Strength to Love

March 23, 2003

The first casualty when war comes is truth.

-Senator Hiram Johnson, 1917

My personal belief, for what it's worth, is that war is always a failure. It may be necessary at times--I am not a total pacifist--but it is always a failure of policy, diplomacy, and mutual understanding. It accomplishes little. It is a dirty, nasty, brutal business, and should never be glorified. Despite the way it has been presented on TV in recent days, it is not some kind of benign spectator sport. It thrives on lies, and always has. But as New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges points out in his recent book War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning, it is a powerful elixir. Hedge's book is one of the most profound indictments of war that I have ever read. If you can read only one book during this conflict, I urge you to read this one.

Though I suspect that we will ultimately "win" the war, I remain cynical about our long term goals in Iraq and the middle east and I am skeptical about the war's consequences for us or them. As William Pfaff, hardly a liberal, wrote in an editorial in the Globe on Thursday, this war will almost undoubtedly "generate new forces of resistance and hostility." Globe columnist Jim Carroll, admittedly a liberal, said practically the same thing in an interview the other night, when he warned that this new war, no matter how idealistic its intentions, will probably increase, not decrease, terrorism and accelerate, rather than slow, the rush by nations to create and possess weapons of mass destruction.

I am deeply concerned about the potential ramifications of our government's new policy of "preemption," about our apparent willingness to move closer to a stance of unilateralism, and especially by strident claims of national chauvinism. I distrust our naive idealism, and despair at our ignorance of the history, politics, and religion of the middle east. I am deeply concerned, and think you should be too, about the Evangelical Christian, Protestant triumphalist underpinnings of so many of our nation's recent actions, particularly in our confrontations with the Muslim world. I am fearful, not reassured, that we seem to want to save the world in our own image. Our recent track record on saving the world is, after all, not so great.

Worst of all, I fear that this war will further divide an already divided country. As Marie Cocco wrote in an editorial this week in the Globe, there are deep partisan divisions on the war. Despite the tendency of people to come together in the immediacy of a crisis, we will not know until later whether these divisions have decreased or increased.

What I believe is most needful at this moment, on all our parts, is humility. Neither those of us who oppose the war, nor those who favor it, will turn out to have been 100% in the right. We need to listen to one another, not try to drown each other out.

Like many of you, I have in recent weeks struggled with my feelings about this war and have sought deeper understanding. Sabrina and I signed on to a Unitarian Universalist letter of opposition to the war on Unitarian Universalist principles which was printed in the Boston Globe on March 6. I have been reading and thinking about what I might say today. It is a daunting task.

In his little book War and Our World, eminent British war historian John Keegan writes that as a consequence of the horror of WW II,

The world . . . has now returned to the international system that arose when states first began to acknowledge the superior authority of monotheistic religion. States are no longer militarily sovereign any more than those within the European Union are politically sovereign, even if that Union did not, as its most enthusiastic supporters claim, originate as an anti-war association. States are subordinate to a power greater than themselves. They cannot make war at wish, certainly cannot claim state interest or political necessity to make war as they choose.

Later in his book, Keegan wrote,

We live in an age that deprecates conflict and sets the ideals of harmony, compromise, and communality above all others.

Communitarianism, a 'third way' between socialism and capitalism, is now the political movement that, under a variety of names and guises, most attracts democratic politicians. It commands also powerful support among electorates. 'We have had enough conflict in our century,' the ordinary voter seems to be saying. 'What we want is a way of life without strife.'

Nationalism, it seems to me, is still a powerful and dangerous force in our world, particularly in time of war. It thrives on our fears. Chris Hedges calls it in one chapter of his book, "The Plague of Nationalism." [my emphasis] We are as susceptible to that plague as any.

Here the almost forgotten figure of Mohandas Gandhi raises his ghostly hand. As University of Maine professor Doug Allen has written, "The father of Indian independence, Gandhi believed that people have a right to their own nation. But he opposed national chauvinism, the notion that one's own country is better than others. He valued national unity, but with tolerance and respect for diverse races, cultures, religions, and opinions."

Gandhi recognized, as he once said, that "an eye for an eye only ends up making the whole world blind." At some point, the cycle of violence must end, or we will end up destroying not only our enemies but ourselves.

I have decided that in the coming days and weeks the most important thing I can do is to work to hold our government accountable to its promise to create what the President called in his Wednesday evening speech a "free, united, and stable" Iraq. I am extremely skeptical about this promise, but I do not want to let us off the hook. Once the war is over, I do not want us to forget that promise.

And I am personally willing to change my petroleum based lifestyle, if necessary, to make that promise come true. One of my greatest complaints about all our recent conflicts is how little sacrifice has been demanded of us. But whatever form of protest or action we choose, let us respect each other and be humble about whatever truth we claim to have discovered.

The ancient Greeks knew well the tragic nature of our human condition. We do terrible things to ourselves and others. We make awful mistakes. We are flawed beings, capable both of great good and great evil.

But the Greeks also recognized that it was the flaws which make us beautiful. It is the imperfection of our being that makes us glorious, even--and this is the implication of Greek mythology--more glorious than the Gods themselves, in all their dull perfection. Ultimately, it is our mortality which makes our lives more interesting.

The necessity for this war, whatever its outcome, will no doubt be debated and argued for years to come. Lacking a crystal ball, I do not know what the future will bring. What is most needed, as I have already mentioned, is a deep sense of humility about our individual ignorance and an acceptance of the possibility that we may be wrong. Not that we should back away from our convictions, but that we must realize the partiality of any and all points of view.

Events are always more complicated than they seem. None of this is as simple as I wish it could be. No one can predict the ramifications of any of our actions for good or ill. As Christian ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr warned, "moral choice is not between the moral and the immoral, but between the immoral and the less immoral" [quoted from Hedges]. Immediately after September 11, we stood on the moral higher ground. Today, I am not so sure.

And so I stand before you today hoping for a strengthening of our sense of community that can transcend our individuality. More than ever, we need one another, and we need to be able to hear where other people are and to accept it without judgment. Our honesty and steadfastness with one another is the greatest gift we can share. I am deeply thankful that I have this community of faith in which to share these difficult and frightening times.

Chris Hedges ends his book with a powerful plea for love. "Love alone fuses happiness and meaning," he says. "Love alone can fight the impulse that lures us toward self-destruction. . . . To survive as a human being is possible only through love." In Martin Luther King's words, we need, in times of terrible crisis, the "strength to love."

Our Unitarian Universalist congregation in Bedford has come under some complaint from the community for a banner they hung on the front of their church. It reads "Speak Out for Peace." It's considered unpatriotic. One of the members of their congregation suggested they might have come in for less criticism if it simply had said "Pray for Peace."

Nonetheless, I encourage you to speak out for peace. Whatever our feelings about this war, we should always and ever speak out for peace. True, it may be a subversive thing to do, but the myths about war, even when perpetuated in a just cause, must always be subverted.

And pray for peace, too, though please do not assume that God is on our side, or that your prayers will change the outcome, or that they will save even a single life. All of us pray for peace, and with luck a few of us will be changed by our prayers.

I want to close with a poem that came across my desk this week. It's entitled "Wage Peace," by Judyth Hill:

Wage peace with your breath.
Breathe in firemen and rubble, breathe out whole buildings
     and flocks of red-wing blackbirds.
Breathe in terrorists and breathe out sleeping children and
     freshly mown fields.
Breathe in confusion and breathe out maple trees.
Breathe in the fallen and breathe out lifelong friendships
     intact.
Wage peace with your listening: hearing sirens, pray loud.
Remember your tools: flower seeds, clothes pins, clean rivers.
Make soup.
Play music, learn the word for thank you in three languages.
Learn to knit and make a hat.
Think of chaos as dancing raspberries, imagine grief as
     the outbreath of beauty or the gesture of fish.
Swim for the other side.
Wage peace.
Never has the world seemed so fresh and precious.
Have a cup of tea and rejoice.
Act as if armistice has already arrived.
Let us not wait another minute.

The Rev. Harold E. Babcock

Readings

"The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life. It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living. Only when we are in the midst of conflict does the shallowness and vapidness of much of our lives become apparent. Trivia dominates our conversations and increasingly our airwaves. And war is an enticing elixir. It gives us resolve, a cause. It allows us to be noble. And those who have the least meaning in their lives, the impoverished refugees in Gaza, the disenfranchised North African immigrants in France, even the legions of young who live in the splendid indolence and safety of the industrialized world, are all susceptible to war's appeal."

--Chris Hedges, War is a Force that Gives Us Meaning

"For as long as I am the religious leader of this religious community, we will hold each other in love and respect, regardless of our disagreements, regardless of how deeply at odds we may find ourselves with the convictions of others. This is the meaning of community. In time of crisis, our religious task is to be united in our desire for peace but united also in our fervent prayers for all who grieve, for all who suffer, and for all whose conviction of duty has placed them in harm's way."

--The Rev. Edward Frost