Healing Our World Commentary

By Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D.

Darkness Comes Again

It's not for laws I've broken
That bitter tears I've wept,
But solemn vows I've spoken
And promises unkept;
It's not for sins committed
My heart is full of rue,
But gentle acts omitted,
Kind deeds I did not do.

I have outlived the blindness,
The selfishness of youth;
The canker of unkindness,
The cruelty of truth;
The searing hurt of rudeness . . .
By mercies great and small,
I've come to reckon goodness
The greatest gift of all.

Let us be helpful ever
to those who are in need,
And each new day endeavour
To do some gentle deed;
For faults beyond our grieving,
What kindliness atone;
On earth by love achieving
A Heaven of our own.
-- Robert William Service

SEATTLE, Washington, December 17, 2004 (ENS) - Sometimes it seems like darkness is everywhere. War, suffering, and hungry and oppressed people surround us. In my own life, I have been immersed in darkness from a bitter divorce after being the stay-at-home parent for my sweet three year old for his entire life.

It seems so hard sometimes to choose the right path. Whether or not we should support this cause or that new technology seem like impossible questions. Yet the answers to our questions may be closer than we think. The very Earth beneath our feet may offer us the means and the wisdom we need all during the year.

As our home planet travels around the Sun on its yearly journey through space, we experience changes in our weather and have to adjust our lives accordingly. The seasons affect some of us dramatically while others of us, who live in relative isolation from the forces of nature, experience little more than mild discomfort.

Morning sun illuminates icicles on a Harpers Ferry, West Virginia home. (Photo by Janet Ward courtesy NOAA)

We are now in the midst of Yule - the Winter Solstice on December 21 - that time of year when the Sun is the farthest south in the sky that it gets during the year. On Yule, the day is very short and the beginning of Winter is upon us. In an age not so long passed, when we were intimately aware of our connections to this planet and our dependence upon the Sun for light and life, this time of year was recognized for its power.

How many of us notice that between the Summer Solstice on June 21 and Yule, the Sun has, each day, risen a little farther to the south of east and has remained in the sky a few minutes less? The days get shorter and shorter until on Yule, the Winter Solstice, we experience the shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere.

Recognition of this time of year can be a powerful healing tool for us. Imagine how the ancient peoples of the Earth felt as they observed that the Sun, the orb that gives us heat and light, kept getting lower and lower in the sky and the days kept getting shorter and shorter. The fear must have arisen that the night would get longer and longer and that the Sun would eventually disappear completely. What could they do but surrender to this fear and prepare themselves for the Winter. They gathered food, they made their families as safe and warm as they possibly could, and reflected on the bounty of the past harvest and the joys that might be taken away.

These people must have felt that they were receiving the incredible gift of life when the Sun began journeying higher and higher and the days got longer and longer as Winter faded.

Eventually, this Solstice time became a part of the Wheel of the Year, the earthly representation of the cycle of life, a time to slow down, reflect, appreciate the bounty of the harvest, and to appreciate the need for death - the darkness - as well as life.

We need to slow down and examine our actions. With the U.S. in the midst of a war with Iraq, the challenge is great to reflect on these actions. Warfare, a constant in our world today and the only solution that some leaders still use to resolve a conflict, has wreaked terrible devastation not only upoln people, but on the Earth as well.

Snow covers The White House and a protest tent with two anti-nuclear war signs. Winter 2002-2003. (Photo by Erica Page, Daughters of the American Revolution courtesy NOAA)

In World War I, many countries' ecosystems were destroyed. Belgium lost most of its forested areas. During the two year Boxer Rebellion in China in 1898, a species of deer was driven to extinction in the wild. Genghis Khan laid waste to vast areas that remain devastated some 700 years later.

In Vietnam, the U.S. dropped 20 million aerial bombs, fired 230 million artillery shells, and used more than 100 million grenades. Over 2.5 million craters were formed by these explosions in Vietnam. Ten percent of these munitions did not explode, leaving two million bombs, 23 million artillery shells, and tens of millions of other devices in the ground as ticking time bombs. Many people are crippled and killed annually by these devices.

The true extent of the environmental damage caused by war is still unknown and in some cases, is willfully suppressed. In 1995, after a team of U.S. public health experts visited Vietnam to research the impact of the defoliant Agent Orange on the civilian population, the Vietnamese government confiscated their tissue samples and data. In El Salvador, people who were investigating environmental devastation were killed.

The United States used over nine million kilograms of the deadly germ warfare agent 0-chlorobenzolmalononitrile, or CS, over vast areas of Vietnam. Countless human and wildlife deaths resulted. The United States also used over 25 million kilograms of herbicides in that war, killing and hurting all manner of living things. There is evidence that the United States used the deadly nerve gas Sarin against its own troops in Vietnam. In fact, the United States got Iraq started in their chemical weapons program in the 1970s when a company in Maryland sold Iraq their "seed stock" for the Viet program.

In my own life, a war is being waged upon me, and the results feel just as devastating.

It is a tricky thing - to carry the awareness of the darkness while living and promoting the light, and those of us who do it are often misunderstood. We are called the naysayers, the party poopers, and those who aren't joyful. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This Solstice, we have much to reflect upon. This terrifying darkness all around us must be contemplated and acted upon. For most people, the long nights will end in the Spring. But for some, the darkness will continue. As we reap the bounty of the holidays, we must also be aware that the darkness will not end for some of those that are bombed, unable to get enough food, or punished by a legal system that is out of control.

Use this powerful time of reflection for some soul searching. Ask the Earth what is right. She always has the answer.

RESOURCES

1. Now more than ever is the time to write your Congressional representatives. Tell them the hypocrisy must end. If the U.S. wants other countries to dismantle their arms, then we must as well. If you know your Zip code, you can find them at: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ziptoit.html

2. Visit the World Game Institute's What the World Wants project and learn how what the world spends on armaments could pay for healing our world. Click here.

3. Visit PeaceNet at: http://www.igc.org/index.html

4. Read an amazing account on the animal victims of the Gulf War at: http://fn2.freenet.edmonton.ab.ca/~puppydog/gulfwar.htm

5. Read about the first international conference on the environmental impacts of war at http://www.eli.org/ecw/frame.htm

6. If you have the means, please consider donating to my legal defense fund, supporting the rights of a stay-at-home father to maintain his connection to his son at: http://tinyurl.com/4e7s9

{Jackie Alan Giuliano, Ph.D. is a writer and teacher in Seattle and the author of "Healing Our World", A Journey from the Darkness Into the Light," available at: http://www.xlibris.com/HealingOurWorld.html or your local bookstore. His book of photographs and thoughts on interconnectedness, "Of This Earth, Reflections on Connections," is available. at: http://ofthisearth.org. Please send your thoughts, comments, and visions to him at: jackie@healingourworld.com and visit his website at: http://www.healingourworld.com}