War and Peace 

The endless experiment of humans trying to become real human beings here on Earth. It is difficult, a mystery. So much peeling-away is needed, first of all. Pain, fear, anger, sorrow, hate. And so much inconvenient truth would need to be faced. Ignorance, greed, envy, cruelty, hubris. When “all we are saying is give peace a chance” ends with a murder eleven years later, we must embrace that too. December 8 – forty-four years ago. When innocence gets punctured, we must learn what is offered. “I just shot John Lennon.” In that moment we could have learned that the world of stardom, celebrity, fame is inherently violent. Do we understand?

We all are “walking on thin ice” when we think just ONE thing will save us, or the world. But simplicity is full of complexity, waiting to be understood. The paradoxes always belong together – ­this I love about the ancient wisdom and the Art of T’ai Chi Ch’uan. Yin and Yang are forming one reality, not two. Dividing into good and bad leaves us with two worlds. And now we have to choose, which seems initially easier than comprehending the complexity, dynamics and flow of Yin and Yang creating each other in ongoing motion, all in one sphere. ONE spacious realm contains the paradoxes as they appear to us. Peace. War. Both. The yearning for peace is eternal. It is endlessly seductive and brutally temporary. How do we embrace our longing for tenderness and the reality of the bullet? Loving the rose we must respect the thorns. How? I had to attempt this with my stepdaughter’s murder. She was shot in the back three times. By her husband, a veteran. He shot himself. She was my friend, my daughter, we were close.

 

There was love, besides murder. There was yearning to be loved. There was embrace. Fear and betrayal. Almost two years later, I remember them now both: she and he, belonging together. Imperfect and wounded, caring and loving, afraid and courageous. In life, in death. First, the news shatters my heart, I literally suffer from broken heart syndrome. It takes me months to recover. Meanwhile my heart keeps breaking with the war in Ukraine, in Sudan, Palestine, Syria, Myanmar. The bombing does not stop. The violence is ramped up.

My mother dreaded the moans of the severely wounded soldiers in the hospital where she had to work as a young teenager. What was the worst of the war? I ask her when young. It was the soldiers howling and shaking in terror when the enemy bombers flew low. The nearby or far away explosions ruptured the men’s hearts again and again. They moaned in ways that terrified and haunted the fifteen-year-old who was there to care for them. The buildings would shake. The men knew, trembled, moaned, groaned. Fear, violence. They relived their experiences from the front, the girl did not know yet. Helpless. Years of war. My mother becomes a fervent lifelong peace activist. Starting in young age, inside of me these voices and sounds are always co-mingling with secret prayers for healing, deep yearning for transcendence, tenderness, music of Bach, poetry, profound silence, beauty. All cradled in the broken heart.

 

In the northern hemisphere, we enter the “season of light” in midst of winter’s darkness. During short days and long nights, we wait for the return of light. Silence and peace – but they surely will be punctured by bullets and death, by war, rifles and grenades, by soldiers in riot gear. By bombs and drones, by hunger and cold, snowflakes and blood. Mercy. Mercy. Humans and history are merciless. Sometimes mercy is bestowed in unexpected small and big ways, a shelter is found, a child is pulled from the rubble, still breathing. A father survives his extensive shrapnel wounds. But the dead are close by. Sorrow lingers.

The violence of robbery and poverty, the violence of state and prison, the violence of language and images, intimidation, cruel lies, rape, bullying. This also is violating our sense of what it is to be human. It injures us bystanders deeply, makes the world a dangerous place. Where can we find solace? Maybe in the greedy ways of distraction? Or perhaps in the little girl’s enticing smile. Coyly she confides her secret to me: “I have a baby.” When I ask what the baby looks like, she answers, eyeing me shyly: “Like me.” And with sudden delight, she swings her body half way around and back. The baby, of course. We each have a baby, new possibilities, innocence, light. Her smile is delicate and bright, laced with bountiful tenderness. The four-year-old Nepalese girl recognizes her two-month-old cousin as her baby. From her father I learn the facts, but from her I learn the truth.

Rosehip tea brewed from the fruit of my wild rose with her monstrous thorns

(rosehips halved, seeds and fine hair scooped out, then dried)

 

The world is always broken and whole. We are bereft. Are refugees, seek shelter, encounter a kind nurse who saves our life. We await in darkness. Are given a piece of bread or an egg. We rest in silence. We receive bad news. Are offered gifts. End of day, I gaze upward into the dark winter sky, searching for Orion’s Belt – the three kings, the three sisters – in the ocean of stars. Again and again, I find them. Or they find me, in spite of my not so good eyesight. I am old. Milky Way’s billions of planets are transformed into a soft blanket I take to sleep every night. I miss Mama Oak. The grandness of the sparkling firmament above consoles me. Here in our human smallness, helplessness is cradled tenderly. The world is always whole, even when shattered and broken. The girl and the baby. The lullaby and the bullets. Heartbeats and last breath. Secrets and smiles. Guiding stars and shelter. Mysterious beauty is being revealed in fleeting seconds, in humble unexpected moments. The great poetry of life.

 

In gratitude I bow and slip into the realm of dreaming – of war and peace.

More on rosehips:

https://karinalandriver.blogspot.com/2022/09/hagebuttentee-und-johannisbeerschnaps_21.html