Molly McGee gets her tea-leaves read- You'll be married in a month they say "These leaves are crazy! Look at this town-there's no men left! Out of the blue-just passin' through A young flight sergeant On two weeks leave- Says "Molly McGee- no one else will do!" She plants her garden in the spring He does the winter shoveling The three of 'em laughin' 'round the radio She says, I'm leavin' here but she don't go Study war no more Lay down your arms Study war no more Lay 'em down, lay 'em down now (excerpt: joni's 'tea leaf prophecy') the long saskatoon winter, and the winter of a 'not always easy' marriage, but moments for the 'three of 'em'... ...and her inner child still calling them to 'lay down their arms...study war no more...' It was a time when young men went in droves to answer the call of 'king and country'...and this time (unlike the 'Great War', the first world war, or the 'war to end all wars', they had an evil enemy - a situation potentially yielding, Churchill warned, to what could become 'a new dark age, more sinister and protracted by the likes of perverted science' unless they 'brace themselves' for battle. And so young men could perceive that they may have to make 'the ultimate sacrifice'...and they were willing... Even then a few, very few, were 'conscientious objectors'...in canada, j.s. woodsworth, founder of the CCF, the commonwealth cooperative federation (Canada's 'Labour Party' - but with populist, agrarian roots from woodsworth's home soil - the prairies. He was the sole M.P. to vote against conscription, because on a personal and conscientious level, he had been, like gandhi or the dali lama, a pacifist by deep conviction... I just shared with a friend on the topic of being a pacifist, that we need to conceive of a society where it could be right for j.s. woodsworth to be one....and right equally for winston churchill not to be... i said to him for instance that i could not be one in world war II, nor could i imagine being one now...but that i could deeply respect the conscientious convictions of a man like j.s. woodsworth...it was right for him... priests, ministers...its right for them to be not warriors...they are to remind the rest of us of our higher and more noble calling to be 'peacemakers'...but i am not a priest, nor could i ever be one...i am called to be a layman, and this involves different responsibilities, to God, to society, and warrior may be one of those duties to which i am called (especially if i were 20 years younger, and really fit and firm of body and vigour!)... but then we have to look at the 'fighting' and the situation we face... the present situation is full of potential deceptions for people to truly understand what is going on... there is no whole nation to take on primarily, it is usually pointed out, but a no less deadly and dangerous enemy... composed of gangs of murderous thugs really...and so the proper response is a kind of 'cop for civilization' approach...and not just 'american cop' which creates resentment upon the often misunderstanding mobs, but truly an international cop, where we need the americans because of their resources and capability for the campaign ahead...the defence of civilization this time needs pinpoint accuracy ...and an emphasis that this is not a campaign against islam nor cannot it ever be, if we are to preserve the very civilization we are purporting to defend... Lay down our arms? no, not this time, in such a deadly peril! the only arms we need to lay down are our interior arms against God, the mere materialistic arms and the 'me-generation' arms...the arms that prevent our self-giving... That being said, we cannot go to the opposite extreme...that of filling up the oceans and skies with military hardware up to the yingyang when we really need thousands of james bonds!...people can be so easily fooled by this military build-up...america has a 'winning' consciousness, and this is also fed by the daily t.v. diet and computer games... ...its not about winning, but about perservering! its about only going after the crooks... and not waging world war three... So there are many diversions and escapes from this recent suffering... how important then to look deeper into the meaning of suffering instead of compulsive quick fixes (for those who only think of 'macho' reactions) .....their aren't any! c.s. lewis, oxford don, cambridge professor, christian apologist, took on the mystery of suffering, first theoretically (in 'the problem of pain') and then personally...he fell in love with a terminally ill jewish woman from new york named joy....he married her in her hospital room...she had a felicitous and very romantic respite for 3 glowing years... and then the cancer returned... after her death, lewis went through all that... before, he had only 'written about'... but, with time, he came to see the grace of God in more thankful eyes once again, (writing 'a grief observed') before his own passing... he said when he was young, he couldn't avoid suffering... he was dragged kicking and screaming into it... when he became a man, he chose it, that he might love... "that's the deal"... Here is a site, then, which introduces us to some of the ideas which grappled in the mind, and then in the experience of c.s. lewis... if there is a God who is loving, how can suffering like this occur?: http://catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0032.html shalom, dear friends, shane
