Almost Forgotten Words

 

Almost Forgotten Words 

We all long for peace.  But with the slightest miscommunication wars erupt, within the household or between nations.

The great conflicts and the domestic disputes coalesce out of the swirling storm of disconnection and distance.  Each of these inner worlds, each ensemble of beliefs and expectations and desires, i.e. each individual human being, churns within the prison cell of its worldly experience.  Words form feeble and distorted connections among the individual cells, but the almost universal aversion to really listening renders the words impotent and their effects unpredictable.  

So arguments ensue and wars erupt.  

It is tragedy unnecessary and horror avoidable, but our trenchant resistance to learning ensures the tragedies and horrors will compound.

Ludicrous sound the admonitions to turn the other cheek and give away your coat as well as cloak.  Such progressive ideas were and are resoundingly ignored.  But imagine the world in the absence of those admonitions.  Indeed, look at parts of the world untouched by those impractical admonitions.  

Against all odds those words and their source have and do make a difference.  They at least sufficiently prick our conscience that we give lip-service to the premise that war and divorce are not to be celebrated.  

We may not turn the other cheek, but at least we ever so slightly uncomfortably squirm upon hearing the phrase.  Maybe our retributive blows are in turn ever so slightly tempered by some nagging sub-conscious awareness that some unrealistic itinerant progressive long ago pointed out a better way.  

Do not listen.  Do not learn.  Continue as always, pragmatic and patriotic, resolute and righteous.  Try to deny that irritating tiny grain of sand in your well shined marching shoes,.... "turn the other cheek…..turn…...turn and repent."