With Malice Towards None... A World in Search of Peace

 

An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.

- Mahatma Ghandi

One doesn't have to operate with great malice to do great harm.

The absence of empathy and understanding are sufficient.

- Charles M. Blow, journalist

Twenty years of American foreign policy incompetence has led to an expected ending of disaster in Afghanistan which only U.S. State officials and the military chose not to see in their contingency planning, all the while the American public and a world of outsiders saw all too clearly. America should never have been on foreign soil, and in leaving, left only more death and suffering as violent ideologies took over as living legacies to America's unwanted presence. As a "Christian" nation we are takers, not builders. Our mirror is pitiful and must be broken in order to see again. May we finally learn the ways of peace and love, the ways of grace and forgiveness, towards a world as hardened as we are towards the other.

R.E. Slater

August 20, 2021

Addendum

Yesterday and the day before yesterday I participated in a forum speaking out against White Christian Nationalism having sensed little difference between it and Islamic Jihadism. Both speak death. Both force upon people unwanted laws and restrictions. Both take away personal freedoms and rights (which I find ironic with the anti-vax crowd and facts deniers). Both harm the other, belittle the other, despise the other, and do not see the other. And both speak a religion ugly and deadly to the soul.

I'll say again, the human heart is deeply corrupt. It speaks death before it speaks life. The God of all religions and nations says to us to learn to hold in our heart the attitude of "Malice Towards None." This is our task as humans struggling to become fully human as God intended (or as our spirit-souls long for deep within our minds and bodies, hearts and spirits). We share together a deep, deep  sense of existential struggle of contrition before others, repentance from evil, humility and respect towards all.

We feel it deeply in our bones the necessity to learn to speak peace, goodwill, honor, and love to one another. This the truest core of the Christian faith. Not its legalism, perversions, and enforced religious structures. When Christians speak war, vengeance and harm we do not speak the life-giving word(s) of God. Just our own selfish, prideful, words. Words which make us blind, deaf, and dumb to one another. Those we no longer can see, hear, or speak to....

Mahatma Ghandi once said, "An eye for an eye will make the whole world blind." Let us then cast off the weight of hatred and malice towards one another and make this next millennium of human civilization about peace and goodwill. Let all nations learn the language of love by beating their metaphorical "swords into ploughshares" by seeking faith and trust with one another. Honor and respect.

The ways of the world can be the ways of beauty and joy if we allow it to be - which is the essence of John Lennon's songs. Chose then this day a new God, a radical God, One who has invested Himself in a radically new religion reviving the souls of the other. And a new social politick which heals, makes beautiful all around it, and nurtures every human benumbed by sin and evil.

And finally, to move forward we must repent of our wicked ways, learn to forgive one another, be merciful to the ones we no longer see, and learn to reach out to the ones we have dismissed and despised.

Importantly, America's newest foreign policy and diplomacy must deploy a radically new motto: "To care for the other and this good earth." Let us learn then the language of grace and forgiveness as Jesus had taught us centuries ago. Which we have witnessed again-and-again in the lives of remarkable human beings filled with God's light and love given to us to guide us in renewing ways of caretake, wellbeing, and nurture for one another.

Peace,

R.E. Slater
August 20, 2021

John Lennon & Yoko Ono: WAR IS OVER! (If You Want It)

HAPPY XMAS (WAR IS OVER). 

(Ultimate Mix, 2020) John & Yoko Plastic Ono Band

+ Harlem Community Choir

John Lennon & Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Mashup at MLK Day in Greenville, NC

Martin Luther King Jr. Nobel Peace Prize Acceptance Speech

Martin Luther King Jr. –

Acceptance Speech

 https://www.nobelprize.org/prizes/peace/1964/king/26142-martin-luther-king-jr-acceptance-speech-1964/

on the occasion of the award of the Nobel Peace Prize

in Oslo, Norway, December 10, 1964

Your Majesty, Your Royal Highness, Mr. President, Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen:

I accept the Nobel Prize for Peace at a moment when 22 million Negroes of the United States of America are engaged in a creative battle to end the long night of racial injustice. I accept this award on behalf of a civil rights movement which is moving with determination and a majestic scorn for risk and danger to establish a reign of freedom and a rule of justice. I am mindful that only yesterday in Birmingham, Alabama, our children, crying out for brotherhood, were answered with fire hoses, snarling dogs and even death. I am mindful that only yesterday in Philadelphia, Mississippi, young people seeking to secure the right to vote were brutalized and murdered. And only yesterday more than 40 houses of worship in the State of Mississippi alone were bombed or burned because they offered a sanctuary to those who would not accept segregation. I am mindful that debilitating and grinding poverty afflicts my people and chains them to the lowest rung of the economic ladder.

Therefore, I must ask why this prize is awarded to a movement which is beleaguered and committed to unrelenting struggle; to a movement which has not won the very peace and brotherhood which is the essence of the Nobel Prize.

Sooner or later all the people of the world will have

to discover a way to live together in peace …

After contemplation, I conclude that this award which I receive on behalf of that movement is a profound recognition that nonviolence is the answer to the crucial political and moral question of our time – the need for man to overcome oppression and violence without resorting to violence and oppression. Civilization and violence are antithetical concepts. Negroes of the United States, following the people of India, have demonstrated that nonviolence is not sterile passivity, but a powerful moral force which makes for social transformation. Sooner or later all the people of the world will have to discover a way to live together in peace, and thereby transform this pending cosmic elegy into a creative psalm of brotherhood. If this is to be achieved, man must evolve for all human conflict a method which rejects revenge, aggression and retaliation. The foundation of such a method is love.

The tortuous road which has led from Montgomery, Alabama to Oslo bears witness to this truth. This is a road over which millions of Negroes are travelling to find a new sense of dignity. This same road has opened for all Americans a new era of progress and hope. It has led to a new Civil Rights Bill, and it will, I am convinced, be widened and lengthened into a super highway of justice as Negro and white men in increasing numbers create alliances to overcome their common problems.

I accept this award today with an abiding faith in America and an audacious faith in the future of mankind. I refuse to accept despair as the final response to the ambiguities of history. I refuse to accept the idea that the “isness” of man’s present nature makes him morally incapable of reaching up for the eternal “oughtness” that forever confronts him. I refuse to accept the idea that man is mere flotsom and jetsom in the river of life, unable to influence the unfolding events which surround him. I refuse to accept the view that mankind is so tragically bound to the starless midnight of racism and war that the bright daybreak of peace and brotherhood can never become a reality.

I refuse to accept the cynical notion that nation after nation must spiral down a militaristic stairway into the hell of thermonuclear destruction. I believe that unarmed truth and unconditional love will have the final word in reality. This is why right temporarily defeated is stronger than evil triumphant. I believe that even amid today’s mortar bursts and whining bullets, there is still hope for a brighter tomorrow. I believe that wounded justice, lying prostrate on the blood-flowing streets of our nations, can be lifted from this dust of shame to reign supreme among the children of men. I have the audacity to believe that peoples everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for their minds, and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits. I believe that what self-centered men have torn down men other-centered can build up. I still believe that one day mankind will bow before the altars of God and be crowned triumphant over war and bloodshed, and nonviolent redemptive good will proclaim the rule of the land. “And the lion and the lamb shall lie down together and every man shall sit under his own vine and fig tree and none shall be afraid.” I still believe that We Shall overcome!

This faith can give us courage to face the uncertainties of the future. It will give our tired feet new strength as we continue our forward stride toward the city of freedom. When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights, we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.

Today I come to Oslo as a trustee, inspired and with renewed dedication to humanity. I accept this prize on behalf of all men who love peace and brotherhood. I say I come as a trustee, for in the depths of my heart I am aware that this prize is much more than an honor to me personally.

Every time I take a flight, I am always mindful of the many people who make a successful journey possible – the known pilots and the unknown ground crew.

So you honor the dedicated pilots of our struggle who have sat at the controls as the freedom movement soared into orbit. You honor, once again, Chief Lutuli of South Africa, whose struggles with and for his people, are still met with the most brutal expression of man’s inhumanity to man. You honor the ground crew without whose labor and sacrifices the jet flights to freedom could never have left the earth. Most of these people will never make the headline and their names will not appear in Who’s Who. Yet when years have rolled past and when the blazing light of truth is focused on this marvellous age in which we live – men and women will know and children will be taught that we have a finer land, a better people, a more noble civilization – because these humble children of God were willing to suffer for righteousness’ sake.

… peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

I think Alfred Nobel would know what I mean when I say that I accept this award in the spirit of a curator of some precious heirloom which he holds in trust for its true owners – all those to whom beauty is truth and truth beauty – and in whose eyes the beauty of genuine brotherhood and peace is more precious than diamonds or silver or gold.

---

*From Les Prix Nobel en 1964, Editor Göran Liljestrand, [Nobel Foundation], Stockholm, 1965. Copyright © The Nobel Foundation 1964

* * * * * * * * * *

"An Indictment against American Foreign Policy"

"We came in as a wrecking ball

then realized others had come in before us

taking what they wanted

leaving their own death and destruction

as we would too."

- R.E. Slater

August 20, 2021

Amazon Link

From Selma to Moscow: How Human Rights Activists

Transformed U.S. Foreign Policy

Illustrated, April 24, 2018

by Sarah B. Snyder (Author)

The 1960s marked a transformation of human rights activism in the United States. At a time of increased concern for the rights of their fellow citizens―civil and political rights, as well as the social and economic rights that Great Society programs sought to secure―many Americans saw inconsistencies between domestic and foreign policy and advocated for a new approach. The activism that arose from the upheavals of the 1960s fundamentally altered U.S. foreign policy―yet previous accounts have often overlooked its crucial role.

In From Selma to Moscow, Sarah B. Snyder traces the influence of human rights activists and advances a new interpretation of U.S. foreign policy in the “long 1960s.” She shows how transnational connections and social movements spurred American activism that achieved legislation that curbed military and economic assistance to repressive governments, created institutions to monitor human rights around the world, and enshrined human rights in U.S. foreign policy making for years to come. Snyder analyzes how Americans responded to repression in the Soviet Union, racial discrimination in Southern Rhodesia, authoritarianism in South Korea, and coups in Greece and Chile. By highlighting the importance of nonstate and lower-level actors, Snyder shows how this activism established the networks and tactics critical to the institutionalization of human rights. A major work of international and transnational history, From Selma to Moscow reshapes our understanding of the role of human rights activism in transforming U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s and 1970s and highlights timely lessons for those seeking to promote a policy agenda resisted by the White House.

* * * * * * * * * *

PHOTOS OF THE TALIBAN IN KABUL, AFGHANISTAN,

AND FLEEING AFGHANIS

Mid-August, 2021

The way of peace is hard

but its joys last forever.

- R.E. Slater

August 10, 2021

Matthew 5:9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

Romans 14:19 So then let us pursue what makes for peace and for mutual upbuilding.

James 3:18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

John 14:27 Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. Not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid.

Ephesians 6:23 Peace be to the brothers, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

Philippians 4:7 And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus.

John 16:33 I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulations. But take heart; I have overcome the world.

Luke 1:79 To give light to those who sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, to guide our feet into the way of peace.

Mark 9:50 Salt is good, but if the salt looses its saltiness, how will you make it salty again? Have salt in yourselves, and be at peace with one another.

James 3:18 And a harvest of righteousness is sown in peace by those who make peace.

Théodore Géricault, The Raft of the Medusa (1818-1819)

Pablo Picasso, Massacre in Korea (1951)

Banksy, The Flower Thrower (2003)

Jaune Smith, I See Red: Migration (1995)

Activists in Exile

Samuel Bak, Open Book

Felicia Dorethea Hemans - Casabianca

Felicia Dorethea Hemans, Casabianca

Felicia Dorethea Hemans, Casabianca

Casabianca

by Felicia Dorethea Hemans

August 1826

The boy stood on the burning deck
  Whence all but he had fled;
The flame that lit the battle's wreck
  Shone round him o'er the dead.

Yet beautiful and bright he stood,
  As born to rule the storm;
A creature of heroic blood,
  A proud, though child-like form.

The flames rolled on–he would not go
  Without his Father's word;
That father, faint in death below,
  His voice no longer heard.

He called aloud–'say, Father, say
  If yet my task is done?'
He knew not that the chieftain lay
  Unconscious of his son.

'Speak, father!' once again he cried,
  'If I may yet be gone!'
And but the booming shots replied,
  And fast the flames rolled on.

Upon his brow he felt their breath,
  And in his waving hair,
And looked from that lone post of death
  In still yet brave despair.

And shouted but once more aloud,
  'My father! must I stay?'
While o'er him fast, through sail and shroud,
  The wreathing fires made way.

They wrapt the ship in splendour wild,
  They caught the flag on high,
And streamed above the gallant child,
  Like banners in the sky.

There came a burst of thunder sound–
   The boy–oh! where was he?
Ask of the winds that far around
  With fragments strewed the sea!–

With mast, and helm, and pennon fair,
  That well had borne their part–
But the noblest thing which perished there
  Was that young faithful heart.

Felicia Dorethea Hemans (c.1793-1835), August 1826

This poem is written in ballad meter and rhymes abab

Felicia Dorethea Hemans, poet

Felicia Hemans

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felicia_Hemans

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Born	25 September 1793 Liverpool, England
Died	16 May 1835 (aged 41) Dublin, Ireland
Occupation	Poet
Nationality	British
Period	Late Romantic
Genres	Poetry

Ancestry

Felicia Heman's paternal grandfather was George Browne of Passage, County Cork, Ireland; her maternal grandparents were Elizabeth Haydock Wagner (d. 1814) of Lancashire and Benedict Paul Wagner (1718–1806), wine importer at 9 Wolstenholme Square, Liverpool. Family legend gave the Wagners a Venetian origin; family heraldry an Austrian one. The Wagners' country address was North Hall near Wigan; they sent two sons to Eton College. Of three daughters only Felicity married; her husband George Browne joined his father-in-law's business and succeeded him as Tuscan and imperial consul in Liverpool. [2]

Early life and works

Felicia Dorothea Browne was the fourth of six Browne children (three boys and three girls) to survive infancy. Of her two sisters, Elizabeth died about 1807 at the age of eighteen, and Harriett Mary Browne (1798–1858) married first the Revd T. Hughes, then the Revd W. Hicks Owen. Harriett collaborated musically with Felicia and later edited her complete works (7 vols. with memoir, 1839). Her eldest brother, Lt-Gen. Sir Thomas Henry Browne KCH (1787–1855), had a distinguished career in the army; her second brother, George Baxter CB, served in the Royal Welch Fusiliers 23rd foot, and became a magistrate at Kilkenny in 1830 and Chief Commissioner of Police in Ireland in 1831; and her third brother, Claude Scott Browne (1795–1821), became deputy assistant commissary-general in Upper Canada. [3]

Felicia was born in Liverpool, a granddaughter of the Venetian consul in that city. Her father's business soon brought the family to Denbighshire in North Wales, where she spent her youth. They made their home near Abergele and St. Asaph (Flintshire), and it is clear that she came to regard herself as Welsh by adoption, later referring to Wales as "Land of my childhood, my home and my dead". Her first poems, dedicated to the Prince of Wales, were published in Liverpool in 1808, when she was only fourteen, arousing the interest of no less a person than Percy Bysshe Shelley, who briefly corresponded with her. She quickly followed them up with "England and Spain" [1808] and "The domestic affections", published in 1812, the year of her marriage to Captain Alfred Hemans, an Irish army officer some years older than herself. The marriage took her away from Wales, to Daventry in Northamptonshireuntil 1814.

During their first six years of marriage, Felicia gave birth to five sons, including Charles Isidore Hemans, and then the couple separated. Marriage had not, however, prevented her from continuing her literary career, with several volumes of poetry being published by the respected firm of John Murray in the period after 1816, beginning with "The Restoration of the works of art to Italy" (1816) and "Modern Greece" (1817). "Tales and historic scenes" was the collection which came out in 1819, the year of their separation.

Later life

From 1831 onwards, she lived in Dublin, where her younger brother had settled, and her poetic output continued. Her major collections, including The Forest Sanctuary (1825), Records of Woman and Songs of the Affections(1830) were immensely popular, especially with female readers. Her last books, sacred and profane, are the substantive Scenes and Hymns of Life and National Lyrics, and Songs for Music. She was by now a well-known literary figure, highly regarded by contemporaries such as Wordsworth, and with a popular following in the United States and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. When she died of dropsy, Wordsworth and Walter Savage Landor composed memorial verses in her honour. She is buried in St. Ann's Church, Dawson Street.

Legacy

Felicia Dorethea Hemans, poet

Felicia Hemans' works appeared in nineteen individual books during her lifetime. After her death in 1835 they were republished widely, usually as collections of individual lyrics and not the longer, annotated works and integrated series that made up her books. For surviving women poets, like Britons Caroline Norton and Letitia Elizabeth Landon, Americans Lydia Sigourneyand Frances Harper, the French Amable Tastu and German Annette von Droste-Hülshoff, and others, she was a valued model, or (for Elizabeth Barrett Browning) a troubling predecessor; and for male poets including Tennyson and Longfellow, an influence less acknowledged. To many readers she offered a woman's voice confiding a woman's trials; to others a lyricism apparently consonant with Victorian chauvinism and sentimentality. Among the works she valued most were the unfinished "Superstition and Revelation" and the pamphlet "The Sceptic," which sought an Anglicanism more attuned to world religions and women's experiences. In her most successful book, "Records of Woman" (1828), she chronicles the lives of women, both famous and anonymous.

Hemans' poem The Homes of England (1827) is the origin of the phrase stately home in English. The first line of the poem runs, "The stately Homes of England".

Despite her illustrious admirers, her stature as a serious poet gradually declined, partly due to her success in the literary marketplace. Her poetry was considered morally exemplary, and was often assigned to schoolchildren; as a result, Hemans came to be seen a poet for children rather than taken seriously on the basis of her entire body of work. A jocular reference by Sakiin The Toys of Peace suggests simultaneously that she was a household word and that Saki did not take her seriously. Schoolchildren in the U. S. were still being taught The Landing of the Pilgrim Fathers in New England ("The breaking waves dashed high/On a stern and rock-bound coast...") in the middle of the 20th century. But by the 21st century, The Stately Homes of England refers to Noël Coward's parody, not to the once-famous poem it parodied, and Felicia Hemans was remembered popularly for her poem, "Casabianca".

However, Hemans' critical reputation has been re-examined in recent years. Her work has resumed a role in standard anthologies and in classrooms and seminars and literary studies, especially in the U. S. It is likely that further poems will be familiar to new readers, such as "The Image in Lava," "Evening Prayer at a Girls' School," "I Dream of All Things Free," "Night-Blowing Flowers," "Properzia Rossi," "A Spirit's Return," "The Bride of the Greek Isle," "The Wife of Asdrubal," "The Widow of Crescentius," "The Last Song of Sappho," and "Corinne at the Capitol."

Felicia Dorethea Hemans, Casabianca

Casabianca

First published in August 1826 the poem Casabianca (also known as The Boy stood on the Burning Deck)[1] by Felicia Hemans depicts Louis de Casabianca who perished in the Battle of the Nile. The poem was very popular from the 1850s on and was memorized in elementary schools for literary practice. The poem depicts what happened on the ship the Orient as Commander Louis de Casabianca died due to refusing to flee his post. Other poetic figures such as Elizabeth Bishop and Samuel Butler allude to the poem in their own works.

"Speak, father!' once again he cried, 'If I may yet be gone!" And but the

booming shots replied, And fast the flames rolled on. [4]

The poem is sung in ballad form (abab) and consists of a boy asking his father whether he had fulfilled his duties, as the ship continues to burn after the magazine catches fire. Martin Gardner and Michael R. Turner made modern day parodies that were much more upbeat and consisted of boys stuffing their faces with peanuts and breads. This contrasted sharply with the solemn image created in Casabianca as Hemans wrote it.

England and Spain, or, Valor and Patriotism

Her second book, England and Spain, or, Valor and Patriotism, was published in 1808 and was a narrative poem honoring her brother and his military service in the Peninsular War. The poem called for an end of the tyranny of Napoleon Bonaparte and for a long lasting peace after the war. The poem is very patriotic towards Great Britain as seen in Heman's multiple references to "Albion" which is an older name for the isles of Great Britain.

"For this thy noble sons have spread alarms, And bade
the zones resound with BRITAIN's arms!" [5]

It is seen throughout this poem that Felicia Hemans is alarmed with the thought of war but her overall pride of nationality overcome this fear. She saw all of the fighting as useless bloodshed and a waste of human life. "England and Spain" was used by her to spread her message across Europe, that the wars were senseless and that peace should resume.

Female suicide in Hemans' works

In many of Hemans' works, a choice is made by several female characters to take their own lives rather than suffer the social, political, and personal consequences of their compromised situations. The social context in which Hemans was writing was not largely conducive to the writing of women, as many modern readers might assume according to the poet's success. Instead, women writers were often torn between a choice of home or the pursuit of a literary career. [6] Hemans herself was able to balance both roles without much public ridicule, but left hints of discontent through the themes of feminine death in her writing. [7] The suicides of women in Hemans' poetry dwell on the same social issue that was confronted both culturally and personally during Hemans' life: the choice of caged domestication or freedom of thought and expression. [8]

'The Bride of the Greek Isle', 'The Sicilian Captive', 'The Last Song of Sappho', and 'Indian Woman's Death Song' are some of the most notable of Hemans' works involving women's suicides. Each poem portrays a heroine who is untimely torn from her home by a masculine force- such as pirates, Vikings, and unrequited lovers- and forced to make the decision to accept her new confines or command control over the situation. None of the heroines are complacent with the tragedies that befall them, and the women ultimately take their own lives in either a final grasp for power and expression or means to escape victimization. [9] The true reasons for the recurring femicide in Hemans' poetry collections can only be found in readers' personal interpretations, giving speculation to Hemans' life and cultural context.

Selected works

On the Restoration of the Works of Art to Italy

Hymns on the Works of Nature, for the Use of Children

Records of Woman: With Other Poems

The Better Land

Casabianca

Corinne at the Capitol

Evening Prayer at a Girl's School

A Farewell to Abbotsford

The Funeral Day of Sir Walter Scott

Hymn by the Sick-bed of a Mother

Kindred Hearts

The Last Song of Sappho

Lines Written in the Memoirs of Elizabeth Smith

The Rock of Cader Idris

Stanzas on the Late National Calamity, The Death of the Princess Charlotte

Stanzas To the Memory of George III

Thoughts During Sickness: Intellectual Powers

To the Eye

To the New-Born

Woman on the Field of Battle

Further reading

"Cambridge Bibliography of English Literature," 3rd ed., 4: 351-60 (2000)

"Oxford Dictionary of National Biography," 26: 274-77 (2004)

"Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Letters, Reception Materials," ed. Susan J. Wolfson (2000)

"Felicia Hemans: Selected Poems, Prose, and Letters," ed. Gary Kelly (2002)

Emma Mason, "Women Poets of the Nineteenth Century" (2006)

"Felicia Hemans: Reimagining Poetry in the Nineteenth Century," ed. Nanora Sweet & Julie Melnyk (2001)

Paula Feldman, "The Poet and the Profits: Felicia Hemans and the Literary Marketplace," "Keats-Shelley Journal" 46 (1996): 148-76

Peter W. Trinder, "Mrs Hemans," U Wales Press (1984)