It’s the dread. I feel it. Do you? A deep down darkness
within. Throbbing some days. Cold sweats on others. What is it and why?
I’ve had these sensations now for over a week. I keep saying
to myself that I need to get over it, but I can’t shake the feeling. I worry. I
fret. I stew. I write this blog to vent steam.
This is what it feels like in my world. I am a reasonable
person fairly well educated. Enough educated to know I don’t know the full
score on anything, really; this feeds the need to read more, think more, engage
others in discussion and hopefully find some resting place for the mind on many
issues.
The many issues. So many that are important. So many that
will be building blocks toward a happier life for many other people. Building
blocks, you know, those things that we all need to construct worthwhile lives
and routines that lead us somewhere other than a lonely grave or a struggling
existence.
I think of the Syrian refugee who starkly knows his life of
before is over forever. His home is gone – blasted to bits. His parents are
dead – also blasted to bits. His sister is alive but without one leg and part
of an arm. She is scared – and scarred. She is often found whimpering in her
bed – cot really, in the open room once used as a classroom, now a temporary
housing unit for orphaned kids.
This refugee and his sister. They cling to community adults
who plan an escape. They carefully map out their route, from this building to a
neighboring bombed out suburb, just 8 blocks away, but now ignored by both
government forces and the rebels. There is a pathway there that will get them
to safe retreat into the hills and then over them to the sea. Will boats be
there for passage away?
That’s where the hope comes into the picture. There are
friends in other countries plotting to help refugees depart their native land
now torn asunder by bombs, starvation, no medical help, blood and futility. And
perfidy don’t forget. No, don’t forget the traitors of this land that helped
destroy it for ages to come. The trust will not soon return here. So the
refugee seeks refuge.
They do find boats. They carefully make it to a safe
departure point in a neighboring country. From there they make it across the Mediterranean to a land of liberty. Greece , or Italy . But they are rebuffed. They
are rerouted to another country willing to take them. But they are rebuffed
again, and again, and again. No safe refuge is there. But a return is
unthinkable. Certain death and despoliation of all things held dear. No; no
return to such ‘homeland’ is possible. It no longer exists; perhaps not even in
memory so horrid it is in reality.
So the global community is now his refuge. The United
Nations? America ?
South America ? Russia ? Maylasia? Where Oh God can
I and my people go? Where will they be welcome like the Good Samaritan in the
white bible? Where is there hope and love and caring? When will this be mine?
Dread as a Syrian. Dread for the Syrian. Dread for the
nation’s too afraid and too inhospitable to open their arms to Syrians. For
fear of perfidy and enemy combatants penetrating their defenses! What on earth
is this? Their dread overpowers our dread?
Is that true? Are they more afraid than we? They have not
lost their homes. They have not lost their families. They have not lost their
culture and homeland and central core of identity by traitors living amongst
them. We have lost all of that. They only fear such loss and see us as the
vehicle of loss for them?
Dread. I get it now. I know dread. The Syrian dread. And the
dread of every émigré and refugee ever to wander the earth seeking safety among
loving fellow human beings. But the world has dread of the same thing. They no
not know who to trust. Even among their own countrymen who have turned blind
eyes to the needy.
Instead they flock to their churches and temples and
synagogues and chapels and pray for peace and refuge. From what I ask? From
what do they dread? As much as the Syrian refugee? Or the immigrant family
seeking life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Where has the great portal
of future gone? Where is that statue that welcomes ‘the hungry, the tired and
poor masses yearning to break free’?
I forget where that statue is. She holds not a bible nor a
beacon of welcome. She, like Lady Justice, is blindfolded now and her arms are
drooping in defeat.
This is what I dread. An America – my America – too afraid
to stand tall and resist the injustice of the world and repel the very
immigrant bloodlines that have made our nation great through nearly 400 years
of history. Not always good years, but almost always leading in the right
direction.
When did we lose our way? Where did we lose our way? Why did
we lose our way?
Thanksgiving or soul searching? Somehow these are the same
to me these days.
Oh the dread!
December 1, 2016
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