Wisdom According to Schwarzkopf

It is refreshing to be able to post something positive and wise from a US Army General.

Remembering War

As there are fewer surviving voices able to speak to us from firsthand experience of those wars we call “World Wars”, it is important that we hear those voices that can still share a story of living through the particular horror of those terrible conflicts that brought such untold suffering to the human community.

Children and Remembrance Day

How do you speak to children about Remembrance Day? What message might be beneficial to little people on this difficult day? How might that message be effectively communicated?

The Questions of War

Faced with the utter horror of war, it is tempting to hope we might be able to blunt the pain by finding some satisfying explanation for the unimaginable terror of armed conflict or by manufacturing a redemptive outcome that makes the violence and suffering feel worthwhile – neither is possible….

to read this post please visit http://blogs.timescolonist.com/2012/11/11/the-questions-of-war/

“Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream”

Shane Clairborne and Ben Cohen are teaming up to create an event they are calling “Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream.”

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/shane-claiborne/jesus-bombs-and-ice-cream_b_922149.html

“Jesus, Bombs, and Ice Cream” is scheduled to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the bombing of the World Trade Towers in New York City on September 11. The vision is to create an event that “will be a night of reconciliation and of grace.”

Babi Yar #1

The documentary novel Babi Yar: A Document in the Form of a Novel by Anatoli Kuznetsov tells the harrowing story of the German occupation of Ukraine, including the massacre of thousands of people in the Babi Yar ravine outside Kiev.

Messy Life

The main character in the second half of Irene Nemirovsky’s novel Suite Francaiseis a young French woman named Lucile. She lives with her mother-in-law, Madame Angellier, in a large house in a farming village outside Paris. It is 1941, Lucile’s husband is away fighting the Germans who have occupied France.

Life becomes complicated for Lucile and her mother-in-law when a German officer is billeted in their home. Madame Angellier is deeply suspicious and resentful of her daughter-in-law’s growing relationship with the enemy officer living in her house. The relationship between Lucile and Madame Angellier becomes increasingly strained throughout the second half of the book.

You Are Not Human

Most of us, when we think about the Holocaust, probably think of ghettos, transport trains, concentration and extermination camps, gas chambers, crematoria, violent evil Gestapo agents, and monstrously inhuman prison guards.

In her book Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life In Nazi Germany, Marion A. Kaplan demonstrates that the sacrifice of European Jewry began long before the first Jew was locked away behind barbed wire. Kaplan chronicles the daily routine grinding inhumanities that began in 1933 as soon as Hitler came to power in Germany and continued until the War finally brought an end to Nazi brutality.

War and the Church

WAGENINGEN, the Netherlands – More than 100,000 people lined the streets, cheered from rooftops and applauded from windows in this historic Dutch town today, saying thanks to the Canadians who liberated their country 65 years ago.

I have been thinking for some time about the relationship between war and the Church. Today on this 65th anniversary of the liberation of the Netherlands by Canadian troops seems an opportune time to post what I have been thinking.