What do we do now? Our administration seems like the B-52 in
Dr. Strangelove, beyond reach of recall, headed for the doomsday drop. Millions
of Americans marching, phoning, faxing; the overwhelming opposition from people
worldwide (despite the support of their US-bribed and bullied governments); the
clear evidence of hypocrisy and deceit; nothing has yet seemed to slow the
gathering storm.
Bush and his team can still tell a story, and from a myopic,
ill-informed perspective, it makes sense: “This Evil Man who hates us is trying
to get weapons that could someday kill far more of us then he killed on
September 11. Let’s kill him first.” But then what, Mr. President? What will we
do with the next Evil Man, and the next? How long can we afford this?
My younger son just turned thirteen. A few days following
his birthday, he caught the flu. Last night, he called me to his bedside with a
feeble voice. His face was pale, with dark crescents under his eyes. His lips
were cracked from days of mouth breathing, and they had been bleeding a bit.
Blood stained his teeth. He reached out his arms for a hug, his voice trembling
with fever. *God, I love him so much. How would I feel*, I thought, *if there
was no hope for him to live another year.* No hope, because the world is
spending $2 billion *per day* on war and preparation for war, getting ready to
re-bomb instead of repair the water treatment plant they bombed in 1991.
When Einstein first saw a film of the nuclear bomb exploding
over the sands of Alamogordo, he is reported to have spoken softly these words:
“All men are brothers.” I get a shiver every time I recall that story. Here was
a man of unparalleled insight, who instantly saw the future springing from his
hallmark scientific discovery. Our fate was sealed: we would live as one, or
die.
I had a similar response to the World Trade Center blasts.
After the shock faded, I remembered the line from Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going
On: “only love can conquer hate.” For the weeks of my emotional recovery, that
phrase was a lifeboat in a stormy sea.
But this war is impatient. Time Magazine interviewed
American soldiers waiting for the order to attack. Their commanders were
worried that if they waited too long, the conditioning that overrides the
natural human revulsion for killing would wear off. One soldier, disturbed by
reports of the protests, wondered if he would be spat upon when he returned.
What would Einstein do? Like other men and women of
spiritual wisdom, he knew the path we must take. “A human being is a part of a
whole, called by us “universe”, a part limited in time and space. He
experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the
rest... a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a
kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection
for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this
prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and
the whole of nature in its beauty."
How do we free ourselves? By practicing and learning to love
our adversaries, even as we stand peacefully strong against their actions.
George and Saddam and Donald and yes, even Osama, are brothers, our brothers.
We cannot win our way by hating them. And we must welcome the troops back with
open loving arms. They are our sons, as are the Iraqis they might kill.
We are at the crux of humanity’s evolutionary climb. If we
waste our energy on hate and war, we will lose our grip and fall towards
wretched brutality and extinction. But if we let go of that useless baggage, we
are free to ascend, to places that for millennia we have only dreamed of.
“Father, father / We
don't need to escalate / You see, war is not the answer / For only love can
conquer hate / You know we've got to find a way / To bring some lovin' here
today.”