Some thoughts on the war in Ukraine, which makes me cry nearly every day.
First, why has this international tragedy gripped me, gripped a lot of us, like no other? Shortly after Russia's invasion I heard about a journalist who answered that question by saying it was because people speaking English were fleeing their country in cars that looked like ours. He was thrown to the wolves for saying that, of course. Culturally insensitive. I get it. It surely is insensitive and even inexcusable to weep over the Ukrainians while brushing off war victims in Syria, Yemen, Myanmar, Sudan, and Ethiopia. But I don't understand those wars. And try as I might, beyond our shared humanity, it's hard for me to relate to those victims. What I can relate to, sort of, is an IT specialist picking up her drycleaning one day and the next day leaving everything behind and running for her life. A mom planning her son's graduation and helping him with college admission forms only to realize that neither are relevant any longer, and there's a good chance he won't even be alive in six weeks. A dad who's watching his 16-year-old son play soccer only to see his legs blown off mid-game by a Russian bomb.
I've never been to Syria or Yemen or Myanmar. But I've been to Russia. I met dozens of teenagers there eight years ago who may be fighting a war today with little knowledge of what's actually happening. They're told to fight and win or don't come home. They can't ask questions. Their young wives can't object or protest. They, too, are the victims of a tyrant, one whose motives are devastatingly easy to understand.
I apologize for being insensitive, really I do, but this all feels so much closer, and the closer the tragedy, the more profound the heartbreak.
Second, I'm freshly aware of my own impatience. Fourteen days into the war, I was worn out from praying and frustrated that God wasn't answering. Then I led a Bible study on James 5, which talks about Elijah, "as human as we are," praying fervently. As we talked about what it means to pray fervently, I could only shake my head at my sorry impatience after 14 days of prayer. I think God has something to say to me about fervency.
And finally, I've been struggling to hold the tension between my happy everyday life and what I watch on the evening news. As I'm prone to doing, I woke up at 3:30 the other morning, with Ukraine one of the first thoughts in my mind. And then I sat down at my computer and spent 40 minutes and $50 ordering basketball confetti and other frivolous items off PartyCity.com. My parties go on as planned, while children bleed out in Ukraine. What in the world do I do with this?
This poem God put in my inbox this morning doesn't answer everything, but it helps. (I should point out that I am not a poetry person in the least, so it's a big deal for a poem to speak to me.) I share a portion of it with you, in hopes that it will help you buy--and enjoy--your confetti, too.
A Brief for the Defense by Jack Gilbert
Sorrow everywhere. Slaughter everywhere. If babies
are not starving someplace, they are starving
somewhere else. With flies in their nostrils.
But we enjoy our lives because it's what God wants.
Otherwise the mornings before summer dawn
would not
be made so fine. The Bengal tiger would not
be fashioned so miraculously well. The poor women
at the fountain are laughing together between
the suffering they have known and the awfulness
in their future, smiling and laughing while
somebody
in the village is very sick. There is laughter
every day in the terrible streets of Calcutta,
and the women laugh in the cages of Bombay.
If we deny our happiness, resist our satisfaction,
we lessen the importance of their depravation.
We must risk delight. We can do without pleasure,
but not delight. Not enjoyment. We must have
the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the
ruthless
furnace of this world. To make injustice the only
measure of our attention is to praise the Devil."
