Today, in light of the meditations by Henri Nouwen concerning writing I have posted past three days and some comments I have received lately, I wish to disclose some of my reasons for writing a blog. Anyone wishing to receive daily mediations in his/her e-mail daily may sign up at the web site listed with the Mediations.
One reason I began writing a blog is blatant self-promotion. I am a poet and free lance writer. On my blog, I can announce any projects, publications, or honors that I receive. It’s my blog. Another reason is to share ideas that I believe are important. The opinions I express may be radical or conservative, popular or not. I answer to God and to the law of the land. But I do not have to agree with any given person or group of people. I believe in freedom of speech.
I am a poet who often writes in the first person, but that is no indication that the speaker (the “I” in a poem) is the author of the poem. Poems are not divided into fiction and non-fiction as prose is.
But in the blogging world, as in the regular one, one soon finds what has been true all along: Truth is where one finds it. I believe in a Absolute Truth, but I don’t believe any one person has it. We all have discovered small pieces of the larger Truth. But only God knows the whole truth. Any reader who has been reading this blog for a while has probably noticed that I have posted poems during April, National Poetry Month, and that I posted special poems and devotions during Holy Week. Doing so was a big hint that I am a Christian. But what I aim to be is an un-obnoxious Christian, one who believes that people who are not Christian have also found part of the truth.
Over the years, I have become a pacifist. I am not only opposed to the war Bush started, but I am opposed to all war. I believe, along with Martin Luther King Jr., about whom I wrote my master’s thesis, “Making All Things New: The Redemptive Value of Unmerited Suffering in the Life and Works of Martin Luther King Jr.” (available in the library at Wake Forest University), that the ills that America must rid herself of are racism, poverty, and militarism. I believe that America can become the nation spoken of in the Constitution and other early American documents and speeches. But I believe we are not on the right path to do so. I do not believe that it is my duty or the duty of my country to kill an enemy. Spiritual battles are not fought with physical weapons but with the kind of love that makes an enemy into a friend.
I will stand before God some day and plead the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ for my salvation. I pray that then I will hear the words “Well done.” I pray that every reader will also. But I refuse to believe God loves me more than people born on the southern shore of the Rio Grande. I refuse to stop struggling to make this world more nearly the way God intended and still intends for it to be.
7 comments
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May 1, 2006 at 8:49 pm
Helen Losse
The incidents you cite are dreadful. Innocent people killed with flagrant violence. But not all Muslims are responsible for the actions of some. Should Christians be judged by what happened during the Crusades or by what Pat Roberston or Jerry Falwell say? Do you know any Muslims? Do you know Erk, a retired engineer, with whom I correspond all the time, concerning issues of peace. Do you know Khalid, the local Imam, with whom I worked on the King Committee to bring the Massey lectures to Winston-Salem (which is where I met Erk). Khalid hosted one of the lectures at the local mosque. Why should Abu Musab al Zarqawi listen to me? He never heard of me! But I do hope that Erk and Khalid know that all Christians are not their enemies, because of something I did or said. Posting poems is self-aggrandizement, is it? Not publicty for a forth-coming chapbook? Just a day ago, you said the world needed both kinds of Christians: "the compassionate, loving, pacifistic,caring,nurturing,encouraging Christian and…. the strong, dedicated,courageous, selfless warrior…who is willing to "lay down his life for his friends" …. And what kind do you now say I am? I, who, need "to be about my father's business." I might be warrior, too, but by another name. At first I asked "good" questions. Are these getting too hard?
May 2, 2006 at 3:20 am
Bill
Helen
I will gladly retract the sarcasm of that comment…I was a little bit miffed by an uncalled for “adhominem” attack that I received in a recent comment about indoctrination in the classroom. I think you know what I mean. And yes…I believe you to be a warrior…. it’s good to see that, underneath that soft, compassionate exterior of yours, there is a person who can “get mean” when she has too (LOL)
May 2, 2006 at 3:31 am
Bill
Having corresponded several times over the past few days and having read each others blogs and comments, I now know that we will disagree on most topics 90% of the time….let’s focus on the remaining 10% to find common ground.
Have a great day!!!!!!
John
P.S. I really like many of your poems as well as your essays. I wish I could write as good as you!!!!!!
May 2, 2006 at 9:52 am
helenl
Finding “common ground” is the basis of creating peace. Peace is more than the absence of war: it involves working for the common good. That’s why finding similarities is more important than finding differences.
May 3, 2006 at 2:47 am
ralph michael
I believe in God and Jesus and cute little bunny rabbits and little
baby chicks. I like to skip through the meadow smelling the pretty
flowers and chasing the bees as they zip from blossom to blossom. I
love all the people in the world, no matter what color they are or how
bad they smell. I am just as joyful on a dark, dreary rainy day in
winter as I am on a bright, sunny day in the spring. I wish we could
all love each other and be friends.
February 9, 2008 at 12:14 pm
Gringo
My freshman year at college I argued long and hard in dorm bull sessions for conscientious objection as the proper response to the Vietnam War: avoid doing evil. At the time I thought that my stance was based completely on philosophical beliefs. I was an atheist at the time, so not as a religious belief. Now I realize that my stance was also based on experience, not just on philosophical constructs. When I was 9 years old, a friend died in a gun accident with his older brother. My horror at the prospect of going to Vietnam and killing someone must have been in large part based on my reaction to that tragic event, though I didn’t realize it at the time. (It took me decades before I released tears over my friend’s death, and the anguish his older brother has been carrying with him all these years.)
My support for conscientious objection became more than a theoretical construct. After my freshman year I dropped out, and eventually got drafted. I applied for 1-O (Conscientious Objector) status, and after an appeal, was granted it. Had I not obtained CO status, I was prepared to go to jail for my beliefs, not go to Canada: I was an American. The essay I submitted to the draft board had no mention whatsoever about the death of my friend: I had repressed coming to terms with his death. I later observed the aftermath of US involvement in Vietnam. The genocide in Cambodia changed my mind. When tyrants have a gun in their hands, I concluded that it is a cop-out to be a pacifist. The pacifist withdraws to the sideline, having washed his hands, and the slaughter continues. What we do is inevitably a mixture of good and evil. He who avoids evil does nothing.
The final moment in my leaving the liberal/pacifist camp came with Gulf War 1, which only 5 Democratic Party Senators supported. I had previously voted for McGovern and Carter for President. Before the Senate vote on Gulf War 1, I heard McGovern on TV. “We should not go to war against Saddam…. Negotiate…UN…We got peace in Vietnam etc. etc. etc.” My reaction: The Peace of the Two Million Dead in Cambodia. The difference between Senator McGovern and me was that his TV statement showed that he felt no responsibility for the two million dead in Cambodia, and I as a former Conscientious Objector, felt some responsibility for them.
As regards Muslims, I will say that any time they cry Islamophobia, we should suggest that they should be extended the tolerance that Muslims extend in Muslim lands to Christians and others not adhering to Islam. It’s called reciprocity. Try building a Christian church in Egypt or Saudi Arabia! JUST TRY IT! A grad student who was an Arab Christian from the West Bank lived at our house my final two years of high school. His father had been a civil servant in the Jordanian government that administered the West Bank at the time, and continued in that vein after 1967. Well before the Six Days War, his father told his children to leave the West Bank. Christians, he informed his children, will not be permitted to advance. Muslims will always promote Muslims in favor of Christians.
February 9, 2008 at 12:22 pm
helenl
Hi Gringo, Thanks for your comment. These issues are not simple, not so black-and-white, so to speak, as some would have us believe. We have to “fight for peace” one heart at a time. It’s a conversion as powerful as any religious one. The battle is not over. And believe me or not, I know individual Muslims who are ambassadors for peace. Just because some nation has it wrong is not reason enough for me to change my mind.