Spiritus Monday: A Chain of Beings

For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will now say, Peace be within thee." Psalm 122:8

You have seen it happen, how many times?

The holding open of a door in a public space--a chain of action and reaction--paid forward, paid backward, paid sideways. With a shoulder, a knee, a heel, an elbow.

Sometimes almost comically. One after another after another after another. And spin some children into the mix and high hilarity ensues.

The door has been held for you in the past and will be held for you in the future. You have most likely done the same for others in your past, and you will most likely do so again.

Is there ever anyone that you would let the door close upon?

Of course, the physical differences are easily noted. By gender, by age, skin color, by body type.

But what of their hearts, these strangers. Do they bear the heart of a worried parent or a grieving child? Do they love deeply or are they afloat in apathy?

Do you know for certain their minds? Their spiritual practices? Their political views? Their personal ethics? Their work ethic?

Does a headscarf dissuade you? A tatoo? A Star of David? A scar across the cheek? A cross? Baggy pants? Uniform? College emblem?

This chain of all beings, linked. Right?

This is War!

I am comfortable hazarding a guess that George Orwell would agree with this notion: “The beginning of wisdom, as the Chinese say, is calling things by their right names” (E. O. Wilson).

The word in the title I would have you focus on for a few moments is war.

This photo from The Guardian is a war photo. Take a good, close look. We are not in a civil war here in the United States. A shootout is not war. A gun battle is not war.

Another war photo, this one from The Telegraph. Look hard. You do not wish war for us. We do not wish war for one another.

Just this last war photo, one from the BBC. Let us be a bit more careful with our words. I hear, or more often read of, voices calling for war, or insisting we are at war. We are not at war with ourselves.

That we have hatred being spewed, that we have injustice running rampant, that we have peace eluding us domestically dominates so much of our current landscape. But, we are not at war. Do not wish it so.

One word more, then. Go, in peace.

On Independence Day Eve

Let me spot you your fourscore—and go ahead take seven more if you wish. May you live that long and live well.

The national angst-o-meter seems to be clicking like a Geiger counter warning of impending doom, but I wonder. I wonder about the buzz that suggests somehow we might dial back to some moment in time before this juncture in our particular history.

So, using 1776 as a starting point, carve out your fourscore, a slice of when you would have rather been alive. With an answer to the ‘why’ of your choice of course. Heck, go on back to Jamestown. Go ahead, give me your notion of our country’s best stretch of 80 years.

And don’t think I won’t drop the ‘best for whom’ card on the table. But, go ahead.

While ruminating on that chore, chew on this—‘a more perfect union’ may not mean perfect as in perfect but more as in getting better. Perfectly? No, I would say ‘convulsively’ we move forward.

The 300-plus years that I am giving you not enough?  How about pretending to be from another country, another time. Turkey has been around since 900 or so.

Or Japan, 660. Or Bulgaria, 632. Or France, 486. Or San Marino, 301—had to look that one up, didn’t you?

Or going further back, Greece around 500 BC. Or Iran, 600 BC. Or China, 2000 BC. Or Ethiopia, 2500 BC. Or India, 3000 BC. Or Egypt, 3500 BC.

See what I did there? 

Find the ideal fourscore, somewhere, at any time—idyllic, just, prosperous…well, perfect.

As for me—and I can only speak for myself—if I should wake tomorrow morning in this here and this now, I can live with that. My threescore and a few, fully aware of work that is always to be done but looking forward. 

Ever forward.