Reprise: Swords and Sheaves

(Originally posted on the blog The Dear Maria Letters, 11/22/15)

Dear Maria,

Enjoyed your quip about finding my coat, but not worrying about Max’s, as cooler weather—cold even—descends. So, yes, I will jacket up during the near-freezing mornings in the offing.

Here’s a moment for you: The other day, I pulled into the driveway and up to my usual spot nearly to the garage, and when I looked up after closing the truck door, there perched a hawk on the very corner of the roof and perhaps six feet away, a crow.

The hawk gave me “the eye” and then flew off over the neighbor’s roof and into a stand of pines about 100’ away. The crow gave me “the eye” and just hopped about on the roof. Predator disinterested, but scavenger still lurking? I’ll need to review the symbolism for those birds before hazarding a guess on my fate.

Of course, I am not immune to the uproar—at least in the media, and social media, as well—over the Paris attacks, the refugees, and the ongoing war in the Middle East. No Pax Humana to be had apparently.

As always, I need to process events piece by piece. I think about a neighbor brandishing a sword as he comes into my yard while I bundle sheaves. His demand is that I renounce my way of life and submit to his viewpoint. And surrender my land and my holdings over to him. Now I can hold my hands up and submit or I can suggest peaceful coexistence, and he can either change his mind or cut me down. Or I can flee nearly empty-handed and hope to outdistance him. Or—and here we go—I can take up the sword and it’s to the death.

Too simplistic, true enough, but what trips me up is when he asserts either my assent or my death. His chosen tool, violence. The message, submit or die. Well, another end is in play—his. So to be acted out again, the cycle in all its historical ignominy returns: forced submission at the end of a sword, gun, or IED, but forces amass and via a countering violence, the ash heap of failed authoritarian empires grows.

And so goes another hapless, mindless, violent horror. More to come, I’m afraid.

Thankfully, it is almost that time when the day dims and the flowers seem to float above the garden’s darkening mass of leaves. Then the roses fade into the shadows, and just the lantana’s yellow flowers are visible. Moments like this—well, nothing more to say about much of anything.

The holidays are soon on us, and I know your family will be gathering as will mine. Enjoy—no, savor each and every minute.

And, maybe in our lifetime, peace on earth. Peace on earth. Peace on earth.

With much love, srk