Patterns

[Padraig18]

This is something I wrote last fall, prior to the vote on IWR; it still sums up my feelings about our misguided invasion of Iraq, and on the futility of non-defensive wars. I beg your indulgences in advance...

I don't know about you guys, but 9/11 weighs heavily on my mind to this day. Any way, this morning I pulled one of my all-time favorite books off the bookshelf, "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance". As I opened it to read it, a quote from the introduction caught my eye; it was written by author Robert Pirsig, after his son Christopher was stabbed to death on a street in San Francisco:

"What had to be seen was that the Chris I missed so badly was not an object, but a pattern, and although that pattern included the flesh and blood of Chris, that was not all there was to it. The pattern was larger than Chris and myself, and related to it in ways that neither of us understood completely and neither of us was in complete control of.

Now Chris's body, which was a part of that larger pattern, was gone. But the larger pattern remained. A huge hole had been torn out of the center of it, and that was what caused all the heartache. The pattern was looking for something to attach to and couldn't find anything."

There were some 3000 such holes torn out of many life patterns that awful Tuesday morning in September, two years ago. Tens of thousands more holes have been torn in the related aftermath, and maybe hundreds of thousands may yet be torn, the way things seem to be going.

By habit, Life wills itself to continue--- this I know for a fact. We here are in the miraculous position of being able to shape *how* it is to continue. As we do--- as we reweave the patterns of our lives--- might it not be best to put aside the terrifying images and the numbing, unfathomable numbers? Any loss--- every loss--- leaves a profound hole in Life's pattern. That's what happened September 11th, 2001 --- a huge, ragged, bloody hole was torn in the pattern of our Nation's life. Now we, as a nation, must collectively decide on just how we want our lives to go on.

As for myself, I can not fill the hole that remains in my life with anger, with hatred, fear or suspicion; the wound in my life's pattern will not be mended with the glue of warm, red blood, nor the void in it filled with the broken and shattered bodies of men, women and children killed in wars in distant places. Perpetual war will not bring back the light to that dark place September 11th branded into my soul. Hatred is the poison which created that gaping hole in my life; therefore, I will let the bitter cup pass from me untouched, its contents vile, nauseating and unworthy of the lips of civilized men and women.

'In pacem, requiescat. In nomine Patri, et Filio, et Spiritu Sancti. Amen'

:hi: