Words and Wars

a Vietnamese greenfinch extends a lifeline. blessèd be the allies.

Words rise from wars.

October 6, 1963. Fifty-six years ago to the day, Emperor Halie Selassie I stood in front of the United Nations General Assembly, and made a speech that called for a peace for his Ethiopian nation and beyond. He condemned the injustice that unfurled from a thirsty racism and rebuked the unabashed disregard for human life and the devaluation of the human spirit in all its sanctity. Inspired by his plea, Bob Marley wrote the song War, further beseeching for peace, equality, and justice for the People. Earlier that same year in April 1963, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. is detained in Birmingham Jail for marching in protest. From the jail cell, he writes, “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Five Aprils later, he’d give his last speech that would prelude his assassination the very next day. And nearly a century earlier, Jewish American writer and activist Emma Lazarus wrote, “Until we are all free, we are none of us free…” In 1883, she commands in the voice of our Lady Liberty, From her beacon-hand…cries she with silent lips. Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Wars rise from words.

Oh, how I wish that our leaders would teach peace. They speak of a peace, but their gums drip thick with the sludge of deceit. They wage war upon the innocent. They bear false witness and then swear upon it. They are beasts that suit themselves up as man. How I wish for all of our citizens to see. But some don’t want to see. They weave their eyelashes shut, sutures tautly knotted. They fumble about the corpses that they don’t recognize as their very own. Perhaps they are afraid of seeing something they’ve never seen, becoming something they’ve never been.

There are some who believe that evil does not exist. Understandably so. Many of us would rather deny its existence than to be forced to look long and deep into its dark, clouded pupils. I need to know: What do we then call the spirit in they who satisfy in watching the sufferers anguish from under the rubbles of war?

The wars that we face fold themselves inside our nations, our communities, our households. But among the most strenuous ones are the wars that are fought within us—these internal battles that test a resilience that extends beyond our comprehension. These wars are not short-lived. They span the length of life, perhaps even extending to time thereafter. They tempt us toward the very edge and then threaten to push us over.

Where are we to look for our survival?

How do we thaw the cold that encrusts our hearts as we take part in this suffering world?

We continue loving.

We remember that this oppression breeds the power to oppose it.

And then we seize this power.

And we continue believing. But this ought not to be a blind faith. Never that. For even faith itself, in its truest form, asks to be questioned. We refer to lifetimes when we wrestled with chaos and destruction, and somehow found the means to obtain, and furthermore, retain, the peace that reverberates within, inhabiting our shifting insides during these times of crisis. We’ve seen it lived out in those whom we admire deeply, here and then—they who have survived severe loss and piercing pain, and have stood with hands punctured and bloodied, in an open field littered with broken arrows that have been smeared with persistent plagues. And none drew nigh to us. We stand fast in the midst of these seemingly hopeless wars because we know that hopelessness is a lie unto itself.

Verse revisited me. I’m not sure if I await her arrival, but when she draws near, I recognize my need. The words surged forcefully from the graphite onto the smooth of the pulp. I’ve relied deeply on these bound pages to document the details and revelations that have influenced my stories, visions, and path toward a peace that has been promised. I tinker clumsily, whittling my way into the heart of sturdy wood and sandstone veined with coarse granite. And without fail, God meets me there. I fill my murky lungs. I remember how to breathe again.

So, like Sir Marley, I glean from sources that press for the promises of peace, with a hope that I (we) may become more of it. I grip my brittle fingers onto a covenant of protection that we so desperately need to sustain life in this perilous world, praying fervently for refuge from the fowlers who feast upon the sufferers. There are many.

And furthermore, I expect it to cloak us like some thick, heavy blanket, doused with the salt water that will sanitize these lacerations that have opened and reopened.

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Many of the Psalms were written during times of war, lamenting suffering, rebuking those responsible for the suffering, protesting innocence, petitioning for divine assistance, anticipating collective response, and with sincere thanksgiving through it all.

After Psalm 91, a promise of protection:

from the snare of the fowler. September 2019. acrylic, charcoal, and hand embroidery on paper. 28 x 44”. A vietnamese greenfinch offers a lifeline to the refugee children.

“Oppressed people cannot remain oppressed forever. The yearning for freedom eventually manifests itself…”

Let us be reminded by Dr. King’s mighty words as we continue in this fight with a vigorous confidence.

*The word confidence derives from the Latin word confidere, which means “to have full trust” or “to have faith”.

Go forth in faith, Friends.
There are girded angels among us.