Who was Cassandra?
In the Iliad, she is described as the loveliest of the daughters
of Priam (King of Troy), and gifted with prophecy. The god Apollo
loved her, but she spurned him. As a punishment, he decreed
that no one would ever believe her. So when she told her fellow
Trojans that the Greeks were hiding inside the wooden horse...well,
you know what happened.
the cassandra pages
words, pictures, and a life
Friday, March 28, 2003 Our primitive response to the despicable regime of Saddam Hussein represents not only a failure of more than two centuries of American democracy to distinguish itself from the way the world has always worked, but it also represents the failure of more than 2000 years of Christianity to offer the world what St, Paul referred to as "a better way." We are faced with present evidence of Gandhi's conviction that "Everyone knows that Christianity is a religion of peace, except the Christians." What a terrible shame that is.
As an American and a Christian, I must live with the burden of that, remembering that others will die because of it...The war may well mark a monumental failure of Christianity but it does not mark a failure of Christ. The failure of Christianity is not a failure of its substance but of its practice. As Alfred North Whitehead said: "It is not that Christianity has been tried and found wanting, but that it's been found hard and not tried." Douglas Theuner, Episcopal Bishop of New Hampshire
We're leaving after the noontime Friday vigil to go visit family. It will be interesting to hear and feel what the atmosphere and atitudes are like in a far more rural area than this. I'm also sure we'll be experiencing major withdrawal from fast internet access to the news. Will try to post from there ...we'll see...
9:45 AM
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Thursday, March 27, 2003
Robert Fisk's commentaries are the most powerful journalistic writing I've seen coming out of this war. Today's post "It was an outrage, and obscenity" is emotional, shocking, irrefutable...after daytimes of visiting hospitals and bombing sites, he reads a biography of Thomas More in the evenings, hunkered down in a Baghdad basement somewhere with a pile of apples and bananas.
These days I am often asked what I did in Tehran as bombs fell during the Iran-Iraq war. My interlocutors are invariably surprised, if not shocked, when I tell them that I read James, Eliot, Plath and great Persian poets like Rumi and Hafez. Yet it is precisely during such times, when our lives are transformed by violence, that we need works of imagination to confirm our faith in humanity, to find hope amid the rubble of a hopeless world. Memoirs from concentration camps and the gulag attest to this. I keep returning to the words of Leon Staff, a Polish poet who lived in the Warsaw ghetto: "Even more than bread we now need poetry, in a time when it seems that it is not needed at all..." Nafisi says he reminded his students, during the Iran-Iraq war,, of Nabokov writing poetry in Russia "while guns roared and the Winter Palace was stormed."
The preciousness of beauty: in the garden today I spotted a clump of white snowdrops emerging from layers of snow, mud, and leaves. When I was young, it was always special to find these first signs of spring and bring a few into the house to my grandmother. She was a masterful gardener who gave me not only her love for growing things, but an awareness that gardening is an extension of hospitality, a gift to anyone who passes by even without entering the yard, a way of creating serenity for others. Today I remembered my grandfather, still strong at nearly 90, detaining me at dusk as I was leaving for the long six-hour drive back to New England, and asking, "wouldn't you like a clump of snowdrops?" So of course I waited while he got the shovel and dug them and wrapped them carefully in plastic and in brown paper. Fifteen springs later, they're still blooming.
3:45 PM
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Wednesday, March 26, 2003 “Liberty cannot be preserved without a general knowledge among the people…of the characters and conduct of their rulers. Rulers are no more than attorneys, agents, and trustees for the people; and if the cause, the interest and trust is insidiously betrayed, or wantonly trifled away, the people have a right to revoke the authority that they themselves have disputed, and to constitute abler and better agents, attorneys, and trustees.” John Adams, second President of the United States
7:14 PM
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Tuesday, March 25, 2003
I hadn't seen all the pictures of casualties and U.S. POWs that Al-Jazeera has been showing, and when I clicked on these pictures I was literally blown back in my seat. I've looked at a lot of war pictures this year, and I thought I was prepared, but these are really visceral, so be forewarned. On the other hand, I wish they were being broadcast into every American home. Instead, they are being censored in the mass media and the websites that supply them are being shut down, while the images are simultaneously shown repeatedly throughout the Arab world. We all make our own icons -- how many times did we see the planes crash into the Twin Towers, or the shuttle blow up? -- for our own purposes. How about if we suppress our squeamishness and take a look at the reality of the rest of the world, including what is happening to our own children that have been sent to fight?
We had 29 participants at the interfaith service today - a record. The feeling in the room was solemn, sad, and very present. These are good people who care deeply, and I am always thankful to be among them and to have the privilege of leading. I read a passage from Paul's letter to the Romans that ends, " do not repay evil with evil", and immediately afterwards, although the reciter and I had not conferred, we heard a reading from the Qu'ran with the same injunction.
We also heard a moving reflection by a Lutheran pastor who has just come off three years of serving in Jerusalem. She read an account of a dream that she had written to her husband this morning; he is still working there. In her dream, she was inside a church with many other people, when a crowd of armed soldiers came in. Voices were raised. She was wearing her clerical collar, and didn't want to get involved. But finally she started shouting, "No arms in this church!" . The soldiers hadn't left before she woke up. "Not too hard to figure that one out," she said. "War and conflict are penetrating right into our lives of faith, and even the church is no longer a sanctuary for any of us."
After that I read Rachel Corrie's words, and made it through.
5:25 PM
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Monday, March 24, 2003
How can it be such a gorgeous day here with so much horror going on elsewhere in the world? It is, as ee cummings said, "mud-luscious", a true spring day, the first when I've been able to get out into my garden. Lots of damage from the heavy and deep snow, lots of dieback and even loss from the extreme cold. But it's glorious and hopeful to be out there and see my green friends poking their heads up again.
Spent the morning planning tomorrow's interfaith prayer service. Each month I do a reading, along with the prayers and meditations. Am considering reading from Rachel Corrie's writings. But every time I try to read the words out loud, I start to lose it -- and I can't do that in a service. So, I guess I'll practice until I can, it's what needs to be read and thought about:
When I am with Palestinian friends I tend to be somewhat less horrified than when I am trying to act in a role of human rights observer, documenter, or direct-action resister. They are a good example of how to be in it for the long haul. I know that the situation gets to them - and may ultimately get them - on all kinds of levels, but I am nevertheless amazed at their strength in being able to defend such a large degree of their humanity - laughter, generosity, family-time - against the incredible horror occurring in their lives and against the constant presence of death. I felt much better after this morning. I spent a lot of time writing about the disappointment of discovering, somewhat first-hand, the degree of evil of which we are still capable. I should at least mention that I am also discovering a degree of strength and of basic ability for humans to remain human in the direst of circumstances - which I also haven't seen before. I think the word is dignity. I wish you could meet these people. Maybe, hopefully, someday you will. Rachel Corrie, 2/28/03
5:16 PM
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Sunday, March 23, 2003
Lent III My church got a new interim Rector three weeks ago. We've gone from a conservative evangelical from the Plains to an Eastern academic liberal. And since this is an Eastern academic liberal town, it feels like an enormous relief -- although certainly not to some. After many years of never hearing a social justice sermon, we have had two in a row: deeply heartfelt pleas to examine ourselves and our relationship to the real Gospel. Today the assistant preached, and left most of us in jaw-dropped amazement at the passion in her words. She spoke about the sickness in our culture; our obsession with violence, guns, and sex; our self-centeredness; our tremendous anxiety; our turning away from the true problems of the world -- and asked us where we stood.
(One immediate thought: are even the clergy so intimidated by church patriarchy and hierarchy that it takes the physical absence of a former Rector to give another permission to speak truly and deeply from her heart? Or did the events of the last week simply move her to speak with special passion and authority today?)
As a lay person, I've been actively working and organizing for peace and cross-cultural/interfaith dialogue, within and outside this congregation, for more than two years. There's been minimal clerical support, and reasonable support from the congregation itself. Last week I got up and announced the global candlelight vigil for peace, and we had a pretty good contingent that evening. Today I made a short speech describing a conversation with my close Muslim friend this week where she told me, "This is a test - God is testing all of us." I said I agreed with her and with the sermon, in which the witness of people like Dietrich Bonhoeffer was mentioned. "We have all been given an opportunity," I said, "to examine our own relationship to our faith and to actively respond, rather than reading about people who've been in this position throughout history. Perhaps we should be grateful. And surely, at the very least, we can come together and pray for peace."
What was most interesting to me was the feeling in the room. Some people were moved and were in tears, and others were serious, sympathetic, and right with me. A few -- mostly Republican men -- looked openly hostile. But most seemed attentive yet uncomfortable. Between the sermons and these announcements, our "nice" Episcopalian atmosphere was being shaken. People were being called to self-examination in a far more immediate way than is normal for this parish, even during Lent. There was an almost palpable sense of people's inward writhing, wishing perhaps that they could just write a check and assuage their conscience -- but knowing that path was probably not going to be offered this time.
Increasingly, I'm coming to understand better what Bonhoeffer called "the cost of discipleship". Part of that cost is a sense of isolation, while paradoxically being motivated by an ever-growing sense of compassion. Of course, for Bonhoeffer, discipleship went all the way, and what I do is really paltry by comparison. Today's sermon stated, "We are asked to take a stand, and we must not be afraid." It's astounding how few people are willing or able to do that. I've always wondered about the regular citizenry of Nazi Germany -- how could they have been so silently complicit? Tragically, we are seeing how. People turn away because they are afraid, and because despite their years of sitting in pews listening to religious scripture, or in classrooms studying human history, when it comes down to it they lack the moral backbone to make their lives count for something beyond themselves. We are creatures bent on self-preservation, and the cost of being something other than that is high.
4:10 PM
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