October 16, 2023 – A

No one has ever had the solution
to war/hatred/evil.

Makes it easy to think no one ever will.

Leaves us with wringing our hands
and staring at the wall,
weeping.

The best among us never did any more than that.

Buddhist monks self-immolation in Vietnam
speaks to the futility of "nothing better to do."

Flash forward to Hamas and Israel and the Gaza Strip,
and the "Armed Republic: Nothing But Christ"
(Of all things)
idea for peace everlasting in our own country,
and it seems that the solution to war
is, as always, to kill everyone not like "us."

Takes me back to the Butcher of Lyons,
AKA Irenaeus Bishop of Lyons,
and his treatise "Against Heresy,"
where the solution to heresy is to kill the heretics.

Killing everyone not like us
is the ultimate fix for all of our problems with "them."
Only, "they" never go away.

Which means that "we" have to "die"
to our idea of how things ought to be,
grow up and allow "them" to be how "they" are
no matter what that might mean for "us."

It is never going to happen, is it?
"We" are going to move to The New World,
raise an army,
kill the British
and then kill the Native Americans,
and then kill everyone else
who gets in "our" way.
Forever.

Killing one another is just what we do.
A stalemate is the best we can hope for,
only that never lasts for long,
because there are always people
who just like to blow other people up.

Which leaves us with wringing our hands
and looking at the wall,
weeping.

Wondering "Why can't we just get along?"

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