"...a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise." – Psalm 51:17
Honest labor makes the world go around, both the outer world of human activity and the inner world of spiritual growth. It's all the better when the work coincides with vocation or a sense of calling, a fulfillment of one's destiny in life. What's "better" about the convergence of work and calling is the coherence it brings to one's life and the sense that one is living purposefully and in alignment with God's will, the universe, karma or however one conceives reality.
One senses, at this precise moment, that down in Crawford, Texas, Cindy Sheehan has both a job and a calling. Her job is hard: waiting in the relentless West Texas sun for George W. Bush to step out from his ranch house and talk to her about why her son Casey died in a senseless war in Iraq.
But, Cindy Sheehan can handle the job because her vocation, unlike the president's foreign policy, is rock solid on the side of the universe: to end an unjust and tragically misguided war. As a woman and mother, she has experienced the evil of Mr. Bush's Iraq misadventure. One dares to shoot for such lofty goals as confronting a president and ending a war only when the depths of one's heart are in alignment with the heart of God.This, of course, is the problem for George W. Bush: his heart is wrong, not merely his policy. Any change in the present circumstance will come, not primarily by a mere policy reversal but through a conversion of this man's soul to cast off the evil of a pre-meditated war based on false premises and pursued for shadowy purposes. Until Mr. Bush's heart is changed regarding these matters, the soul of this country is hostage to a deeply immoral and arrogant foreign policy.The broken heart of a mother senses this, and it has called her to a job that, for the moment, is giving some of us hope of life beyond this nightmare of a war. A wounded mother with a calling–that's a recipe for changing the world. Mr. Bush better look out [and his unwillingness to meet with Cindy Sheehan suggests he is]. This is a deep moment, a knee-buckling moment. If he's not careful, he might find that her heart is calling to his heart–and his job, as a result, will have just gotten harder.But that harder job–acknowledging his colossal mistake and ending U.S. involvement in this war–would gain him a vocation far more significant than just his day job as president. For starters, he'd get back his heart and begin the healing of our nation's soul.
7 comments:
A mother's "broken heart" leads to her rock-solid alignment with the "side of the universe" (whatever that means) and gives her the courage to confront a president on behalf of the right? Maybe. Or maybe Cindy Sheehan is simply revealing her (understandably) broken heart over a lost son--but doing it beneath a banner that makes her action appear larger than personal. I don't think we can say from a distance.
Mr. Swecker seems to be convinced he can know another's heart--and that the sufficient criterion for his knowing is whether that other person's views accord with his own. He pronounces President Bush's heart "wrong" and in need of change, even though on July 16 [in "The Ties that Grind"] he lamented the same sorts of charges when they were leveled at him. He wrote: "I've never gotten comfortable with personal attacks and challenges to my basic decency." Is it not a challenge to the president's basic decency when one labels his heart "and not just his policy" wrong, his purposes evil, and his soul in need of conversion? Or is Mr. Swecker merely uncomfortable with attacks on his own, but not on others', basic decency?
How easily policy disagreements turn into ad hominem attacks--and how quickly Mr. Swecker's feigned distress over what someone writes to him is forgotten in what he writes about someone else! Does this reveal Mr. Swecker's heart? Maybe. Or maybe it simply reveals unfettered emotion and the sin that bids to entangle us all. I don't think we can know from a distance.
But we should know that the death of a son isn't by itself evidence for the wrongness of a policy--much less of the heart of those who make, support, or implement the policy. Deaths occur in the pursuit both of good and of evil. Only sophistry pretends otherwise.
Mr. Swecker should know something else: words can be like violence. Verbal attacks undermine credibility and invite counterattacks. To put it in more down-home language, a fella' shouldn't pretend to protest what he practices--or expect to be respectfully heard if all he can muster is emotional reactions and character assassination. People with any larger sense of purpose will simply stop listening.
I think Gene raises a legitimate question: Am I practicing the very thing I protest when I state point-blank that there's something wrong with Mr. Bush's heart and that he needs a conversion on the issue of Iraq? Am I, in other words, engaging in the same kind of ad hominem that I lamented in a previous entry when others attacked me?
With all due respect to Gene's perception to the contrary, I don't believe so. The critical difference, revealed by the last sentence in the entry Gene criticizes is my explicit desire for healing of both Mr. Bush and the nation; the objective in the end is not, like ad hominem, to attack or tear down but to hope that all of us, including Mr. Bush, can somehow "get it right."
The preaching of the Gospel is predicated in part on the reality of this very assumption: that hearts can be wrong and require healing, and that we have at least crude indications of a heart's moral condition by observable behavior. Is it risky to make these moral judgments? Of course it is; Gene himself has made such judgments by implying that I'm little more than a hypocrite or, at best, ignorant of my own motivations (by "feigning" distress, for example). Further, he suggests that I'm a character "assassin" because I say harsh things about the most powerful person on Earth. O, Ad Hominem, thy name is myriad! But, do I really believe Gene's intent was to tear me down with words? No, I don't–I believe he's a decent person who simply has political disagreements with my point of view.
All that said, however, I contend that there is something wrong with the moral bearings of one who can lead us into a war under false pretenses as Mr. Bush has. If it is of any help to Gene, I confess that there is something "wrong" in every heart, including my own and, we can be sure, Cindy Sheehan's.
We're not arguing here for moral purity, though. But there are moral turning points in history occasioned by the broken hearts of people wronged–Rosa Parks comes to mind. We could be witnessing such a moment in time, and that's all this particular blog hoped to convey. If it went awry, such are the risks of saying anything at all in writing, as I'm sure Gene well knows.
funny how supportive this lady was when she met Bush LAST YEAR.
Mr. Swecker, you do yourself no credit by associating with this anti-semitic, hate-spewing moonbat.
One can make a case that the war was a bad idea and that we should disengage. But you should watch the company that you keep.
Oh -- something's wrong with your permalinks. They're not connecting properly. Try to pull one up and you'll see what I mean.
I've seen lots of hate statements toward Cindy Sheehan, but John's is a new low: an "anti-semitic moonbat." John certainly distinguishes himself by this comment! I feel a little bit grimy just adding this response to his.
John certainly distinguishes himself by this comment!
Thank you! I always like to achieve great things!
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