That’s
Just Awesome!
“Awe
is the gateway to compassion.”
Diana
Butler-Bass (Grounded: Finding God in the World—A Spiritual Revolution)
If we
believe ourselves to be co-creators with The Creator, then we must also
understand that whatever happens in the world, we had a hand in creating. Awe
for the magnitude of our successes and failures is in order. We are watching
from the other side of the globe as a completely unnecessary war is being waged
in Ukraine. We must examine, not just Putin’s actions, but our own. His are transparent—he
wants to expand his power. And he’s willing to do whatever it takes to accomplish
that. I am, and I’ll bet you are, truly tired of old white men sending our
young people into battle—especially since we have seen time and time again that
no one wins a war—we just kill off generations of our precious children.
I would guess that Putin
has chosen this moment because we just got out of a 20-year war, and no one is eager
to start again. We should not, however, feel righteous that we didn’t cause
this one, because we’ve been the instigator of several bloody and unnecessary conflicts—Iraq,
is only the most recent. Let us see this for what it is—a bald-faced power
grab. Ukraine is a huge country, rich in natural resources. It has the most arable
soil in Europe and produces a large percentage of the food for that continent. Russia,
on the other hand, is dependent on one source of income—oil and gas—which is
finite and limited. Instead of negotiating a good-faith contract with Ukraine
for food and resources like everyone else, Putin’s choice is simply to take it by
force. That’s what autocrats do.
We must stand in awe of the
lack of human intelligence—that we still choose our leaders by who we think is “strongest”
in the ways of war. Even the female candidates for political office here in
Alabama have clips of themselves strutting around in camouflage with a big gun
on their shoulder. They may as well be cavemen with a club. And, of course, our
former president has called Putin “a genius for how he went about this.”
As upsetting as all of
this is, we should not give up. We should do our best to stand in solidarity
with the Ukrainian people and follow the suggestions of our spiritual leaders
to gather in prayer and fasting—though, I honestly think the good Lord is going
to sit this one out. I can just see God slapping his head and saying, “What
was I thinking when I created these clowns?” What indeed. And what are we 21st
century humans thinking when we believe that guns are more powerful than love
and compassion, that blindly following the violent patterns of history and the
greed-driven appetites of a dictator will end well. As Diana Butler Bass said, “The
Crusades did not end well.” She also wrote in Grounded, “If we do not
like the world, or are afraid of it, we have a hand in that. And if we made a mess,
we can clean it up and do better. We are what we make.” That should be our thought
for the day.
In the Spirit,
Jane
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