Wednesday, January 12, 2011
on war and peace and rivers
I often think about war and how I hate it and wish it to end, but recently I've been thinking about the peace which I hope to see replace it. Where is that peace? What actually embodies it? It's harder to articulate than one might think. The first thing that comes to mind is a river. But is a river peaceful? It may be equal parts eternally beautiful and relentlessly powerful, but peaceful? I think not. I love a river--even a raging river, even one that fills me with just as much fear as awe. But I cannot say that a river embodies peace. And so I must think: couldn't the human species be equal parts beautiful and ugly, compassionate and hateful, innocent and horrifying? Isn't it, in some way, like my dear river? But war is never beautiful; war, I do not love. A river doesn't hate or discriminate. It just is. So I'll search for another metaphor. All of the things I think of--the mountains, a tree, the ocean, the stars-have peace insofar as they simply are. I suppose humans should learn to simply be in the world and with the world.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
All these things that simply are...the mountains that were pushed up into existence by the sliding and the crashing of tectonic plates, and the tree that sprouted into being through the ground and the air, and the ocean that bangs against the shore and wears the earth down and is a place of birth and death, and the stars that are burning balls of gas...all these things that simply are, are giving and taking forms. Can peace exist on earth? Is it only representative? Can nature ever be peaceful?
ReplyDeleteI wonder if peace is the right word. Harmonious, maybe?
I love the way you wrote this blog. It flows, like it came right out of your thoughts. It's beautiful.
Hey Selkie. ;D And a beautiful comment! Sure, harmony it is. I think the human community has a whole lot to learn from the rest of the world about harmony.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDelete