To create an enemy

To Create an enemy

Start with an empty canvas

Sketch in broad outline the forms of

men, women, and children.

Dip into the unconsciousness well of your own

disowned darkness

with a wide brush and

strain the strangers with the sinister hue

of the shadow.

Trace onto the face of the enemy the greed,

hatred, carelessness you dare not claim as

your own.

Obscure the sweet individuality of each face.

Erase all hints of the myriad loves, hopes,

fears that play through the kaleidoscope of

every infinite heart.

Twist the smile until it forms the downward

arc of cruelty.

Strip flesh from bone until only the

abstract skeleton of death remains.

Exaggerate each feature until man is

metamorphasized into beast, vermin, insect.

Fill in the background with malignant

figures from ancient nightmares – devils,

demons, myrmidons of evil.

When your icon of the enemy is complete

you will be able to kill without guilt,

slaughter without shame.

The thing you destroy will have become

merely an enemy of God, an impediment

to the sacred dialectic of history.

By Sam Keen, Faces of the Enemy

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the faces of the enemy

what do we see there?

what do we fail to see?

those we choose as enemies

are those whose faces we choose to obscure

changing them from a child of God

obscuring “the sweet individuality of each face”

until there is no face

no person

only a stereotype

only a caricature

until there is no face

and we can “kill without guilt, slaughter without shame”

Dylan Roof

The Muslim driver in London

The man who drove into Muslims leaving worship

The young man in Manchester

The ISIS warrior

The American Pilot

Did they, do they see

The faces of those in front of them?

The man with a bat, who beat to death a 17 year old Muslim girl

Did he see her face?

Perhaps the problem is we do not see the faces of those we have chosen to hate

We do not see the pain

The hurt

The hunger

The fear

The love

The hope

The despair

The humanity

The divinity

We do not see a child of God

When we look at that Muslim

Or look at Trump

Or look at McConnell

Or look at “those liberals”

We have stripped flesh from bone

Until only the “abstract skeleton of death” remains

And so we attack

With words

With actions

With knives and guns and bat

We will never come together

We will never have peace

We will never heal the earth

We will never help bring into reality the Kingdom of the Sacred

Until everyone

Has

A

Face