forgiveness

“An eye for an eye, and the whole world would be blind.”

― Kahlil Gibran

“Forgiveness means it finally becomes unimportant that you hit back.”

― Anne Lamott

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In my dreams

I am standing again in a field in Kurdistan

The sound of military helicopters growing ever louder

As like vultures

Or is it angels of mercy

They drop from the sky

Disgorging their sad burden

Tattered  and wet

Fragile with hypothermia

Bent with the burden of the precious bundles they hold in their arms

Barely protected from the bitter weather

By the rags with which they are wrapped

We tried, Oh we tried

But they were too weak

Too far gone

And so, as we held them, they died

These little innocents

Their faces drawn and grey white

This was the fruit of war

I wake and remember

Other babies, starving to death in Africa

Shot in their classrooms in America

Poisoned in Syria

Shot and bombed in Gaza

So many children, destroyed

The fruit of prejudice, and anger, and hate

The fruit of violence

The fruit of our need for power

The fruit of our Greed

As I walk in the snow, in the silent peace

In the relative safety of rural Oregon

I wonder how we respond?

Is the answer missiles, bombs, drones

Is the answer violence?

Has that ever worked?  Really?

Even when it appears to have benefited the world,

Were not the seeds of hate sown?

Was not the groundwork laid for the next conflict?

There is no war to end all wars

There is only war after war

We must go a different way

We must walk a different path

And it will not be an easy path I fear

We must walk the path of love

And it takes more strength to love in the face of hate

Than it does to return hate

I am not sure I am strong enough to do that

Very few, in the history of the world have been

One was

That one who “humbled himself”

And refused to take on the way of power, although he could have

And walked in love all the way to the cross

to say in a way unmistakable

this is how it ends

the endless cycle of violence and retribution

this is how it ends

How do we approximate that way?

What does it look like, today?

God help me, I do not know

But I am fairly certain it does not look like missiles

Hurled into space

It does not look like dying babies

It does not look like chronic retribution

It looks as radical and costly as the cross