best of dc #3: arlington cemetery

[I kind of forgot about this series that I had started, so I've decided to take it up again. Because there are just so many great places here.]

Arlington Cemetery is, I think, one of the most beautiful places in Washington. It is astounding by virtue of its sheer size. Acres of rolling hills covered in identical marble headstones, it is at once sobering and, in some odd way, inspiring. I feel no more patriotic anywhere in Washington than I do here.

But while the grounds are beautiful and awe-inspiring, what I love most about Arlington Cemetery are the engravings (my three favorites below). DC is a city of marble, and nowhere is that better used than here.

At the John F. Kennedy Gravesite: “With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking for his blessing and his help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.” -JFK

Robert Kennedy, 1966, South Africa: “It is from numberless acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripply of hope, and crossing each other from a million centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Aeschylus: “In our sleep, pain that cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart and in our despair against our will comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.

twenty years later.

In honor of the twenty year anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, I am revisiting a recent post on the matter: http://talithacum.wordpress.com/2009/10/01/ich-bin-ein-berliner/

Also, in two weeks, I will have health insurance for the first time in just 2 weeks shy of a year. More on that soon. For now, reminisce about history and appreciate the fact that you are free.

rebel.

I love running into things like this, love seeing people speak out. But I feel like most of the “speaking out” that’s done in the media, etc. is always so overbearing and obnoxious. Inflated opinions that unfortunately seem to lack much thorough thought.

But this…regardless of where one stands on the sentiment, the method is refreshing. Like someone’s exasperated outburst, but so subtlely conveyed. Like someone just had to get this out of them, quickly, and then walked on.

this is a test.

For some reason, comments have been disabled on this blog. I’m trying to fix that now since I know you’re all dying to write back.

reorientation.

Last night, Jon and I went and heard Rob Bell speak. On tour for his newest book, Drops Like Stars, the age-old issue of the existence of suffering in a world governed by an allegedly good God.

It’s a question that I struggle with frequently. If God is good, then why are there more slaves today than at any other point in history? If God is good, then how can he allow children born into slavery in India, freedom not even a concept, much less a reality? If God is good, then how can he allow this 10-year-old girl to be raped over and over in a brothel in Cambodia?

The thesis of the speech was that, perhaps, when we encounter suffering, we ask the wrong question: Why? Maybe we require a reorientation. Maybe the real question we should be asking is, What now? How do we let our suffering then shape us if we certainly cannot go back to the way things used to be? Rob referred to “the art of the disruption”: your life is altered so significantly as a result of an instance of great suffering, and so everything must change.

Upon further rumination though––and while I love idea of a reorientation––this doesn’t answer the question of that boy in India or that girl in Cambodia or any of the human beings who are slaves in this very moment. To ask them, “How will you let your suffering shape you? Will you let it destroy you or make you stronger?” seems inconsiderate at the very least.

Perhaps in that context––and that is the context of our world where thousands of individuals are infected with HIV daily with no access to anti-retrovirals, where 29,000 children die from hunger every 24 hours, where millions are enslaved, millions more forced to flee their homes as refugees, and the list goes on––perhaps in that context, there is another question we need to ask: how do we let the suffering of others shape us?

Maybe we were created to be the answers to each others’ prayers.

ich bin ein berliner.

Housed in the Washington NEWSEUM are eight panels of the Berlin wall and one watchtower from which snipers would target East Germans trying to climb over, burrow under or sneak through the barrier to West Germany. It is a powerful and staggering historical artifact to encounter. It is a gruesome, and therefore unfathomable, fact of history to stand before. But the fact that I can now stand before it produces an overwhelming reassurance. This is a testament of hope.

At Arlington Cemetery, just outside of DC, this quote is engraved on a stone wall that abuts a small, still pool of water. It is an excerpt from Robert Kennedy’s Day of Affirmation speech at the University of Cape Town in 1966 in the midst of South Africa’s brutal system of apartheid:

“It is from numberless acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

two years later.

I just finished The Shadow of the Sun by Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish journalist who lived in Africa during the unraveling of colonialism, the rebirth of a continent. The book begins in Ghana, which, in 1957, became the first African country to be decolonized from European imperialism and ignited a flurry of coups and revolutions and even some peaceful separations for a continent that the West had held captive for as long as the West had known about it.

It is a truly unusual experience to read a story of an exotic place that you have actually seen. The pastel stuccoed walls are not vivid because of the writer’s evocative language, but because you have actually seen them, and not only in pictures. You have in fact lived in them. They are less a part of his story as they are a part of your very own memory. So the “distinct smell of the tropics” is not so much distinct as it is familiar.

You become defensive, reading objectivity as cold and critical––criticism of a place that was once home, criticism of others who were once family. And suddenly you realize––or understand––that this place has become you without your even realizing it. Or maybe in some way, it has been you all along.

art.

Since I moved into my new apartment in Adams Morgan, this graffiti painting has been a daily part of my life. A young boy holding a Palestinian flag, proudly, the way millions of Americans raised patriotic flags at president Obama’s inauguration. The other day, it disappeared, painted over in an attempt to clean up the neighborhood.

I have always loved creative, nearly-unnoticed graffiti art (I get this from my mom),  mostly for the understated statement that it makes. And because  this kind of art––so tenaciously sought after by police officers and landlords seeking to rid the premises of such vandalism––represents exactly what art is and should be. A statement. A commentary. A voice that will not be silenced.

I am waiting for the painting to resurface. Maybe here. Maybe on another building down the road. I have no doubt it will.

still…

Two quotes that have stuck out to me recently:

“Then, looking back, you will see the cities become a long procession leading to nothing. This is beautiful in its way, and was once enough to make you travel. Would you want this forever?…Perhaps also you have witnessed too much. You have seen too many gods, heard too many people swear by them. That way you lose your judgement, even your sanctities, and other travellers notice, and become afraid of you. In the end, you lose your way. So you must know when to stop. Otherwise nothing will have more value than any other thing.” (Shadow of the Silk Road)

The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon, or, perchance, a palace or temple on the earth, and, at length, the middle-aged man concludes to build a woodshed with them. (Henry David Thoreau)

But I am still young…

liturgy.

Just as Jesus broke down the walls of hostility that used to keep us separate from each other, leaving peace in their place, so let Jesus be our peace (Ephesians 2:11). Let our daughters and sons be known as peacemakers in this world (Matthew 5:9) and use us as your ambassadors of reconciliation (II Corinthians 5:20). Plant a seed of peace in New York and in Kabul, in Washington DC and in Baghdad, in Madrid and in Morocco, in Gaza and in Jerusalem and in Africa, over there and right here, in them and in us, and let the Garden of Shalom we remember sprout and bloom, we pray in the name of Jesus, who is our peace.