This choice is made even more difficult when my favorite trusty website, Rotten Tomatoes, shows a good rating for a film or show on the topic. (As my friends know, I trust the site's averages [sample size dependent] wholeheartedly.)
So, when I saw that the new film version of All Quiet on the Western Front had a 92% with 99 reviews, I had to do some discernment.
I did end up watching it. The opening scenes were mostly piles of dead, bloody bodies, and people stacking piles of dead, bloody bodies. That made me cry.
And now I am writing this blog in response.
+++
When I was teaching, I kept this classic poster somewhere in each of my classrooms.
+++
Here's a poem I love... Bees by Alden Solovy
The bees
Do not stop
Collecting pollen
When humans
Murder each other
With guns.
The bees think:
How strange,
How low
On the evolutionary scale
Must those humans be,
That they haven’t yet
Figured out
How to make honey
Or peace.
___________
When will those wildflowers in our backyard begin blooming?
+++
I taught in a Quaker school for a year, and we weren't even to put war into the curriculum. It's debatable on a lot of levels, but it's what we did. We also had a tribute assembly at that school when Pete Seeger died.
+++
Josh Ritter, one of my favorite artists, sings some of the best contemporary anti-war music I've found.
+++
Old Monk has a quote on the wall of her office...
"I dream of giving birth to a child who will ask: 'Mother, what was war?'"
Gets me every time.
+++
May we walk into the Advent season with the Peace of Christ in our hearts and in our voices.
+++
Let us walk in the holy presence.
