Thank you. Thank you. Thank you to any of you reading this who have lost loved ones and comrades in service to our country and to our value of freedom. We are indebted to you. May your great loss never be in vain.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
1256. Do you believe in fate – or that a person shapes her own destiny?
Good morning. Sundays are devoted to poetry on the blog. Recently The Wall Street Journal ran an article about Maksym Kryvtsov, a Ukrainian poet turned soldier. Kryvtsov, who wrote most of his poems about the horrors of the war, perished in battle, on January 7th. He was 33. One of his most well-known poems talked of his “severed arms” that would “sprout as violets in the spring.” This same poem ends with these lines:
My bones
Will sink into the earth
Will become a carcass
My busted rifle
Will rust
Poor thing
My spare clothes and equipment
Will be given to new recruits
Well I’d rather it were spring already
To finally
Bloom
As a violet.
Poetry touches our hearts and our souls in a way that more direct writing cannot seem to do. I suppose that the way to our collective hearts is a windy path, filled with mystery, nuance, feeling, and to surrendering to its ever changing direction. I wrote the poem below, just this morning, before reading again, the poem above by Maksym Kryvtsov, which my husband had kindly laid aside for me a week or so ago. I am humbled by the difference in poetry by a poet who is surrounded by the direness of war, versus a writer who leads an agreeable life, in a country not at war.
On stormy, cold, windy days,
As the rain hammers its surroundings,
Home feels so cozy, comforting, serene.
Curling up in our own corner of the world,
Fills us with the feeling of being nurtured,
By the nesting that we busied ourselves with,
in more agreeable, enticing, seductive weather.
On still, bright, inviting, playful days,
We jauntily leave home for adventures,
Full of confidence, curiosity and calm.
And we often bring home possessions,
Which remind us of our truest selves.
So that when the storms arise again,
We are surrounded by the contentment,
Of our inner selves, displayed in physical form.
Our home, which is an extension of the life of us,
Is our familiar and steadfast, shelter from the storm.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
Here is the question of the day from 3000 Questions About Me:
1375. Do you think happiness is a choice?
Detective Martin Hart:
Do you wonder ever if you’re a bad man?
Detective Rustin Cohle:
No. I don’t wonder, Marty. World needs bad men. We keep the other bad men from the door.
The scene and the written dialog above is from Season 1 of True Detective. It’s one those inconvenient truths that when we are resting in our most idealized selves, we don’t want to believe. We don’t want to believe that the amazing freedoms that we have in our lives were sometimes hard won by people who were capable of doing things that we, ourselves, might not have it in us to do. It often comes down to the question, do the ends justify the means? And that’s a squirmy question.
I come from a family that has a lot of military veterans. So does my husband. I am proud of how much military service is in the history of my family. I remember, many years ago, getting into a heated discussion about something related to peace and war, during a book club meeting with another club member. Her background was that of a long history of academics and professors. I respected this member quite a bit. I considered her to be a friend and an interesting, thoughtful, intelligent woman. And I believe that she felt the same way about me. After making the whole book club feel immensely uncomfortable, we quieted down and we agreed to go out to eat together, and to talk about our different viewpoints further, with just each other. It was a nice dinner. It was civil. Nothing stands out about the conversation to me. Neither of us changed each other’s mind. But the friendship lasted. The mutual respect lasted. There were a lot of viewpoints that we completely agreed on, in different matters that we read about, in other books. We still exchange Christmas cards to this day.
I admittedly sometimes get into my woo-woo/yogi girl states of being, and I belt out John Lennon’s “Imagine All the People” at the top of my lungs, and I fervently wish that I could manifest this state of peace instantly for all of us. I don’t believe that there are many people in this world who don’t wish for peace and abundance for all. However sometimes, my romanticized, utopian view of the way things Should Be sometimes clouds my vision for truly seeing the way things are right now. And yes, I believe that we all can do our individual parts to “be the change that we want to see in the world”. (attributed to Gandhi and Joseph Ranseth) That’s really the best that any of us can do. And this “being the change” often looks like different things and different roles for different people.
We creative types love nuance. We love to see things in a different way and bring these “different ways” into fruition with our art and in our general ways of being. But sometimes we forget that looking at things “different ways” for other people, in other, more rigid, mechanical fields, other than that of the creative arts, can often be about having to make difficult, snap decisions between the lesser of two awful evils.
Perhaps instead of condemning others for their “stupidity” and their “war mongering”, we might be able to find some level of gratefulness for “the “bad” men who keep the other “bad” men from the door”, so that we are able to do our art, and our protests, and our comfortable day-dreaming about a utopian world where “bad men” don’t exist at all.
“The older I get, the less I know. By that I mean the less I am sure of. I view people with strong opinions on the big stuff with distrust. I don’t think we should have certain certainties on faith and politics; I think we should be open-minded.” _ Pam Ferris
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
There is nothing stronger in this world, yet paradoxically more vulnerable than a mother’s heart. A mother’s heart holds so much. It holds so much love and pride and vision and fear and worry and resilience and a load full of understanding and empathy for all of the other mothers’ hearts. A mother’s heart rarely breaks, because it can’t. Mothers’ hearts are the webbing of humanity’s entire existence and this webbing cannot afford too many bottomless holes of despair. My prayer is for all of the hearts, of all of the mothers. May those of us who are stronger and safer right now, keep the beat for the other mothers’ hearts who are bleeding down to a faintly beat.
Are you passing on love or are you passing on pain? Heal your pain and pass on love.
