The nation states are helplessly flailing at Trump and Netanyahu and their crowd of applauding billionaires but let’s remember how the beginning of a war pulls us into a story that is thrilling and ancient and addictive. We need to help each other keep distance from the burning children and flames in the market square. This is not legitimate drama. This isn’t something that should add screen-time to our day.
In the life-times of most of us, the United States has been pursuing wars that are illegal and immoral. Viet Nam and Iraq were started on outright lies. And every year the money for weapons is increased, as the burning of gas and oil and expansion of its infrastructure is globalized. As the poet put it “The ceremony of innocence is drowned.” Trump and Netanyahu are crazy gangsters, worshippers of fundamentalist religions as intolerant as the religious leaders in Iran. But the act of war predates them, it is a year in and year out attack on life itself, on our planet Earth.
The Peace Movement as a practical physical action seems to have blown away in the wind, and this is because it was not grounded in the Earth. If Earth is our national enemy, as it is now in the United States, then Peace won’t stop war if it’s just a conceptual idea. Earth has the power. We have to learn how to let power come through us and out to others. We say “Save the Earth” to be righteously correct – but the Earth isn’t a damsel in distress. The Earth has the power of Peace. The Earth gives us life, gives us love to make life. If we control our explosives and our poison pesticides then the Earth comes forth through us and around us. It’s a circular economy of love. The Earth needs Peace. Give the Earth peace then the Earth gives back more and more Peace. Earthalujah!
Rev. Billy