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Thursday, April 06, 2006
Deep Listening
A few nights ago, we went to a screening of Conviction, a documentary about the three Dominican nuns who were imprisoned for protesting at a missile silo here in Colorado. Conviction is a motivating documentary that really is fair and balanced. In it, we get to hear the perspectives of the nuns with their spiritual callings; Ted Haggart (see him in action), an evangelical in Colorado Springs, the prosecutors, and a woman whose job it is to maintain the status quo of the missile silo where the nuns did their action. I came out of the movie with a deep sense of the strength and inner commitment that moves through the lives of these powerful women.
The nuns were at the screening, and they mentioned the book Hell Healing and Resistance. It is a book of veteran's stories that shows the human cost of war. I have only begun to read it.
An excerpt from the foreword by Thich Nhat Hanh:
...we cannot divide reality into two camps - the violent and the non-violent - and stand in one camp while attacking the other. We cannot blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing violence in ourselves. It is not correct to believe that the world's situation is in the hands of the government and that, if the President would only have the correct policies, there would be peace. It is our daily lives that have the most to do with war.
If we look deeply in to the weapons of war, we will see our own minds, our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To do this, we must learn to listen in a way that helps us to understand the suffering of others, to see the real losses, the real casualties of war. Just by listening deeply, we can already alleviate a great deal of pain. This is the beginning of healing.
The nuns were at the screening, and they mentioned the book Hell Healing and Resistance. It is a book of veteran's stories that shows the human cost of war. I have only begun to read it.
An excerpt from the foreword by Thich Nhat Hanh:
...we cannot divide reality into two camps - the violent and the non-violent - and stand in one camp while attacking the other. We cannot blame and condemn those we feel are responsible for wars and social injustice, without recognizing violence in ourselves. It is not correct to believe that the world's situation is in the hands of the government and that, if the President would only have the correct policies, there would be peace. It is our daily lives that have the most to do with war.
If we look deeply in to the weapons of war, we will see our own minds, our own prejudices, fears, and ignorance. To work for peace is to uproot war from ourselves and from the hearts of men and women. To do this, we must learn to listen in a way that helps us to understand the suffering of others, to see the real losses, the real casualties of war. Just by listening deeply, we can already alleviate a great deal of pain. This is the beginning of healing.
posted by Carol at 12:26 PM
2 Comments:
That is a beautiful excerpt.
Isn't it?
Unfortunately, as I go in to the book and read the veteran's accounts of their experiences, the beauty is harder to find. I knew war is bad, but I didn't know... sigh...
Thich Nhat Hanh, even tho he as witnessed the atrocities of war, has found an inner peace that raises us above the inhumanity of our species.
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