Tyler's Turn Blog

A couple weeks ago, a friend's eighty-pound dog nearly succeeded in killing my eleven-pound pinny-poo, Lucia. My dog will be okay, but it was a pretty harrowing experience — there was a point when she passed out and I thought she had died, and another when she began rasping for breath and I thought she would die in my lap on the way to the vet.

For the next night or two, I had a hard time sleeping. According to my spouse's employees (who are all social workers), I was suffering from Acute Stress Disorder (ASD), a DSM-IV diagnosis.

I wrote about how I dealt with my ASD for the online devotional Be Still. The piece is written for a specifically Christian audience, so I won't post it here, but I thought I'd link to it anyway.

A friend was horrified by my cavalier attitude toward Saddam's execution. And another friend told me this morning how depressed he is that our country continues to participate in violence.

I do wish we could have handled Saddam Hussein differently (the whole thing — from the war to the execution — is not what I would have wanted). However, watching HBO's Rome so shortly before the execution gave me a historical perspective that helps me feel more hopeful about humanity than my fellow believers in non-violence.

We don't live in an ideal world (by any stretch of the imagination), but we're learning some lessons. Most of the developed world no longer performs executions, and even this execution was less brutal than it could have been (and less brutal than many people wanted it to be).

I am afraid we're at the beginning of a denominational war in the near east, similar to the Thirty Years War in Europe. But, assuming we don't destroy the planet, I think we'll survive this next war, and humanity will continue to grow away from our violent heritage.

That's why non-violence is so important. Through our everyday choices, we can be part of the energy that will eventually move humanity away from things like the brutal murder of Julius Caesar and toward the "peaceable kingdom" envisioned in Isaiah 11.

Yesterday, I watched the Season One finale of HBO's Rome, in which Julius Caesar is murdered on the Senate floor. It's a brutal and bloody scene. Then, right before I went to bed, I read Plutarch's account of the same scene (part of the fun of HBO's Rome is seeing how close they hold to the history). Here's part of Plutarch's account:

But those who had prepared themselves for the murder bared each of them his dagger, and Caesar, hemmed in on all sides, whichever way he turned confronting blows of weapons aimed at his face and eyes, driven hither and thither like a wild beast, was entangled in the hands of all; for all had to take part in the sacrifice and taste of the slaughter. Therefore Brutus also gave him one blow in the groin. And it is said by some writers that although Caesar defended himself against the rest and darted this way and that and cried aloud, when he saw that Brutus had drawn his dagger, he pulled his toga down over his head and sank, either by chance or because pushed there by his murderers, against the pedestal on which the statue of Pompey stood. And the pedestal was drenched with his blood, so that one might have thought that Pompey himself was presiding over this vengeance upon his enemy, who now lay prostrate at his feet, quivering from a multitude of wounds. For it is said that he received twenty-three; and many of the conspirators were wounded by one another, as they struggled to plant all those blows in one body.

Now, this morning, we have the news of Saddam Hussein's execution, and I'm struck by the differences between the two men's experiences. Saddam's end seems staid and sterile by comparison to the stabbing death of Julius Caesar. I'm still opposed to the death penalty (even for Saddam Hussein), but I think he got off pretty easy — Twenty-five years of living in the lap of luxury, followed by a couple years of hiding, a short time in prison, and a speedy dispatch at sixty-nine. Not as easy as Pinochet, but not too bad, all things told.

In the Christian Liturgical Calendar, today is Childermas, also known as the "Feast of the Innocents." It's the day during the Twelve Days of Christmas* when we remember the slaughter of the children of Bethlehem by King Herod. In the Secular Liturgical Calendar (for lack of a better name), this Saturday is World Healing Day, when we remember all the people in the world who need healing.

Today, I'm thinking about the children around the world who continue to be hurt and killed by those in power. I'm praying for healing for the children of Rwanda, Darfur, Iraq, Iran, Zimbabwe, and North Korea.

I'm also praying for the scores of children who suffer from our government's well-intended sanctions regimes. As I wrote in July of 2004, I almost died of dysentery when I was child, and I feel a particular kinship with the children who lack clean drinking water because our sanctions make it impossible for their governments to adequately maintain their water purification plants. I also feel an affinity for the refugee children living in squalid camps -- particularly those in Africa, my first home.

Of course, there are also the children in my neighborhood who suffer because of their parents' bad choices (or outright abuse), and I do what I can for those within my sphere of influence. But today I'm thinking more globally. I'm sending my prayers out to the world's "innocents," be they in Bethlehem or Baghdad.

* The Twelve Days of Christmas are the days between Christmas and Epiphany, inclusive — that is, Christmas and the eleven days following.