off-shore Cambria, CA
It was buried in an Associated Press report from Colleville-Sur-Mer, France, an account of several dozen veterans in their 90's observing D-Day. About 4 paragraphs down it jumped off the page, one of those universal truths we recognize with a flash.
The speaker is a 98 year old Penobscot Native American from Indian Island Maine who was participating in a sage-burning ceremony near the beach. Charles Shay was a 19 year old US Army Medic at Omaha Beach.
"In 1944 I landed on these beaches and we thought we'd bring peace to the world. But it's not possible."
It is not possible! Peace?
Sage burning is a native ritual of cleansing and release and on this day in honor of fallen comrades.
"I have never forgotten them and know their spirits are here."
The AP reports "He said he is especially sad to see war in Europe again.
'Ukraine is sad. I feel sorry for the people there and I don't know why this war had to come, but I think human beings like to, I think they like to fight, I don't know...'"
98, a survivor of an historically bloody invasion tending to the fallen as a healer, a spiritual man who has seen the ways of the world for almost a century, and he cannot understand human beings.
It is no wonder then that I cannot.
Peace, the diadem of human faith, the elusive goal of religions and diplomacy, the thing that humankind values above all, even trying to find it in places, things, and states of mind. Peace, a state of no conflict, of no hostility, of no more war. It is not possible.
Not possible. You can't get peace out violence.
Quickly I attempted to deconstruct the truth that Charles Shay spoke 78 years after he was part of massive effort to "bring peace." My mind ran to my father and his generation who fought in that war, to "win the peace." And then to my friends who "did their patriotic duty" in Viet Nam and then to all of the other conflicts, all over the globe. Why is it that we ask so much for a peace that is impossible.
It was ever such.
The only good thing to be said of a war is when it ends. Though, does it ever? It only changes shape and decades. Peace, an idealistic aspiration is shredded by a read of history.
We stumble through life grazing for something that will resonate deeply as significant, a clarifying knowledge, an insight. We search, even as we're never sure what it is we're after. Until it smacks us.
Peace is impossible, because?
As Mr. Shay said, "human beings like to, I think they like to fight."
Despite the wisdom of this special man, and even in these later years of my life, I'm not giving up on peace, either as a diplomatic and geo political quest, and certainly not as a spiritual reality.
As a global status it may not be possible, no indeed, but the absence of trying for it is even more disturbing.
Some humans choose to live in peace, engaging our better likes.
Lana creates beauty. Here is evidence, a corner of our deck, benefiting from her affirmation of life by means of a green thumb.
Even through the millennia of human history, from clubs and stones to assault weapons, killer drones and nuclear missiles, the force of life resurrects itself, nature shows us the path. For as long as we have told our histories particular humans have lifted our vision to what can be. Like Mr. Shay humans have knelt over the injured and dying and have comforted parents, friends and the grieving. Humans have told us there is a better way. It need not be our destiny "... to like to fight. I think it is that which enables our survival.
Peace.
See you down the trail.
