Military Burial Sites

‘She gives me religion.’

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Maybe there always had been something going on here, it just took so many years to recognize the holiness.

‘She gives me religion.’

To life. The things felt deep within. To extend the arc of your fertility, with the same degree of freedom and belief in freedom. When hyprocrisy is the chaarge leveled when leaders cannot live up to the espoused standards of true freedom as well as the wants and needs of freedom. Supplemented by thing like love, in the intermingling of your DNA with themes about pursuit and power.

When a man abandons his past, isn’t that the story of Jacob? When Andy came into the classroom and spoke of how he slept around. Perhaps like so many in this society. And when his schooling was over? What did he do to his brothers? When it took forty years to answer the question: “What the hell kind of friend was he?”

When Jacob had never really yet considered the birthright – what it might be. The missing recognition which he might have inherited from his father. Isn’t that always the story of Jacob? Or the story of fertility? Long before Jacob, Abraham. When your spouse recognizes it, years later.

How had Abraham changed in the story? As the outside world meets the inside world. What had Sarah provided? On issues of accommodation? Why did Abraham change, only at the end of the story of his life? Was it due to the need for a stable relationship in his life? Sinful people who thought God should just accept selfishness? That you should bring your sinfulness into temple/church. People, unwilling to change, willing to have sex where the outside world meets the inside world, in sacred places.

Public places. Private places. Military cemeteries. To see the precision, when you spent year after year surrounded by death, of the burial grounds. Old soldiers never die. So what had you left behind?

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Of your fertility. In the way of inheritance, what had you left your family? And what had you left the world, in the way of life? How had it come to all of this, over and over? Judy Herman’s Trauma and Recovery. About battle fatigue. The unworthiness of power. The volleys that wake the dead. If these dead could ever sleep. The outrage at the system that empowered men. The training of generals and high priests. The anger over time when no one was left to defend you.

Burial grounds. People who thought God should just accept sinfulness. That you should bring it into temple/church. Burial grounds, of the old ways. At what age was a parent supposed to just accept the lifestyle decision of a child? When it was okay for a 25-year to have sex with a girlfriend but it was not to an 18-year old? When a grandparent was supposed to be concerned about what his grandkids believed. People, unwilling to change, willing to have sex without bonds, in sacred places? Unbonded people willing to murder their neighbor.

Selfishness. The change in perspctive, beyond myself. As the outside world meets the inside world. And so the November elections, about control. Controlling the levels of comfort. Creating an environment. In a world with air conditioning to adjust the levels of comfort, controlling the environment or just the money supply. Like someone had control. Of money supply, of interest rates. Of happiness. Or of pain. On issues of life and death, or just of birth. When weak leaders tried expanding the laws which had always sufficed. The greater the upheaval, the more force is needed to restore order, to arrive at a new legitimacy. Of the old ways. Like in the cities hosting political conventions. When you now had to give up some basic freedoms, to be the host.

In a democracy when the majority ruled, in elections and in Supreme Court decisions, the control and manipulation issue. A culture if not a pluralistic NATION deciding how close to God, to a religion, it wanted to get.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Trust. Faith. Power. The things that humble us, which cause fear, and are associated with the Lord – like drought, or famine. Or the Occupy Wall Street Movement. Or just the occupied cities which host the political convention every four years.

Seeing what military power is when turned on the natives. Yes, more and more the difficulty of power-sharing. Which the news media never really reports.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

When a nation abandons its past. Living in a voluntary totalitarian society, with cell phones and computers. If you did not want to look like some kind of buffoon. But you carried a concern about valuations for the generations which followed you. When they built something on the foundation laid by me. But the core values were loosened, on matters of the deepest things about you.

Finding the power to love, with the difficulty of power-sharing in a relationship. In a promise land.

« Book Clubs

Days of Awe »