EASTER APPROACHES--LETS'S GO NO DEEPER INTO WAR'S TOMB

NORAD command bunker in Colorado

NORAD blast doors

 

 Below -- photos reportedly from security storage bunker in Kansas

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                                        

Easter 2002 -- From an earlier unpublished writing --

          We’ve allowed the election of a government of grey flanneled suit troglodytes, a shadow government under Virginia mountains. Whether above or below ground, they give us the constant high sign of red light / green light homeland security, and a wink to corporate colleagues as they invest our dollars in the business of hi-tech war.  Oil weaponeers.  Ever think how much fuel is consumed in a war where the average flight to Afghan target by each high altitude bombers is 1000 miles, every bomber equivalent to a giant bundle of SUV’s?  And President George Bush Jr. has called this war on terrorism a war of “infinite duration.”  {As quoted in a Times Herald TV section article, 3-8-02, on Ted Koppel defending his news program’s debates on national war policy.}

From a NYT article -- laser guided missiles from 5 miles up have been our Afghanistan war standard.

 

          Our military industrial complex is the modern world’s version of the golden calf.  It now demands perpetual adoration by all politicians and taxpayers.  Weapons, oil, drugs and their laundered or respectable money are the coins of the global realm, and are constantly paid in tribute to the highest bidders worldwide as long as some slight allegiance is made to the powers that be—not democracy.  Witness the ongoing situations in Columbia, Chiapas, Central America, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq and the Middle East. It doesn’t matter which side we’re on as long as money wins.

           President Bush’s "axis of evil" points straight back to a heart of darkness and stone here in the high places of the USA. A heart bristling with weapons unable to disarm, unable to offer true charity, justice and mercy.  A heart of nuclear war centurions that mocks a King who refuses to call down destruction on thousands or millions of subject souls, who refuses to come down from His cross claiming the worldly crown of firepower—as they have done and continue to do.                                                                                                                                 

White Cricifixion -- by Chagall

 

           If we believe the Son of God called Lazarus from the tomb, rose from the dead, and promised we will also, then we can cease offering up our copious first fruits to the gods of war, the weapons-of-mass-destruction-and-death military machine.  April 15^th—False god tribute day—soon follows Easter.  The challenge of faith is to find a way to choose life instead.  This Easter Sunday let us pray for the inspiration to so change our lives and hearts, truly respect life, and renew the face of the earth.  Let’s live on the planet with all our brothers and sisters, not under its surface in hardened command centers hoarding our goods and stifling our blessings.

 A few of the 750,000 Communist era bunkers [1 for every 4 people] in Albania -- engineered by former dictator,

 Enver Hoxha -- photo by David Galjaard

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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More than a decade of war has passed and persists, since Easter 2003. What has really changed?  Syria is now the main theater of war.  The death dealing show must go on.  The Department of Homeland Security increases control of our lives, borders, and travel. We must give the Just War Theory a thorough Christian burial, if we want to fully welcome the Resurection—new life.

  

For inspiration on ways to resist and redirect war taxes --  http://www.nwtrcc.org/#

      

LORD, HASTEN TO BRING YOUR EASTER LIGHT TO OUR WAR-TORN WORLD

There is promise of another way of life, from daily scripture of two Monday's ago---

          Reading 1 Isaiah 65:17-21

Thus says the LORD:
Lo, I am about to create new heavens
and a new earth;
The things of the past shall not be remembered
or come to mind.
Instead, there shall always be rejoicing and happiness
in what I create;
For I create Jerusalem to be a joy
and its people to be a delight;
I will rejoice in Jerusalem
and exult in my people.
No longer shall the sound of weeping be heard there,
or the sound of crying;
No longer shall there be in it
an infant who lives but a few days,
or an old man who does not round out his full lifetime;
He dies a mere youth who reaches but a hundred years,
and he who fails of a hundred shall be thought accursed.
They shall live in the houses they build,
and eat the fruit of the vineyards they plant.

 

 

 

NOTES ON UNJUST WAR REMEMBRANCE DAY – MARCH 19

 

No more BP Exxon war extortion.

No more the abortion of war.

Not for oil or foreign soil.

War = abortion = genocide.

Genocide – fast with a nuclear weapon –

slow with bayonet & bullets

and vacuum extractor.

A genocide of the soul

starts generations

before the last body’s

been extinguished.

Starts with the first innocent life sacrificed.

 

ON THE FIFTH ANNIVERSARY OF THE CALL TO MAKE MARCH 19

UNJUST WAR REMEMBRANCE DAY

THE DAY WE INVADED IRAQ IN 2003

IN SEARCH OF THEIR WMD = OIL

 

 

AND INSTEAD OF DEEP HORIZON OIL DISASTER GREEDINESS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WE OFFER THIS CELTIC PRAYER

 

Deep Peace – of the running wave to you.

Deep Peace – of the flowing air to you.

Deep Peace -- of the quiet earth to you.

Deep Peace – of the Son of Peace to you.

                    From  Chrstopher News Notes

 

– MAY PATRICK OF IRELAND BE WITH US –

 

 

 

St. Joseph, who’s feastday is March 19, help us dedicate to creative work—and repent of war’s exploitation.

PREFERENTIAL OPTION FOR THE RICH---PROTECTED BY JUSTIFIED VIOLENCE?

Robbing Peter to pay Paul, for pre-emptive wars of destruction and debt.

See full article [Citizens for Tax Justice]

 

 

full article [Citizens for Tax Justice]

pend greater than one half of our federal budget on war, borrow from Social Security for war, still rack up debt from unfunded war, create a new Department of Homeland Security as further backup for war.  Then bemoan the situation and demand gross cuts to social security, education, environment, infrastructure—anything that does not serve the interest of the war and security industries.  And this in the country that spends as much on these industries as do all the rest of the countries of the world combined.  This in the country in which its wealthiest 1% has become the class that controls more wealth than 40% of all the rest of its own people.  While the 80% of us on the lower and middle class ends, have only 7% of our country’s wealth [video - graphic representation].  A Wall Street Journal column contends the disparity is greater.  Yes there is class warfare. 

 

More important, this situation of the rich and powerful, detached from the needs of common people and the poor, here and worldwide, is deep social sin.  Jesus cries out loudly against this injustice.  “Woe to you who are rich” and He tells the devastating story of the rich man and Lazarus ultimately separated by the chasm between heaven and hell.  There is so much in the Gospel that warns against hoarding riches.  For the super-rich that’s a huge impediment to salvation.  Yet it’s a message for all of us who live in this richest country on the planet. 

  

To protect our wealth, property, privilege, we believe we’ve the right and responsibility to maintain the world’s largest war machine.  Nation states are designed to operate with the mentality of the war machine [it’s necessary to kill, to survive], but our Christian churches must operate on the faith taught by Jesus.

 

Church + society’s justified violence = the greatest impediment to the New Evangelization.   We continue to misconstrue the basic Gospel truth:  greater love than this no one has than to lay down their life for their friends {not the taking of life in defense of their friends}.   Jesus showed us this way so clearly—telling us to put away the sword, forgiving his enemies, as he died for all of us, on the cross.  Violence is the devil’s tool.  God is love.  Justified violence is the Deceiver’s most potent lie. 

 

If God sends His Son to tell you that the way to salvation is nonviolent love and mercy, why, as in our budget, would you spend more than ½ your resources on war and violence? – why would your church endorse even one farthing, or send even one member off in support of the justified violence of war?  It does not do so for the justified violence of abortion.

“God will not be mocked” can put off for a time--as when Jesus suffered the mockery of the cross.  But God, the creator and sustainer, will never long be successfully ignored.
 

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A past departing Pope understood completely the nature of our nonviolent merciful loving God.  The church and society wasn't interested in what he was saying.  On April 22, 2011, six years into his reign, Pope Benedict XVI proclaimed---

“It could be expected that, when God came to earth, he

would be a man of great power, destroying the opposing

forces; that he would be a man of powerful violence as an

instrument of peace. Not at all! He came in weakness.

He came with only the strength of love, totally without

violence, even to the point of going to the cross. This is

what shows us the true face of God: that violence never

comes from God, never helps bring anything good, but is

a destructive means and not the path to escape difficulties.

...This is Jesus’ true message: seek peace with the means of peace and leave violence

aside.” 

          For a remarkable insight into Pope Benedict's inspiration and recent decision, above and beyond the media controversies, see Fr. E. C. McCarthy's complete article.
 

 

 Illumination by Kathy Brahney

More ---

John Perkins, author of Economic Hit Man, on how wealth extends globally.

http://vimeo.com/12483678

Ed Asner’s look at the crash of 2008--Tax the Rich An animated fairy tale. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S6ZsXrzF8Cc

What, and exclusive who’s is -- the plutonomy?

http://blogs.wsj.com/wealth/2007/01/08/plutonomics/

 

 

 

THE NEW EVANGELIZATION---RECRUIT NOT WARRIORS, BUT PEACEMAKERS

We welcome the young energy of Occupy Port Huron at the Jan. 30th opening of Season for Nonviolence 2013.

They double our numbers at the end of that evening.

I pray at daily mass for a multiplication of national service opportunities for our young people—a nonviolent national service that serves God first, and country second.  An AmeriCorps, Peace Corps, and missionary services---bigger than the armed services.  We are not called to be soldiers by Christ, but servants of each other.  When we judge another an enemy, we determine that they’re guilty and not innocent.   We use that to justify the violence of war.

But there are always innocents living in the homes of the enemy.  An innocent can never be killed intentionally.  Yet abortions and infanticides are conducted every day in war.  Can even one of them be justified?  The targets of our smart bombs include the babies at the breast, and in the wombs, of terrorists’ wives at their household tasks.

 

The mind that kills the innocent in the womb by abortion is the same as the one that kills innocence in war—we didn’t mean to—their lives were just in the way of our greater purposes, our need to protect our interests.  Jesus never justified killing, not for benefit of God nor country, nor personal convenience.  His life, death and resurrection teach the opposite reality—God is infinite love, God is infinite mercy.

There is real risk in following Christ’s way.  Onward Christian soldiers means courage, but no reliance on guns bombs or vacuum extractors.  We can’t spread the Good News until we trust in His Way.  How can we evangelize young people when we delete the Sermon on the Mount?  How can they believe, or respect life, if all they see is the invitation to participate in an endless stream of preemptive wars on our church and society’s behalf?

So read and pray the Gospels, and then do all you can to recruit new peacemakers for national and community service.

The Sermon on the Mount by Cosimo Roselli 

 

 

 

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