On Heat Emergencies and Propaganda

The air today has the cadence of a lowland voice. It echoes with dogwood, willow, magnolia and spanish moss. The haze mutes all color to lazy pastel, the heartrate of the city slows just a fraction. Yankees have visions of palmettos, of slowly waving fans, of linen and seersucker.

As I sit here slowly melting into the puddles of my thoughts, these thoughts of Charleston and Savannah run to thoughts of the hearts of their people. I've found myself recently involved in a number of discussions about the concept of propaganda. About how terrorists indoctrinate their children into their culture of hatred and violence. It is horrifying.

And yet, I reflect in my southern swelter that this concetp is by no means a new one. Hatreds are often passed to the next generation. This great country came close to collapse not quite 150 years ago and its scars still show, in the inherent distrust that my brisk words will stir in those lowland climes. And in that ungodly struggle children were sent to fight and die for a "cause". What the mid-east now boils with is a stew of fury much mor ancient and refined. Their propaganda is far more complex and intricate than "cotton, slavery and states rights!"

I know also that those arrid baking sands are not the only places in our modern world where children are fed on hatred and clothed in violence. There are Chechyn and Basque children, Irish children still being taught the hatred of the previous generation. There are pockets of hate all over the globe where hides the spirit of hate behind the faces of the innocent.

And let us not forget our own Southland, where in some the hot anger and resentment of a hundred years has not simmered down to flavoring as with most, but where there are men of cloaks and weapons teaching children their dogma of hatred.

When I dwell to long on these thoughts I take on the face of the Romani (the gypsy), who knows that nowhere is there haven from hatred and suffering and who retreats into himself and his own, showing only defiance and distrust to those outside, living on the fringes, scavenging and secretive.

But bury me not standing, I come up from my knees, blessed with the phantom embraces of hope and faith. I will stand tall in this life for that which makes us as man different from the beasts; that in which can flower beauty, art, and achievement, for the part of us all that can reason and love and swell with emotion.

When I hear the echoes of the southland, I can lose myself in the beauty of humanity, the symphony of love and hate, glory and suffering, the cruel exquisite life of man.

And then my heart can sing the song of the downtrodden, the oppressed, of the slave in America and in Egypt, the prayer which is for all peoples, our enemies as well as ourselves, "let my people go". My prayer today is that good, loving men and women around the world can join in that refrain singing their hearts out for the love of all.

From 8.2.06