October 24, 2005: Sick Of It

Hello friends,

"The blood of our enemies is still the blood of men, and the real glory is to spare it."
Who do you think said it? Some liberal bleeding-heart peacenik? Some anti-American flag-burning girlie man? No, the person who uttered those words was King Louis XV of France, in the year 1745, after a great victory in the battle of Fontenoy, the greatest military success of his reign.

War is idiocy. We live on a small, small planet, and what we do to others is what we do to ourselves. The destruction we inflict and the turmoil we breed in Iraq is waged in the open there, far away, where it is hard to see and harder to feel, but yet the effects of it surface like a cancer, from within, from the depths of the conciousness from which it came, here, in America. I do not believe in terrorism. It does not rank in the pantheon of my beliefs. I have a right to say that because I watched the twin towers burn from the street, 20 blocks north of where they stood. The first plane went over my head on its way to the North Tower. I do not believe in terrorism, violence, destruction, murder, pre-emption, or War. We give energy to that which we believe, to those things that incite our passion. I choose not to give energy to the emotions of revenge, hatred or the desire to subjugate.

In this whole mess, from 9.11 to today, there is one thing only that I thought was appropriate and just, and that was to take Osama bin Laden into custody and put him before a world tribunal. This has not only not been done, but his name has not been mentioned by our president, or anyone in power, in about three years.

I am so sick of reading about another car bomb, another suicide bomber, another 10, 20, 30, 70, 100 people dead in a day, both Americans and Iraqis. When does an insurgency become a coup? When do insurgents become patriots? I am fairly certain if Poland invaded the United States, and removed George Bush from power, and you and I resisted it out of a powerful sense that Poland had no business getting in the affairs of our country, that we would consider ourselves patriots, true-blooded Americans, defenders of the faith—not insurgents. Just a thought. I know all the reasons, both real and fabricated, for the invasion of Iraq, but still… it’s a thought.

The world is a mess. So it seems. Or maybe everything that was hidden, festering, wrong, twisted and based on lies, is now surfacing and showing itself in all its various forms of greed and violence and un-truth. That could be helpful. How can you heal something if you aren’t sure what it is? The medicine needs to be specific to the illness. The remedies I am finding myself drawn to are: Radical Truth-speaking, Fearlessness, Defense of the Helpless and Young, Resistance to Manipulation, and Voting with my Dollars. Every person’s every action has an effect. It’s true. Every small act of compassion, every brief moment of speaking the truth, every dollar, i.e., unit of energy, put into a pro-Earth, pro-healing cause, counts. Everything counts. Every thought, every word, every choice.

Please join me in transforming the ideas of what it means to live in a global community, a tiny world where you are just as connected to the child with AIDS in Africa as you are to the child in your living room, whether you know it or not. What does it mean to transform the notion of living together on a small planet, with—dare I say—harmony? I don’t know for sure, but I’m determined to find out.

“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”

—Martin Luther King, Jr.

Love from Mrs. L

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