I don’t know what caused the altercation, maybe it was nothing.
Maybe a bumping of shopping carts, or something simpler, as I can imagine, it doesn’t take much in the crowded shopping exit of a Costco on a mid-December Saturday.
But the elderly white man clearly was saying you should be deported… the Hispanic man, yelling that he was not an illegal, and he has rights… the white man answering, well you look like it and so it went… the anger, the self-righteousness, and the responding demand for respect of rights… but the chaos made me think of how we are near a tipping point like we’ve not seen for 86 years… since maybe Germany’s Kristallnacht.

Unser Eigenes Kristallnacht*

Righteousness is killing us
the cruelty is purposeful
the gradual normalization of hate
was always intended to get to this point.
The language of otherization is vermin,
rapist, criminals and this is purposeful
as is the cruelty of separation, of division,
and worse.

Yes, take criminals off the street
but we need no special laws or actions
except enforcement of current law.
We need a path toward compassion
and fairness, without mindless mob
action by the righteous and
morally compromised.

Tipping points are never quite
clear until we are seeing it with
the eyes of history, in the analysis
of the past we find we are no
better than those who came before,
we who think we are better
may someday witness “our own
night of broken glass”.

The light filters through the trees
from the closest star we know,
feeding fauna, deer, birds and bees.

We stroll through using faint paths
worn by others for there is nowhere
untrodden and no undiscovered maths.

For we are merely the next, in a long line
of discoverers of universal truths
leaving bread-crumbs as a sign.

For those who will follow us into the past
and who will occupy this future life-space,
for nothing of us and of this is meant to last.

And some poet, someday, may for a bit think
about us as a continuum of thought from
forever ago to forever to come as a link.

And then the faint path we’ve left for those
who come next and those who come after
will give a bit of wisdom, if well we chose.

Where are we on the subject of empathy?
Oh yeah, we don’t care for it nor for sympathy
or so I’ve been told for they are the others
while we are the first, we and our brothers.

Others are not us, so it has become perfectly okay
to separate families once again, and deny them a way
to a better future, the one we feel is our birthright
and for this we will cast the others to the night.

The night of horrors, roundups, and detentions
the night of deportations, and rights suspensions
as separations will resume, and children will be lost
as families who are not us, are into the night tossed.

But what do we care?  We who so quickly forget,
we who have no empathy and no feeling of regret.
We are okay, we are Americans and we are first,
and we no longer think of hunger and thirst.

We no longer think of oppression and threats
of violence, we’ve protected our precious benefits,
our prices and our borders, from imagined horrors
as we gave up on our love of God and human morals.

The Washington Post reports that there are 1400 children still not reunited with families from the policies of Donald Trump’s first term and the chaos by which they were separated from families at the border.  Imagine, what will happen at the border and throughout the country as the roundups begin, especially as he promised them to be violent. 

When you light the candles
in numbered wishes of happiness,
we give homage to our ancestors,
who sat aglow around fires of warmth
and laughed and sang in unison to the
songs of birth, and songs of life.

We sing in unison to life’s
shared  values, creating wishes
of play and of health too,
the wealth of family, the
fellowship of friends, in the
songs of birth and long-life wishes.

And when we are well celebrated
of birth,  we shall sing our songs
of accomplishments and joys,
in the fortune of family and friends,
and of storied-lessons in the
songs of birth and life’s legacy.

So, I thought of writing of the
darkening storm clouds, but
it seems it is already raining.

I thought of how unity is confused
with conformity, but I know
it really means surrender.

I thought, I will write about charity
but I saw in my mind the stark
clarity of barbwire.

I considered, I could write of a swinging
pendulum of thought, but my heart felt the
wrecking-ball of demolition swinging forth.

I remembered, “a shining city on a hill”,
but I foresee it dulled and tarnished by
the shame of principles abandoned.

I thought of symbols of freedom, but instead
I witnessed a desperate struggle for fairness
among the dark clouds of oppression.

This struggle finally brought to me a
small glimmer of hope, a harbinger of
sunrise after a long stormy night.

But oh how long must we wait?

We, in our pedestrian existence
are too seldom awed by the vastness
of the universe, by the incredible
velocities, and yet the connectivity
of gravity, the soul inspiring light,
the breathtaking darkness of the
inbetweens.

We fail to see the miracles all
around, and more than just life,
but the mysteries of our life;
of the who we are, with thoughts,
words, and ability to love as we
overcome the challenges of the
inbetweens.

We should make room each day
for aweness, for our breath
to be taken, for our connections,
for our ideas and souls to soar,
and realization that we are
special because we thrive in the
inbetweens.

The leaves don’t need to know
of the changing season when
they are sprouts of green.
The squirrels may know of
treasured bountiful harvest
they store away for leaner times.
As we may wisely save for
that rainy day when a friendly
roof may fail to provide shelter.

But we, as they, need not know of all
which is hidden, and all which may
come in the turbulence of the future.
For then we will fail the present,
failing to enjoy the bountiful harvest,
and the beauty of the nature of things.
So, let us then rejoice in life and
not worry of what is kept from us.
For we were never meant to know
everything, as we appreciate both
what is here and what is hidden.

Years ago, I read a great novel by Mark Sullivan, called Beneath a Scarlet Sky.   One of the best I’ve ever read, I highly recommend it.  I wrote about it almost exactly seven years ago: https://mikevargamusings.com/2017/10/09/beneath-a-scarlet-sky-an-incredible-story-of-a-hero-and-tragic-love-loss/ 

Since then,  I haven’t read anything further from this author, because I naively thought nothing could improve upon this tale coming out of World War II.  A hero with an incredible story of survival, and tragic love loss.  Such a monumental experience.

But I was looking for something new to read this last month and realized he had another WW2 survival true-story published, The Last Green Valley,  and I decided to give it a go.   Wow, what another masterpiece in storytelling by Mr. Sullivan!  A story of extraordinary adversity.  A real-life family, caught between the prevailing evil of Stalin, and Hitler.  A story of trial, of suffering, grit, and yet the story of a dream of a future, of a Last Green Valley… Achievable by determination, by chance, or as expressed in the writing, a faith and trust in God.  A faith which is constantly tested. Sometimes this is expressed as the notion of a power in the universe for which we can be one.  It makes one believe there is a way with faith and determination and positive outlook to survive in the most evil and trying of times.  Finding a path toward a better future.  Along the way, the author contrasts between those who embody this faith, may have lost it but find it again, as well as determination and persistence, from those who seek their own temporary advantage.

I will not retell the story here, but I leave you with my impression, and to suggest if you liked Beneath a Scarlet Sky, then give The Last Green Valley a read.

Faith

Is as spherical thing
held and felt with an infinity
of possible sides, it will
roll with you or away from you,
it will challenge you to keep up,
it will seem elusive even when
you need it most, and yet it keeps
rolling.

It is tested, as your connection
and oneness with everything
and each other is tested, and
in such times it may grow or
shrink as you see the future
and your participation in it
obscured, but it keeps
rolling.

It will be your companion
if you allow it, rolling before
you, opening new doors, if you
treat it with innocence and wonder.
If you see it in the smallest
things, it will be there for the
biggest things in time, still
rolling.

I wonder if I sit here quiet
enough, would I hear the Earth
moving through space, would
I hear it rotating on its axis?
Would I experience a universe
in motion pushing and pulling me
millions of miles every hour from
where I imagine I sit motionless
and my soul seems quiet?

And what could I learn of this
universe-of-motion, which hides
itself in relative stillness?  A brilliant
disguise of perception-bending
astronomic, as well as, atomic motion
of probabilities … the known and
and unknowable experienced in this
quiet-moment of passage … as I realize
my quiet soul is also a disguise.

The last few days were like a trip
down that famous memory lane,
which is oft-lined with blossoming
trees, and bubbling brooks, and
it seems so straight, as life flows
on toward a future it must then
become, and yet as I look back
it was only straight in moments
blossoming and bubbling along
in segments, which would make
the sharpest of turns, surprising
such that no psychic medium
might have imagined, let alone
a young man becoming this
old man… but I wouldn’t have
exchange these twists and
turns and the moments along
the way for any other, for it
brings me here today with
all these memories and the
love of life to share.