Another article by my winsome and thoughtful brother on his route from ROTC to pacifism:

I watched a movie not too long ago. It was called “To End All Wars,” a true story about four Allied POWs during WWII who endure harsh treatment from their captors without fighting back. The forgiveness and grace offered by the POWs in the midst of persecution so shocks the captors that a camp-wide revival begins to take place. The film touches on themes about self-sacrificing heroism, the power of forgiveness over hatred, the futile tragedy of war, and God’s way of peace in the midst of it. After watching the movie, I couldn’t help but be reminded of the radical teachings of Jesus and why I decided to get out of the Army: “You have heard that it was said, ‘An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.’ But I say to you, do not resist one who is evil. But if anyone strikes you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also; and if anyone would sue you and take your coat, let him have your cloak as well; and if any one forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles” (Matthew 5:38-41, Revised Standard Version)

So, I suppose, the cat is back in the bag. I’m one of those: One of your classmates with long hair and facial hair worthy of 20 pushups, a lap around the campus, and a stern haircut; One of your classmates who sleeps in until 8, sometimes 9, and wears clothes from H & M and Banana Republic throughout the week. I am an ex-Army ROTC cadet and on my way to becoming a pacifist. There is a certain stigma to being a “quitter” from the Army and definitely for being a pacifist. “Unrealistic”, “naïve,” or “impractical” are terms thrown around to describe pacifists. And there’s no doubt that people look down on me for not staying with the Army and question my motives for doing it for only a year. I joined ROTC at Wheaton because I saw the Army as a way of bringing peace to the conflicted parts of the world by resisting evil. I began to see, however, that there were non-violent ways to do this, and I began to explore what creative resistance to evil looked like. Referring back to Matthew 5. In his article, “Doing Justice to Jesus” preeminent New Testament scholar N.T. Wright has this to say: “Turning the other cheek, going the second mile, and so forth, were not a summons to ‘be a doormat for Jesus’, but were themselves a call to non-violent resistance, not just non-violence”.

The Jewish community at the time when Jesus was saying this had embraced a tradition of holy war, and was seeking vigorously to promote it. Wright also states in his book that, “Jesus in his teaching, and his challenge to Israel, aimed precisely at telling Israel to repent of her militaristic nationalism. Jesus was offering a different way of liberation, a way which affirmed the humanness of the national enemy as well as the destiny of Israel.” Pacifists argue that there are ways to protect others without violence. Action does not have to equivocate to violent action. The Biblical mandate to defend the poor, the orphan, the widow, and the ethnic outcast is not inherently connected to some sort of violence.

The question about war and pacifism is clearly a very emotional and controversial issue. I have wrestled and struggled through it, in theory and in practice. I saw my future go from a potential 4-year commitment fighting in Afghanistan to now, a potential commitment to serving with a church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia fighting to bring food to famine-stricken land.

I began engaging with this issue with pacifists on campus who I deeply respected. They wanted to completely reject war as an option for bringing peace based on the teachings of Jesus. With their help, I began to see war as an uncreative option, and that there is always a third way, that suffering in the name of Christ is better than taking on violence in the face of conflict. It seems to be a very deep part of the Christian tradition. Indeed, Church Father Tertullian said in his Apologeticus that, “the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church”.

I continue to grapple with the fallenness of our world, that there are sinful systems and dictators that must be called to account not only in the next life, but in this life as well. I do not want to be naïve of our world’s brokenness, and I do want to be harshly realistic. But I see people like Jesus, Ghandi, and MLK who used non-violence, and I cannot help but be moved, shaped, inspired to be radically engaged in the volatile parts of the world without a gun in my hand. I continue to pray and study through this profound question and continue to hear Jesus’ prayer ring out in my head: “Your Kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10).

This is a newer song I’ve written for the piano and it’s based off of My Name Is Asher Lev in which Jay and I were ruined momentarily while reading it. We had a discussion about the necessity of venturing outward from familiar traditions and thought in order to embody the creative, generative self that speaks gritty, embodied truth. This incarnate truth enlarges the territories of love and freedom. Both are very dangerous in dark hours, whereby we cling to the warm and cooing truths of others in order to not stare into the possibly grave, mysterious, unanswerable faces of God. So, a small song is due from the challenge of staring into the often unknown-ness of God, in which surprisingly and inadvertently empowers blessing to arise, uncomfortably so, but still arises with the new dawn.

 Go outside from what you know

They’ll protest to keep you home

Wear your discipline round your neck 

And don’t go past the lines in the sand

Because we’re,

bound to safety

We’re hushing all the anxiety

That we may not know, 

we don’t know

Go outside from what you know

You will find skin unnamed

Who will tempt your blood ties

So, step through lines with your home on your back

Because we’re,

staying with purity

We’re nulling all fantasy

That we may not feel, 

we don’t feel

Go, go, won’t you go

Because we’re, 

fighting against beauty

We’re loosing all sensitivity

That we may not weep

For all that’s killing you and me

Go, go, won’t you go

*my rambunctious day in the rain at the park with Steph, Micah,Caleb, and Owen as well as this blog Steph recommended are the muses for this… 

The earth cried today

This is why you were spit out of the winding downward, metallic slope

Your body involuntary

as it flailed to the beckoning birch bed

Shocking laughter

e     n    sue    d

The aged ones locked eyes and bursted

with life while standing on the 

bed of wet tree parts

as the remembrance of

the few frames of unbidden movements

flashed before our faces,

again and       a         ga in

What if we all became 

unseamed in that moment?

Filled with surprise,

covered with earth’s tears and landscapes

while time stopped and the baptized leaves

Rose all around us,

swirling

Lifting us up so,

we could somersault through the

drop    let   s

Then gravity would slowly draw us onto sea of greens

Allowing us to roll down the gentle bank,

missing all of the craggy jaggy

arms and legs of those who exhale air for you and me

Bre eee   ath   e             in

Rest chases us into the cloud’s resting stops

The muddiness dresses us up

We all then prance,

wildly  

But wait,

no, no stop thaaat!

Come here! Listen!

Don’t do thaaat!

Sweet moses.

My dried insides tighten

Loosen

Tighten

Loosen

Ti   gh  t en

Their faces find mine

And, I’m tackled to the ground’s vulernability

with giggles, wet suits, and boots with silly horns

Unseamed

I

Be      come

to them, to me, to the freewheeling experiences of

moments without time and demand

Where elation is our mode of travel

Unseamed as I say “listen to me”

“FBI figures from 2007 show that anti-Latino attacks account for about 8 percent of all hate crimes. About 35 percent of hate crimes were directed at blacks, 16 percent at homosexuals and 13 percent at Jews.”

read story: White Boys’ Homicide

Your eyes have roots in my mouth

Your flushed cheeks have breathed hot air into

my ears

I sit at the feet of those with weathered lots

But, my flesh is standing

Pacing, itching, beating my chest

with loose ends

Later I find,

Your documenting hands have held still the earth

Your darkness has dove into the pit of my stomach

I sit like the one who feels

Feeling the stories of others

But wonder will it ever be mine alone

The scenes, the characters, the deep-seated, freely given expressions of

a felt life

So I will

prick me with ink,

cut off my hair,

strike my wrists from untold pages of separation,

and wail wildly at my homemade wall

Then I ask,

Who is this for?

latest piece–

“Dear Jesus I pray for the ______ family. The mother passed away and it was right before ____’s sweet sixteen birthday. Be with their family Jesus. Amen.”

Sixth grade, Mr. Bosman’s class, my prayer said aloud. 

Mr. Bosman introduced the literature of CS Lewis to my world and helped form my songwriting skills as I attempted to write 100 hundred songs the summer after my year of “sincere prayers for others”. 

During this year, however, I began to grow an acute awareness of being “in” and being “out”. I tended and tilled to the observations and disparities between them and me. 

Prayers with phrases “sweet sixteen” and “dear Jesus” were not exactly extending their hands to the cool kids for friendship and acceptance.

Thus, I tapped into an intense craving within my soul to be located on the top tier of the Timothy Christian pyramid and until I was, life would seem terribly insecure. 

And it was. 

I would look, gawk, and become obsessed with the fittest of the pack and nightly put on imaginary dioramas of a life where I would be the nucleus of THEE group.

As these private peephole dreams  became part of my ritual to attain popularity, I also compromised, for the purpose of adapting, many sweet and endearingly honest things about myself.

My overly stimulated and multi-layered outfits from Marshall’s molted  into bland Stüssy shirts and stuffy sweaters from Abercrombie.

I tried Sketcher’s and got called a “poser” of the skaters.

I tried revealing some cleavage and got called a “poser” of the hot gals.

I tried being hilarious and got called a “blonde” or “clutz”.

Nevertheless I continued to mimic and configure my image into what would be revered as ‘oh so desireable and enviable’ by my class.

Slowly I cast away genuine expressions and sentiments about loving literature, God, and people…and, sadly I flippantly tossed aside wearing floral body suits that provided me with eye-popping wedgies as my baggy jeans hid it all.

These are the beautiful things that I gave up.

Yet.

Yet I still absolutely loved my live-in aunt who had Downs Syndrome and art that dangerously befriended  me and writing music which unearthed the secrets of “me”. Those facets were nearly inextricable from my personhood and unworthy of any type of degradation.

These pockets of tense-filled dilemmas of either abandoning self for the sake of being herded into a safe arena or choosing self with the ensuing emotions of emptiness and loneliness are inevitable and pivotal.

Walking into a crowded room with no one to call your name or being singled out with something shameful to bear or not being deemed as beautiful by those that somehow were given the ultimate criteria are painfully quiet moments that ring with reverberating dissonances of poorly used synthesizers and erratic cymbals, clashing.

The internal circus nightmare.

To silence the lion tamer and the ludicrous trapeze artists we must disown self for the preservation of normalcy, seeming solitude.

But it is not enough. We are haunted by our undealt with pasts.

Remember because,

there is mercy and great reasoning for what we have allowed ourselves to lose. There is strength to gain as we see how desperately willing we were to lose those parts of us, because now we can truly hope to become fuller–brave and unabashed by the quirks and glories of you and me.  Though, one has to recognize the other.

We cannot forget from whence we came.

No, we remember with kindness and understanding and from there we are emboldened, free, and unhindered by the stories that once asked us our lives.

Sometimes I still feel developmentally arrested in those middle school years. I can even hear my bra being snapped and feeling slightly disgusted, but more importantly happy that some nitwit went for my  double-hooked brassiere instead. 

Slowly, though, I realize the cost. At various moments that cost remains more than worth it and I cling to the cost like my identity was the cost and then, a disarmament of sorts invokes within me a puddle of adolescent tears, grieving loss.

And, I remember what was and what is and what could be–not just being “in” somewhere with some people, but being “near” to self and others, others and self and there we experience life abundantly.

A former professor’s (Max King Cap) terrifying and stunning artist statement:

Narrative––hermetic or lavish—is our touchstone and the only artistic strategy capable of uncloaking us to ourselves. It is the visual equivalent of revealed religion. All artworks worthy of consideration are purposing toward the same realization; confession. The moment art attempts philosophy (crudely drawn) or science (sadly naïve) it is an admission of failure, for art will not respond to a Socratic interrogation nor provide data that can be formulated to replicate its revelations. Without a wholehearted investment of the personal, the artwork shall remain a collection of formal contrivances, initially impressive but ultimately vacuous. An artist may imply and an audience might infer but we’ve no protocol proficient––stubborn hope and arrogant insistence are simply signs of panic––in translating the taciturn object into a garish interpretation. The self, alone, is the magnetic pole and the whole of the world is drawn to it. 

Our desire to win praise, lure the unwitting, garner sympathy, or the dozen different façades we mount in order to account ourselves finer than we know ourselves to be are all evidence that we are unfit to recognize, and fearful to tell, the truth. Art attempts to remove these veneers; therefore some nakedness must be attempted in order that the viewer and the artist may stand unprotected before the judgment of our own dubious conscience.

Each life is a negotiation between its ambitions and its fears, an attempt to distance noble flesh from its verso of corrupted meat. So we attempt to balance, head swiveling, divulging each side’s secrets to the other. Art is the transcript of that conversation.