I Lost My Voice . . .

  . . .  because of summer cold’s cough. Its been gone for three days and the experience of trying to communicate amongst four children eight and under is awkward. They have a tough time waiting for me to croak out what’s on my mind. Talking to Doug is equally frustrating. I can’t talk on the phone, either.  Somehow, the effort required to get the words out makes me look cranky – well, after having to repeat myself 2 or 3 times, I am crabby.

Not being able to make myself heard because of a stupid virus, however made me think of people who can’t make themselves heard because of the wars raging around the world – and in American cities, like Chicago and New York City, and Baltimore. I can’t always keep the countries or combatants straight – and I don’t understand why human beings shoot into crowds of people hoping to hit their enemy.

 

The Light Shines in the Darkness

But I see the images of those who cannot make themselves heard and have been caught in crossfire so virulent that rational men and women apparently cannot stop.

In a few days, my voice should return – but what of the voices silenced in fighting in the Gaza Strip . . . Sudan . . . Ukraine . . . the drug wars, the gang wars . . . abortion?

·      Sometimes I think it should be a rule of war that you have to see somebody up close and get to know him before you can shoot him. ~M*A*S*H, Colonel Potter

·      Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the clouds of war, it is humanity hanging on a cross of iron. ~Dwight D. Eisenhower, speech, American Society of Newspaper Editors, 16 April 1953

·      What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world. ~Robert E. Lee, letter to his wife, 1864

*Quotes are from quotegarden.com.