Ponderings

As a western liberal not acquainted with war I’ve always been persuaded by Ghandi’s legendary logic, “‘an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth’ leaves the whole world blind and toothless.” Believing Ghandi from the relative comfort of my midwest home has been easy and quite frankly hasn’t exacted much effort. Sure, I joined others in peace vigils before we invaded Iraq. I even preached about peace from the pulpit and angered a few folk. But my check writing never exceeded my disposable income and my daily routines remained uninterrupted.

As I read about the warring in the Middle East, from Lebanon to Iraq and back again, I find myself wondering about the platitudes I so easily espouse. When the greatest threat to our contiguous borders is an influx of cheap (and ‘undocumented’!) labor from the south, I find myself wondering ‘what if’?

What if the Canadian’s were hostile towards us? What if groups of young disgruntled Canadians (not the dignified Canadian government of course) gathered together to strategize about how to undermine our country? What if they began to amass armed colonies in Sarnia, Windsor, and Vancouver? Although our current administration has low public approval ratings, half of the voters got what they wanted. But what about the half that didn’t? And the other half of Americans that didn’t vote? Only 25% of us voted for this path we’re on, and even that 25% isn’t happy. What if the Canadians made strategic alliances (friendships even) with AIM (remember the American Indian Movement?) in the Northwest and the Nation of Islam in Detroit and Buffalo? Given the number of weapons bought and sold in this nation (and I understand from Michael Moore that Canadians have even more!) we could quickly find ourselves surrounded. Recently we spent an hour crossing from Sarnia into Port Huron and had to show passports to keep our kids. We were rather off put that the customs agent was rude. But what if the border was armed and hostile?

From the comfort of my midwest home I find comedy in such a script (as did a particular West Wing episode in Season 6). But comedy is rooted in the things we fear, things we at once fear and from which we feel secure. But what if we did not feel secure? What if the laughter stopped?

Although I do not support the policies of my nation state that provoke hostility from many in the world community, what might I feel when the hostility came round in the form of a bomb on my child’s school bus? Would I side then with those avenging? Or with the avenged?

In fleeting shards I see the Gordian knot of my brothers and sisters who live in a land I generically call the Middle East. So far removed that I need to google a map each time I read a story. But what if I didn’t need mapquest? What if the borders were so close that I could hear the artillery? That the mortar shook my walls? What then would I say about Ghandi’s wisdom?

My query began this morning when my son asked me about Ghandi’s fasting. The question was far from the context of our conversation, a gift from the universe perhaps. Ghandi’s fasting, his hunger fast that my son remembered from the movie seen several years ago, was a tangible, public, and sacrificial act of resistance. Peace comes not from passivity but from active resistance to evil. Perhaps the peace for which we pray will be realized only when we leave the relative comfort behind.