This article pretty much sums up my feelings on the current situation in Iraq. I've thought it over many times and because of the vulnerable situation of Iraqi civilians, I can't bring myself to back the political rhetoric of immediate withdrawal, despite my opposition to the war. I believe the American people have a responsibility to recognize our complicity in creating the violent, chaotic and destructive situation in Iraq, and thus an ethical duty towards the restoration and rebuilding of Iraq, while somehow respecting and recognizing Iraqi sovereignty. I find much of the Democratic rhetoric around immediate withdrawal as completely self-absorbed, self-aggrandizing, and nationalistic as the rhetoric on the right. I am infuriated by those on the right and left who are frustrated with the government in Iraq and feel as if it is our right to call for a regime change or "timely" improvement as if Iraq is America's plaything (it's just not working out like we planned, what happened?). It's also convenient scapegoating. And since the beginning of this war, the cost has always been most deeply to the Iraqi people. I don't know what the course should be for the future, but I do think we owe it to the Iraqi people to listen to their needs and support them at all costs in meeting these needs. I believe that fundamentally, most Iraqis want what most human beings want: security and stability without the constant threat of violence. I know our occupation of Iraq incites violence, but I can't help but think that if we withdrew now the level of violence would be catastrophic. My analysis is probably biased in its own way, and incredible naive...but that's why I value news stories that actually try to report the story of Iraq from the perspective of those who live there because in almost all political debates, this perspective is absent.
If you know of more ways to hear these voices, please let me know.
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Still Lost
“Commemoration provides interpretation; it offers a public meaning that survives the event. It surpasses private experience and continues to provide significance even when memory is long gone. Commemoration is not a matter of healing or feeling; it is a matter of meaning.”
It is September 11. I am a feeling the same way I felt the last few years – vaguely sad, but intentionally disconnected. Six years later, I still do not know how to interpret this day, and apparently the American public doesn’t either. For the most part, those of us removed from the east coast seem so ambivalent we almost go out of our way not to observe the day. Then there is the uneasy and permanent tie with Iraq ironically represented by the Petraeus hearings in the Senate today. Feelings on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan cloud memory and shift interpretation. And I feel guilty.
I received an email today asking me to pray for peace and send my prayer to Congress in a “surge of prayers” that will be read out loud during the Iraq hearings. Trouble is I can’t fathom what it really means to pray. I am disturbed as I hear the reports of the hearings trickling in. Of course, I want peace. I am committed to peace intuitively and theologically. But on days like today, I have no idea what peace really looks like or accomplishes. And I am uncomfortable with prayer being used as a political tool when I can’t even understand what it means for me to pray. And I feel guilty.
So, I guess I’m wondering where the process of grief, the politics of justice, and the reality of war intersect. As much as I deplore the current war, I don’t know how to also appropriately acknowledge and respond to the grief, loss and sorrow of those who suffered on Sept. 11. It is easy to be cynical or sarcastic given the disproportionate loss of life resulting from the wars. It’s also all too easy to self-blame as this New York Times article points out.
So, I end up disconnecting because I can’t figure out what’s “appropriate” to feel: guilt, apathy, sorrow, heaviness, weariness, cynicism, hopelessness, sarcasm, self-blame, outrage, anger, quiet meditation? And can a prayer for peace or justice really hold all of these? Whose justice? Whose peace? And yet, this ongoing violence must end. We are – I am – too easily blinded by its logic.
Six years later, I still feel lost, still feel loss. I wish it were as simple as “peace” – but in this political economy, I can’t grasp its currency; it offers no guidance or grounding. I find myself grappling with uncomfortable questions and realities about the nature of war, violence, and loss, but there are no easy answers. I’m not sure we are ever going to know how to commemorate once the memories and emotions slip away and fade. This seems to be our current struggle, or at least it is my struggle, as I search for meaning in the absence of emotion and my own ambivalence.
It is September 11. I am a feeling the same way I felt the last few years – vaguely sad, but intentionally disconnected. Six years later, I still do not know how to interpret this day, and apparently the American public doesn’t either. For the most part, those of us removed from the east coast seem so ambivalent we almost go out of our way not to observe the day. Then there is the uneasy and permanent tie with Iraq ironically represented by the Petraeus hearings in the Senate today. Feelings on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan cloud memory and shift interpretation. And I feel guilty.
I received an email today asking me to pray for peace and send my prayer to Congress in a “surge of prayers” that will be read out loud during the Iraq hearings. Trouble is I can’t fathom what it really means to pray. I am disturbed as I hear the reports of the hearings trickling in. Of course, I want peace. I am committed to peace intuitively and theologically. But on days like today, I have no idea what peace really looks like or accomplishes. And I am uncomfortable with prayer being used as a political tool when I can’t even understand what it means for me to pray. And I feel guilty.
So, I guess I’m wondering where the process of grief, the politics of justice, and the reality of war intersect. As much as I deplore the current war, I don’t know how to also appropriately acknowledge and respond to the grief, loss and sorrow of those who suffered on Sept. 11. It is easy to be cynical or sarcastic given the disproportionate loss of life resulting from the wars. It’s also all too easy to self-blame as this New York Times article points out.
So, I end up disconnecting because I can’t figure out what’s “appropriate” to feel: guilt, apathy, sorrow, heaviness, weariness, cynicism, hopelessness, sarcasm, self-blame, outrage, anger, quiet meditation? And can a prayer for peace or justice really hold all of these? Whose justice? Whose peace? And yet, this ongoing violence must end. We are – I am – too easily blinded by its logic.
Six years later, I still feel lost, still feel loss. I wish it were as simple as “peace” – but in this political economy, I can’t grasp its currency; it offers no guidance or grounding. I find myself grappling with uncomfortable questions and realities about the nature of war, violence, and loss, but there are no easy answers. I’m not sure we are ever going to know how to commemorate once the memories and emotions slip away and fade. This seems to be our current struggle, or at least it is my struggle, as I search for meaning in the absence of emotion and my own ambivalence.
Thursday, August 30, 2007
The Lone Star State
(This is a bit late: I apologize)
I’ve survived a week in Texas, and truth be told it hasn’t been that hard. I’m settling into the heat and daily giving thanks for air conditioning and welcoming the rain with a knowing smile because it somehow brings comfort. I still don’t entirely know why I am here, but I do feel taken care of.
Next week, Than begins his graduate program, and the school I work at begins classes. I’m anxious to get a sense of this place and its people: cultures and customs. I think I understand why “middle-America” sometimes seems so insular. I don’t think Texas technically qualifies as middle-America, but in my mind I equate the two. Anyway, there is something about being landlocked in the middle of dessert and miles of fields that just makes you forget about the rest of the world. All you really need to know is where the nearest store, gas station, and church are. I’ve met so many people whose radius of knowledge by choice or circumstance is 100 miles. It’s a bit endearing (although this is still probably part of my own cultural bias) – generations growing up together, side by side. Parents, grandparents, children, with intimate knowledge of one another. Families spread out and planted like treees, connected to the very land itself. Richness of life found through one another. It’s also been a bit shocking to hear many people express, “I don’t like traveling."
I knew when I moved here and still know that this is not me, but for this season – it is me. This is my home now. And this isn’t entirely foreign to me. Though I’ve come to embrace urban “cultured” life, my roots are somewhere in the great plains of Manitoba, in the mixed tongue of low German. My roots are found somewhere in the corn fields and cattle farms and homesteads that have not remained untouched by the modern forces of change. We all scattered as seed; the land sold off and stolen piece by piece.
I trace my line through my mother. As I have grown older, it becomes clearer why. The stories we embrace and tell about ourselves. I grew up in Germany. My mother is Canadian, but not just Canadian: Mennonite. My family emigrated from Holland to Prussia to Russia to Canada. I completely ignore the generations on my father’s side who I have never met or known, who grew up on American soil. As far as I know, my father’s line begins with his mother in the great northwestern state of Oregon, and I’m from the Northwest: somewhere that is far removed from the center of our country, the last territory discovered, on the edge of an ocean which connects us with continents thousands of miles away.
But at the moment, it all seems irrelevant. Now, I’m from Texas.
I’ve survived a week in Texas, and truth be told it hasn’t been that hard. I’m settling into the heat and daily giving thanks for air conditioning and welcoming the rain with a knowing smile because it somehow brings comfort. I still don’t entirely know why I am here, but I do feel taken care of.
Next week, Than begins his graduate program, and the school I work at begins classes. I’m anxious to get a sense of this place and its people: cultures and customs. I think I understand why “middle-America” sometimes seems so insular. I don’t think Texas technically qualifies as middle-America, but in my mind I equate the two. Anyway, there is something about being landlocked in the middle of dessert and miles of fields that just makes you forget about the rest of the world. All you really need to know is where the nearest store, gas station, and church are. I’ve met so many people whose radius of knowledge by choice or circumstance is 100 miles. It’s a bit endearing (although this is still probably part of my own cultural bias) – generations growing up together, side by side. Parents, grandparents, children, with intimate knowledge of one another. Families spread out and planted like treees, connected to the very land itself. Richness of life found through one another. It’s also been a bit shocking to hear many people express, “I don’t like traveling."
I knew when I moved here and still know that this is not me, but for this season – it is me. This is my home now. And this isn’t entirely foreign to me. Though I’ve come to embrace urban “cultured” life, my roots are somewhere in the great plains of Manitoba, in the mixed tongue of low German. My roots are found somewhere in the corn fields and cattle farms and homesteads that have not remained untouched by the modern forces of change. We all scattered as seed; the land sold off and stolen piece by piece.
I trace my line through my mother. As I have grown older, it becomes clearer why. The stories we embrace and tell about ourselves. I grew up in Germany. My mother is Canadian, but not just Canadian: Mennonite. My family emigrated from Holland to Prussia to Russia to Canada. I completely ignore the generations on my father’s side who I have never met or known, who grew up on American soil. As far as I know, my father’s line begins with his mother in the great northwestern state of Oregon, and I’m from the Northwest: somewhere that is far removed from the center of our country, the last territory discovered, on the edge of an ocean which connects us with continents thousands of miles away.
But at the moment, it all seems irrelevant. Now, I’m from Texas.
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Friday, July 13, 2007
divisadero
Michael Ondaatje has a new novel out, which I discovered by chance through Wikipedia yesterday at work. It must have been orchestrated by the stars because this novel is really brand new (as in The Stranger reviewed it this week). My heart is pounding, and this morning I am craving and savoring the possibility of buying this book and losing myself in it. It's lust in the truest sense: is that wrong? Possibly.
Monday, July 9, 2007
July
I feel restless – alert when I need to be tired and tired when I need to be alert. I am ready to go to bed at 7:30 only to feel wide awake at 10. I wake up at 5:30 clear-headed and by 7:00 AM I’m stumbling through the day. I can hardly drink coffee.
I spent the last two weekends at home and just felt weary but also pleasantly surprised by an ache in my side. Gazing at the great arched backs of gentle warrior mountains, I no longer felt tied to the sweet air and the blistering sun. I felt ready to leave and finally to say: this is not my home and this is not my family. This is something else, once removed.
My family is growing from my limbs, from the soft tissue of my side, from somewhere deep in my heart – I think. Love, now, is thicker than skin. Even if we decided we didn’t want it, it would still choose us. Love is like breath. It slides between our angry gazes and our sharp words and keeps us close.
I like you close. Sometimes you are the only person in the world that I can tolerate. The only person who keeps me sane or keeps me calm. And sometimes you are the one I cannot tolerate, the one who makes me crazy, makes me angry. But that’s ok. I still want you near
I spent the last two weekends at home and just felt weary but also pleasantly surprised by an ache in my side. Gazing at the great arched backs of gentle warrior mountains, I no longer felt tied to the sweet air and the blistering sun. I felt ready to leave and finally to say: this is not my home and this is not my family. This is something else, once removed.
My family is growing from my limbs, from the soft tissue of my side, from somewhere deep in my heart – I think. Love, now, is thicker than skin. Even if we decided we didn’t want it, it would still choose us. Love is like breath. It slides between our angry gazes and our sharp words and keeps us close.
I like you close. Sometimes you are the only person in the world that I can tolerate. The only person who keeps me sane or keeps me calm. And sometimes you are the one I cannot tolerate, the one who makes me crazy, makes me angry. But that’s ok. I still want you near
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