in their place
Originating thirteen years ago this month, this week, on October 10, 2010 as I was diagnosed by cardiologists and heard their prognosis "would die on the operating table" and "two to five months" to live, what developed into +Time started as my decision to observe myself and journal my adventure through the experience of dying.
To have one's self as one's object of observation seems to be uniquely human, and I was now in the place where I'd been with any number of beloved parishioners over the years, so I'd decided to journal it, actually "to enjoy it" rather than despairing of what I could not change.
Discharged from hospital with my cardiologist's advice to nevertheless seek a cardiology institute that would take me anyway and give me a chance, and with unusually close colleagues in the Holy Nativity School Foundation gathering round to pressure me and make it possible in every way, here I am thirteen years on. In Time, they told me to knock it off, that they had "been thanked enough," but I am still and always thankful, grateful: you gave me life!
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This day continues to have significance. Five years ago this morning I opened my laptop to check on what we expected to be either a category 2 hurricane or to have downgraded to a tropical storm before coming ashore - - had overnight become Category 5 Hurricane Michael that would rage ashore and devastate beloved community. That morning, we were with daughter Malinda at hospital in Pensacola, where she underwent a third brain surgery and suffered a stroke that, together with hurricane devastation, permanently changed her life and ours.
On the Panama City scene, there are still blue roofs here and there, and, seriously endangering homes, there are many tall dead trees that should be cut down. Some property owners don't seem to realize the deadly threat, the high risk. It won't require another hurricane - - in Time, one of our frequent severe thunderstorms will begin toppling trees to crush homes. And, IDK, what if your home insurance company sees what risk you are tolerating and subjecting them to?
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So, this month, week, and day has heavy memories, personal, family, community.
An ongoing war in Europe.
And now again, a Hamas-Israel War, with unspeakable atrocities and threats in which rules of war, and morality, and ordinary human decency are not factors, only hatred and cruelty. National policy on one side is to keep Palestinians in their place. National policy on the other side is to "kill Jews," as many as possible. There is history, and there is guilt, and there is innocence.
One thing that confounds me, though it should not with what I understand about the tension, is why one side would plan and initiate an absolutely unwinnable war in which they will be crushed. What can they possibly gain? Martyrdom. Not everything is rational: never underestimate the empowerment and determination that vehement hatred brings into a Cause.
Never dismiss hatred that is demonstrably based in history.
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Many things about my life I've related here over the past thirteen years. One is the "field trip" that we KA pledges at Florida were sent out on one weekend the spring semester of 1954. Gathering on a Saturday morning and separated into groups of three pledges, each group was handed a slip of paper with their assignment. Ours: hitchhike to Sarasota and return by Sunday evening with a pound of pachyderm excretion.
We didn't return with the desired product, but we did manage to hitchhike down and back. While walking and thumbing and riding, the three of us got to know each other in quite intimate discussions and even arguments.
This is the main thing that I brought back from that adventure, and that has stayed with me lifelong. The realization that we are different to the core; in this case, that what I knew as right and wrong was "a hundred eighty out" from theirs, the other two boys - - all three of us were eighteen years old - - knew as right and wrong. There was talk about desegregation of the South, schools would admit Blacks, our own University of Florida would no longer be all White. I asked one of the other boys how he felt about it. He said that he didn't mind Blacks (he used the N-word), "as long as they stay in their place." I said, "They don't have 'a place'." He retorted angrily, "there's no use in discussing this further, because you and I will never agree."
It was a moment of various awakenings. One was to realize that I was probably in the wrong college fraternity, one that embraced Southern culture and the Confederacy. In fact, I was initiated in as a Brother, and participated through my sophomore year, but returning to campus for my junior year, I never went back. I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that, it's simply part of my history.
Another awakening was never in life to assume that another person has the same convictions, certainties, and world view that I do. Largely, I try to keep my mouth shut, because my part of creation is filled with strange people who have highly doubtful certainties, and I'd prefer to get along peaceably with them than be constantly at odds.
Why is all this stirring in my +Time thoughts this morning? Because a major facet of the Palestine-Israeli conflict is that the Palestinians won't "stay in their place" to which Israel and the White world have consigned and stomped them. With Hamas and others as igniters, it may yet burst into global conflagration: many are they whose hatred is so abiding that they fully mean to bring about that world war. It was the basis of our 9/11, and it's the basis of last weekend's surprise attack across the Gaza border into Israel, not an attack to win a war, but to kill as many Jews as possible.
News from that front is horrifying. The White Judeo-Christian worldview v. the Brown Islamic worldview. Why must we hate each other so? Why are we so certain?
T88&c