Notwithstanding by Steve Lehman

I am a pacifist, not with standing, only a pacifist layman. As a kid I went to a pacifist Church, and contemplated non-resistance to evil, the inscrutable heart of Jesus, irrelevant to organized religion. Then nukes made such madness not only logical, but necessary. I was dunked in a holy tank: bubbles rising from my ears popped the surface tension, creating a blessed, fog enshrouded limbo, through which I still grope, now armed and encumbered with learning and experience. Sometimes, I am a closet pacifist, ashamed of the accusation of cowardice, or a meek schlepper for arrogant autocrats, clogged heart choking on humility. Sometimes I want to punch a real fist through my pacifist aspirations. Sometimes I do, falling prey to endemic Christian hypocrisy. But notwithstanding the foehn or the full moon, or the politics of patriotism; notwithstanding my children get tortured too much, or murdered, or I fall in love with Lady Macbeth and start lusting for eyes and teeth, revenge and power; yes, the weakness of the flesh to the contrary notwithstanding, and that willing spirit still standing with the truth, not understood upon this revolving Earth, dizzily dropping toward doom through the vacuum of eternal space . . . I am a pacifist. Steve Lehman