Monday Morning Musing: Things We Should No Longer Study

The spiritual Down By the Riverside speaks of studying war no more. There are many things we ought to study and ponder and pursue: justice and peace and righteousness, for eternal examples. And perhaps small pleasures and tiny delights. And rest.

The world cries ENOUGH and both Israel and Hamas seek revenge. When my Beloved and I talk about this deep sorrow, we say that the complexity makes it hard to understand, but at its base it is simple. That an unquenchable thirst for power on any scale will only bring havoc and heartache that will span generations and spin through time.

Tina Chang's poem, which I first encountered sometime last Advent, speaks into these times:

Somewhere there is a larger fire, a pyre

stoked by the fury of all that we have come

to understand, all that we could have done

but did not. Its flames lick the underside

of the earth. It propagates needing

only a frenzy of air to fan it to inferno.

I’ll call that the Forest…

If I told you that all of this happens at night,

you wouldn’t believe me. If I told you

all of this happens in the future, always

the Future you would continue following

the scent you could only describe as smoke.

I’ll call that Justice.

But aren’t we talking about mercy and its dark

twin? Isn’t that what is pummeling history

in the side as I write this? Isn’t it the thorn

and the taser? Isn’t it the chokehold

and the gold arm of vengeance? I say it

from my mouth and when it spills forth

it lands on the ground in a pool of light

reflecting back at me the one true blasphemy:

Love and love and love and love and

love and love and love and love and love

and love and love and love and love and

love and love and love and love and love

and love and love and love and love and

love is crowding the street and needs only air

and it lives, over there, in the distance burning.