Non-violence or non-existence

Today I came across a story of healing for a Vietnam war veteran who was so traumatized by that experience that he still bore the scars thirty years after the fact. I sent that story on to some friends today. I read the entire book three Christmases ago. Now, we learn that our president wants to start another war. He’s saying the that we need to bring peace through bombs and bullets. Its just pure bull.

As the number of children grew, the situation became less and less safe because often the Vietcong would use children as weapons against us. So someone chased them off by firing a burst from an M60 machine gun over their heads. As they ran away, a baby was left lying on the ground, crying, maybe two feet from the helicopter in the middle of the group. I started to approach the baby along with three or four other soldiers. That is what my nonwar conditioning told me to do. But in this instance, for some reason, something felt wrong to me. And just as the thought began to rise in my head to yell at the others to stop, just before that thought could be passed by synapse to speech, one of them reached out and picked up the baby, and it blew up. Perhaps the baby had been a booby-trap, a bomb. Perhaps there had been a grenade attack or a mortar attack at just this moment. Whatever the cause, there was an explosion that killed three soldiers and knocked me down, covering me with blood and body parts.

Read more here from the Beliefnet article written by Claude Anshin Thomas. After reading this article and reflecting on it tonight I came upon this video tonight and it fits with the thoughts and the story. I hope this powerful writing and equally powerful video helps you to make a decision to work for peace. This is the season where we celebrate the birth of the Prince of Peace.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK4B74ci2y4]