Via Ocean Guy I have read a post that rends my heart, in much the same voice that a quote I copied some times ago speaks:
We can try to deny it, but we can’t escape it — a battle is raging around us. No matter how much we don’t want to listen, we lie in bed and hear the shooting. There is no way not to listen. But what is the message we are supposed to hear? It’s not clear anymore. We want peace, but peace is a word that is not the absence of war. Peace has to have value in itself. We have been dreaming about peace. But we have been dreaming with our eyes closed. Now our eyes are open. We can’t escape the sounds of battle. And what is most alarming is this: The battle is a result of giving everything we could. To give more, makes no sense.
-Sheri Lederman Mandell on her situation in Israel
The post, by Gail of ‘Crossing The Rubicon2’, details her reaction to Margaret Hassan’s murder.
I have been basically a pacifist in my own convictions for a long while, and I have to say the present conflict is severely testing my views.
All I can do at this time is feel. I am not ready to fully think out the stance and its demands on me. I feared for this situation that we now find ourselves in Iraq when we had found ourselves in the first Desert Storm. It just causes grief for me, personally, right now. I feel for our soldiers, for their families, for those caught in the crossfire in Iraq, for the needs of many people throughout the world who are impacted in some way. It is just so difficult.
“I am not accustomed to wanting people dead, to wanting to see the death of an ideology. Desiring death and destruction has always seemed wrong….”-Gail
The feeling I have is that we must find resolve for this, I just don’t know where that resolve will lead us. Or I don’t want to think about it right now. Or maybe it is time to grieve. After that? It will be another time, for there is a time for everything in its season.
It is just that some of those times do rend ones heart.
May we be strong to sow seed of righteousness…. it gives the fruit of the peace we seek.
Well said, Ilona. I blogged on this this morning after reading about it in the paper. I just couldn’t imagine the grief of her husband basically begging these terrorists for his wife’s body. It was just too awful to contemplate.
Thank you for the link.
I was once a pacifist too, but I have come to see that pacifism can, without meaning to, condone, allow and even promote violence. I have changed my views completely since 9/11, and am still trying to come to terms with what it all means.
Theophilus,friend, I agree… it is too awful to contemplate.
Gail, thank you for well-spoken words that I linked to!
I am not ready to give up my pacifist base, but I seek to reconcile some of these things…. I don’t know yet if I can.