Juxtaposing Joy with Thoughts of War (*Warning*)

Bella detesta matribus
Wars, the horror of mothers 

Horace

There is no government so worthy

as your son who fishes with you

in silence beside the forest pool.

There is no national glory so comely

as your daughter whose hands have learned a music

and go their own way

on the keys.

There is no national glory so comely

as my daughter who dances and sings

and is the brightness of my house.

There is no government so worthy

as my son who laughs,

as he comes up the river path in the evening,

for joy.

-Wendell Berry

I took my son to the fall carnival in Anthem, Arizona, a magical event to celebrate the transition to cooler weather from the long and relentless desert heat. I let Josh and his friends run and play in the park as I sat under a tree reading a book about Freud and Jung. Children to my left were standing in line for hair-raising rides decorated with flashing lights and wild music. Masked children to my right were dancing to the Monster Mash as proud parents watched and grand parents gloated. Sticky-faced children ate their pink cotton candy and red-patent apples. It was a smorgasbord of panoramic festivities. Laughter filled the air and shadows leapt on concrete. Several fighter jets from a nearby military facility graced guests with a gratuitous fly-over.

"How bizarrely ironic," I thought to myself. Military jets flying above the heads of hundreds of people, families, here in Arizona. There was no fear, no terror, no bloodshed or bombs dropping from the sky. No. Not here. But in Iraq (or Afghanistan or any other country plagued by war), nearly 8000 miles away, there are no family festivals, no enchanting rides, and no tooting community park choo-choos with giggling children on board, led by a strange bearded Santa-type iconoclast.

My son approached me, drenched from water toy combat with other boys at the playground. And I realized that somewhere in Iraq an 11-year-old boy, just like my own, was also drenched. Drenched in his own blood. A wound that is not pretend, that will not heal, and that will cost his family the ultimate price. I looked around and really saw... our children were playing. Our children were eating. Our children were joyful, laughing, unscathed, and fully-limbed. Our children were privileged with abundance.

And as our children enjoyed their comfortably cool fall day, somewhere in Iraq children, countless numbers of them, were dying. Starvation. Bombs. Disease. Lack of clean drinking water or electricity. Scarcity. Luxuries of our lifestyle are the antithesis of the suffering, terror, and death in battle spaces of America's choosing such as Iraq, Somalia, and Afghanistan.

War is ugly. We know this. But how many are willing to truly contemplate the cost? Truly? Wendell Berry, in The Failure of War asks:

"How many deaths of other people's children by bombing or starvation are we willing to accept in order that we may be free, affluent, and (supposedly) at peace? To that question, I answer pretty quickly: none. And I know that I am not the only one who would give that answer: please, no children. Don't kill any children for my benefit."

"We seek to preserve peace by fighting a war, or to advance freedom by subsidizing dictatorships, or to 'win the hearts and minds of people' by poisoning their crops and burning their villages, confining them to concentration camps; we seek to uphold the 'truth' of our cause with lies, or to answer conscientious dissent with threats and slurs and intimidations."

Berry goes on to answer his own question: Is there any reason for which he could surrender his own child's life to war. "No," is his clear response.

I cannot imagine a more necessary time in history for a radical change. It begs the question in my own heart: Is the life of an Iraqi child any less worthy than the life of my own?

I must also answer a resounding no.

And I packed for home, placed Sigmund and Carl in my bag, and walked to the car, past children doing the Monster Mash, juxtaposing joy with thoughts of war.