Tag Archives: Hope

We Must Never Forget

16 Friday Nov 2018

Posted by in Healing

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1993

I enter the recently opened Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., join a crowd of strangers and begin travelling through time. Our group moves from one historical moment to the next. We observe Kristallnacht, the burning of books, mass murders, rape, and other Nazi atrocities. Each event brings us closer to Hitler’s “final solution.”

Passing beneath an arching sign, ARBEIT MACHT FREI (work sets you free), I enter Auschwitz—following the trail of my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, cousins, children, countless members of the human family. First, the selection: to the left or to the right, to gas showers or living hell.

To The Left

A scale model of Auschwitz’s Crematorium II depicts the journey too many were condemned to take: down a stairway to an undressing room, and from there to an underground gas chamber. Naked bodies massed together, each struggling to survive. Gold teeth and fillings pulled from corpses as they lay on the ground. Hair shaved from their heads. And, then, their final destination. Ovens.

Wanting to control my emotions while bearing witness, I take a deep breath and steel my innards. The next exhibit displays empty canisters of Zyklon B. (The insecticide that gassed my Grandmother.)

I enter a room of shoes. These shoes survived, but not their owners. A stale musty smell pervades the room, for the shoes carry a stench from the past, reminding me of the horrors they witnessed. (Could one have belonged to Grandmother?)

To The Right

After selection came tattoos. No longer a name, now a number. At least Grandmother was spared this indignity. But like others entering Auschwitz, Grandfather would have been branded on his left arm. And then he would have been shaved.

I stand staring at a display filled with human hair—swatches in shades of black, brown, yellow, white, and grey.

Unable to look at the hair any longer, I read the accompanying placard and learn that the Nazis found a use for everything. They sold their victims’ hair. When soldiers liberated Auschwitz, they discovered 15,000 pounds of human hair in bales averaging 40 pounds each. (Was Grandfather’s hair in one of those bales, or was it sold to make felt slippers or stuffing for a mattress?)

Continuing my journey through time, I view photographs of death marches and learn that on January 18, 1945 about 60,000 prisoners were removed from Auschwitz. About 15,000 died during that march. (Each life precious, one my Grandfather’s.) I stare at a photograph of prisoners with grey camp blankets draped over their shoulders, each barely surviving, yet struggling to continue. (Is Grandfather among them? Which one might he be?)

Moving on to Liberation, I wait my turn to watch a display of film clippings. The first is of Auschwitz and Dachau. I look at haggard faces and emaciated bodies stuck atop toothpick legs. Some survivors are too weak to walk; soldiers carry these skeletons to shelter. (Could one be Aunt Friedl?)

I stand transfixed before one person’s eyes: wide open eyes, haunted, staring. They gaze at me and through me—as if perpetually drowning in an internal sea of horror. Rescuers help and support his body, but his mind appears frozen in time, stuck inside the terrors of his past.

I stare at piles of decomposing dead bodies. A fly moves in and out of one person’s nostrils.

At Liberation, I lose control over my emotions. Pent up feelings erupt, tears stream from my eyes, and my chest heaves with inner sobs. Moving away from the exhibit, I search for a place where I can pull myself together. Luckily I find a bathroom nearby, where I hide inside a stall. My face twitches as tears roll down my cheeks. I struggle for composure, trying to contain my raging emotions and quell my tears.

When my chest eventually stops heaving, I blow my nose and resume my journey. After passing exhibits describing the plight of survivors and their search for a homeland, I walk into an area where a movie is being shown.

The movie consists of interviews with survivors. I sit mesmerized by their stories—poignant moments of hope, bravery, courage, rebellion, anger, faith, and love. Many cared for each other despite deplorable living conditions, reminding me of humanity’s decency. Tears fall from my eyes with each testimony. I wipe the tears away, but am unable to locate a tissue in my backpack and sit sniffling through the movie.

A woman speaks from the screen, saying, “One should never give up. Giving up is a final solution to a temporary problem.” Another man says, “The future—there was none. But we didn’t give up.”

The movie ends with a female survivor asking us all to bear witness, to stand up to every form of persecution, to make sure such atrocities can never happen again. Not to anyone. Not ever!

People around me start leaving the area. Many quietly wipe tears from their eyes. I continue to sit, still sniffling away. The woman next to me leans over and asks, “Are you alright?”

I am initially taken by surprise. (My grandparents were murdered along with millions of other good people. Such suffering! And courage! How can anyone be alright with that?)

Appreciating her expression of caring concern, I smile reassuringly and say, “Thank you. I’m fine.”

A voice announces that the museum will soon close. It is time to leave, but I have trouble pulling myself away from the exhibits.

Finally following the crowd, I drag myself into a hallway, pass beneath a sign that says “Hall of Remembrance,” and enter a spacious place. A flame burns on a coffin-shaped grey slab of granite at the far end of the sky-lit room.

Walking around this six-sided space, I sense six million ghosts swirling above me, behind me, and around me. They are here to remind us of human nature’s dark side. They are here to protect us from ourselves.

WE MUST NEVER FORGET!

 

The Great Turning

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by in Whole

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People prefer not to think about the fact that we’re destroying our life support system.  Feeling helpless and scared, we protect ourselves from the awareness that we’re nearing a planetary tipping point, a point of no return for human life as we know it on Earth.  This deadening of awareness prevents us from acting in ways that could create a better world, a world where people live in harmony with each other and all of Earth.

Joanna Macy, an Earth activist and Buddhist scholar, proposes that active hope might enable the shift she refers to as “The Great Turning.”  While she recognizes that our industrial growth society depends on the ever-increasing consumption of Earth’s resources, with corresponding ever-increasing waste products which get dumped into, around, and on our Earth, she considers this to be an extraordinary time in human history – with the potential to move from an industrial growth society to a life sustaining one.

In her “work that reconnects”, Joanna guides people to acknowledge their pain for Earth and to open awareness.  She invites us to release the false sense of separateness and to experience ourselves as interconnected, part of the web of life, members of Earth’s community.

The Great Turning requires that we take responsibility for what is happening on Earth.  This entails releasing old structures and enabling life sustaining ways of being to emerge.  It involves creating a new world.

In this new world, partnership and cooperation will replace competition and strife, empathy and compassion will replace hostility and aggression, generosity and sharing will replace selfishness and greed, and the power of love will replace the power of force.  We will move away from striving toward perfection and aim to grow into wholeness.   Rather than disconnection and separateness, we will experience ourselves as integral members of the web of life.

Holding hope for the future, let us join together and help create this better world.  

Cooperative Edge?

18 Thursday Oct 2012

Posted by in Nature

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After yet another Lyme disease infection, my husband and I decided to bring guinea fowl onto Harmony Farm.  These attractive birds supposedly eat ticks and we hoped that their presence would reduce our exposure to Lyme.  While we’ll never know what impact they’ve had on the tick population, for we continue to pull the little buggers off our bodies, we enjoy watching guinea fowl run around the land. 

When male cocks compete for a female, the two birds chase each other around a large area, running rapidly with their heads tilted forward, their bodies seemly still, and their feet moving at an amazingly rapid pace.  Round and around they go.  Sometimes they take flight for a while, then resume their on-ground race.  When one catches up with the other, he grabs onto the other one’s feathers, they scuffle a bit, then resume their race until one finally gives up the chase.

The victor wins the coveted hen, which is quite a prize for guinea hens are monogamous.  During mating season, the loyal pair roam around foraging together.  I dubbed one particular couple “Romeo and Juliet.” 

Living where we do, with predators all around, our once-large guinea flock dwindled down to five – one female and four males.  Then one evening, only four males were roosting in their coop when I locked them up for the night.  I worried that the female might have met her demise, but held onto the hope that she might be sitting on eggs somewhere.

Unlike birds who nest in trees, guinea hens lay eggs on the ground.  During summer months, guinea hens will often make a nest, lay an egg in it day after day, and when a suitable number of eggs are there (usually over 30), they “go broody” – which involves sitting on the eggs both day and night with a short break now and then to eat and drink. 

As a broody hen is like a “sitting duck,” she often falls prey to animals and hawks searching for a tasty meal.  And if she hatches her brood, they readily succumb to a variety of fates.  We’ve never had a flock born in the wild survive more than a day or two. 

A couple of weeks ago I saw the guinea hen, and heard her distinctive sound.  “Yea, she’s alive” I thought, “I’ll keep my fingers crossed.”  And when the males dashed out the minute I opened the door to their coop, I assumed they were off to visit the mother-to-be.

Then yesterday, mother hen appeared with her brood.  She was sitting outside the locked-up coop, waiting.  And many tiny little bodies – white ones, speckled ones, various shades of black and white ones – poked out from underneath her body, came out for a minute, then popped back under.  Quite a sight to behold!!

I let the males out of the coop, and something amazing happened.  They gathered around mother hen and sat.  When I returned a little while later, I saw the baby keets moving from under one bird to another, to another.  The males were caretaking the keets, keeping them warm.  And not just papa.  All the males.

In all my years on the farm, I’ve never seen such a cooperative caretaking effort.  The baby keets trusted the males, seemed to already know them.  And the males adjusted their bodies to accommodate the little keets moving around beneath them.  They also pushed them under their bodies, just like a female hen behaves.   

As the day progressed, I watched the whole flock move around just a bit.  Like mother hens, the males called the keets over when a morsel of food was found.   The keets ran back and forth between all the adults, under them, and between them.  Often the mother hen was up and about, preening and eating, while the males were caretaking the babies, giving her a break.

Reflecting on this unusual behavior, I think about the Great Turning, where partnership and cooperation will hopefully replace competition and strife.  I wonder, could these guinea fowl be figuring this out?   Could they be demonstrating that the path to survival lies not along the road of individual separateness, but on the path of harmony, of cooperation, and of sharing?  

Whatever its reason, I hope that this cooperative approach might bode well for the adorable little newborn keets.  Dare I hope that these babies will survive?