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Tuesday, 25 March 2003
Trying to make sense of things ::
I’ve been reading, listening, watching, and talking about the unfolding episode of death and destruction in Iraq (Raed’s weblog from Baghdad personalizes it in a way that hits home). I’ve heard the anxiety of the American families whose spouses, children and parents are in Iraq, some captured, some killed, and read of the looming spectacle of thousands of deaths in a battle for Baghdad. I’m watching myself closely; I don’t want to feel numb, hopeless, helpless and angry; I want to empathize with all this suffering and feel it for myself, which means allowing myself to put myself in the positions of young soldiers on both sides, people of southern Iraq facing a humanitarian crisis, and people everywhere who are disturbed and trying to make sense of events. Better to feel the suffering of others than to create yet more of my own.
Last night I came to a passage in Lao-Tse: Life and Work of the Forerunner in China. The young man has just seen soliders and military fortifications for the first time.
Li-Erl shuddered.
“Why must such things be?” he asked. “Men should live in peace. If they serve the Supreme One aright, there can be no disagreement.”
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