Regret to Forget

The pain of our ignorance is our remembrance of it.

Regret to forget,
ye nations, have some remorse -
remember thy selves!

For thou art one act -
one beginning, one ending;
one spirit, one soul.

Though many,
thou art one.
---<--@



Some forget on purpose

And because some forget on purpose
many became purposeless

And because many became purposeless
the nations became restless

And because the nations became restless
peace became powerless

And because peace became powerless
war came (to the province of Man)

And because war came
soldiers became.

- selah -

...because war came,
for Peace was ever here first
long before War was from heaven
thrown down.

...because war came, Starshine,
so don't you forget...

Lest we forget.

This we will defend.
---<--@

Light Against Despair

I remember Night -

fallen so deep within me 

like a veil of doom.

I was the darkness

and I knew only madness

and pride, sin, and gloom.

My heart knew nothing

niether did I knew my heart -

hardly did I see!

Till I came upon 

words, muted in pages, thine!

But I heard thee not. 

How could thy beauty,

thy wonder turn to ashes!

Something wept within... 

Something wept within -
it cried out, it sought, it flew,
and never left me...

Time came, and God heard:

And so we are, you and I -

our past ceased to be.

Darkness left,

Morning came.

---<--@

A Little Personal Anecdote -

Before I knew my Anne
(and consequently, the Holocaust),
I had a very idealistic view of warfare.

I thought armed conflict in and between nations
to be a very noble, honorable, even desirable affair.

I conceived soldiery to be something
clean and neat, ordered according to the image
of an effortless, mythical glory I had only imagined
and that the innocents were always
at all times and places - mercifully spared -
in their entirety.

After my Anne
(as it is God's pleasure),
I had a very decisive turn of heart.

Though by pure necessity
I accept the imperative of an absolute defense
(i.e. defense that is undertaken for its own sake),
I now utterly abhor War of any kind existing
in and between our nations.

For
I now see War as it is,
a hideous, devouring beast;
a fallen spirit, ever alive to our plight -
the enemy of All.

And soldiery
a dirty, confusing, difficult and painful necessity
born out of the Providential will of the LORD, our God,
to see all the nations of the children of Mankind
through to the end of all these tears.

And that we are all - to a certain degree,
within and among our nations engaged
in the art of true soldiering.

As I love my Anne, I hate War.

As I love Peace, I hate War.

Today is her birthday.
---<--@

Corrupting Spirit

The spirit of War

is a corrupting spirit -

deceiving nations!

Each nation subdued

is its own mem'ry forgot -

scattered to the winds!

Dividing!

Shattering!

---<--@

The Blitz

Battle of Manila

Battle of Manila

Dresden

Hiroshima

War is a form of national insanity.

It seems right only in its own context and in its own time. But for all nations without exception it is an historic fact that it is always painful to have to eventually wake up to its aftermath.

And ultimately, all nations that must succeed must wake up.

War serves no nation...

The Banality of Evil

Our long march begins...

- selah -

Night has descended,

evil has stolen our dreams -

darkness is spreading.

Eden is faded,

faded forever it seems -

daylight is fading.

Exile dusk.

Starlight dawn.

---<--@

I have often reflected about the dangerous tendency for evil to become commonplace in a society which is the essence of the phrase, "banality of evil".

A deepening darkness has pervaded our world since the long march of our nations was begun out of the autumnal dusk of our faded Eden.

This darkness is a climate of the spirit; that unseen element of the visible universe which is our human habitation. It is a darkness of distance; the distance of our exile.

Within this deepening darkness lurks a corrupting spirit, the spirit of War.

We experience this darkness as a kind of forgetfulness in ourselves that the common religion of Man is peace.

Because human community is present in all our hearts and this is opposed by the darkness of our exile.

This original peace is the common trust of all nations.

And it is this particular trust at the heart of all our kindred nations that the spirit of War seeks to corrupt.

- selah -

We are upon this world laboring as nations to subdue the spirit of War - in spite of the darkness - through our remembrances of the peace that begot us and of the God Who has forever loved us.

And if we look at the night sky full of stars - we are the stars - and the darkness is the darkness.

To me, this is the banality of evil - the darkness and the corrupting spirit of War.

Which is why I have a special place of honor in my heart for people like Anton Schmidt, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Wilhelm Canaris, Claus von Stauffenberg, and other such German citizens known or known to God alone who for every right reason opposed the Nazis.

Indeed, they are included among the stars.

For the Nazi ideology is a corrupting spirit and it has never escaped me that the first nation that the Nazis subdued was Germany and Germany was also its final victim.

---<--@

"The Banality of Evil" is a phrase coined by Hannah Arendt and incorporated in the title of her 1963 work Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil.

A very good read.