The first thing that happened

  at an attempt to have an interfaith meeting of the minds was two different kinds of Christians hitting each other with picked up protestor sticks. 

  "Come on.  Let's just leave." A group of Academics did.  Wound up at a fast food joint sliding into a conversation anyway prompted by a ham dish called something like Moons Over Miami.  "Speaking of moons," one pensive woman, who'd been a sole family survivor of war where she came from, said, "That's how they know when to get pregnant." 

  "Now I've lost my appetite," a man said.  He sipped the glass of water that had had to be asked for since a lot of water had been being wasted. 

  "There are reasons the Mooslims disagree too." A world travel woman harkened back to what had prompted us to leave and be here. 

  "Everyone's interpreting the holy books their own way!" A student roused from deep thought space. 

  "Yes!  How did you know that?" 

  "Kinda obvious I guess.  I pay attention." 

  The food came.  If Grace was said it was internally.  Private gesture in public.  "Just knowing about the world doesn't solve anything," the student directed the complaint at the world traveler. 

  "That's true.  Yet, it seems to help people stay out of the way." 

  "People will do whatever it is they will do," the man drained his water.  "Hungry yet?" Someone asked.

Wars have many battles.

  In the years of our own Civil war, many battlefields.  Not only the fighting was decisive in coming to union.  Some moments in history are pivotal.  Now everyone in the world is thinking of what the world is doing now. 

Romans 9-12, 

Acts 11 

  Both readings show a relative few believers approaching regions where Jesus was not well known and the culture was very different than notions of loving your neighbor, using your freewill to follow God's Commandments, believing that man/humans are not omnipotent...our attempts and efforts to forge "good" are noble, but not mandate-able.

  I am proud of the Trump administration's perseverance, innovation, and odd-squad way of making progress in this much survival in a weirdly violent world.  And grateful for our service people. 

Robeson singing,

  while someone is peephole camera-eyeing factory workers from the top of a building.  The "footage" will have to be spliced into going films of the day.  A view into the reality between State-made fake "news" and a developing documentary witnessing of the world. 

  Some of the still caring "freaks" cautioned the "popular" kids. 

  An ear full of earrings and studs.  "You know who's not here?"  Sometimes a question disarms, you can maybe get closer to the foot of "the walls".  Kid sloppily, nervously poured orange soda into a paper cup.  Asked: "Who?" Other kids in oxford shirts and collar-tees gave looks like, oh shit, someone talked. 

  "Just so your people know," the freaky-looking girl addressed all "the sheep", "Simon Michael tried to kill himself since y'all made it clear he's not good enough to be one of you." 

  The soda bounced out of the cup as it was put back next to the giant bottle of the bubbly.  "Um, where is he?" 

  "We've got him."  Eyes grew wide. 

It's not a Louisiana Purchase, but

  it is also NOT a "war of choice". 

  In all the rhetoric you can really hear influencers putting their slant on the speaking floor.  Perhaps that's why, in order to stress the importance of issues, people use circus-advertising language in these matters.  When really we are just humans deciding what to do next.  And what to do now.  And what then? 

  Of course if we could agree on some factors we might be able to co-exist.  This is where we get to in all relationships.  

  It helps us to re-forge ourselves to solid in nationhood.  And meet each other as we are.  And maybe honor the basics but not much more at first.  So we can keep working on stuff as we go. 

At first everything was awkward.

  True to our alpha and follow-pack natures we were all momentum. 

  Thinking of ourselves as new men in new clothing, that of living by faith in the Jesus piece, and trying to abide the Ten Commandments was really in friction with the pyramids of what politics and culture had become towards the end of the twentieth century. 

  The stumblingblocks were huge and microscopic.  Would appear in any encounter or in isolation. 

  There were habits and addictions, comfort zones, and obligations.  "So different from us," people clung to each other and acknowledged by way of fear.  

  "Protect each other." The generations meeting us in the liminal places, the thresholds, were adament about that.  Though people couldn't really agree about hardly anything past next step in one foot in front of the other.  We were under orders as surviving next generation; as Service people; as future world leaders and participants; as forging beach heads and bridges and boundaries. 

  There were astounding crashes.  "That was a miracle!" Some said rather factually without as much wonder as acceptance--comes with our God's package.  That God in which we can trust.  "Remember when we scraped the hurricane mud off that old bent up license plate and saw that phrase anew?  We had nothing again." 

  We nurtured each other as fellow Americans through collapses, personal and public.  And kept proving our generation will not cave to too hard.  Navigate that he or she couldn't. 

  Couldn't save everyone. 

  Couldn't seal the deal. 

  Couldn't stay sober. 

  Couldn't say. 

  And pass the baton as we can. 

  One of us opened a backpack briefcase to reveal a multitude of actual batons.  "No backing out.  We exist." 

  "We won't be bored." Final assurances.  One of us closed the airplane's door and locked it against being sucked away.

It's that point...

  Isreal has to be careful not to lose its nation status in this crush of "disruption".  Going back to its permissions to be a State and Nato which was complicated by Allies/Axis split as worked out by World War II.  This brought us all to a different kind of brink way back when as we all started seriously talking about anihilation or survival.  Hezbollah is not a State.  So the world tangled with "terrorism" and two state solution as a peace move and tried to explain capitalism. 

  Back when we talked about layers of politics and culture.  What to call stuff in the air? How to place a humanity into a place-centered situ?  

  As changes in global trade and money flow bloc'd and channeled we had to have deals and negotiations.  We needed treaties between enemies to survive hope of survival.  Violations then needed law enforcement and dealing with.  People scrambled to mount into thinking/action groups that were as tall as toddler tyrants ripping up pieces of paper. 

  As hedge against total loss in the case of world war, America developed that point-peace-plan put forth regarding Gaza (also a layered place).  So even if the elevator shaft of two-state bickering with war machines collapsed the antiquated title of MidEast would be the big pillow of region.  

  As a great nation America has to tend to itself as a nation.  One of some allies.  In a world where resources and ownership create "enemies". 

  It's that point again!

  Which world do you want to live in? 

  The tank rumbled forward.  We were down to a small extraction team, the very tip of a fertile crescent.  When we found the war-crazed husband that would never surrender until all the hurt was avenged a lady took the speaker's mouthpiece. 

  "I see you're still alive." Boots on crushed glass and smoldering ash stood to ATTENTION at the sound of her voice. 

  "They killed our baby, our future." The man shout-wailed into a megaphone. 

  "YOU KILLED OUR BABY.  THERE IS NO BABY IN OUR FUTURE." 

  "HOW CAN THAT BE?" 

  Silence from the tank. 

  A diplomat's pouch attached by handcuff.  Barely legible writing: How can that be?

  It took a couple minutes to find the file.  Classified information showing what was coming at the area from air; what was fired from the ground; where the women had gone through a toxic nuclear cloud of gas and crud. 

  Gorbachev started talking. 

  W started listening. 

The picnic table v

  a fury of yeah, we were attacked. 

  The arroyo quiet, early morning, sun stuffed into a velvety coolness quite the opposite of it's late day blare. 

  "What kind of art do you do?" 

  "Sort of, uh, not sure how to phrase it really. Someone called it Applied Community Arts." 

  "There's no money and very little food here.  Realistically." 

  "I still write and document life.  Other peoples'.  I don't really, I'm not like 

  "A real artist?" 

  "Yeah.  I've been being very philosophical and into critical thinking and governance in a, um, kind of wild environment." 

  "Maybe this would be a good fit." 

  A wirey dog ran by panting hard.  "Guy calls that one Toilet Brush." 

  "Gross." 

  "Can't change anything." 

  "The war and all?" 

  "People are going to do what they do." 

  "There are some others here now who said they might pitch in to a literary magazine or some kind of something.  Could be interesting." 

  "At least something to do besides war." 

  "Yeah." 

  Time, no time.  The exact opposite of regimental.  Fifty shades of gray, so one hundred and two shades of caring and tending to.  Adjustments in the build up to striking back. 

  Clawing for Catholicity or some semblance of moral footing.  Out past even the discernment of friend or enemy in glances and ignoring. 

"You can't have your ass on

  two horses at the same time." She said with all the weight of being a child survivor of World War II but the admonition came light as air because it was advice to someone else. 

  "Not like I'm holding up the line," the writer snapped back.  And it was true that the "crisis" had Godsmacked the whole financially co-dependent world into the righteous-enough-to-proceed (pay to play) and the cast offs.  A young person just deciding college or other path was being pressure-forced to decide what to do with your life that was a muck of entwined with world. 

  That so many had been directly involved with sudden warfare and grown up quickly in some ways wasn't somehow magically solving the crunch crisis of who should do what next.  The most qualified had kept cover or been exposed as the Cold War dissipated into diplomacy and striving to be pensioners-some-day career professionals.  The latest baby boomers were gaining in Academic and professional acumen.  And the warriors who'd come together as allies were re-entering global workforce. 

  "Make up your mind." 

  "About my life?" 

  "No.  Dummy.  At least about an appetizer." 

  "Maybe some fiction for a bit." 

  "And for your main course?" 

  "Have your lawyer call my lawyer," men's conversation rose over "take aways". 

  "Sorry chica, gonna have to skip to the special Hungarian dessert and more strong black coffee." 

  Two other sometimes special correspondents slid into the small table seats.  A hand squeeze for a goodbye without tears.  "What's that supposed to mean?" One answered for the other, "War correspondents don't die, they just fade away." 

  "Want coffee or tea or something?" 

  The underground on the late afternoon sidewalk spilling from place to place was getting louder.  "They're going to pay us to escort them back to Europe." 

  "Who is? I thought 

  "Our boyfriends!" 

  A toast of coffee and air-raised imagined drinks.  And the two went out the back way to the train station. 

Unpenned, the women

  were still "crazed".  Seven were crawling and making animal sounds.  One did so, but was faking.  She'd stayed awake.  And somehow had managed to contort her body so the cattle prod didn't stun her into shock.  She'd been around the world as a Correspondent covering combat. 

  Men in dirty farm work clothes and grocery shirts had been deputized for the manhunt.  One headbutted the finally lasso'd hunted man, accused criminal.  Another withdrew a pistol from oilfield jeans waistband and pointed it at the ground.  "You got ten seconds to respond to the Sheriff's question." The hunted man spit but the broken teeth bits had already been swallowed, so just backy-colored juice and blood spewed from his black hole mouth.  "You just used up the ten." The man shot the man in the foot.  Hunted man didn't flinch. 

  Some of the women went into law enforcement and justice theory.  Either by marriage or solo.  

  The instance of change to life, sudden violence, forced people to grapple with questions of human nature; conduct of self vs. navigating others with different character/values/lifestyles; faith in a world where reality can and does change. 

  For my generation witnessing that phase of people pulsing between a safe world and a violent world allowed a peek into the cracks in Establishment.  And started us pondering voids, lack, resilience, tumult, and faith.  

  It wasn't long before people started creative grappling too.  An at-first awkward effort to express healing and permanently "broken" and measures of caring and involvement, Post-Apocalyptic literature marked an intellectual processing of a world that is everything all at once.  And, heroics or no, still existing as it all plays out. 

  "We're okay."  One girl texted back to a far away parent.  "This is what we are doing right now," she said allowed to the others.  They'd all survived being outdoors in the hurricane.  A man smacked the water with a rafting paddle.  "Need attention?" A woman asked.  He chuckled.  "Trying to wake my brain up without coffee."  A heron silently sailed overhead.  "It's a sign!" Someone shouted. 

  "Awake now?" 

  "Of what?" 

 

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Really good chicken biskets! 

At Nantahala General up slope in the Gorge area.