Marian Theology and the War In Iraq
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the various conflicts we’ve found ourselves militarily involved in, particularly as they relate to my personal views on war and peace. For me, the war is rather personal. It’s not some abstraction, it’s people I love going away from me for long periods of time. It’s people I love perhaps not coming back. So far it hasn’t been any family members (I’m lucky enough to not have any family in the military), but it has meant two close friends of mine. One is in Afghanistan, and the other is currently in the heart of Baghdad.
I don’t like this. When I think about it, it just doesn’t belong in my world. It’s almost surreal. Kjirstin should not be in Baghdad. Kjirstin should be home (note: when I say home I mean here in Dayton with me, not in Washington state where she’s from or in Arizona with her parents – yeah, I’m a little self-centered), getting ready to meet me for dinner or reading books in her apartment with her cats. What is she doing in Iraq, with gunfire outside her bedroom and a combat helmet stashed beside her desk while she works? For me there is a fundamental disconnect there. Something is not right in the world.
Today it ocurred to me that this is possibly part of what Mary felt when she stood at the foot of the cross. The world might have suddenly not made any sense to her at all. What was her son, her little baby, her darling one around whom her whole world revolved, doing up there nailed to that wood? How could those hands that she washed and held now have pieces of metal stuck through them? It would have seemed just utterly wrong, that things were not right in the world and perhaps would never be right again.
However, the truth is that in that moment when things might have seemed so wrong, the whole world was being put right. After millenia of things-going-awry the cosmos was about to become correctly ordered for the first time. And I guess that’s where I have my hope. I don’t like seperation. I don’t like knowing that those I love are in danger. I don’t like the accumulation of sin that has made it necessary for my friends to be there. But perhaps, like Christ’s suffering on the cross gave humanity its great chance at salvation, the work my friends are doing might give the people they work with a chance at a better life. So I’ll wait, like Mary, and trust, like Mary. God’s will will be done. While we have heaven no seperation is forever. “Behold the handmaid of the Lord. May it be done unto me according to thy word.”
It’s weird to think that my life would be affecting others like you, B . . . Here I am, albeit in the heart of Baghdad, feeling as though I’m still not doing enough. I think that I would probably have to be in the heart of the firefight, explosions resounding all around me, directly taking on the people who hate us and want to destroy our country, in order to feel like I was doing enough. (And annoyingly, I probably wouldn’t be very good at that, judging from my abysmal abilities with video games.)
The point is, you remind me that God calls us each to our specific callings–vocations, if you will–in such a way that we are becoming more and more ourselves, the people God created us to be. For you, this may mean some Marian-style suffering as you watch people around you in danger and/or hurting . . .
And I think for me, it may mean that, somehow like Peter, I’ll be rushing into situations in a nigh-foolhardy way. I can see myself cutting off that soldier’s ear and being reprimanded for it . . . and getting caught up in the heat of the moment and thinking it was “good OpSec” to deny the Lord . . . and regretting it the rest of my life . . .
You’ve made me think, girl! Keep updating this site–it’s interesting stuff!