Pearl Harbor

Veteran broadcast journalist Tom Brokaw has written and spoken eloquently over the years about a long-ago time when young Americans rose up against a dire threat to our way of life.

That threat presented itself in a tangible and tragic way 70 years ago this very day in a faraway place called the Hawaiian Islands. That was when waves of warplanes from Japan swooped in over Pearl Harbor on a quiet Sunday morning. They bombed, torpedoed and strafed U.S. warships and airplanes in the harbor and at nearby airfields. They killed 2,402 Americans and thrust the United States into history’s bloodiest war.

And in the process, those Japanese pilots changed the world.

Seven decades ago, the “Greatest Generation” was born out of the fire that erupted in that tropical paradise. Brokaw wrote about that generation of Americans, who went to war, defeated the tyrants in multiple theaters of conflict, came home and built the greatest economic power in the history of the world.

These once-young warriors are now old. Many of them are frail. The total national mobilization that occurred as a result of what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt described rightly as a “dastardly attack” sent more than 16 million young Americans into military service.

The ranks of those 16 million Americans have shrunk to around 2 million. More than 1,000 of them are dying each day. Is there any way at all to thank them adequately for the service they performed in defense of liberty? Of course not.

We are left, then, just to say thanks to those brave warriors.

Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto spoke presciently about the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor. “I shall run wild considerably for the first six months or a year but I have utterly no confidence for the second and third years,” the admiral wrote. The Japanese momentum in the Pacific lasted all of six months, until the Battle of Midway turned the tide against the aggressors.

Our nation’s warriors would achieve victory in the late summer of 1945. And those of us today who are the direct descendants of the Greatest Generation owe these great Americans all that we have.

From Amarillo Globe News, December 7th 2011

Veteran's day

This is not about whether you support war or are a pacifist that believes that war is never the right decision. Today is not about the rationality of war. It is about the men and women who have seen the tragedy and travesty of war first hand and what the experience of war is, was, and will continue to be for those who have been to the front lines.

The origin of Veteran’s day being held on November 11th dates back to the end of WWI, the first modern war. This day was known as Armistice Day and was to represent the day that signified the what was hoped to be the “war to end all wars.” On the eleventh hour of the eleventh day in the eleventh month in 1918, the world knew peace once again.

Yes, this world has seen countless wars since that day in 1918. Millions have fought one another, and millions have died. Yet, this day is not about the ideological grounds that wars have been declared upon, nor religious differences. This is not a day that is a politicians platform, nor a day that is for the liberal, the conservative, the righteous or the corrupt. It is a day that we the people are given as a reminder that war exists and that those who are at the front lines experience events that most of us will never understand, and hopefully never have to experience ourselves. Perhaps this is a day where we should take a moment and contemplate what these words by a Veteran of WWII, “I do not remember what I read this morning, but the events of those days will be forever burned upon my soul.” And perhaps on this particular day, today, we should reflect back to Armistice Day in its original intent, that veterans often carry with them images and memories, emotions and reflections that are burned on their soul, which many of us can never comprehend and that they may never be able to share or shake the rest of their lives.

On the eleventh hour on the eleventh day in the eleventh month during the eleventh year of our second millennium, perhaps we should take a moment of silence and reflection for ALL of the veterans of the world, not just those that are American, and remember that every man, woman, and child that has directly experienced war is a veteran who carry with them the images of a war to end all wars.

Chances are you know a veteran…..

One Man's Dream, All of Our Dreams

Greetings to all of you on this day. Today, across this country, across the fields which lie fallow in their winter rest and across the bustling city streets, we are called to join together in remembrance of one of our nation’s greatest leaders and spiritual warriors. We are called to spend one day reflecting upon the message and the life of a man who had been to the mountain top and brought a message of justice and peace to us, the people in the valley. This is a day that we are all called to gather our strength, a strength that all too often lies silent most of the year. We are called to uncover this strength and bring it out of its passive solitude and into the active world. What is the strength that we all carry and that I speak of? It is the strength that the honorable and beautiful Martin Luther King carried into the streets of injustice the strength that flowed from his lips unto the masses who stopped to listen. It is the strength of a justice that does not live in our courts, but lives in each of our hearts. It is a strength that we so often forget, that we cover with misguided ambitions, illusory fears, and destructive actions upon our brethren.

Today I pray that we all spend a moment to surrender to the greater strength that Martin Luther King Jr. embodied and which he reminded all of us that we too embody. It was not only Martin Luther King Jr. who had a dream. I know that I too have a dream, and that you have a dream, and that all of our dreams center on the hope of a better world, a world of mutual respect, a world of honor, and a world where compassion outshines anger and hatred, where no person is judged by the color of their skin, or their choice of religious practice, or their political party affiliation, or the quality of their clothing, or their ability to speak English, Spanish, Pashti, but that all beings are judged “by the quality of their character.” May you all find a moment of peace today and may you rediscover your strength of heart today, and may it carry all of us tomorrow and beyond.

Part and Parcel: Human, beast, nature

"The infant, like a sailor tossed ashore
By raging seas, lies naked on the earth,
Speechless, helpless for life, when at his birth
Nature from out the womb brings him to light.
He fills the place with wailing, as is right
For one who through so many woes must pass.
Yet flocks, herds, savage beasts of every class
Grow up without the need for any rattle,
Or for a gentle nurse's soothing prattle;
They seek no varied clothes against the sky'
Lastly they need no arms, no ramparts high
To guard their own -- since earth itself and nature
Amply bring forth all things for every creature"
~Lucretius, as cited by Montaigne (405)

For years now I have assumed that we, homosapiens, have been the scourges of the earth, the outcasts of nature, the beings who were isolated from the rest of creation, who have evolved into beings unrecognizable to Nature herself. We are born helpless, in the arms of those who have to create shelter, clothing, and produce food, at a minimum, for survival. We spend months learning to walk, to move ourselves from one location to another, completely reliant upon our fellow beings to supply our infant bodies with every sort of sustenance if we are to survive.
And yet, are we so different then our fellow beings, the four-legged, the finned, the feathered, who share this earth with us? In regards to what I have stated, perhaps not. Does not the baby swallow stay within its nest, awaiting the return of the parent for food? Was not the nest itself a creation of shelter, a modification of the tree or eave? Does the new born roo not rely on the pouch of its mother to move from place to place? Does the young lion cub not need the direction and training from its parent to learn the hunt?
But what of clothing you ask, to which I respond, what is our dress? At the nesting place of human existence, the heart of the African continent, we today find many a people who do not rely on the coverings of dress, but have exposed and adapted their bodies to the elements of their place. Their skin has met the earth and sky, changing to meet the needs of survival. Soles have hardened, hands callused, the arms and legs, the trunk and back have become thicker for the cold, darker for the light. It is no different than when we begin our northern summers barefoot, hardening the pan of our bodies. Clothing and coverings are not a natural necessity for our survival. Yes, there are locations upon our home where survival would be near impossible without the covering of fur or Gortex, but these locations have become centers of human living, not of natural necessity, but due to human ingenuity.
What of human ingenuity, of our ability to reason, to think, to speak and theorize? The latter of these is not for this discussion, as it is much to large to tackle here. But what of the rest? Do we find that our minds reason is what separates us from the fauna and flora of our homes? Does not the squirrel recognize the danger of the canine, waiting upon its perched limb, seeking its escape, taunting its adversary in chirps and pitches..., are all these not signs of a reasoning and emotional being? The canines below, guarding the only exits for the squirrel, one at the base, another to the side, a third in the ambush. What of the swallows we spoke of before, choosing the best and safest location for their nest, one that minimizes the troublesome elements and naturally guards against predators? What of the collecting of twigs and branches of the correct size for the base, middle and edge of the nest? Or the mixture of water and dust for the mud hut of some? What of the collecting of cotton and discarded textiles for the inner nest, the softness upon which to lay themselves and their eggs? Are all these not signs of thinking beings? Some may say that this is no more than intuition, than programed responses that the beasts are limited to. To this I can only respond, how unfortunate we humanoids are then, who have to struggle so hard through reason for what the other beasts have by intuition. But I do not believe this, for I believe that we too utilize this natural intuition of survival, and modify our actions to the specific event before us...just as the squirrel changes its response according to the circumstance it finds itself in. The unbridled rationality that we live within may be what isolates us from the flora and fauna which surrounds us. It has been assumed that reason is our greatest gift, for science, technology, abundant comforts of the home, are all products of creative rationality. But what of the wars, the pollution, the cultural genocides, the isolated and depressed figure amidst the a million other people...? Perhaps unchecked reason, reason without intuition or emotion, is not what makes us special but tyrannical, always living in the past or the future. Again, this is for another time and day.

a mind

A beautiful mind. Filled with the ideas and creations of reality. A mind that runs in circles, spirals its creations into a form, forms its elements into a dream, sees its dream as somethings solid, though the dream may be a nightmare, a phantom. The mind does not operate alone though. It is more than the workings of the logical and illogical. More than the process and combination of thoughts, ideas, order. The mind has no force on its own. It draws that force from the depths of the emotions, from the sensations of the ideas. I cannot say if these forces, these emotions are intimately connected with the mind or simply attach themselves to the minds creations. My inclination is to say that the emotions drive themselves upon the states, the ideas, the expressivisms of the mind in such a way that a discerning mind may not bee them as separate, or ultimately disconnected forms...one driving the other, one giving space for the other to exist, to manifest itself. Run together they are like dogs, Leo and Noa, egging each other on in a certain direction. One can easily run themselves into isolation this way, the seclusion of the mind and emotions, for it is a 'safer' realm when there is no other to bring in the light of reflections. It becomes a lonely place, a place of solitude, and likely delusions of reality, though not necessarily. There is also a solitude that is light itself, a discerning mind and intuitive emotion. But these latter open unto the world and absorb the world, not holding and hiding away from the world, as the former finds itself. This is the balance of the self as defined by the mind and emotion. Here the pathways of life can lead one. There are demons all around, demons who feed on their own creative power, demons whose presence is to become more powerful the longer they are fed. Some live on fear, some on isolation, some on lust, or anguish. They are demons as long as the mind allows them residence without lease or conversation of their essence or intent. A mind overtaken by demons, by darkness where there is not light let in, no question of root or nature or force, though the form may be all to obvious.

A Question of Identity

Sitting in a room, almost in isolation and the question comes to raise its head. What is an identity? On a level of uncertainty about how to answer this my thoughts turn to the realm of how I rely on others to fulfill specific needs. Here I sit, an individual, with needs, desires, expectations, fears, anger, all of which feel to be isolated from the rest of the social world. These are mine without reliance upon others. Or so it feels. But on a deeper level each of these needs, desires, expectations, etc. all involve someone else. To desire love is to to desire that love with or from another. To be afraid is to be afraid of a reaction or expectation of someone or something else. The need relates to an 'other' of some sort, though this need reflects itself back upon the self I believe to be. So here I sit asking what is this self. In Buddhist terms the 'self' is not any real sentient being but a construction of interdependencies, a development of grasping onto that which I hold dear, or abhor the most. At every moment these needs and desires, angers and fears come into view then pass into nothingness. They are not the self, nor are they capable of defining a self for they themselves are full of their own constructions that come and pass. On a physiological level how would I define the self. I am a conglomeration of parts, of skin and cells, blood and bones. At root I am a compound of atoms, atoms which themselves are nothing more than space, protons, electrons, neutrons, quarks, etc. What of the psychological level? I am a consciousness, but what does this mean? I have memories, some of which I know not to be mine, but were given to me through stories and that I have made my own. Regardless of which, do these memories constitute my identity? or even a self that I can call my own? I am tired of typing at this time so I will send a farewell to the post knowing that this is only the beginning of a long path of indentifying an identity.

This Change

In the past recent days and weeks I have been surrounded by the prospects and inevitibility of change. Sometimes the change has been to source of choice, other times it has been the result of simply being alive. In almost all cases it has aroused emotions and responses that are less then what one would consider happy or healthy. There have been family members lashing out at each other, friends who have been forced into a sort of exile, questions of mortality and feelings that are best summed up by Franti's lyric "to feel alone like a tree in a desert." Change can be hard, especially when it touches us in a way that we may lose something that is dear to us or when it leaves the sense of having to go through something on our own.

On my way home today a song came onto my ipod from a concert that Beth and I attended back in 02/03 in Eugene Oregon. These are the lyrics:

You don't have to run away
From the bad things you've done to me
You don't have to run away, from the pain and the misery
You can cross this by land you know
Take a boat or you can fly
You can just lay down in the river you know
Lay your head back and just float on by

This change is a good change
This cry is a good cry
This pain I’m feeling is a good pain
This goodbye is a goodbye

So take that bag you carry
Open it up and take a look inside
There might be some angels living there
Maybe even a little bit of suicide
Take all them things you own now
And throw them into the riverside
And say goodbye to the things you know
Say goodbye to the other side

This change is a good change
This cry is a good cry
This pain I’m feeling is a good pain
This goodbye is a goodbye

I say
I walk right into the storm

This change is a good change
This cry is a good cry
This pain I’m feeling is a good pain
This goodbye is a goodbye

Peace