I exist because my father was wounded, not killed, in World War II. Throughout my childhood and youth, I knew that my Dad had been an officer and had fought in the war, but he never, ever talked about it. It wasn't until the last months of his life that I learned he was a decorated war hero. Now I am humbled by his story. What would I do if confronted by the reality he faced upon graduating from college in 1942?
Through childhood and my teenaged years, my choice of nonviolence as a life principle never had me feeling cowardly. The stories of the Buddha, of Jesus, of Gandhi and of Martin Luther King always stood out as heroic narratives. My parents simply didn't practice corporal punishment, ever. Yes, when bullies in junior high and high school tried to beat me up because they intuited my gayness, I probably affirmed their prejudices that I was a total "sissy" by not fighting back. I have never had a single physical altercation in my life.
My passage from youth to adulthood was shadowed by our going to war in Vietnam. I've never been shown how either the Vietnamese people or the US of A were made more free or more safe by waging war. The American soldiers who crossed the Pacific to kill and be killed were doing so because they believed that our leaders spoke the truth. And because they were drafted. In the draft lottery of 1970 (including males born between 1944 and 1950) that determined the order in which said men were being called to service, I was awarded with number 031 out of 366. The remarkable story of my trip to a Belgian woods for my physical will come along in another post.
What I'd like to shine a light on today and ask that you, dear reader, reflect on your own truth about this topic, is the reality, especially in our country and culture, that all our lives we are taught to glorify fighting and killing and to feel shame for sensuality and sex. We are inured to this bizarre and tragic truth, taught to believe that this is simply the human condition. I look on this passive embrace of violence, this notion of fighting for peace, as baked into the core of our culture.
When I was fired from my teaching position of 20+ years, my sudden dismissal was presumably caused by my choice to screen for my freshman Core Arts students an Academy Award nominated, unrated short film that included one nude female and a number of women with their breasts bared. There wasn't any sex in the film at all. The film was about a young artist's adoration of the female form. Head of School called it pornography and would tolerate no discussion. [This story still astounds me. I will share it further down the line.]
Even my staunchest allies -- and they were legion, all of whom I hold in high regard -- did not speak up to question whether a group of fourteen- and fifteen-year-old girls would be harmed by seeing a naked woman. In the aftermath, speaking with an alumna who is an adult now, I heard about how traumatized she felt when, as a sixth grader, her History teacher screened swathes of the film Gladiator to the eleven-year-olds, the explicit violence giving her nightmares for weeks. Her former teacher has now taken on the mantle of Head of School. In my one meeting with the new Head in the years since they sent me packing and broke my heart, when I told her of the pain she had caused her students, she gave me a blank look and continued to sweep my expulsion under the rug. An unfortunate incident.
So here we are. A clash of armies, men mutilating and killing one another in glorious Technicolor. A beautiful nude adored. May we one day all dare to walk down that less-traveled, glorious road where true beauty and true power abide.