AustinGranny.com - Accidental Activist

We are constantly being astonished these days at the amazing discoveries in the world of violence, but I maintain that far more undreamt-of and seemingly impossible discoveries will be made in the field of nonviolence.
— M. Ghandi

"A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong gives it a superficial appearance of being right." and "Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
— Thomas Paine

GOOD PEOPLE
by Siobhan Kolar

Those bloody Iraqis
remind us to go to church,
read to our children.
Garden. Don’t curse too much.
Our time is coming.

We must be moral
give to the poor
and not look at the TV too long.

It doesn’t tell us, anyway, how
the children weep for their mothers
and fathers shot, burned out. Collateral

for the next war. We’re good for it.
Aren’t we.

The Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese manual on the art of living, reads:
Weapons are the tools of fear... a decent person will avoid them except in the direst necessity and, if compelled, will use them only with the utmost restraint ....Our enemies are not demons but human beings like ourselves. The decent person doesn't wish them personal harm. Nor do they rejoice in victory. How could we rejoice in victory and delight in the slaughter of people? Enter a battle gravely, with sorrow and with great compassion, as if attending a funeral.

"You can no more win a war than you can win an earthquake," Jeannette Rankin wrote. But we go on trying. Why? What exactly is to be gained? The powerful stay in power. The innocent are expelled from their homes. Children grow up with fear and hatred in their hearts. Who wins what?

For war to be just, the first criterion is that it must only be waged in the face of "real and certain danger." So when did we start waging war "just in case"?

"All war is insane," Madeleine L’Engle wrote. Killing doesn't stop killing. It just gives the world a new reason to do it called "vengeance." In the meantime, the poor get poorer and the strong get stronger. Nothing really changes.

After years of Nintendo and shopping mall video arcades, Americans know that no one bleeds and no one gets hurt in war. In fact, we teach our children to love it. Or, as Ellen Glasgow said, "The worst thing about war is that so many people enjoy it."

War is not what happens in the military.
It is what happens in the hearts of the rest of us who applaud it.
Marianne Moore, the poet, wrote,
"There never was a war that was not inward;
I must fight till I have conquered in myself
what causes war,
but I would not believe it."

If I had only known,
I would have been
a locksmith.
— Albert Einstein

There will be no peace among the nations without peace among the religions
and no peace among the religions without dialogue.
— Dr. Hans Küng, Theologian

The world is still here, and there are aspects of human life that are not purely destructive,
and there is a need to pay attention to the things around us while they are still around us.
And you know, in a way, if you don't pay that attention, the anger is just bitterness.
— W.S. Merwin

The god of the cannibals will be a cannibal,
of the crusaders a crusader,
and of the merchants a merchant.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Conservatism makes no poetry, breathes no prayer, has no invention; it is all memory.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

We shall find peace. We shall hear angels. We shall see the sky sparkling with diamonds.
— Anton Chekov

There are always two parties; the establishment and the movement.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

A sect or party is an elegant incognito devised to save a man from the vexation of thinking.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

War is the means by which Americans learn geography.
— Ambrose Bierce