"...where a civil war between Muslim Arabs of the north and the Christian and pagan blacks of the south conspires with periodic droughts to create misery on a scale colossal even by African standards."
And later on,
"This entire continent has made friends with the absurd...a war whose beginning no one can remember, whose end no one can see, whose purpose no one knows. Yes, here they are best of friends with the absurd."
...
Earlier, I was reading Dexter Filkins' The Forever War. It was recommended to me by both Joe and Dad, and it turned out being one of the better books I can recall reading. Filkins writes extensively about his time in Iraq and Afghanistan with the power and simplicity that only comes from having lived in war, walked among death.
"They had been fighting for so long, twenty-three years then, that by the time the Americans arrived the Afghans had developed an elaborate set of rules designed to spare as many fighters as they could. So the war could go on forever."
...
On Monday, I was driving to work. At an intersection that I was stopped at, a man was waving a sign. At first I thought it was one of those signs advertising a jewelry sale or apartments for lease -- you know, the ones where they wave and spin at you as you drive by to try and attract your attention to the ridiculous deal that you don't want to miss out on? It wasn't one of those. He had written "GOD HATES FAGS" in big black letters. That's what he was waving to everyone. The light turned green a few seconds later and I drove off. I looked back once in my side mirror and the guy was still there, braving the afternoon Texas heat to wave a sign that somehow managed to wed God and hate in the same sentence. I wanted to honk. But since I drive a big truck, I thought he might mistake that for a sign of support.
Bear with me. I know I jump from Africa to Afghanistan and then to Austin rather hastily, but it is leading somewhere... I hope.
*EXHALE
At a time when teenage girls are being sold into prostitution in places like Cambodia and Thailand, and when thousands of gallons of oil wash aboard America's shores each day, and when according to UNICEF 24,000 children die each day from poverty [the Staples Center -- where game 1 of the NBA Finals was played -- holds 19,000], and when nearly a billion people entered the 21st century unable to read a book or sign their name -- when there is all of that going on [and do I even need to say 'and so much more'?], somehow people still find the time and energy and the desire to hold signs that do nothing except spread hate. People still find time to behead someone because they are Dinka, not Arab. Or blow up a bus full of women and schoolchildren to further a cause they are told needs to be furthered.
I'm not going to lecture. I'm just here to rant, which if you read my blog, you know I'm prone to do. I'll say it again, bear with me.
The world isn't missing more hate, another death or another suicide bomber, another genocide. It isn't missing religious fanaticism. It is not missing racism, corruption, politics, genocide or millionaires. What Jackie DeShannon famously sang in 1965 holds true forty-five years later, "what the world needs now is love, sweet love." Desperately so.
It is missing people who 'protect the sanctity of marriage' by loving their wife, their children, not hating homosexuals. People who have beautiful chubby babies and love every ounce of them. Who don't yell and scream at each other, but who are happy and who are too much in love to stand in the way of others loving each other. Who sing along with green stuffed dogs and laugh when their child throws all their books into the toilet. It is missing people like Ellie, who live for standards instead of a paycheck or some hollow idea of what success is. Who pack everything in a bag and move down to where help is needed and figure the rest out as they go along. It needs more people like Joe, who the more I read his writing and talk with him, am convinced I am going to be reading his biography one day [which unless I receive bribe money, may-or-may-not contain certain stories]. Someone smart enough to understand, someone sharp enough to not be ignored.
And as I look around, whether it's in the pages of the book I'm reading or the streets I drive to work on, hate has the upper hand. This blog won't change it. Hell, president Obama won't change it. Drugs will still fuel 4,000 murders a year along the Mexico/US border. Malaria will still claim close to 1,000,000 lives this year [using insecticide-treated nets would cut this number anywhere from 50-75%]. And it's a frustrating feeling. I want to ask a suicide bomber why he has to die, and why he has to take people with him who just want to live, grow old with the people they love. I want to shake them, tell them that for every passage in the Qur'an [the Bible as well] that preaches hate, there are ten preaching love. That there is far too much to live for, and so little worth dying for. That hate is too great a burden to carry.
Just as I wanted to park my car and get out and shake that man standing by the side of the road. Shake him and tell him that while the Bible says [Lev 18:22-23] "You shall not lie with a male as one lies with a female; it is an abomination," it also says in Corinthians, "I may be able to speak the languages of human beings and even of angels, but if I have no love, my speech is no more than a noisy gong or a clanging bell." [ A side-note, if we're taking the Bible literally, why aren't we campaigning for capital punishment for adulterers? Leviticus 20:10,"If a man commits adultery with his neighbor's wife, both the man and the woman who have committed adultery must be put to death." And why aren't we stoning witch-doctors and psychics to death? Leviticus 20:27, "Men and women among you who act as mediums or who consult the spirits of the dead must be put to death by stoning."]
Anyway, that's how I like to think of that man by the side of the road. A noisy gong. I wish that's all they had, were gongs and bells, instead of bombs and guns. Sure they'd be loud. Annoying. But they already are. I'd just let em bang away. Drown them out with a little Jackie DeShannon.
"What the world needs now
Is love, sweet love
It's the only thing
That there's just too little of."
"What the world needs now
Is love, sweet love
No not just for some
But for everyone."
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