** Won't you please share the joy of WYFP by recommending?
WYFP is our community's Saturday evening gathering to talk about our problems, empathize with one another, and perhaps share advice. Everyone and all sorts of troubles are welcome. May we find peace and healing here. :-)
One of today's diaries, about the human toll of the Iraq war, begins with some words that probably all of us can relate to: "Once again, I find myself nauseous at my computer, reading the news." I don't want to talk about the diary specifically, but about that feeling.
I think nausea is the right word for the times when our emotional guts clench in rejection of the news we've taken in. Grief would often be a fair word for it too, when we feel like we're losing something personally.
We congratulate ourselves for our nausea sometimes, on the theory that we must be morally upright if cruelty, callousness, and hatred make us feel that sick. Maybe that's true somehow, but I think it's easy to be too attached to that idea. Feeling sick is natural, but it's not healthy or life-promoting. It makes us feel like victims even; makes us feel sorry for ourselves; it saps our capacity for real empathy. Being sickened is just being sickened; it's neither being good nor being bad. It's right to want to not feel nauseous.
Lots of Americans feel nauseous about the grossness and dirtiness of politics in general. And in its own way it's civil war, especially now. Brothers are fighting brothers. We have a special love for the rare politicians who approach their vocation with exceptional honor--Lincoln and Feingold come to mind. Their existence doesn't make it all better though. One kossack posts here in WYFP almost every week that their effing problem is "people who don't vote!" I agree, but I think many people who don't participate are nauseated when they pay any attention, and so they feel averse to the whole thing.
In other words, nausea is a problem. I think the remedy looks a lot like the old-fashioned virtues of faith, hope and charity (love). Faith here especially means confidence in the truth of what we're doing in response, whether that's voting or activism or making peace on the streets of Baghdad.
Okay, how about a song to acknowledge our nausea, exhort us to care, and insist that we stop crying and come together:
Sunday Bloody Sunday
by U2
Yes...
I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long...
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long...
'cause tonight...we can be as one
Tonight...
Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
And the battle's just begun
There's many lost, but tell me who has won
The trench is dug within our hearts
And mothers, children, brothers, sisters
Torn apart
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
How long...
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long...
'cause tonight...we can be as one
Tonight...tonight...
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Sunday, Bloody Sunday
Wipe the tears from your eyes
Wipe your tears away
Oh, wipe your tears away
Oh, wipe your tears away
(Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
Oh, wipe your blood shot eyes
(Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
Sunday, Bloody Sunday (Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
And it's true we are immune
When fact is fiction and TV reality
And today the millions cry
We eat and drink while tomorrow they die
(Sunday, Bloody Sunday)
The real battle just begun
To claim the victory Jesus won
On...
Sunday Bloody Sunday
Sunday Bloody Sunday...