STEPPING OFF THE FIELD

My Enemy

The Sun settled slowly,

After a long and costly fight,

And I with the rest of the men who survived,

Pulled back and dug in for the night.

In front of us in an open field,

Lay those we could not save,

Their mangled bodies stiff and cold,

Their lives for freedom gave.

I sat alone on listening post,

But nothing could I see,

Yet across the field at another post,

I knew one sat like me.

I wondered if by chance he too,

Were trying not to cry,

Remembering all the friends he’d lost,

Asking why they had to die.

Suddenly my feelings changed,

No hatred could I find,

How strange that this my enemy,

Would have feeling just like mine.

I wanted then to meet him,

But would he understand,

If I stood in peace before him,

And offered him my hand?

With a rifle shot, the answer came,

And I knew it could not be,

For that young man across the field,

He was my enemy.

And so I put away my thoughts,

And forgot about my friend,

For I knew tomorrow we’d probably meet,

And for one it would be the end.

We did meet the following day and although I do not know if it was his… a hand grenade exploded just a few feet in front of me, sending shrapnel through the air, a piece of which shattered my glasses… causing me to loss vision in one eye. I wrote this poem a few months later, while recovering from those wounds at the Bethesda Naval Hospital in Maryland. It is not one of my better poems but it does express well what I was feeling at that time in my life. A lot has changed since then… and yet, only recently, have I realized the significance of what I wrote back in 1968.

It did not take me long back then, to go from pro-American to anti-establishment Hippie. I exchanged my gun for a Bible, went from Republican to Democrat, left the work force to become a volunteer, and realized that there were alternatives to being straight. I considered myself to be a much better person… more loving, more open, and much more intelligent than any pro-American, straight, gun carrying, workaholic, Republican, and up until recently, delighted in defending my position with anyone who dared challenge me.  

Perhaps I have just grown tired of the challenges… or maybe it is, that in my old age, I have finally come to the Understanding, that to become friends with your enemies, you must to be willing to step away from the playing fields and not take sides with those who choose to continue playing the games.

A CLOSET WITH STIFFLY-HINGED DOORS

Three days ago I was asked a straight question which required a direct answer. Usually these are the questions I enjoy answering as it takes little effort. Straight question = straight answer. But this is the one question I always dread being asked as it is the one question that has the potential for real physical danger. No, it is not “are you gay?” On today’s social acceptance scale, this would be the easiest to answer. That weather-beaten closet has well-oiled hinges and an easily turned key.

It starts with “Do you believe in …” and here the problem initiates. You see, I don’t believe in anything. The word “believe” means “accept as true; take to be true” and I accept not, neither do I take to be true anything. It’s a cop-out—a failure to face some problem squarely. It means to give up the need to search for answers, to find out for yourself. It means the truth, if there is such a thing, will always remain out of reach or belong to someone else with a more dominant personality.

“Do you believe in God?” asked the delightful staunch Kashmiri Muslim over a cup of chai. I am in a country that has, at last thumb-suck count, over 33 million gods and growing, in a community that is staunchly Tibetan Buddhist—the Dalai Lama being the official leader here—surrounded by all sorts of other faith systems including Sikh, Jew, Islam, Jain, Christian and whatever else requires the kneeling, bowing down to, praying, muttering, wailing, beating drums, gnashing of teeth, burning candles, incense, offerings or some ritual to worship or show reverence to some or other unknown and unseen “higher presence” (including ancestors) in expectancy of intervention, or near or distant future reward or punishment.

“No” invited a look of blankness and a launch into all the teachings of Mohammed. Now just because I don’t believe in something doesn’t mean I don’t know about it. Raised in a strictly Christian family—both my parents, both sets of grandparents, my in-laws and their respective entourages are all practising Christians and most of them in the ministry—I had no option as a child but to unwillingly follow suit. I won competitions for reciting the most verses in the Bible, I sang at church gatherings, I did all the stuff required to maintain a semblance of familial and community harmony, but it stuck in my craw. “Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so…” I struggled to say “Jesus” and I would mumble the word.As for the Bible ... written by whom and when?

I have read and looked into many religions, read the Koran in translation, attempted the Bhagavad Gita, dabbled here, read there, studied and pondered. I need to do this to understand others, what makes them tick. And none of them makes any sense. Sure, they are lovely and not so lovely bedtime stories, but then so are those written by Hans Christian Andersen or the brothers Grimm, which are just as believable or “true”.

So I posed the same question I asked my parents as young child: “what if this is all there is? What if, when we die, we turn to dust, it’s over, it’s done, what then? Does it matter? Shouldn’t we simply be living morally and doing good deeds because that’s the way we should be living? Why do we stand and clap our hands, or bow and fall on our faces to something we don’t know, in the hope of one day going to some mythical Heaven or Nirvana, in fear of going to some Hell?”

“But people don’t work that way” is the scariest response I have been given, and true for almost 98% of the world’s population. “People” it would appear, in order to make sense of their daily trials and tribulations, of debilitating diseases, of sudden deaths in flaming car accidents or plane crashes, of birth defects, of acts of cruelty, of sudden natural disasters (a.k.a. Acts of God in insurance policies, thus eliminating the need for pay-outs), require a higher being to be blamed or acceded to, or used as a crutch or an excuse. “God’s will be done. I am waiting for God.”

On a trip to New Zealand a few years ago, I was telling a dear lady about the orphanage in Cambodia I had started and she asked, “Which church do you belong to?” I responded “none”. “Then why do you do it?” In horror I looked at her and responded, “Because it needs to be done. Isn’t that why we should be doing things?”

I feel sick to my stomach when someone tells me “God is good” or that “dear Jesus takes such good care of me” or “we were waiting for a sign.” “God sent you,” I was told in Kenya where I closed down the orphanage exploiting children that “God” sent me to run. Wonder what they think now? To wait for some sign or some guru to give a blessing for an action that should be taken, is beyond the pale. No wonder the world is in the state it is.

Is there anything I do believe? No, there are things I know and things I don’t know and if they are important enough to me, I will make the effort to find out.

I know tomorrow the sun will rise in the east and set in the west, maybe not for me, but it will for someone and for this planet. It’s a law of nature. As long as this earth keeps turning on its axis and orbiting its sun in this galaxy, this is what is going to happen regardless of whether it is inhabited or not. I know that there is goodness in every human being—I may have to dig horrendously deep sometimes to find it, but it’s there, and if it’s worth the effort, I will keep digging. If not, I walk away.

I live in a state of joy, gratitude and thanks. Not to some ethereal omniscient carrot-and-stick presence … to life itself. For my intellect and physical attributes I am grateful that my parents were not first cousins. For my health, said same parents and a strong constitution acquired from a childhood of non-namby-pambying. For my comparative youthfulness, again my genealogy—thanks, mom. For my constant thirst for knowledge, again, my parents who urged us to find out, to learn, to question…a bit of a dichotomy this on the religion front.

And I have no fear of dying. None whatsoever. I don’t want to get hurt, or become ill as that means pain and recovery and could take a long time at great expense. But I don’t have a death-wish either. I enjoy living and I walk without fear. I like what I do and how I move. I live to live, to do the best I can with what I have been given. To alleviate suffering where I find it, to give a smile, a hug of encouragement, a meal, a shoulder to cry on, to walk on this planet as gently as possible and take in all the wonders with the eyes and mental faculties I was gene'd with. The only meaning to life, is what I give it and should meaning ever leave, the only one to blame or wail to, or look to for reawakening is me. I do not congregate, or bow, or worship, or pray, or light candles unless there is a power failure or I burn aromatic oils for the sheer pleasure of the scent.

I am, and one day I will am not. It’s a fact. It’s the way it is. And I delight in being.

THE PLAYWRIGHT

It is not so much that I mind what people want to believe in, but when they do not want to discuss why they believe what they do, it sometimes is a bit frustrating. I remember a time, a few years back, just after being asked to resign my position by the Director of Mission to Unreached Peoples. I had crossed a line that put me on the outside of the perimeters of their Statement of Faith and, as I had promised him when he hired me, I handed him my resignation because I had, once again, become a pain in the butt to some of the other more qualified missionaries on the field. The following day he wanted to visit my project at Wat Opot to check on another member of the MUPS team, and so I invited him to come out with me on the bus.

We didn’t talk much on the two hour ride out in the backseat of the bus… not that I didn’t want to, but because whenever I would ask him a specific question about what he believed in, his answer was always, “I don’t know, I guess I never really thought about it.”  That seemed strange to me at the time, but I finally stopped asking questions and ended our relationship in silence.

Perhaps however, he was not lying after all… for I have known others, since that time, who have said they are believers… but when asked to explain why, they don’t have a clue as to how to answer. When pressed, they finally admit that they believe what they believe because they heard it from someone they trusted, but had never really thought about it on their own. Imagine that… living your whole life on the words of someone else without asking yourself if there is any validity to what you are being told.

There are many points in all religions that don’t make a whole lot of sense to me but one in particular has bothered me for a long-long time and, in fact, I was kicked out of Mr. Timer’s Sunday school class nearly 55 years ago for asking, “How could God know all things before they happen?”

For that to be true, God would have had to write the screenplay of Life in advance and then create a cast of bit actors (that would be you and me) to play the different roles. We are not told anything about the plot or the ending of the play, only given our daily script to act out… and for the play to be successful, none of us can ad-lib our parts, because that just might ruin the ending. Does that sound realistic to anyone? Are we all just bit actors in God’s play and when our part is not needed anymore, we just fade away (go to Heaven) like actors on General Hospital did?

Of course, given the state of our World today, it would be nice to believe that God did write the script and has prepared a happy ending for it… like maybe a Rapture of all the good guys followed by a Grand Finale, with heavily armed Angels rounding up all the bad guys and throwing them into a Lake of Fire. Great idea for a Mel Gibson movie… and in the end, while the Titles are scrolling across the screen, the audience of Heavenly Host and raptured bit actors would be shown giving a standing ovation to God, the Playwright and Creator of the entire cast and setting…   of course, if God didn't write the script and we are not just bit actors in his play, but real live people ad-libing day to day on this planet Earth… who but ourselves could we hold responsible for the condition of our Life and of our World?