Memorial Day: Lines and Borders

Photo today on the AP line: Men walking on the left side of a short barbed wire fence atop of which they have installed small American flags. The men are proud to have set up a fence between themselves and their neighbors to the south. Dark skinned neighbors who don't speak the same language. Neighbors who they fear will steal their jobs, their wealth, maybe their daughters.

They draw a line in the border sand, across the border rock. The men erect fences to puff themselves up and hide their fear. Goddess doesn't recognize our borders and fences. She makes light of them. She sends rivers and hurricanes and fault lines careening across them every day. Goddess builds her fences in our hearts of thorn bushes, of myths, of sacrificed sons, of fear.

It all seems absurd this morning. We sing in church in memory and in sorrow and in joy and in our hope to overcome the absurdity of war and hatred and loss and death and greed. We are admonished to stand tall in our values and beliefs. We hold hands, shed tears, and then what? The fight seems absurd this morning when George Bush and Dick Cheney hold the power and the reigns to greed and death and fences as the ruling paradigm.

I have walked across landscapes strewn with skeletons and garbage all over the world, in Iraq, in Jordan, in Greece, in Peru, in Ecuador, in Kiribati, in Indonesia, and in the USA. There are landscapes of death in every country, created by every culture. The planet holds the memories of our indulgence in death and war and it doesn’t seem to care. I don’t see God or Goddess manifesting any stopping point to the destruction. Perhaps God enjoys watching our carnal feasts just as young men playing video games do.

Yesterday there was a small dead bird on the ground in front of my car. I stopped to look at it and I pointed it out it to my son. Then we got in the car and drove away and didn't think of the bird again until I wrote this essay. Does God watch us like that?

Below is a picture of my older son many years ago. He is trusting mama and he is afraid to jump. I am coercing him into a swimming pool and he trusted me. If I didn't catch him, God wasn't about too. Goddess would let him die if he had fallen in without another human’s care. It is humans who value human life, humans who care to help one another. At least some of us humans try to care. I think I do and then I get lost thinking of corporate greed and nationalistic wars waged by my country and fences drawn to keep the poor and hungry out. I get lost when I think too big. I can catch one boy when he jumps in a pool. I cannot catch the nation or even this small town if it decides to jump.