Losing my Religion
Growing up, my mother taught me that love was the most powerful of emotions. The old cliche about love conquering all - she really believed that and she taught me to believe it too. I always did, but I'm starting to have doubts.
This weekend I saw the results of torture. People I care about and call friends, piled in a bloody heap at my feet. The physical wounds will heal. They both have capable life magi around them. But there will be psychic wounds as well, and those are gashes in the soul that are much more difficult to mend. I've seen people who have lived through wars, who have seen and experienced things no sane human being should ever have to endure. They have a distant, haunted expression that lives just behind the one they show to the world. It's sad, and a little frightening. My father has that expression.
And so I begin to wonder...how does love manage that? How does one remain a caring, empathetic creature when confronted with so much cruelty? Surely the first inner voice is the one that screams for retribution. There is great satisfaction in an eye for an eye. I've heard the siren song of vengeance; I hear it more and more every day. Each abduction, each manipulation of the innocent, each lash of the whip or stroke of the knife brings it more fully to my ears. It is a discordant song that threatens to overwhelm the soft strains of love. So again, what it is the serves to remind us that love is still stronger than hate, more enduring than revenge?
Enya tells us that Hope has a place in the lover's heart and Sting calls it the Seventh Wave. He wrote a terrific song - makes it sound very attractive and powerful. I wonder if he ever saw one of his friends after a week of torture in a technocractic laboratory.
And then of course the inevitable thought creeps into my mind. What if that victim weren't 'just' a friend. What if it were someone I loved? What if it were Hannah or Saul or God help me Lijah? Would there even be a question? Would even a scrap of that 'turn the other cheek' sensibility remain, or would it all dissolve into a haze of reckless thoughts and bloody inclination?
I don't think there's an easy answer here. I think I'll struggle with this one for awhile, a long while...maybe forever. That's probably a good thing. I think maybe when you stop pondering it, when it ceases to be an issue for you anymore - that's when you're in trouble. So I'm not in trouble...not yet.
This weekend I saw the results of torture. People I care about and call friends, piled in a bloody heap at my feet. The physical wounds will heal. They both have capable life magi around them. But there will be psychic wounds as well, and those are gashes in the soul that are much more difficult to mend. I've seen people who have lived through wars, who have seen and experienced things no sane human being should ever have to endure. They have a distant, haunted expression that lives just behind the one they show to the world. It's sad, and a little frightening. My father has that expression.
And so I begin to wonder...how does love manage that? How does one remain a caring, empathetic creature when confronted with so much cruelty? Surely the first inner voice is the one that screams for retribution. There is great satisfaction in an eye for an eye. I've heard the siren song of vengeance; I hear it more and more every day. Each abduction, each manipulation of the innocent, each lash of the whip or stroke of the knife brings it more fully to my ears. It is a discordant song that threatens to overwhelm the soft strains of love. So again, what it is the serves to remind us that love is still stronger than hate, more enduring than revenge?
Enya tells us that Hope has a place in the lover's heart and Sting calls it the Seventh Wave. He wrote a terrific song - makes it sound very attractive and powerful. I wonder if he ever saw one of his friends after a week of torture in a technocractic laboratory.
And then of course the inevitable thought creeps into my mind. What if that victim weren't 'just' a friend. What if it were someone I loved? What if it were Hannah or Saul or God help me Lijah? Would there even be a question? Would even a scrap of that 'turn the other cheek' sensibility remain, or would it all dissolve into a haze of reckless thoughts and bloody inclination?
I don't think there's an easy answer here. I think I'll struggle with this one for awhile, a long while...maybe forever. That's probably a good thing. I think maybe when you stop pondering it, when it ceases to be an issue for you anymore - that's when you're in trouble. So I'm not in trouble...not yet.