.Please listen to the song Cruel War, sung by Peter, Paul and Mary, as you read my article below. Click at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fto9ji994JY, then press at the Facebook or e-mail tab at the top or the bottom of this screen, and then at the link back to this blog. As you will soon realize, the song doesn't sing about much cruelty, as the unspoken prayer below does!
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A MULTIPLICITY of deep friendships among people belonging to differing nationalities has been pointed out as a powerful deterrent against wars breaking out between those nations. This is because deep friendships are bonds not quite easily severed in times of misunderstnding and anger. Friends usually have a rich trove of patience and understanding for each other, along with the predisposition to be so forgiving, when it comes to annoying or even downright improper behavior on the part of one another.
Among parties of normal maturity, the longevity of a friendship already forged translates into the strength of reluctance to end that friendship altogether and go into a fullscale quarrel, which is what war inevitably becomes with its intentions of mutual annihilation.
Such longevity and depths of friendship are more practically attainable in circumstances where nationals of one country become long-term or medium-term visitors in another country, freely socialize with their hosts, and often become their bosom friends in relaxed peaceful circumstances. It is also in such circumstances where beyond simple friendships romantic relationships and even stable inter-nationality marriages get developed.
As travels between countries become ever easier and less expensive, there would be bigger numbers of foreign visitors in each of a pair of countries, mostly for purposes of tourism or cultural exchange, business and commerce, education or training, and also employment.
While foreign visitors are there in another country, they are therefore away from their respective homelands and are called “expatriates” or, for short, “expats.” And visitors and hosts often get endeared to one another.
Seldom if ever would people bonded in deep friendships would support a war- orientented self-righteous prayer that was illustrated a little more than a century ago by American satirical writer Samuel Clemens of Tom Sawyer fame, more popularly known as Mark Twain.
Wrote Twain:
IT WAS A TIME of great and exalting excitement.
The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety’s sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.
Sunday morning came — next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams — visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory!
With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths.
The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation
“God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!” Then came the “long” prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory —
An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher’s side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, “Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!”
The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside — which the startled minister did — and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:
“I come from the Throne — bearing a message from Almighty God!” The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. “He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import — that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of — except he pause and think.
“God’s servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two — one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this — keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! Lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor’s crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.
“You have heard your servant’s prayer — the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it — that part which the pastor — and also you in your hearts — fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words:
‘Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!’ That is sufficient. The "whole" of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory—'must' follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!
“O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle — be Thou near them! With them — in spirit — we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it — for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, light their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.
(After a pause…) “Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!” It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.
[Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens) is said to have dictated this “War Prayer” around 1904-05; it was rejected by his publisher, and was found after his death among his unpublished manuscripts. It was first published in 1923 in Albert Bigelow Paine’s anthology, Europe and Elsewhere. The story is in response to a particular war, namely the Philippine- American War, which Twain was staunchly opposing. See Jim Zwick’s page Mark Twain on the Philippines for more of Twain’s writings on the subject. Transcribed by Steven Orso
From my viewpoint as a Filipino, I cannot but marvel at the multitudes of opportunity afforded us to build multi-nationality friendships between my compatriots and the people of other nationalities, with the multitudes of expatriates – foreigners now living in our country and Filipinos now living in theirs.
If even just half of all such opportunities were to be fully utilized in building deep friendships between the visitors and their hosts, all such friendships expanding, rippling off larger and larger, and criscrossing the world would foster enough sincere mutual understanding and goodwill among peoples to deter and automaticaly reject as grossly insane the raging of hundreds of wars big and small. This would go a long, long way in our search for oneness of Humanity manifesting concretely in our own lives of peace, of human development and harmony, of shared innate divinity.
I dare shout out loud to ask us all, as i really want to receive categorical answers: Why, indeed, not???! Is it because we don't really mind trying to engage God in double-talk of futile hypocrity when we fervently pray for war victory?
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