We are grieving the third anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Three years of horror, trauma, killing, war crimes, destruction, genocide, child kidnapping, and corrupt, leadership and gross misinformation and propaganda. To paraphrase Oleksandr Mykhed, this is a prayer ‘about things one can never forget. Or forgive.’ (2024:xi)
I feel inadequate writing about pain and the horror of war. I have been fortunate not having experienced this horror. I reach for words used by others who have known the inhumanity of the enemy. The one who has chosen to dehumanise and obliterate the evidence of the ‘other’; the sheer evil encapsulated by unbounded death, destruction and the cataclysmic glee at the potential of Armageddon.
Hannah Arendt (1992) spoke of the banality of evil, as the evildoer lives an ordinary life, simply focussed on unmaking the lives, stories and history of others. The lack of imagination and inability to see the temptation of death bringing about profit in annihilation which becomes the enabler for the hatreds, racism, greed, and desire for power. Adolf Eichmann would go home at the end of a working day in the Third Reich, and love his children, play the piano and enjoy civilised company. He was untouched by his grotesque working out and smooth efficiencies designed into his system and processes of the Final Solution for all the Jews. The processes and systems were smoothed out by the establishment of a high functioning bureaucracy ensuring people involved in the death of millions and the payment in blood and the looting of their possessions were able to discount, ignore and deny any moral, human connection, and they did not feel responsible for their roles in the killing machines.
Such stories abound, in the behaviour during the Rwanda genocide, the Serbian Bosnian massacres, the treatment of black South Africans during Apartheid, our own Australian stories of the massacres and enslavement of the Aborigines so long denied, the tyrants in Argentina, Chile, in India, in Afghanistan, in Israel and Gaza and now, once again it is beginning in the USA. The scapegoat is found, the blame is laid, the killing spree is begun and the bodies will pile up until we’re choking on death and the dance has to slow down so all can draw breath. (Girard: 1986, 1999)
The penitential rite of seeking forgiveness, after acting too late, because not enough self-interest or gain was to be had is creating shame and some sense of guilt; meaning it is too little, too late – in Rwanda, Yugoslavia, Cambodia and Gaza. Where are the world’s institutions – the UN, the World Bank, NATO?
War permeates all lives for generations to come; we are changed forever. Children are traumatised, they start to play games reflecting the war, their drawings and writings and language change forever. They can’t unsee the horrors they’ve seen. Domestic animals, wild creatures, the environment are destroyed. Creation becomes unimaginable. Art, literature, beauty, innocence are victims in the rubble. Free speech, independent reporting are casualties. Poetry becomes a weapon of war. Words become bullets. Language becomes redefined to empty out the horror, to make it banal, meaningless, unattributable and so it loses its capacity to disturb the peace of war.
Profits grows fat and obese in war as people benefit from the carnage, the illegality, as law loses its bite and rules are ignored. Who cares? Death in large quantities is a money making machine as weapons are stockpiled like dead bodies in mass graves. Concentration camps, prisons, gulags and torture chambers spread like viruses which imprison, oppress, silence and disappear life, hope and justice. Nationalism removes independence and autonomy. Citizenship is waged as a war, a price to be paid in death. Flags become signifiers of the flavour death, not life.
Nationalism of one kind or another was the cause of most of the genocide of the twentieth century. Flags are bits of coloured cloth that governments use first to shrink-wrap people’s minds and then as ceremonial shrouds to bury the dead. (Roy 2003:47)
Religion becomes a loyal servant of the state, the ritualising of prayers of peace where the tyrant must be the winner leaves Jesus in the tomb, with no hope of resurrection here. God lies waiting in their souls for prayer. Forever destined to be in Saturday Eve’s tomb.
Out of such pain, comes this prayer:
‘Our Father, are You in heaven?
Are You on earth?
All-Powerful, why are You allowing these horrors?
Let Your military administration come and count the deadly sins.
Thy will be done, though we will not turn the other cheek.
Give to the occupies our daily bread and water.
Save the souls of the mass graves.
Give us strength and let this land flourish.
Strengthen our hands and protect us from missiles.
And if, Father, You have prepared hell for us, then first purge these unclean legions in it.
And lead us not into the temptation of forgiveness. But deliver us from evil.’
(Mykhed 2024:79)
We offer such pain to The Christ, to Jesus who hung on the cross, tortured, betrayed, unjustly tried and murdered.
This is not an attempt to understand, translate, transform, seek peace. We sit in the dust of death and pray with empty hearts and minds. ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?’
Primo Levy rightly points out, as does Vaclav Havel, if you have not been there you cannot judge, condemn, absolve or deny. You have no right to sit in judgement. Only God in the dust, in prayer, broken, bleeding, dead.
The unspeakable nature of grief leaves us in Saturday’s Easter Eve, in the tomb, no resurrection, unimaginable and always dark, without light.
Arendt says that the killing does eventually stop, and there will always be a witness, ‘there are no black holes in history’. I wonder sometimes.
Our prayer for the people of Ukraine this day and always: and, for all who are on the wrong side of peace:
Creator God, Painbearer, Life giver,
Your will be done, filled with justice and peace on earth,
And as it is in your creation across the universe, and in this small hell hole now;
May the world be turned upside down and restored to your way
Be our witness, testify for us
Feed us with compassion, mercy, justice, healing and hope,
Show us your love this day and always,
And everywhere for all who are broken and breaking
Forgive us and help us to find your peace
As you forgive those whom we hate
Save us, save us, save us,
Deliver us from this pain and grief and the evil of death bought by others,
For it is all yours, this unholy mess and sheer wickedness and if love is the only way, then help us on your way. Now and always. Amen.
References
Arendt, H.1992. Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil. Penguin Group, England
Chomsky, N. Pappe, I. 2015. On Palestine. Penguin Random House, UK
Chomsky,N., Polychroniou, C.J. 2023. Illegitimate Authority. Penguin Books, UK
Fidler, R. 2016. Ghost Empire. ABC Books, HarperCollins Sydney
Girard, R. 1986, The Scapegoat. The John Hopkins University Press. USA
Girard, R. 1999. I See Satan Fall Like Lightening.
Havel, V. 1990. Disturbing the Peace. Alfred A. Knopf New York
Klein, N. 2007. The Shock Doctrine. Allen Lane, Penguin Group, Australia
Levi, P. 1989. The Drowned and the Saved. Abacus, London UK.
Mykhed, O. 2024. The Language of War. Penguin Random House UK.
Roy, A. 2003. War Talk. South End Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA
Ibid, 2002. The Algebra of Infinite Justice. Flamingo, HarperCollins Publishers, London
Ibid, 2004. The Cheque-Book and the Cruise Missile. Harper Perennial, HarperCollins, London