On the Subject of Fundamentalist Scandals

So I'd been thinking about this for a while now, and I think I now understand why it is that Governor Sanford, who left his state in secret for five days to visit his mistress in Argentina, refuses to resign. In the same way, I'm also pretty sure I know why Senator John Ensign of Nevada refuses to resign. Simply put, it's because doing so would, in their eyes, be acting against God's will.

An explanation is required. Both Governor Sanford and Senator Ensign are more or less fundamentalist Christians. Even more, they are heavily influenced by 'The Family,' a strain of Christian fundamentalism that apparently weds the language and appearance of the gospel to a version of the explicitly anti-Christian philosophy known as Objectivism. They are a sect which has determined that to feed the hungry, to care for the sick, and to visit those in prison is a waste of time, and the group that really needs our love and service and compassion are the rich and the powerful, who are, according to this creed, the foundation of our society, the virtuous ones who innovate and produce jobs for everyone else, etc. It's sort of a 'prosperity gospel meets Ayn Rand and makes sweet sweet love while crushing organized labour beneath its boot heel.' When they speak of serving the poor, or having a heart for the poor, they mean serving powerful businessmen and having a heart for powerful members of congress: the 'poor in spirit.' The poverty of the spirits of businessmen and members of congress may even be well established, but that's hardly what Jesus was talking about, and is, of course, neither here nor there.

As dictated by their fundamentalist faith, these men do not believe that they were put into power by their constituents. No, it was God who appointed them to their current posts. They are His elect, you see. His chosen. It was His hand which guided the election, explicitly not the votes of everyday people. They are therefore, in their own minds, not answerable to the people, but only to God. To resign now would be to act against the will of God that they use the positions to which they were divinely mandated to receive for the advance of the cause of His kingdom on Earth, and is therefore impossible.

That's pretty much all there is to it. Theocracy or bust, and no amount of naysaying will convince them of anything else. Come face to face with their own moral bankruptcy? Well, God's only testing them. Testing their resolve, and their willingness to submit to his will and to remain in the office to which He appointed them. And besides, God doesn't care about whether or not they've shown themselves to be hypocrites, or whether or not they're virtuous men. God just cares that they're obedient men, doing the work for which they have been Chosen. And by their own reckoning, they are.

It's disgusting, yes. Hypocritical, yes. Unexpected? Hardly.

The Lighter Side...

Going to see Wicked in San Francisco tomorrow. I don't think I've mentioned how much I really, really love Broadway. <3

The Torture Memos

In all seriousness, I've been reading the torture memos lately, and what amazes me about them is the sheer clinical banality of... I'm not sure. Evil, maybe. This is not the work of barbarians, but of civilized men with well-scrubbed hands. These men, while discussing a very real, very horrifying act, while discussing a victim being tortured on a table, dissemble. They split hairs. They try to justify their actions. They argue that 'pain' cannot be considered to be a distinct concept from 'suffering,' and therefore because Waterboarding inflicts no physical pain, it also inflicts no 'suffering,' and therefore cannot be said to constitute inhumane treatment, or cruel or unusual punishment.

... and I look upon this, and I see people arguing back and forth, I see people arguing for and against, I see them making the inevitable good points on whether or not waterboarding can be said to inflict pain and suffering, and I see the inevitable result: the victim remains strapped to the table, and continues to be waterboarded.

There is a time for debate. It has passed. Now it is time to arrest the criminals who have so freely confessed to having tortured, having approved torture, having ordered torture, and to have them stand trial in a court of law.

We must, must, MUST prosecute. We must establish once and for all that even when the country's legal authorities themselves act unlawfully, they are still subject to the law. And we must establish that we are not a country which will allow such barbarism to be carried out in her name. Otherwise, we're no better than the very fanatics the Bush administration claims to have embraced barbarism to oppose.

On the Nature of Good and Evil

Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil.

John Milton, Areopagitica

An Open Letter to Senator Feinstein

Senator Feinstein,

I am writing to you to express my deep concern about the attitude of many politicians which seems dangerously focused on 'moving forward' when such an attitude is entirely inappropriate for the situation with which we are faced. I realize that what I want is a politically inconvenient position, but let's make no bones about its reality: we tortured. These are not my words, but the words of Susan Crawford, convening authority on military commissions under the Bush Administration: "We tortured Mohammed al-Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture." Never was a more damning statement issued by any American in modern history.

Men and women in the service of these United States have engaged in the practice of torture. An illegal practice under both International and our own law. We made it into law. We led the way in establishing torture's illegality. This must, must be investigated and prosecuted. We have a responsibility to uphold the law. If we turn away from our responsibility now, how will American citizens ever be able to look each other in the eye again without shrinking beneath the shame of it? For it will then be our shame. Ours is a representative government; everything our government does is done in our name and for our sake and, on some level, by our choice. If we as a people turn a blind eye to the practice of torture in the face of such a confession as was given by the Bush Administration, the guilt becomes ours. Becomes mine. Senator, I beg you not to let this happen. I do not want such barbarism and brutality as a permanent stain upon my conscience and upon my soul, and so it shall be unless it is investigated and prosecuted in a court of law.

Again, I realize that this is a politically inconvenient thing to ask, but the sentiment appropriate to such a horror carried out by our own government in our names is not 'putting the past behind us.' Rather it is time for 'NEVER AGAIN.'

Respectfully,
Paul Howard Wise

Civil Rights

While I was overjoyed to see Barrack Obama voted into office, one thing has soured the experience for me - one thing has robbed the victory of some portion of its sweetness. In my home state of California, prop 8, the constitutional amendment to ban homosexual marriages, passed.

There have been massive protests ever since.

Today I heard on the news that, across the state, city and local officials are joining the protest against Prop 8, working to see this gross injustice overturned. I have never been prouder of them in my life.

The issue of whether or not homosexual couples should be allowed to marry is not a matter of religious conviction, but rather of secular conviction: it is a matter of convictions which, uttered at the dawn of our nation's history, hold no less true today. "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness..."

This is about civil rights. This is about the necessary separation of Church and State. This is about whether or not it is acceptable in a free society for a majority to strip civil rights from a minority; in the same faith with which our founders penned those mighty words, we assert that it is not. We have seen too much to believe for even a moment that the desire of the majority - 'separate but equal' - is anything less than institutionalized injustice, and in unified spirit with Doctor Martin Luther King Jr and every civil rights leader who ever stood up for a despised minority, we hold to the faith that though the arc of the moral universe is long, it bends towards justice in the end.

California's Proposition 8

I suppose there are very few people out there who are unaware of prop 8 on tomorrow's ballot, but in the unlikely event that any of you come across this blog, prop 8 is the one that strips homosexuals of the right to marry under the guise of "protecting traditional marriage."

It probably comes as no surprise to know that I am against proposition 8.

What the 'protect traditional marriage!' crowd fails to understand is that there is a difference between a marriage as facilitated by the state and the sacrament of marriage. It is an unfortunate coincidence of our language that we use the same word for both. One is a category in which couples receive legal benefits and protections. The other is a religious sacrament - in Christian theology, one of the seven sacraments of Evangelical Law (note: 'evangelical here does not in any way refer to the evangelical movement). Now, a church can do whatever it likes, but the state must not discriminate illegally in its contracts. If your particular church or denomination chooses not to recognize homosexual unions as participants in the sacrament of marriage, that is your right. I disagree with you, but I respect your right to make this decision. But it is immoral to exclude homosexual couples from the benefits and protections granted to couples in marriage as facilitated by the state.

It is my great hope that the majority of Californians will agree with me, and choose to say no to institutionalized hatred, discrimination, and injustice. We'll see what happens.

Why I am Pro-Choice

I originally posted this as a comment on someone else's blog, in response to their question of how a Christian who supposedly believes that human life is sacred could possibly support abortion. After some urging from my brother, I've decided it's worth posting here as well. I'm going to tell you why, as a Christian, I am pro-choice.

First, I'm going to say off the bat that I am against abortion. I think abortion is a very big deal, is terrible, and that every time an abortion happens, a human life is ended before it can begin. However, I also believe that life should be brought into the world freely, not under duress. That is, I believe in free will.

When I look at the two alternatives, both of them terrible, I find the second worse than the first. While abortion is awful, looking into the eyes of a woman with an unwanted pregnancy and telling her, “You have no choice. We are going to make you carry this baby to term, whether you like it or not. We’re going to force you to have it, and there’s absolutely nothing you can do to stop us,” is in my mind incomparably worse. Such is my horror at this utter negation of her personhood, this reduction of herself into little more than a glorified baby-factory, that I would rather abortion be legal and safe than put any woman through this kind of … rape. My horror of it is such that I must guard against the danger of thinking the pro-life position to be monstrous, understanding that it is held by those with no less moral conviction.

Perhaps there are holes in that argument. Perhaps it is overly emotional. But you must understand that my position is no less rooted in a strong sense of right and wrong than yours, and no less the product of intense emotion.
Yes, having a baby is the natural consequence of procreation. But we live in a time in which our science, outstripping our wisdom, perhaps, has given us not only the ability, but also the responsibility to decide when or when not to allow things to follow according to their natural consequences. In the literal sense of the word, it is an awful power, but it is ours, for better or for worse. Yes, we are responsible for our actions. Yes, it is arguably ‘against nature’ (if you hold to a concept of Natural Law) to abort a baby. None of that undoes the horror of the alternative. Abortion grieves me, and I wish that it never happened, but the alternative horrifies me more than I can possibly express.

God will judge, and judge justly, whether we were right or wrong. In the meantime, we must do as our consciences demand, and pray that when it comes our time to die, the mercy we have in Christ extends even to decisions like these.

On Education

I am currently engaged in the ordeal of acquiring a teaching credential.
It's a strange sort of thing, doing this program. There's so much nonsense mixed with so much valuable information that it's hard to know which is which.

To quote Areopagitica (because, hey, why not?): "Good and evil we know in the field of this world grow up together almost inseparably; and the knowledge of good is so involved and interwoven with the knowledge of evil, and in so many cunning resemblances hardly to be discerned, that those confused seeds which were imposed upon Psyche as an incessant labour to cull out and sort asunder, were not more intermixed. It was from out the rind of one apple tasted that the knowledge of good and evil, as two twins cleaving together, leaped forth into the world. And perhaps this is that doom which Adam fell into of knowing good and evil, that is to say of knowing good by evil."

And of knowing sense by nonsense.

In any case, I'll press on, do my work, turn in my assignments, and with any luck, I'll get my credential and secure a job for myself. Life is funny. I never in a million years would have thought that I would have wound up a teacher. Stranger things have happened, but always to other people.

If the credentialing process is anything to go by, teaching is a strange, strange profession. Education is a religion of sorts in this country. We dispense knowledge in the faith that education will raise the quality of life for all who receive it. It's our sacred cow in budgetary matters (think about how angry people get when they thing someone is cutting money from education), our chosen instrument of social reform, and simultaneously both the greatest resource of and the greatest threat to the continuation of our democracy: a well-educated populace is necessary for a functional democracy; a well-educated populace is clear-sighted enough to rise up in Revolution against an oppressive and corrupt government. But well-educated by whose standards? In public education? The government's. Catch 22. But I'll press on. No matter how much it creeps me out to think that the government is educating its own populace, no matter how horrifying the potential for abuse is in that arrangement, I'll press on.

Even idealists need to eat.

So here's to you, my future students, whoever you are. May you become the kind of educated people our country needs. May you be able to think rationally and (though the word is overused almost to the point of nonmeaning) critically about the world around you. May you mount up with the wings of eagles and help to create the sort of world you would want to live in. You won't have an easy time of it, I'm afraid. The idolatrous hopes of the United States of America rest in you, the student population. It is you who will be worshiped as soldiers, the idols of our hearts, condemned and stripped of your rights as criminals, condescended to as the middle class, ignored as the poor, embraced as the rich and the unexpectedly successful, lied to, manipulated, and ultimately may well be destroyed by a society in which the mass is still simple and the seers are no longer attended to. As C.S. Lewis wrote, "On or back we must go; to stay here is death." It is you who will decide this. Again, it will not be easy. But only very rarely are things which are worth doing things which are easy to do. The work of the transformation of our world for the better lies before us all.

Let's get to it.

Pale Blue Dot

I don't even have words for this one. Rarely before have I seen anything on youtube so beautiful that it moved me to tears.

Reflections on the Inferno

Reading through the Inferno this time around, I find myself particularly interested in the use and role of language here within. When you consider the various ways and forms of its use, an interesting picture is created.

First of all, the gates of hell bear a message for those that pass under, a final sentence of the condemned. "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here," and dares to suggest that all the horrors of hell are the product of Divine Love. Perhaps they are. Then descend we into Limbo, where we find the citadel of the virtuous pagans, and the great philosophers there, who, by reason as through language, stave off the darkness of the Hell around them, a light which, like that same fire stolen by Prometheus of old, gives light but not comfort: What comfort can be found in Hell? But even here, even in the best possible world without salvation, the barriers of language are firmly in place: Saladin stands alone.

Unless I have misread, Hell appears to be a place utterly divided by language barriers. Dante and Virgil can speak only to those who can understand them, and in light of the unfathomable numbers which must suffer therein, this is not a small thing: part of the torment of Hell appears to be its isolation, and language barriers only serve to increase this. Not only to suffer eternally, but to be unable to communicate your suffering to the greater part of Hell's population, and therefore unable to make it less than it eternally is. Here we see the faint glimmering of a great truth: If Hell is to be eternal, it must always be happening *now.*

Descend we further and we encounter Charon, and further still the band of demons, and I note with interest that they have no difficulty understanding human speech, nor in being understood by humans. Yet the demons, though they can understand and be understood by the damned, are such low, such vulgar creatures that they scarcely have anything to say that is worth hearing. Hell, it seems, has a sense of humour, and there is no stronger evidence than this that it is God's handiwork: the damned do not laugh.

In stark contrast stands Purgatory. When souls arrive, they arrive singing, and not only that but singing *together,* and there is more in that than might be supposed. Already we find a spirit of cooperation vastly, vastly different from what exists in Hell. They are singing the Latin text of Psalm 114, which in English is as follows (The Holy Bible, NIV):

"When Israel came out of Egypt,
the house of Jacob from a people of foreign tongue,

Judah became God's sanctuary,
Israel his dominion.

The sea looked and fled,
the Jordan turned back;

the mountains skipped like rams,
the hills like lambs.

Why was it, O sea, that you fled,
O Jordan, that you turned back,

you mountains, that you skipped like rams,
you hills, like lambs?

Tremble, O earth, at the presence of the Lord,
at the presence of the God of Jacob,

who turned the rock into a pool,
the hard rock into springs of water."

These are not simply singing pilgrims at the base of their holy mountain: these are God's chosen, who, though they have not yet reached the promised land, have not yet seen the hard rock become springs of water, fervently look forward to the Divine Promise that it will be so. Eve at the entrance to purgatory, even at its lowest levels, the souls within exhibit a level of trust that is simply inconceivable in Hell. The psychology of the damned is, to quote C.S. Lewis, one that is primarily concerned with its own dignity and advancement. "It is a place where everyone has a grievance, and everyone lives the deadly serious passions of envy, self-importance, and resentment." And in Dante, it is also God's answer to these evils: a last, stop-gap emergency measure to draw even the irredeemable as close to perfection as can be achieved. If the damned could see beyond these passions, beyond their little lives, beyond their suffering, towards any kind of perspective whatever that was not centered on their selves, they would no longer be in torment but in Limbo. But here, at the base of the holy mountain, the souls who are about to be plunged into the purifying fires of Purgatory sing a psalm of praise. Their focus is in the right place: not on their selves, but on each other. Unlike the language of Hell, their language serves its proper purpose. Now they walk and sing. Presently they will learn to fly; it is said that angels fly by taking themselves lightly. So may we all.

On the Romance of Language

I watched a video today called "Silent Children, New Language," and it was interesting. It dealt with the emergence of a new sign language among deaf children in Nicaragua, and there are some very specific things that I found particularly notable and worth examining in the short space allowed here.

The first statement made in the film which I should like to examine is this one: "These children have created a language out of nothing." I wish to further inform this statement with another one from the film: "The ideal linguistic experiment to see whether we have an inborn capacity for language would be to take five children and put them on an island and have them live together in isolation." Now, much is made of the fact that these Nicaraguan children are totally isolated, that they have 'created a language out of nothing,' but this is not entirely the case. These children are not without raw material for their language, nor is it created in total isolation. These children are not alone on an island, but acting and living as best they can within the context of the Nicaraguan culture. We must be careful about the kinds of things we claim as fact supported by evidence. Broad, sweeping, blanket statements are dangerous tools. If we are not careful, we shall find that, in our zeal to find support for our theories, we have editorialized the evidence into a shape which its geometry will not support.

The next statement I should like to examine is more a matter of philosophy than strict linguistics, but is interesting nonetheless. It is a quote of Judy Kegl, and given in reference to her attempt to discover what exactly the signs she was studying meant. "The signs have to come from somewhere." On one level, this is an obvious statement. Everything that is not self-existent must find its source in something else. The same is true of a new language. Considered on another level, however, this is a fantastic statement of faith, and gives us real insight into Doctor Kegl's philosophy of language, and where she stands on the 'inborn language' VS 'social construct language' debate.

Another interesting quote follows along the same lines: "It is not surprising," we are told, by many experts and repeatedly, "to learn that we have an instinctual ability to create language." Furthermore, "It is no more fantastic than the ability of foetal cells to divide and grow from a single cell into a human being." If there were ever in all the history of the world a greater lie about language, I have not heard it. "It is not surprising?" What strange, deluded creature could make such a statement? It is surprising. More accurately, it is fantastic, just as the ability of foetal cells to divide and grow from a single cell into a human being is fantastic. Language is a Romance, and all linguists are Romantics, for only Romantics mistake the sublime for the everyday. It is said that the Hatter is mad because he must measure the human head. So too is the linguist, for he must measure what is meant by such statements.

Homeopathy, Simulacra, and the Material Culture of Medicine

Simulacra and the Placebo Effect

A very interesting read. I wonder if there has been any work done on what the placebo effect means for material culture?

The following quote was taken from another article on the same website, which can be found here: Homeopathy AIDS Conference

"We know that the placebo effect can be very powerful, because it’s not just about the pill, it’s about the cultural meaning of the treatment: so we know from research that four placebo sugar pills a day are more effective than two for eradicating gastric ulcers (and that’s not subjective, you measure ulcers by putting a camera into your stomach); we know that salt water injections are a more effective treatment for pain than sugar pills, not because salt water injections are medically active, but because injections are a more dramatic intervention; we know that green sugar pills are a more effective anxiety treatment than red ones, not because of any biomechanical effect of the dyes, but because of the cultural meanings of the colours green and red. We even know that packaging can be beneficial.

Similarly we know that sugar pills have no physical side effects. This is great, because there are a lot of people for whom there is little effective biomedical treatment: a lot of back pain, for example, or medically unexplained fatigue, most colds and flu, and so on. Going through a theatre of medical treatment, trying every pill in the book, will only elicit side effects, so a sugar pill might be a great remedy."

It was the first sentence that piqued my interest in particular: that it isn't just about the pill (which does nothing), it's about the cultural meaning of the treatment. That is to say, the meaning given to the thing has more significance than the thing itself. I don't believe that this should be applied across the board, but it does give an interesting insight into the soul of the culture, here rendered completely distinct from its body by nature of that body being totally inert.

Written in the Flesh

Written in the Flesh

A twelve minute short video introduction to the works of David Cronenberg. I thought this was very interesting in light of the discussion we'd been having in class about what industry and technology does to the way we think about the human body. Warning: disturbing content. Cronenberg tends to make videos that are really, really messed up.

Material Witnesses

http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/11/05/china.orbit.ap/index.html

"All of the subsystems of the Chang'e 1 are in normal operation so far," said Pei Zhaoyu, spokesman for the China National Space Administration.

The Chang'e 1 has survived the most critical part of its journey, Pei said. It had to enter the moon's orbit at the right time and speed, otherwise it could have hit the moon or flown by it.

He said the satellite's success was a sign of China's advanced engineering. "The project is a comprehensive demonstration of China's economic, scientific and technological power."

------------------

Not simply a demonstration to, but a material witness to, I would say. The Chinese economy is now capable of producing things which reach for the moon and the stars.

It is a strange thing to think that humanity's footprint in the universe has gone well beyond the planet Earth. Satellites orbit the Earth and other worlds in our solar system. Radio signals rocket away into the black at the speed of light, and some of them will have traveled more than 50 light years by now. We are a very noisy, messy people. I wonder if we will be noticed?

A Thousand Plateaus (Capitalism and Schizophrenia)

I'm still trying to digest the readings that we had from this book. As near as I can tell, the author's argument is a total rejection of the medieval concept of natural order, and encourages us to think of the whole world as a rhizome. He goes on at length about why rhizome-thought is good and 'binary logic' is bad. Multiplicity good, duality bad. Subject/object bad. In rejecting all dualities, he falls into duality, with his multiplicity on the one side, and singularity/duality on the other.

His point seems to be that 'the system' has multiple points of entry and exit. He would probably object to calling it 'the system,' saying that this demonstrates binary-logical thinking. He encourages us to consider all the possible factors involved. That the wasp and the orchid are not closed systems, but interrelated. He makes a few good points. The world is more complicated than 1 and 0, and things seem to exist in relationship with each other and not in isolation.

The problem with his model as I see it is that generalizations, singularities and dualities are absolutely necessary. If we are to take into account every possible factor every single time we talk about anything, exploring every inch of the rhizome-structure both above and beneath the ground at every point of access, we shall never say anything at all; we shall rather contemplate and admire the Rhizome. He encourages contemplation and admiration, but renders criticism all but impossible. Certainly it is helpful to get a larger picture of the processes and secret chambers hidden underground that connect things in unexpected ways, but at some point you have to stop contemplating and take action.

We need to organize our data. Doing so makes it intelligible. The ability to choose this and not that is freedom itself. If I am not free to choose this and not that, but must take all of it without discriminating between useful information and peripheral information, I am not sure that it is possible to do anything with that information. In that state, it is, not does.

Huge Research Project

So I'm taking a class at Sonoma State on research and literary criticism. As a part of this class, I am required to come up with a topic for, a proposal for, an outline for, and then to write a twenty page research paper with a minimum of sixteen sources. The paper must be in MLA format, and Wikipedia cannot be used as a source. I thought that last restriction was a masterful touch.

What am I going to do for my research project?

I am going to chart the economy of Hell.

Yeah. That's a doozy. Even so, this is my aim. Hell is called eternal separation from God. Eternal in this context is not so much a measure of duration as it is a statement of the kind and quality of separation. In the same way, Consumer society appears dead set on producing an eternal separation from the natural world. For the purposes of this argument, nature may well stand where God stood, for when we are finally lost to the one, we shall be lost to the other as well. When everything around us, the mountains, the hills, the forests, the streams, the oceans, the earth in all its mystery, the animals, and finally even ourselves and each other are no more than material for production and consumption, then shall be written above the gates of our cities, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Then shall we echo the sentiments of Milton's Satan, looking down over the wreck of our world, finding it good, and murmuring, "Myself am Hell."

If it seems impertinent that a writer with a background in poetry and literature should take on such a project, I can only make this reply: we fight with what weapons we have. This is my task, and with any luck, I shall do it well.

The Stars Knew That...

I looked out the window and saw my reflection over the world beyond
I didn’t much care for it.
I strained to see the street, the courtyard, the stars, the trees beyond
To no avail: my own reflection blocked my view
The air conditioner hummed, and I sat, and looked for inspiration
Finding none, my gaze returned to my reflection, and I sneered.
It sneered back. How could it not?
I did not want to see myself, but as I looked into its eyes, I stopped.
I laughed, and stepped aside, and looked upon the world, and saw not ‘me’
The night was clear, the stars shone bright, and cars were passing in the road
And all the night went on.
You can’t see truth by your own light: the stars knew that.
I didn’t.

More Relevant Now

Mark Twain's War Prayer:

O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle -- be Thou near them! With them -- in spirit -- we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe.

O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it -- for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet!

We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts.

Amen.

Looking Back

Hard, dull, cracked brown bark;
Green, green moss growing in the cracks;
An old child’s tree-house falling off it,
Boards rotten through and soggy with rain;
The old tree looms large in memory,
But it’s less large here looking at it..

Beneath a dreary February sky,
The withered old tree, covered
in new leaves
and fragrant, white flowers.