My heavy, aching heart found this tonight—an evening upon which the world waits to see if my home country chooses, in the most insane alternate timeline conceivable, to unleash unimaginable additional suffering upon the ordinary, innocent Iranian populace.
We can know with sufficient certainty in advance that the cascading effects will reach far beyond that country, and yet, we haven’t been told in any credible fashion •why• this must happen, nor why it must happen •now•. While an enormous number of us here do not want this, still: it is all being done in our name. And so, culpable or otherwise, we shall bear the shame and the guilt of countless lost lives and those traumatized and maimed in the process.
This, if it does come to pass, will be considered an appalling moral failure of the first order, and it could take two generations or more for a significant portion of the world to begin even considering whether we deserve any kind of forgiveness. I’m not sure that we do—at least, not those who support war upon a non-aggressive nation that poses no immediate threat. And not those who by their silence signal tacit assent. And not those who supply the weapons and war-making technology that could lead to widespread catastrophe and nuclear Armageddon.
This track, in contrast, holds the sounds of hope.
Mercifully so.
I hear in it a quiet resolve, a wise resilience, a transcendent grace. The sense that, generally speaking, most things tend to work out, to some degree. All is not destined to end in utter doom.
So, on this historic night: May all beings be free from suffering, and ultimately know how to live peaceably among one another. For too long, we have misadventured in the opposite direction, and yet nothing good ever comes of it. We simply must learn, or else the lesson will be served upon us, repeatedly, until we finally, fully understand.☮️
