In light of this administration’s insane and illegal attack on Iraq (also the illegal kidnapping of Venezuela’s president and his spouse AND the domestic terrorism operations that ICE and DHS are conducting) I turned to Thomas Merton for some insight and guidance. In his book, Seeds of Destruction, he wrote the following words:

…faith cannot be preserved if reason goes under, and the Church cannot survive if man is destroyed: that is to say if his humanity is utterly debased and mechanized, while he himself remains on earth as the instrument of enormous and unidentified forces like those which press us inexorably to the brink of nuclear war. (p. 243)

This insanity must end! We must find a way to nonviolently confront this administration and demand change. We must come together and have actual dialogue… I pray it isn’t too late. As Merton said in his “Letter to an Innocent Bystander” in his book Raids on the Unspeakable:

If I dare, in these few words, to ask you some direct and personal questions, it is because I address them as much to myself as to you. It is because I am still able to hope that a civil exchange of ideas can take place between two persons—that we have not yet reached the stage where we are all hermetically sealed, each one in the collective arrogance and despair of his own herd. If I seem to be in a hurry to take advantage of the situation that still exists, it is, frankly, because I sometimes feel it may not continue to exist much longer. (p. 53)

I pray that it isn’t too late for this nation to turn around and change its ways. In the words of 1 Peter 3:11, let us (them) turn away from evil and do good; let us (them) seek peace and pursue it.