"I want to ask everyone, where do you think you as a 'community' desire
your own fruitful flowerings to eternally lay? "
-- June 2000 LO24778
June 27th. Notes for an LO contribution withheld... until today
Dear Learners,
Last night I watched film footage of fundamentalist Taliban militiamen in
Afghanistan parade a young woman around a UN funded and local government
built open air football stadium, the stadium was provided for the
community so that they may enjoy 'recreation' in an otherwise devastated
land, devastated both spiritually and physically by wars of cruel Russian
oppression.
After they 'paraded' her around the filled stadium in the back of an open
American pick-up the young woman was forced to kneel down on the 'penalty
spot' and then facing the 'goal posts' and eternity from which 'crossbar'
other random men are hanged, perhaps like this young woman for reading the
wrong book...but, right now, this young woman knelt down with courage and
without struggle and up strutted the rifleman (executioner) from behind
and placed a ballistic projectile into her head ...and one saw the bullet
pounding into the dust of this new 'killing field' and then, only then,
did the young girl go like an exploded red carnation to join the bullet
grounded, though she now truly the more truly grounded.
And at once lifted to paradise.
And I am recompassioned tenfold, a hundredfold, and ten hundred folded,
impassioned and at once impaled upon a useless world and left to wonder
when she really died. Before the bullet, and the trigger... what pulled
the trigger...where was the trigger pulled, in the finger or the head or
the heart...what does 'systems theory' tell us about that, and will
'systems theory' stop the bullet? You cannot see the bullet. The bullet
travels faster than the eye can see. From the arms dealer onward, like so
many shares on the stock exchange.
This 'eye' sees the bullet travel hither and yon, before it travels to the
'bolt' and sealed by the catch, the carnation explosion happened somewhere
else. Somewhere else.
Perhaps Socrates saw something like this as he searched out the
double-barrelled meaning of a 'white spirit', and what 'spirit' pulls
these triggers? Can we just keep working with ligaments? The man
interviewed about this terrible vision was the Afghan Secretary of State
for Culture and Recreation. He sat in his chair, and was very comfortable
with HIS world and the woman interviewing him in his comfort asked him
from the safe distance of ten feet and a western passport, " You were
given this field to play soccer in, and you make a sport out of executing
people, why?" His reply was, "The west ought to learn that if they are to
offer criticism ten times then one time they ought to offer praise." (This
is a 'numbers' man) - and a pragmatist too, " So, we are very poor people
and if you do not enjoy, as we do, these public killings then pay for us
to build enclosed execution chambers where we can hide it from you, then
we will play football on the open fields you paid for us to build."
So, now as then I watch as women learn and teach the children the liberal
arts of reading and writing in secrecy, behind walls and apply make up
behind veils...and so the resistance goes on as I type out these very
words...
resistentialism.
Another woman, with no name, known to me. Now known to you. Let's name
her. Courage and freedom. Maybe At knows a name via etymology that
encompasses both courage and freedom and I will paint a picture for her,
this girl, an Afghan veiled girl, killed for reading a book .
A message from history addressed to every terrorist in the world and for
symmetry's sake every democrat in the same and only world who thinks he
alone has God on his side.
" On my arrival in the United States the religious aspect of the country
was the first things that struck my attention: and the longer I stayed
there the more I perceived a great political consequence resulting from
this new state of things... As long as religion is sustained by those
feelings, propensities, and passions, which are found to occur under the
same periods of all history, it may defy the efforts of time; or at least
it can be destroyed only by another religion. But when religion clings to
the interests of the world, it becomes almost as fragile a thing as the
powers on earth. It is the only one of them, all which can hope for
eternity; but if it be connected with their ephemeral power, it shares
their fortunes and may fall with those transient passions which alone
supported them."
Alexis de Tocqueville
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS HOLY WAR.
"Love is such a power that it maketh all things to be shared." The Cloud
of Unknowing
I want to ask everyone again, where do you think you as a 'community'
desire your own fruitful flowerings to eternally lay? September 2001
Love,
Andrew Campbell
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