Stories, Tales, and Outright Lies About Justino
I have not always had a blog. This is apparent to me but I start to wonder about people about ten years younger to me. Meaning that some of my most interesting and precious stories have not been written down and stand ready to be lost with time. Not only do we have my "Pre-blog" days but all too often there are many stories, struggles of my life, or interactions with people that have for one reason or another never made it to the pages of this blog.
Often I will be on the bus or walking around and think of some interesting or important memory. Then I think, "I should write that down before I forget the whole ordeal entirely". Now I would like to begin a series of sporadic posts that I would like to call Stories, Tales, and Outright Lies About Justino.
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In the summer of 2007I traveled to England. One of my stops was in the town of Nottingham. Wanting to avoid anything to do with Robin Hood (who has dubious historical connections to the area) I took in the Gallaries of Justice, Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, and the City of Caves, under Nottingham city itself.
The caves have been used for a plethora of things over the years like by the tanners of yore to use harsh chemical sand human urine to produce the cities leather. But during WWII they were used as bomb shelters in England's darkest hour. So part of the tour involves a presentation about this period, meters underground, in the company of complete strangers. As was the case most of the time that trip I was the only person going solo warrenting tentitive looks from families from London or couples from the Midlands.
Our presenter was an elderly man who was a young boy during WWII. Grouped together with a small family and two couples on holiday from some place or other I listened to the mans account of repeatedly running to the shelters at the sound of the sirens, of emerging to find the houses of neighbors lying in rubble where they had once stood only an hour before, and of people showing uncommon courage and compassion.
I keep my mouth shut absent mindedly, having spent the vast majority of the trip with my head phones on and speaking to hardly anyone. I was rewarded with some light hearted and disparaging remarks about Americans. Meters underground the city of Robin Hood, EPIK Justino was quickly becoming amused.
After the presentation, the more interesting of the whole tour, I stayed behind to ask the Englishman some questions about something or other. After apologizing profusely about the American comments (of which I took no offense) we had a rather nice and informative conversation about his memory of WWI.
What makes me want to commit this story to blog starts here. The conversation turned to how dire the situation became for England and the well spoken gentleman gave a good accounting of that time in his life. It wasn’t until he was talking about the stakes and he said "Had the Nazis won it would have been the end of all the democratic Christian Nations"
I didn’t know what to say to that. Within seconds I went to being shocked as such a backwards comment, to being seduced by such a neat little package that tied up a nasty part of human history and built up my side of that conflict as Captain America or Superman style do-gooders. I didn't know what to say to that.
Did I point out that some of our allies like the USSR and China were neither Democratic nor Christian? Did I point out that the fight was against fascism, a fascism that was perfectly willing to and capable of make bed fellows with Christianity and that the identity as a Christian nation is what made the holocaust so easy to swallow for many Germans? A fascism that explicitedly called for the destruction of people like me, therefore giving me, an atheist a far more vested interest in fighting Fascism than the man standing with me in some cave filled to the brim with displays of wartime paraphenelia and propaganda posters. Did I point out that the Jews, Hindus, Muslims of the British empire fought brilliantly and bravely for their "Christian" colonial oppressors.
Should I have simply pointed out that the truth does not fit in that neat little package? I wanted to point out that Fascism is alive and well every time Nationalism rears it ugly head in our Western Christian Democracies or every time our leaders try to bulldoze over dissent by equating it with treason. Perhaps I should have pointed out that in this vision of the West as a bastion of Christianity and Democracy people like me have no place. Maybe it was just easier to put a pretty silk bow on that package and write if off as "We are good, they are evil and we won".
Instead I changed the subject. I learned as much I could from him in the polite amount of time that he could afford mr, but that comment stuck with me, even to this day. I have had about a year to mull it over and I can still feel the gulf between a man of his generation and experience and someone of my generation. A curious gulf, the kind that usually originates in caves under British Midlands cityies that are haunted and cramped by cheese... tourist cheese. It is one of those moments of real human experience that opens up a new vantage point with which to view the world.
Anyways, the point of this subterranian story isnt about how lame the West is or how radical I am. The point of this story was the shock of seeing such a gulf between my elder and myself created by time, attitude, and faith. But really I think the shock comes from being crushingly aware of the gulf between myself today and the boy I was that would gobble up stories and histories of WWII from books, movies, my grandmother, or anything else I could get my hands on. Back then I probably would have strongly echoed what my Nottingham elder was saying.
This post too long?
Listen to this and earlier posts at Odiogo
