Monday, May 30, 2011

I WEPT

Like most Americans I have been too emotionally isolated from our recent and current wars.  Last night on a memorial day TV program I felt the pain of wounded warriors and saw their mangled bodies as clearly as I did when I stood beside them in Vietnam field hospitals and rode with them on medevac planes.  But this is here and now.  I heard their stories and those of their suffering families. I wept.  In the night I woke up remembering that Jesus wept.  He wept with a pain of love for masses of people He longed to take under his wing for protection, but they would not allow it.  Last night, when I got to where I could talk, I said to Martha, "Its sad that we just don't learn."  I felt the suffering of our American people, but realized my wave of compsssion was washing up on far distant shores. The masses of wounded people over there, friends and foe alike, are our family, too.  Karen Armstrong, a currently popular student of all religions, is concluding that they all teach a form of the golden rule, compassion. We all weep, but we separate ourselves into little camps and are of no value to each other.   How long, O Lord, how long?

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