What a mix of hope and sadness in this month's issue. Probably some will feel that I've leaned a little too heavily to the violent side. But it seems that every issue of the newspaper (I avoid tv news) has another such rageful story.
I wrote the following in 1995. The ending remains the statement of my belief and my being.
OUTCRY they took us from the wild hills and made of us -- nothing but chattel our use to grind the grains to bear sons the mother was anathema when she crept back in, was slaughtered what were the fears of men? they loved power and corruption of the earth spirit became them an ancient age it was four thousand years ago what does it matter? it has mattered to every living soul that has been killed for religious purposes shall I count the ways? the death by stoning of Hebraic woman to free her of the crime of being woman the Holy Crusades to free Jerusalem from "the infidel" the Grand Inquisition to free the soul from the body damned the conquest of the New World to free native Americans, north and south, from the land they lived upon the Holocaust to free a country from its Jews and gypsies the "ethnic cleansings" in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sri Lanka, Cambodia, Tibet to free one kind of people from another countless people, countless ways in the name of god, in the name of allah, in the name of christ in the name of hated differences in the name of desired property I used to believe that people created a god to fill a need when disaster struck, it was "the will of god" when someone was worse off, "there but for the grace of god..." which implies that someone else has no grace and even more unspoken, deserves none the god that the intolerant religions of the world claim a god that damns the different and the poor can never be my god I have gone to where there is death but not butchery, where there is life in the souls of the winds the sentience of animals the spirits of trees and all green growing things the essence of earth's rocks and soil and the song of water, sun, moon, and stars where truth exists and not interpretation where in the honoring is the belief where love has indeed moved beyond words
Truly,
Cherie Staples
Editor