very disturbed

do you ever watch something, read something, or learn something that disturbs your soul?

sometimes that happens to me,

and it happened to me tonight.

pete took the kids to his mom's house tonight so i could work on maggie's bday present.

i decided to watch the documentary Hiroshima: The First Weapon of Mass Destruction while hand-stitching away on maggie's blanket.

and now my soul is deeply offended.

this is not a post about politics, war, who started it or who ended it,

so please refrain from jumping down my throat.

it is about humanity.

we cannot continue to have nation against nation, rulers against people, people against people.

if war is the direction that this world wants to take,

then we will continue to obliterate mankind,

and then there will eventually be no one left.

then what will it all have been for?

call me an idealist,

but i believe you will NEVER make peace with war.

peace comes from practicing peace.

it is troubling that it is easier for nations to continue to fight than it is to soften their hearts.

how can they (meaning all countries and people who war) think it's ok to kill, injure, and destroy innocent people just like you and me all in the name of war?

in this documentary there was an account of a mother who survived.

she had 2 young children and husband who did not survive.

in a heart-wrenching scene immediately after the bomb was dropped she could hear her child screaming for her.

the child was trapped.

as hard as the mother tried she could not dislodge the child before the fire overtook her.

she had to listen to her child screaming "i'm burning! where are you mummy! please help me!".

the poor mother was sobbing "i'm not a good mummy to you!" as her child burned alive.

to think this poor mother lived until 2002.

what kind of war do you think she lived for 57 years?

my family is not more important than her family.

i don't love my children more than iraqi mothers, libyan mothers, etc. mothers love their children.

call it "in the name of war" all you want,

it doesn't make the destruction of innocent lives for the good of the people ok.

this world has had enough examples to see that fighting doesn't really solve anything.

sure, it may end a war or stop the fighting,

but a much longer lasting war lives on in the heads of those who experienced it forever.

when will we ever learn?

will the fighting ever stop?

i don't believe in it.

am i grateful for people who defend my country so i don't have to see my children burned to death at my fingertips?

you bet i am,

but i just wish we didn't have to have those people.

while i might be an idealist,

i'm also somewhat of a pessimist.

i don't think this world will ever exist.

but i do believe the fighting must stop,

and the only way to stop it is to stop it.