_______________ QUESTIONS _______________
How does it feel to be cut in half
_____ by a sudden burst of machine gun bullets?
What does it feel like at the precise moment
_____ when a bullet enters your eye, and pierces your brain?
Can you imagine having your lower jaw smashed by bullets
_____ and then see its bloody, splintered fragments
__________ drop to the ground ?
What is it like to take a direct hit to the skull?
_____ Would you know that you were dead?
What sensations must a person feel
_____ as his body is being consumed by fire?
What might be the thoughts of someone
_____ just thrown to the ground and kicked,
__________ whose hands have been tied behind his back,
who then gets chained by his heels
_____ to the rear end of a vehicle
__________ about to drag his still-healthy, still-unbroken
_______________ young body over stones, gravel,
____________________ dirt and thorny stubble?
How does it feel to have the flesh ripped off your cheeks?
_____ To have all the flesh on your hands torn off
__________ exposing bones and tendons?
How does it feel to have grit and gravel
_____ embed themselves in your eyes?
How does it feel to be torn
_____ limb from limb by a jeering mob?
Exactly how does it feel to have your head
_____ stomped to jelly by hobnailed boots?
Or your genitalia ripped out by the roots
_____ and stuffed into your screaming mouth?
How does it feel to be smart enough to realize
_____ you are suffering and dying for the sole purpose
__________ of lining the pockets of international bankers,
_______________ global industrialists and the suppliers
____________________ of war materiel with gold?
Exactly how would you react to being held down
_____ and having your teeth kicked down your throat,
__________ your eyes gouged out,
_______________ your ears and your nose sliced off,
____________________ or a glass rod inserted in your urethra
_________________________ and then smashed to pulver?
How would you feel when you are forced to eat
_____ ground glass or drink hydrochloric acid?
How would you feel if you were sodomized by barbarians
_____ then buried up to your neck in sand
__________ and systematically stoned and kicked to death?
How does it feel to be held down and deliberately blinded by acid?
How does it feel to be maimed by “Friendly Fire?
How does it feel to be flayed alive
_____ and then slowly cut to ribands?
How? How? How?
But much more important is
WHY?
__________ WHY?
____________________ WHY?
How, when we need to ask questions like this now more than ever, could we imagine even for a moment we have no need for the healing power and redeeming grace of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?
~ FreeThinke - December 11, 2012
FORMAL NOTICE:
Comments unrelated to the material presented in each daily post will be summarily deleted, UNLESS I, myself, find them of potential value to others, or of particular interest to me, personally.
~ FT
What's up with the morbidity? Did you get up on the wrong side of the bed or this this another you manifesting itself?
ReplyDeleteCame across this item today which relates in some ways to what you have said:
The Shootings, The Globalists and Gun Control: The 2nd Phase of Disarming Americans
http://beyondthephysical.blogspot.ca/2012/12/the-shootings-globalists-and-gun.html
Here in the last words of today's post is the answer to your question, Waylon:
ReplyDeleteHow, when we need to ask questions like this now more than ever, could we imagine even for a moment we have no need for the healing power and redeeming grace of Our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ?
I shared QUESTIONS with an old friend, and she wrote back: TOO STRONG!
Yes. It is, but so is the world in which we must live where things like this happen all the time.
How could we hope to overcome the worst in us without confronting it directly every now and then?
I see today's poem as an excellent companion piece to yesterday's musical offering. The confusion, violence and distress Dupré indicates in The World Awaiting the Savior is echoed in plainer language in today's provocative, deliberately unpleasant poem.
There IS an antidote. There IS a solution, but it could never be implemented universally. It must come to each individually with a change of heart with the realization that SELF-control is the only worthwhile kind. All others imply the establishment of tyranny to enable them to work.
Tyrannical policies have within them the seeds of their own destruction, because out most basic urge and our deepest need is to be free.
The Christ asks us to surrender Self to Him (Truth) as THE means of gaining the liberty we so long for.
A paradox, indeed, but then isn't all existence exactly that?
We keep looking for PHYSICAL or LEGALISTIC solutions to our most basic challenges. I truly believe our only hope lies in nourishing Mind Soul and Spirit with ideals and values based on Truth and Love.
In case you hadn't noticed most people are hostile to Truth, because it rarely flatters them, and therein lie ALL our greatest difficulties.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
~ FT
A very sobering post, FT.
ReplyDeleteI've checked in and read this post several times. It makes me think of Herman Melville's poem "Shiloh."
"... most people are hostile to Truth, because it rarely flatters them, and therein lie ALL our greatest difficulties."
ReplyDeleteIndeed I have noticed that. I take special delight in putting forth uncomfortable truths. Obviously not everybody likes that. But so be it.
I don't see any light at the end of the tunnel unless it's the truth train coming at us.
Merry Christmas to you and your readers.
Go not far from me, O God.
ReplyDeleteCast me not away from Thy Countenance.
Forsake me not when my strength faileth me.
O, let my mouth be filled with Thy praise
That I may sing of Thy Glory all the day long!
Those are the words (as well as I can recollect them) of an anthem by Zingarelli we used to sing in the church choir when I was still in my teens.
I happened to a fragment of it in an episode of Matlock last Sunday where Andy Griffith was directing his church choir.
I hadn't thought of it in years. The last time was when I hastily made a three-part transcription of it for my little choir in a rural parish where we had no tenors.
Every day I thank God for my religious training and all the wonderful experience I've had from singing solos as a boy soprano in an Episcopal boys choir to playing the role of a full-fledged "Kappellmeister," who did his best to emulate Johann Sebastian by writing at least one new piece of service music -- either an anthem, a set of liturgical responses, an organ voluntary, a descant to an old hymn tune, or an alternative accompaniment to a familiar hymn -- every week in the last ten years of my humble 40-odd-year career as a church musician.
The Bible readings each of us took turns sharing each morning in school as soon as we could read meant little at the time -- it was just unexciting routine -- but as the years have gone by and challenges have mounted the training I had as a boy has risen to the surface and stood me in good stead.
I sincerely believe we have lost our way as a nation, because several generations have been deprived of these experiences by Court Edict -- and because popular entertainment and the world of all-pervasive electronic devices that grab our attention and pull us away from one another have cut us off from essential moral and spiritual nourishment.
Powerful stuff you write, FT. Too bad so few pay any attention to it. Lack of popularity is probably a sign of high quality. Maybe you ought to feel flattered?
ReplyDelete------------> Katharine Heartburn
Jesus won't save you from the horror, friend. At least not in this life.
ReplyDeleteSodom and Gomorrah all over again, and yes, I know, I probably spelled it wrong.
ReplyDelete"Jesus won't save you from the horror, friend. At least not in this life."
ReplyDeleteAh! But He already HAS, Jack, -- many many times. Had it not been for Jesus, my life would have been a miserable affair, indeed, and probably would have ended long before now.
Cultivating love for Jesus is not supposed to guarantee us immunity from tribulation. Instead it makes it possible for us to BEAR life's burdens and unspeakable challenges with equanimity and joyful expectation -- even in the worst of circumstances.
That's what the Jews, who rejected Him, never understood. He did not come to subjugate the world. He came to show us how to subjugate the Ego -- the selfish, spiteful, vengeful, divisive, stingy, insensitive, overly acquisitive aspects of our individual selves.
It's an INNER thing.
And I assure you it's NOT a bunch of baloney.
AA, if it matters, I think Gommorrah may contain two m's as well as two r's. We need to look it up, but I can't really see how this poem has much to do with the "Cities of the Plain."
ReplyDeleteIt's about things far more hideous (in my estimation) than general licentiousness and homosexuality. It's an up close and personal look at the worst aspects of "Man's inhumanity to Man."
I'm sorry to have to tell my fundamentalist Christian friends that there are far worse crimes than sexual relations between consenting adults of the same sex. The operant word, of course, is "consenting."
The misapplication of religious doctrine to serve temporal Power Agendas gives organized religion of all sorts a great deal to answer for. (Take another look on this blog at It's the Belligerence, Stupid! posted in the archives for a thorough examination of my views on this sad subject.)