Bullets or Blossoms?

It seemed like just overnight that the first timid white blossoms made their appearance on our old apricot tree. I must remember to look at them every day for their beauty is fleeting. Already the pink cherry tree blossoms are fading. Is their ephemeral nature that makes them so precious?

My attention is drawn away from blossoms to the war scenes on the news. While I’m taking pleasure in the signs of spring, on another continent thousands of refugee families are living in tents on hot, dusty treeless plains; young men are assassinated while I worry about what to serve for dinner; mothers lose sons while I’m just a phone call away from mine. I want to rant in anger at someone, at those responsible. I feel so helpless.

One of our nine-year-old twin granddaughters, while visiting us, happened to see scenes of people huddled in the bombed-out rubble that was once their home. What I remember was her comment asked so innocently: “How can they live like that?” She wanted to know who was fighting and why. Technology brings atrocities into our living rooms and we must find ways to answer children’s questions, answers that we ourselves don’t have.

My husband and I watch the news of racial riots in the States. Since I have not lived in the States for decades, it’s difficult for me to understand the events: fires, shooting, teargas, looting and destruction, some instigated by outsider vandals. “Just like here,” I said to my husband: student protests that begin peacefully and deteriorate into violence at the hands of hooded and masked disfranchised youth.

Anyone up for a giant WORLD MARCH FOR PEACE?