letter back at a petition for prayer in the schools
Posted: May 20th, 2005, 4:46 pm
When I first got to Vietnam, I went out to this town next to the Base at Cam Ranh with some guys from the squadron. We had some money for three schools. The first thing I remember seeing was a church with a swastica at the steeple. I'm thinking, Nazis? They said it was a Buddhist symbol.
We went to three schools, a Buddhist, a public, and a Catholic.
The Buddhist one I remember well. We went into a compound all in bamboo. The fence was this small 1 room building, woven bamboo. There was a long table and chairs and a single book. We sat down. This tall young monk came in, carrying a large pitcher of lemonaide and some glasses.
This guy was alien to us. He was shaved bald, had high cheekbones, slanted eyes, a yellow ochre robe, and long curved fingernails. He kept his hands in a prayerful manner, nails and fingers extended overlapping. We were all gawking, mouths agape. There was a closeby artillery gun shooting, the Korean Army shooting off at the mountain. The building shook everything shook, the lemonaide was shaking too. This monk looked like a Jedi. His face was calm, yet poised, with a certain tension underlying it all, yet a sensation of radiance surrounded him. I was at the other end of the table. I walked up to him, bowed, and met his eyes for a second. Why, I cannot say. I wanted to overcome the awkwardness and tell him by body language and my behavior that I thought he was OK and I wanted to say so. I guess.
The book laying there was a hardback small yellow book, with a map of Vietnam on it, the entire Vietnam, and Vietnamese words. The monk said to me "Parlez-vous le Français ? " I said "¿Español?" Then he said to me, in French, " géographie de Viêtnam." I nodded, and some kind of understanding passed between us. Then the guys wanted to go, the money haven been presented. They piled out fast and loaded into the truck. We all had either pistols or M-16's. I stopped at the gate, turned around, and saw the monk standing there in the blazing sunlight. We bowed. They guys were yelling, waving at me to go. Later one of the guys said they were afraid they had lost me to the Buddhists!
A few months later, before I had upgraded to AC, we had flown into Fire Base Snuffy, Djamap, an artillery base on the Cambodian border about 100 miles north north-east of Saigon. It was noteable because it had a double artillery compound with guns at the north and south ends, They had to hold fire on the south gun and we'd land to the north, later they'd again hold the south gun and we'd take off to the south. Anyhow, I was standing around outside the plane at the base while they were offloading the darned big bullets, artillery shells, and I saw this red bearded little dude sitting on a pile of dirt. He waved me over. He was in fatigues. I saw a black Star of David on his chest. He was a Jewish chaplain. He asked me, "What's your name?" I said, "Jim." and then I lost sense of time and place, and realised as an outsider to that place, I was bored with it all. It was not a great adventure. The base in the jungle at the edge of a great expanse of defoliation and wasteland was beyond my comprehension. It made no sense to me. Then I came to, looked at the chaplain and small chatted. Then we split.
When I was at the end of my tour, my rating officer, a captain gave me a ten on a scale of ten. And he told me, "I'm a Christian and I want to be a general, and in order to become a general, I have to fly a plane with weapons." So he volunteered to fly B-52 bombers.
A year later, my next rating was a one on a scale of ten and my rating officer, a major in my assigned squadron of tankers, wrote "the leutenant is concentrating so much on disruption that his military duties are lacking." I was going to some Quaker meetings then. I was protesting the ongoing bombing, the war.
Now, some 30 plus years later, I look back and wonder about my initial conditioning, how I was inducted into a structured, view of reality.
I am somewhat puzzled about what is meant by allowing prayers in schools. Yet I suspect that it is really an attempt to impose conservative orthodoxy upon an unwilling public. Much like the indoctrination of subservience to the all powerful commander in cheif, the entrenched political beauracracy, the reinforced endowment of the wealthy via the military industrial complex, the real ideology at work, without compassion for the less fortunate, the different, the non-conforming,or the unwilling.
So it is the organised predominating prayer that I am against. Making time for prayers, quiet time is all well and good, and prayer groups can form as a voluntary practice within that scope of set aside time, but to ask for legally sanctioned state school time for dominant culture straight orthodox Christanity to be broadcast either over loud speakers, intercom, or at the behest of the teacher in class, or at student assemblies is not right. We are a multi-cultural society. Some prayerful messages are allowable, but not to the exclusion of other religious traditions. They should be inclusive and sensitive utterances, appealing to the universal.
Yet the narrow minded orthodoxies will bring about increasing diviseveness and conflict, the revelatory rapture fantasy land of the apocolypse. May the Force be with us, shining through the blunted vision of our pre-conditioned small selves, that we might mind the light.
We went to three schools, a Buddhist, a public, and a Catholic.
The Buddhist one I remember well. We went into a compound all in bamboo. The fence was this small 1 room building, woven bamboo. There was a long table and chairs and a single book. We sat down. This tall young monk came in, carrying a large pitcher of lemonaide and some glasses.
This guy was alien to us. He was shaved bald, had high cheekbones, slanted eyes, a yellow ochre robe, and long curved fingernails. He kept his hands in a prayerful manner, nails and fingers extended overlapping. We were all gawking, mouths agape. There was a closeby artillery gun shooting, the Korean Army shooting off at the mountain. The building shook everything shook, the lemonaide was shaking too. This monk looked like a Jedi. His face was calm, yet poised, with a certain tension underlying it all, yet a sensation of radiance surrounded him. I was at the other end of the table. I walked up to him, bowed, and met his eyes for a second. Why, I cannot say. I wanted to overcome the awkwardness and tell him by body language and my behavior that I thought he was OK and I wanted to say so. I guess.
The book laying there was a hardback small yellow book, with a map of Vietnam on it, the entire Vietnam, and Vietnamese words. The monk said to me "Parlez-vous le Français ? " I said "¿Español?" Then he said to me, in French, " géographie de Viêtnam." I nodded, and some kind of understanding passed between us. Then the guys wanted to go, the money haven been presented. They piled out fast and loaded into the truck. We all had either pistols or M-16's. I stopped at the gate, turned around, and saw the monk standing there in the blazing sunlight. We bowed. They guys were yelling, waving at me to go. Later one of the guys said they were afraid they had lost me to the Buddhists!
A few months later, before I had upgraded to AC, we had flown into Fire Base Snuffy, Djamap, an artillery base on the Cambodian border about 100 miles north north-east of Saigon. It was noteable because it had a double artillery compound with guns at the north and south ends, They had to hold fire on the south gun and we'd land to the north, later they'd again hold the south gun and we'd take off to the south. Anyhow, I was standing around outside the plane at the base while they were offloading the darned big bullets, artillery shells, and I saw this red bearded little dude sitting on a pile of dirt. He waved me over. He was in fatigues. I saw a black Star of David on his chest. He was a Jewish chaplain. He asked me, "What's your name?" I said, "Jim." and then I lost sense of time and place, and realised as an outsider to that place, I was bored with it all. It was not a great adventure. The base in the jungle at the edge of a great expanse of defoliation and wasteland was beyond my comprehension. It made no sense to me. Then I came to, looked at the chaplain and small chatted. Then we split.
When I was at the end of my tour, my rating officer, a captain gave me a ten on a scale of ten. And he told me, "I'm a Christian and I want to be a general, and in order to become a general, I have to fly a plane with weapons." So he volunteered to fly B-52 bombers.
A year later, my next rating was a one on a scale of ten and my rating officer, a major in my assigned squadron of tankers, wrote "the leutenant is concentrating so much on disruption that his military duties are lacking." I was going to some Quaker meetings then. I was protesting the ongoing bombing, the war.
Now, some 30 plus years later, I look back and wonder about my initial conditioning, how I was inducted into a structured, view of reality.
I am somewhat puzzled about what is meant by allowing prayers in schools. Yet I suspect that it is really an attempt to impose conservative orthodoxy upon an unwilling public. Much like the indoctrination of subservience to the all powerful commander in cheif, the entrenched political beauracracy, the reinforced endowment of the wealthy via the military industrial complex, the real ideology at work, without compassion for the less fortunate, the different, the non-conforming,or the unwilling.
So it is the organised predominating prayer that I am against. Making time for prayers, quiet time is all well and good, and prayer groups can form as a voluntary practice within that scope of set aside time, but to ask for legally sanctioned state school time for dominant culture straight orthodox Christanity to be broadcast either over loud speakers, intercom, or at the behest of the teacher in class, or at student assemblies is not right. We are a multi-cultural society. Some prayerful messages are allowable, but not to the exclusion of other religious traditions. They should be inclusive and sensitive utterances, appealing to the universal.
Yet the narrow minded orthodoxies will bring about increasing diviseveness and conflict, the revelatory rapture fantasy land of the apocolypse. May the Force be with us, shining through the blunted vision of our pre-conditioned small selves, that we might mind the light.