Praise God from whom all blessings flow.

I finished watching the TNT miniseries Into the West today. It's about the American conquest and colonization of the western territories from 1825-1890, focusing on two fictional families, one white and one Native American, over their generations.

And do you know what? We screwed the Native Americans...monumentally.
We never viewed them as people or human beings, only savages. I'm not entirely sure what I mean when I say "we." I'm fairly certain I don't mean "the white man," even though it was mostly white men doing the screwing. I mean, the whole situation was due in large part to the notion of manifest destiny and the expansionist campaigns of the government and military. But the problem was more deeply rooted than policy.

When arrogance and ignorance are combined as the driving force behind an entire nation's skewed sense of destiny, what hope can there possibly be for the ones who stand in the way?

Tonight I also watched Bobby, the movie about the people in and around the Ambassador Hotel the night Robert Kennedy was assassinated. At the end, over the images of people's immediate reactions to Kennedy being taken away in an ambulance, plays the recording of one of Kennedy's final speeches, delivered in Cleveland, Ohio, on April 5, 1968, the day after Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s assassination. I've put the text below, or you can watch the scene from the movie here.
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On the Mindless Menace of Violence

This is a time of shame and sorrow. It is not a day for politics. I have saved this one opportunity, my only event of today, to speak briefly to you about the mindless menace of violence in America which again stains our land and every one of our lives.

It is not the concern of any one race. The victims of the violence are black and white, rich and poor, young and old, famous and unknown. They are, most important of all, human beings whom other human beings loved and needed. No one - no matter where he lives or what he does - can be certain who will suffer from some senseless act of bloodshed. And yet it goes on and on and on in this country of ours.

Why? What has violence ever accomplished? What has it ever created? No martyr's cause has ever been stilled by an assassin's bullet.

No wrongs have ever been righted by riots and civil disorders. A sniper is only a coward, not a hero; and an uncontrolled, uncontrollable mob is only the voice of madness, not the voice of reason.

Whenever any American's life is taken by another American unnecessarily - whether it is done in the name of the law or in the defiance of the law, by one man or a gang, in cold blood or in passion, in an attack of violence or in response to violence - whenever we tear at the fabric of the life which another man has painfully and clumsily woven for himself and his children, the whole nation is degraded.

"Among free men," said Abraham Lincoln, "there can be no successful appeal from the ballot to the bullet; and those who take such appeal are sure to lose their cause and pay the costs."

Yet we seemingly tolerate a rising level of violence that ignores our common humanity and our claims to civilization alike. We calmly accept newspaper reports of civilian slaughter in far-off lands. We glorify killing on movie and television screens and call it entertainment. We make it easy for men of all shades of sanity to acquire whatever weapons and ammunition they desire.

Too often we honor swagger and bluster and wielders of force; too often we excuse those who are willing to build their own lives on the shattered dreams of others. Some Americans who preach non-violence abroad fail to practice it here at home. Some who accuse others of inciting riots have by their own conduct invited them.

Some look for scapegoats, others look for conspiracies, but this much is clear: violence breeds violence, repression brings retaliation, and only a cleansing of our whole society can remove this sickness from our soul.

For there is another kind of violence, slower but just as deadly destructive as the shot or the bomb in the night. This is the violence of institutions; indifference and inaction and slow decay. This is the violence that afflicts the poor, that poisons relations between men because their skin has different colors. This is the slow destruction of a child by hunger, and schools without books and homes without heat in the winter.

This is the breaking of a man's spirit by denying him the chance to stand as a father and as a man among other men. And this too afflicts us all.

I have not come here to propose a set of specific remedies nor is there a single set. For a broad and adequate outline we know what must be done. When you teach a man to hate and fear his brother, when you teach that he is a lesser man because of his color or his beliefs or the policies he pursues, when you teach that those who differ from you threaten your freedom or your job or your family, then you also learn to confront others not as fellow citizens but as enemies, to be met not with cooperation but with conquest; to be subjugated and mastered.

We learn, at the last, to look at our brothers as aliens, men with whom we share a city, but not a community; men bound to us in common dwelling, but not in common effort. We learn to share only a common fear, only a common desire to retreat from each other, only a common impulse to meet disagreement with force. For all this, there are no final answers.

Yet we know what we must do. It is to achieve true justice among our fellow citizens. The question is not what programs we should seek to enact. The question is whether we can find in our own midst and in our own hearts that leadership of humane purpose that will recognize the terrible truths of our existence.

We must admit the vanity of our false distinctions among men and learn to find our own advancement in the search for the advancement of others. We must admit in ourselves that our own children's future cannot be built on the misfortunes of others. We must recognize that this short life can neither be ennobled or enriched by hatred or revenge.

Our lives on this planet are too short and the work to be done too great to let this spirit flourish any longer in our land. Of course we cannot vanquish it with a program, nor with a resolution.

But we can perhaps remember, if only for a time, that those who live with us are our brothers, that they share with us the same short moment of life; that they seek, as do we, nothing but the chance to live out their lives in purpose and in happiness, winning what satisfaction and fulfillment they can.

Surely, this bond of common faith, this bond of common goal, can begin to teach us something. Surely, we can learn, at least, to look at those around us as fellow men, and surely we can begin to work a little harder to bind up the wounds among us and to become in our own hearts brothers and countrymen once again.
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I couldn't think of a better conclusion to this whole violence discussion I've been having on and off this slate than with these words, surely among the finest ever spoken. Although Kennedy does keep his message mildly restrained within the American borders, I believe his sentiments are universal nonetheless. I am sure this conversation is not done for good (indeed, I do not wish it to be), but I hope that if anyone wants to keep it going, they can perhaps look to this speech for a "broad and adequate outline" of what we should look like, a foundation of basic human dignity.

Now, moving on.

Today in church a woman introduced her husband and son, explaining they don't often join her because they "are a mixed religion family: Protestant and Catholic." I found this amusing. I won't explain why, just in case you don't get it. I wouldn't want to spoil it for you.

When we sang the Doxology, an ambulance drove by. It is very difficult to sing the lyrics "praise God from whom all blessings flow" as an ambulance is rushing someone to the ER. For my musically inclined readers, know also that it was made more awkward by the fact that German ambulance sirens are based on a tritone - they alternate the notes of an augmented 4th. Imagine that playing over the oh-so-consonant Doxology. It was difficult on my ears and my heart, but it was definitely an interesting way to put the lyrics and just what God's blessings are into perspective. My vocal muscle memory kicked in, so I was able to sing along and think a prayer for whoever was in that ambulance at the same time. It was an interesting conflict of interests thing, but I'm sort of glad it happened. Like I said, a little perspective is good. We don't have to put ourselves in danger in order to not be safe.

Then the chaplain gave his sermon. Which was awful. Seriously, it was terrible. His central message was that Jesus wants us to go out and witness to people. Really. That was about all he was trying to say. He took 30 minutes trying just trying to explain that, and in the process, I'm pretty sure he said that the people who followed Jesus were "caught up in the moment," which to me makes it sounds like Jesus was some sort of fad. He also made it seem as though Jesus did not have compassion for anyone until later in his minstry. Earlier on, you see, Jesus enjoyed his solitude, until one day he suddenly saw the multitudes and was overcome with compassion for the harrassed and helpless, so he sent his disciples out. And let's not forget he was able to mention both John 3:16 and the armor of God, which, despite their importance which I do not deny, are probably the two biggest cop-out preaching references in the Biblia. It just wasn't very good, and I'm not sure I can keep going on Sunday mornings. What's the point of going to church if you don't get anything out of it?

Anyway, that's been me lately. By the way, I finished Knowing God. It was an intense study, but I definitely want to go back to it sometime. I jotted down a few of its basic foundational ideas, but I don't have that paper on me. Just check it out if you get a chance, you won't regret it. Once I finish Pride and Prejudice (hopefully sometime tomorrow), I'll be back into American Pastoral so I can maybe finally finish it, and I'll start Mere Christianity. I also want to get a hold of some foreign films at the library I haven't seen. Moolaade, The Lives of Others, Nowhere in Africa, The Triplets of Belleville, Joyeux Noel, Pan's Labyrinth (which I have already seen, but want to see again), The 400 Blows, and maybe some Akira Kurosawa stuff that I really should get around to.

That's it for now. As always, send me your feedback if you have any.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow.