All that matters.
Love and laughter and friendship and art.
4 FEBRUARY—In a November email exchange with my friend Steve Heck—each of us curious as to how the other was doing—I attached pictures of recent pencil sketches I’d done of the local Connecticut landscape. A man of few words when it comes to email, he replied with three photos of recent paintings and a typically succinct note: “I did the first and the last, Mike did the ones in the middle. We’re pleased with them.”
I couldn’t have been more pleased either. Alive with color and motion, the paintings told me more than words ever could about how my friends were doing. Loving spouses who recently celebrated 51 years together, Mike and Steve continue to dance—with life and with each other.
Nothing is more important.
These paintings reinforce in me a conviction that among the most significant things we can do with our lives and the time each of us has is to express our creativity in whatever ways we are inspired to do so: baking, knitting, dancing, painting. Our media are many.
When we use our minds and bodies in any creative endeavor, we are engaging the same energy that gives rise to life itself. It is a form of sacred play. It is a sacred dance with creation at the very moment of its unfolding, like the petals of a rose as it opens. We are that beautiful fragile rose opening in the dawn. Our creations are intimate and also generous expression of who we are—an embodiment of love and intelligence.
Any act of creation is a powerful life-affirming force in the world—a kind of remedy for all the negative forces that cause so much harm and destruction. It may well be that through our small but collective insistence upon honoring and expressing our own creativity—and honoring the creativity of others—that we usher into the world the very changes that are so desperately needed.
The purpose of this post is to feature Steve’s and Mike’s paintings and to offer a brief contemplation on creativity. But as I have considered what to write, the drums of war again beat loudly in Washington, as they did during the buildup to our invasion of Iraq, and with as much sense and justification this time as last. But with far more deadly consequences.
The minute hand on the doomsday clock moves closer to midnight. Closer to a winter that will see no spring. Closer to a darkness wherein paintings cannot be seen.
Have you ever wondered at the long list of America’s enemies? And the purpose of it? And why it is we are encouraged to be afraid? And who it is encouraging us toward fear?
How many wars has our government lied us into—sometimes with a Republican administration at the helm but just as often, as now, with a Democrat in the White House—and always with the overwhelming support of both parties?
Every war during my sixty-two years. And I include all the CIA-fomented coups that destroyed democratically elected governments in nations threatening to escape our control. The human casualties of all of these are in the millions—tens of millions if one includes the displaced.
Without enemies where would the United States be? What might our nation look like? Might we have universal health care by now? Is it possible our bridges wouldn’t be falling down?
Late last week the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft published a pithy report on the profitability for the defense industry of recent tensions in Ukraine and elsewhere:
…. CEOs from both Lockheed Martin and Raytheon outright acknowledged that a deteriorating state of global peace and security and an increase in deadly violence are very much in the interest of their employees and investors.
Here is what Raytheon CEO Greg Hayes had to say, as quoted in the RS piece by Eli Clifton:
…[W]e are seeing, I would say, opportunities for international sales. We just have to look to last week where we saw the drone attack in the UAE, which have attacked some of their other facilities. And of course, the tensions in Eastern Europe, the tensions in the South China Sea, all of those things are putting pressure on some of the defense spending over there. So I fully expect we’re going to see some benefit from it.
Who benefits from war? The list is long indeed. War is profitable and there are careers (military, corporate, political, media) and fortunes to be made. It is no coincidence those who profit from war are the same people who shape and determine our foreign policy—one of unending military aggression.
A majority of Americans, smarter by far than our leaders, do not want war with Russia—even should it invade Ukraine. By a vast majority (73%), citizens want our government to prioritize domestic issues. And little wonder. The average person in this country is suffering.
And so it is very good news indeed that Russia doesn’t want to invade Ukraine. Russia wants and deserves what all reasonable nations want: respect and security. It does not want NATO on its doorstep and it does not want our nuclear weapons on its borders. Entirely reasonable.
Reports of an impending Russian invasion are a fairytale, a fantasy cooked up by warmongering fabulists and profiteers. Why? For the same reason the same people lied about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. To frighten us into unquestioning compliance and to justify U.S. military aggression.
As The New York Times reported last Thursday:
Ukraine’s defense minister has asserted that there had been no change in the Russian forces compared with a buildup in the spring; the head of the national security council accused some Western countries and news media outlets of overstating the danger for geopolitical purposes; and a Foreign Ministry spokesman took a swipe at the United States and Britain for pulling the families of diplomats from their embassies in Kyiv, saying they had acted prematurely.
To state it boldly and nakedly: We are as close to a nuclear incident as we have ever been, and the blame lies almost entirely with Washington. Our real enemies are not Russia and Vladimir Putin or China and Xi Jinping—although we are constantly propagandized (and have been for a long time) to believe so.
Our real enemies are ignorance and hubris and greed.
The greatest threat to domestic and global security is and has long been our military-industrial complex, including our intelligence agencies, the self-serving political leaders of both parties, and corrupted media that serve power and disseminate propaganda, just as they did during the first Cold War.
The fragile beauty of my friend’s paintings, the exuberance and genius that shine in them, gives me the courage to write this because they forcefully call to mind all that we have to lose. Indeed, it is the stark contrast between the creative life force of these works and the terrible threat hanging over us that sharpens my focus.
We live in a time in which we are called to stand on the right side of history—and to speak up. If we are to do so with intelligence and wisdom, we must first open our eyes to all we are encouraged not to see and consider.
In 2016 I decisively severed my ties with the political party I had been loyal to for forty years. It freed me in ways I could not have imagined. Instead of continuing to cast stones at the opposite party, blaming it for every ill and evil, I turned my gaze inward to my former political home and found it full of corruption and hypocrisy. I found it every bit the fraternal twin of the other political party.
My solidarity is no longer with a political party but with my fellow citizens. My allegiance is no longer to my country but to humanity. And I see and hear, if not perfectly, more clearly for it.
Death is a certainty, but war is not. We dance on a knife’s edge every day, never knowing which will be our last. So let our dance be as beautiful and meaningful as it can be. In whatever way we can, we must raise our voices against this madness as we celebrate and honor all that matters.
Which is to say life and love and all our beautiful creations.
* * *
This was a difficult piece for me to write. In part, because I am always conscious of not wanting to upset or alienate readers. But we live in a particularly alienating and upsetting time and the things I have written about weigh much on my mind. The paintings featured here give me joy and lessen the sadness pressing on my heart. I am grateful that Steve and Mike agreed to share their paintings on Our Journey.
Thank you my friends.
Note: For those interested in independent, non-partisan reporting on foreign affairs I recommend Consortium News and Responsible Statecraft among others. Consortium News was founded by the late Robert Perry who famously said, “I don’t care what the truth is, I just care what the truth is.” Australian commentator Caitlin Johnstone is unequaled in her dissections of the U.S. military empire and the use of propaganda to manufacture consent.