Fathers Day

When you exchange your loving words, hugs and meals tonight, for just a second, stop and be thankful for each other and the fact that you don’t live in Palestine or in other nations in the Middle East, parts of Africa and South Asia or elsewhere where families have been destroyed, children slaughtered, fathers disappeared and daughters stolen or sold as so much the “need” of men in war, in fights started, funded and perpetuated by those who hang on to deadly and dated notions of racial and cultural superiority or religious supremacy-because they can, because we let them.

Under the false wrap of freedom and “enlightened” democracy, today’s crusade continues to a beat largely driven by a “free-market” Western and Judeo-Christian plunder and tradition that began in these regions well more than a century ago largely by white men. Today It continues with their sons who now find themselves desperate to hang on to what’s left of their inherited neo-colonial stretch through bombs dropped under their own flags or those flown by their surrogate states- states themselves desperate to stop a tsunami of change that will sweep away their House along with the House of McDonalds and every other false idol erected on lands owned by others who see their lives and world in a different light. And are willing to take it back.

Tonight walk into your kids’ bedroom, stop and watch them as they sleep safe and happy. You know, that little smile that says hi to you even with closed eyes; its warm, it knows no limits- surely it brings a smile to your face as well. And what of that little body flutter as they dream dreams that for them may very well become reality under the watchful, caring and protective eyes of their dad. Can you hear their laughter? See their tears as they fall and break a toy? See them grow before your very eyes? Await nervously as they come home from their first date?

Now, imagine their beds empty, covered with stone or dust and blood- your wife wailing as they are laid to rest, screaming out “why, why, why” . . . as she yanks her hair from her flailing head. Or picture them walking dazed, aimless, alone in a refugee camp, or hungry and lost wandering down broken streets crying out for lost dead parents- mom and dad slaughtered by flags and anthems and carved artificial borders built on theft that have no meaning or place anywhere but, perhaps, the soulless states from which they have come- if then.

Happy Father’s Day.

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