Every
morning I have a routine. I get my coffee, get on my computer, and I check
Facebook. The first thing I do is glance at a little sidebar on the right that
tells me which of my “friends” are on line, and which ones were recently, by
minutes and hours. The first name I am looking for is Josiah Markiewicz. That’s
Private First Class Josiah Markiewicz to you. To me, he’s Si…my son. He’s somewhere in Afghanistan, and pictures like
these are pictures that will give a mothers heart a new meaning to the word
anxiety.
A fortunate thing I have today, that my mother and grandmothers didn’t
have when my dad was in Korea, is the internet. It’s sporadic and delayed, but
it’s there, and if he’s been on, I know he’s okay. Sometimes we message – but
he can only say so much. Today, the message was, “Hey Mom, still alive”.
I hope you
are getting a picture here…an emotion…a feeling. I hope you feel me here in the
most literal sense. That feeling you are hopefully having is your HUMANNESS. It
is the highest order of our lives. It is the very essence of US…what we find
when we peel away layers and layers of labels. When we peel off our social and
financial statuses, our careers, our educations and the letters that accompany
them; when we lay aside our political biases, our neighborhood location, and
our prejudices; when we step away, however briefly, from our religious beliefs,
spiritual practices, cultural norms and nationalistic pride…at the end of the
day, and in the face of having your children in harm’s way…WE ARE ALL HUMAN.
And in the
purity of your humanity, you stand naked. Nothing to hide behind. Here is both
our vulnerability and our strength. Vulnerable, because you are open to the
pain of living and loving. This is life, and people get hurt, sick and die, and
we, at this level feel it. Oh, we try like hell to avoid it, drown it, drug it,
deny it, delay it…but that just hurts worse. Yet this is our strength. A gift
denied other life forms on the planet. They know not compassion as we do. It is
the link that connects us all. It’s the spirit that created our innate desire
to connect, and manifested clearly in the invention of the airplane, the car,
the telephone, the radio, the television and the internet. And this is the
level I wish to connect with you on today.
We have a
situation here on the planet, and at the level of humanity, we need to ask
ourselves some questions. Specific to this writing, but applicable to any similar
situation, I am referring to Syria.
Briefly, it’s
September 9, 2013. Syria has been having a civil war for quite a while. One
party has used chemical weapons, resulting in loss of human life. For reasons
we need to determine amongst ourselves, the United States of America has stated
that it needs to “send a message” to whomever has done this with a “limited
strike” involving our military, because it is our “obligation” to do so.
Questions to
ask in the context of this information:
1. How do we determine WHO the good guys
and the bad guys are in a CIVIL war? Each party has a point of reference that
makes sense to them within their culture…which is important to understand is
quite different than ours here, and few of us honestly understand.
2. WHY do we have to determine this? Why
is this our business?
3. What is the difference between an
acceptable weapon and an unacceptable one? More importantly, what is the
purpose of a weapon?
4. What “message” are we sending?
5. What is a “strike”?
6. What is the outcome we are hoping
for?
Bear in mind,
now, we are talking about this in the raw. No argument can be made which
includes a label, such as political orientation, national security, or even
political agenda. These have no bearing in the minds and hearts of a person who
is in their humanness. When you are holding the form of a dying loved one, or
watching them struggle in pain, struggling to breathe, fighting to hold on to
life, there are no good guys or bad guys. There is only the Love of this One.
In fact, to
hear someone blathering on about political motives, punitive military practices
and an obligation to hurt more people is the height of insult to your grieving ears.
And the very person talking would be silenced to his own rhetoric should the
dying person be someone he loves deeply. Suddenly, nothing would matter to them
either, but the Love of the One.
This is
where we are all the same, and every person who has suffered their humanity at
the hand of violence. Regardless of our geographical location, culture, nation,
religion, or title.
At a human
level, we don’t do this to each other. Just because you slap on a moral,
religious or political motive, a country border or a culture does not and never
will make it right in the human being.
We are all
connected in this way. Every woman holding a dying child is me. We feel the
same. Every man burying his wife or son is YOU burying your wife or son. Every
human being knows innately, at the core of his soul, that hurting and killing
each other is not the way it’s supposed to be, or the way it could have been.
If you can
see ANY validation for the use of military weapons here, please…ask yourself
what label has required you to dismiss your humanity in order to validate it.
Is it because you are American? Or Syrian? Is it because you are a republican
or a democrat? A rebel or a loyalist? And then ask yourself if this belief in
your label is really working for you as a human, and is it working for your
fellow humans as well? Can you stand in the mirror of the face of the grieving mother
and justify the death of her child with your label? Could anyone ever justify
the death of your child to you – to your face – with a label? Just because we deliver our
label-justification via the impersonal media and political rhetoric does not
make it acceptable. That is just one more attempt to usurp the humanity at the
core of the issue. 
While it
would be frighteningly easy to do, I am not going to even suggest a solution to
this. I am only going to encourage you to look within yourself, ignore your
labels, feel the feelings of your fellow human family members outside of THEIR
labels, and live your life according to what you find there.
