Yesterday, while I was driving home from a long day at work, I heard an old song on the radio (anymore, in Wichita, ALL one hears on the radio are old songs, but that’s another story). It was Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire(this link has the lyrics with links for most of the stuff mentioned, although the site doesn’t appear to have been kept up).” Here’s a video. It’s probably not one of the best rock n’ roll songs ever, but it does tend to make me stop and think about history in that deep, cosmic sense.
In the last few months, I’ve talked to two classes about Malcolm X, caught the last bit of Spike Lee’s movie, I’ve started doing research on the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, caught the last hour of the movie Glory, and caught a few minutes of Dances with Wolves. There’s been a few other things that have contributed, but I can’t pin them down at the moment.
I’m not sure I can express the concepts I’m holding in my head. I’ve always used as a shortcut, this line from the movie Contact "You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares." I’ve tried to express the depth of significance that line represents for me, but truly, words seem to fail me. I’m sure other’s have felt or thought about all of this. I’m sure there are some who have written elegant essays about it. But if those essays had satisfied all that I feel I have to say about it, then why do I need to write anymore? Maybe what’s in my head is no different than what’s in anyone else’s. The challenge is to get it out so we can compare.
Consider what I’m doing here a rough draft, a few stumbling steps towards this thing.
I think most people think in images, so let me steal from John Berger a bit and use images to begin making my point. These are some of the horrors that reside in my consciousness:
A lynching in Omaha, Nebraska.
Another lynching in Florida.
Verdun.
The Somme
Adolf Hitler
Ovens in a Nazi concentration camp.
Victims of the Nazis. This is what they mean by the cliche "bodies stacked like cord-wood."
Vietnam.
Jonestown.
Srebrenica, Bosnia.
Darfur, Sudan.
9/11.
Iraq
Sometimes, the history of the Human Race is nothing more than this for me: a list of atrocities, horrors, and suffering. Our willingness to slaughter each other, the efficiency with which we do it, and the depths to which we'll go to rationalize it, leave me shaken, horrified, and sad beyond any ability to express it. These images are why I recoil at anyone who says with confidence that they are the favored, or chosen of God. This is why I cringe when Religion becomes the centerpiece of an argument. People cloaking themselves in the armor of blind faith in anything - religion, nationality, ethnicity, culture - are capable of the most horrible things. Some even find a sick glee in these things, idolize death, worship those who are most efficient at it, and dream of some exclusive utopia where the things they hate, fear, and despise will be wiped away. But their dreams mean a dystopia for the rest of us.
Even as I dwell on these horrors, I also carry these thoughts, like jewels:
The Taj Mahal.
Mozart's music.
Shakespeare
The Brooklyn Bridge, built so well it's been in use for over a hundred years.
Gandhi.
Einstein - "Imagination is just as important as knowledge."
Picasso
Oskar Schindler and other like him who, when needed, did the right thing even in the face of great personal cost and danger.
Martin Luther King Jr's dream.
Dr. Jonas Salk and the Polio vaccine.
Landing on the moon.
Bringing down the Berlin Wall.
The Olympics (this is from Athens, 2004).
These things, of course, would not be as valuable to me if there was nothing of the opposite. Our moments of grace, success, triumph are made so by those moments of horror. That doesn't mean we should tolerate or accept those moments of horror. In fact, it is our rejection of those moments, our yearnings for kindness and grace, that propel us to attempt these things that sometimes move me to tears. Transcendence, the leap beyond our current existence to something new astounds me. Look at our potential. It leaves me in awe, and nearly inarticulate.
Everything we do with these
can be horrible, or sublime. I fear their power and I adore their gentleness.
I wish we could all use them better.
In the last few months, I’ve talked to two classes about Malcolm X, caught the last bit of Spike Lee’s movie, I’ve started doing research on the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921, caught the last hour of the movie Glory, and caught a few minutes of Dances with Wolves. There’s been a few other things that have contributed, but I can’t pin them down at the moment.
I’m not sure I can express the concepts I’m holding in my head. I’ve always used as a shortcut, this line from the movie Contact "You're capable of such beautiful dreams and such horrible nightmares." I’ve tried to express the depth of significance that line represents for me, but truly, words seem to fail me. I’m sure other’s have felt or thought about all of this. I’m sure there are some who have written elegant essays about it. But if those essays had satisfied all that I feel I have to say about it, then why do I need to write anymore? Maybe what’s in my head is no different than what’s in anyone else’s. The challenge is to get it out so we can compare.
Consider what I’m doing here a rough draft, a few stumbling steps towards this thing.
I think most people think in images, so let me steal from John Berger a bit and use images to begin making my point. These are some of the horrors that reside in my consciousness:
A lynching in Omaha, Nebraska.
Another lynching in Florida.
Verdun.
The Somme
Adolf Hitler
Ovens in a Nazi concentration camp.
Victims of the Nazis. This is what they mean by the cliche "bodies stacked like cord-wood."
Vietnam.
Jonestown.
Srebrenica, Bosnia.
Darfur, Sudan.
9/11.
Iraq
Sometimes, the history of the Human Race is nothing more than this for me: a list of atrocities, horrors, and suffering. Our willingness to slaughter each other, the efficiency with which we do it, and the depths to which we'll go to rationalize it, leave me shaken, horrified, and sad beyond any ability to express it. These images are why I recoil at anyone who says with confidence that they are the favored, or chosen of God. This is why I cringe when Religion becomes the centerpiece of an argument. People cloaking themselves in the armor of blind faith in anything - religion, nationality, ethnicity, culture - are capable of the most horrible things. Some even find a sick glee in these things, idolize death, worship those who are most efficient at it, and dream of some exclusive utopia where the things they hate, fear, and despise will be wiped away. But their dreams mean a dystopia for the rest of us.
Even as I dwell on these horrors, I also carry these thoughts, like jewels:
The Taj Mahal.
Mozart's music.
Shakespeare
The Brooklyn Bridge, built so well it's been in use for over a hundred years.
Gandhi.
Einstein - "Imagination is just as important as knowledge."
Picasso
Oskar Schindler and other like him who, when needed, did the right thing even in the face of great personal cost and danger.
Martin Luther King Jr's dream.
Dr. Jonas Salk and the Polio vaccine.
Landing on the moon.
Bringing down the Berlin Wall.
The Olympics (this is from Athens, 2004).
These things, of course, would not be as valuable to me if there was nothing of the opposite. Our moments of grace, success, triumph are made so by those moments of horror. That doesn't mean we should tolerate or accept those moments of horror. In fact, it is our rejection of those moments, our yearnings for kindness and grace, that propel us to attempt these things that sometimes move me to tears. Transcendence, the leap beyond our current existence to something new astounds me. Look at our potential. It leaves me in awe, and nearly inarticulate.
Everything we do with these
can be horrible, or sublime. I fear their power and I adore their gentleness.
I wish we could all use them better.
Posts
3 Notes to the Editor:
I have never been able to get the image of a church in Rwanda, it's floor and pews literally piled with skeletons,out of my head.
There are times when the things you say or rather write, take my breath away...and it's not because you're my brother.
Thank you.
Wonderful.
Gandhi not Ghandi
(I've noticed most Americans get it wrong.)
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