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| My great-grandfather Frederick Smith Strong's grave at Arlington National Cemetery. We buried my grandfather, Brigadier General Frederick Smith Strong Jr., at West Point in 1986 on what would have been his 99th birthday. A Different Story To Consider: Being the Peace Our World Yearns For |
Since 9/11 in particular, it has also become important to me to look at what it means to "serve our nation" and, ultimately, to question the stories we have collectively embraced in American culture around patriotism, military service, nationalism, what it means to be an American, and what it means to be a global citizen.
I come from a long line of military people. Toward the end of his life, I was able to have many deeply meaningful conversations with my paternal grandfather - who many knew as "the general." We grandchildren, however, always knew him as "Super" and our grandmother as "Sugar." After my grandmother died in 1970, I grew especially close with my grandfather. The last time he traveled from Michigan to Oregon to visit me he was 96 years old. At age 90, Super also had read Steinbeck's "Travels With Charlie" and decided it was now or never. So he got in his car and did a 10,000 mile solo trip driving all over the country visiting family and friends. Super was super!
My grandfather sometimes referred to himself as a "maverick", and I believe that in the twilight of his life he increasingly questioned, explored, clarified a great many of his beliefs, experiences, values, personal and collective stories. I knew that my grandfather's grade point average at West Point was not surpassed for many decades after he graduated in 1910. I knew that he had taught Eisenhower at West Point, that he'd served in both World Wars, that he knew Patton. I didn't know until toward the end of his life how horrified he was with the "completely unnecessary bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," and how he believed that the most important work he did was after he served in the wars and was able to be part of the development of prostheses for wounded veterans.
Super encouraged me to think outside the box. And I believe he would be proud of how fiercely I discouraged my youngest son from enlisting in the years that followed 9/11. I believe that my grandfather would be proud of how fiercely I have set about educating myself since 9/11, which was a huge wake-up call for me because, while I was hearing that "they hate us for our freedoms," I knew in my bones that this was not why we were attacked. I also recognized that I had no idea why we were attacked. So I determined to engage in this quest to find out. And I followed one thread to another to another and was ultimately shoved full-on through yet another doorway into a greater awakening than I had known before that horrific day nearly thirteen years ago. And I gradually came to realize that I had been deeply, deeply ignorant of American history, American foreign and domestic policies, our unsustainable way of life, and that the values we profess to embrace are often not in alignment with what is done in our names. It was a profoundly humbling, disturbing, illuminating and life changing experience, and continues to be - to awaken to realize the great fog I'd been living in regarding this beautiful country I call home.
And Super would be proud. Because it takes courage to think outside the box, to be a "maverick" of sorts, to look deeply, to not believe everything we think and are told, to question and think critically, to grow my heart and that which I care about even bigger. My circle of caring continues to grow and grow and grow. Heck, I don't even eat meat. And I weep for all those who have died for what they believed was service to a higher good for our nation.
I also wonder how it is that we as a nation are okay with teaching our children that it is in the highest good to learn to completely shift what we know to be true in our deepest being - that it is not okay to kill another human being? How is it that we don't consider the trauma to one's soul when we send our children to war?
I've sat through Veterans events in which veterans told their stories - some for the first time since the Vietnam War and even back further - through essays, poetry, songs, tears, rage, terror, forgiveness, and more. Their courage was beyond amazing! And so was what they lived through. I've forced myself to stay through all three parts of a Winter Soldier event here in Portland in which I witnessed first hand the stories of veterans so trauma-filled, so horrific, so over the top unbearable, that I simply ached, ached, to leave the room and not stay through the whole event. But I did stay because I told myself that if they can live through these actual experiences, I can live through bearing witness. And I did bear witness - with all of my being, my heart and mind, my spirit and soul - to the horror of war.
This also touches me so deeply because I am a mother of three sons. And I do not understand how it is that we as a nation continue to be okay with sending our children to war? It is one thing to slap a "Support Our Troops" bumper sticker on our car, but what does that mean?? Then there's the bumper sticker I saw just the other day: "Support Our Troops or Go Stand In Front of Them!" Somehow I am thinking that that person does not have any understanding, or desire to understand, how it is that I support our troops.
It takes courage to go off and risk dying for what one believes is an act of ensuring and protecting American freedom. Again, what is freedom? How do we define "freedom"? Are the 20,000 vets who are homeless on any given day in this country free? How about those who return with PTSD? Are those who commit suicide also acknowledged, considered, and honored among those others who have died as a result of their service? Why not? How many Americans even know how many of our soldiers and veterans commit suicide every day? How many veterans don't receive the help they need? How many come back poisoned from exposure to chemical weapons? How many suffer from traumatic brain injury and other devastating wounds such as major depression, substance abuse and addiction, and relationships that spiral into domestic violence? How many know who makes the decisions about going to war? Where, why, when - who makes these decisions?
This is the shadow side of our fallen heroes and those who survived that all too often is neglected, minimized, ignored, denied. Such denial, to me, is not how we honor our troops. To honor another human being it is necessary for that person to feel seen, truly seen. Turning the other way to the true suffering of so many is turning away from seeing our veterans and what it is that they live with day in and day out.
Meanwhile, today millions of little American flags and colorful flowers adorned cemeteries all over the country. People wept, celebrated, talked of the "ultimate sacrifice". Others simply had barbeques, drank beer, had a much needed day off from work.
As I reflect and am mindful of this day, my heart aches. I ache for the thousands - and millions - who have died and continue to die in wars because humanity hasn't yet resolved that there is another way. It is still considered normal in American culture to believe that war is peace. And so millions and billions are spent on missiles and drones and training our children to kill the children of others in far away lands while our own children all too often go to bed hungry here at home, or kill the children of their neighbors in American war zones, or play violent video games, etc., etc., etc. And meanwhile I drive by what looks to be a Vietnam War vet holding his sign up on the street corner - "Veteran. Anything helps." And I live knowing that more than 22 veterans committed suicide today. And many others are living lives of despair, terror, depression, and quiet desperation because the war they tried to leave has followed them home. Yet, we continue to believe it is normal to send our children to war. We continue to believe that one has to learn to kill others in order to protect our "freedoms." It is all insane to me. And it sickens my heart. So I write...
And I reflect knowing that my Brigadier General grandfather would be proud that in my own little way in my own little corner of the world I am working for peace. Beginning in my own heart. And then expanding outward.
Truly, another world is possible. Let us increasingly join together to make it so. My deep prayer is that humankind - Americans and all humans everywhere - will increasingly grow into remembrance of what we have forgotten. That we will stop the insanity that is sure to follow whenever we make someone - anyone - into an "Other" to objectify, demonize, destroy. War does not make peace. It simply doesn't. As Howard Zinn wisely states, war is terrorism.
May we awaken now and together open to the new stories that are awaiting for us to create, know, and live by. Stories in which we hold life in reverence. All life, not just those closest to us, or those who believe like us, or those who look like us. May we humans reach a tipping point where enough of us become "super", open to thinking outside the box, and do whatever it is that we each can do to make this world a place the children of today and those yet unborn on into the next seven generations will be grateful for.
There will be a day when we are held to account. Let's all take a stand for freedom, true freedom - the freedom to live in peace inwardly and outwardly. We can stop glorifying war. We can create new stories in which we teach our children compassion, kindness, caring, courage, and the interconnectedness that threads through us all. Can you imagine such a world? We can be that brave. We can be that change, the peace our world yearns for.
Peace & blessings to all ~ Molly
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