I am in front of an exhibit. Behind glass upon a circular stand is what looks to be scraps of cracked wax. Below I read about the mother who saved the melted skin of her nine year old son, the skin to show the father, a soldier, who is away still fighting, not knowing everything is lost. The mother, shielded from the original blast will soon die of "A-bomb disease."

I see a photograph, a boy standing, arms held out as if feeling his way, sheets of skin hanging off muscle like Spanish moss.

I read of a woman on a street car who watches people on the street. She sees small fires start at the tips of fingers, then she sees the fires spread and cover bodies.

I read about a girl who was making 1000 paper cranes which will grant her wish to live. She dies of leukemia ten years after the bomb. She made 644 paper cranes.

There are 140,000 other stories.

How do you place Hiroshima within Easter? Easter within Hiroshima? With what perspective do you frame 140,000 crucifixions? Is it not reasonable here to see Easter as a joke?

On behalf of the Allies, President Truman thanked God that this "awful (atomic) power has come to us and not to the enemy." Hiroshima was still burning, Nagasaki to come, when he prayed that God, "may guide us to use it in His ways and for His purpose."

I am looking at a tricycle. Another exhibit. It has slumped from the heat that arrived immediately after detonation. I’m in deep here, hanging on to Easter in the middle of Hiroshima.

All my received Sunday answers fail, all the ones I repeated to my children: Easter: the settling of a payment for sins—a human/divine sacrifice required by a righteous God—us just off-stage knowing everything turns out all right at the end. Easter: the right to eternal life for believing the right thing—a new fraternity reserved for those who believe in the one way—the knowledge that after death heaven awaits the steadfast and upright, while in the mean time, we are given a pass to go on playing by the code of lesser evils, the miserable dictates of death, the rules of reprisal and sacrificial violence.

What is Hiroshima except a barely imaginable spectacle of the game of death? With us thanking God that it fell to us to be able to play deadlier than our enemy. The grizzly victory gained, in the name of God.

But what is Easter except Jesus voluntarily stepping into the toxicity of all our deadly ways of securing our lives? And what is the resurrection but an end to the game of death?

If this is how Easter truly is it undermines everything we believe about death. It is the new and dangerous reality that makes it possible to live as though death were not. If it isn’t true, well, then you’d expect things to look much like they do now.

Or, it is true, but we’ve missed the point of the best story ever. Or it is true, but we’ve put in on hold because violence appears always to win. And winning is what counts. Security trumps trust. Which of course it does in a closed system. Or it is true, but only in those church-rehearsed, spiritualized ways that secure for us a personal paradise over 140,000 non-believers. Which of course makes it all false.

But I also see how easy it is to blame the "administration," and be blind to my own participation. What damning prayers—in the name of God, and thus justified—have I whispered for my security, preservation, recognition?

Easter is an event toward humanity, but there is a personal response to Easter. A daily response that has nothing to do with mouthing verses, but everything to do with seeing, in the lynching of Jesus, my propensity to exclude another for the sake of me and mine, which is nothing but the fear of death; and everything to do with a resurrection that makes all that fear, all those death-grip moves to solidify the group, unnecessary.

If there is such a thing as original sin, it is simply this: my participation in sacrificing another for the sake of my group, my nation, my world—which diminishes everything and destroys oneness—an abiding oneness which is God’s desire for us.

If Hiroshima (insert Gaza, West Bank, Afghanistan, Iran…and any number of Old Testament nations) can justifiably be sacrificed in the name of God, can Easter be true?

Easter is the witness that there is nothing behind Jesus, no warrior God in disguise, nothing except love. Easter is not a narrowing of options in the false top-down reading of "I am the way the truth and the life," but an opening up of possibilities in the bottom-up witness of one who is inhabiting death for us—and who returns to us in the ones we exclude. Easter is not assented to, it is undergone.

We read that the U.S. Army staff sergeant suspected in the killings of at least 16 Afghan civilians, nine of which were children, was on his first tour of duty in Afghanistan after three tours in Iraq.

In the weeks to come the Army Criminal Investigative Command will be seeking a motive for the slaughter. A slaughter that, according to the Defense Secretary Leon Panetta, may warrant the death penalty.

We will wonder about the emerging picture of the 38 year old army sergeant, married with two children, whose act of horrific human destruction was finally an act of self-destruction.

And we will note that while this is not, historically, an isolated incident, it is rare. And in this way we will distance this event from the everyday acts of war. Perhaps the problem will be found in the screening process. We will dismiss the man as:

"Apparently deranged", "probably deranged", journalists announced, a soldier who "might have suffered some kind of breakdown" (The Guardian), a "rogue US soldier" (Financial Times) whose "rampage" (The New York Times) was "doubtless [sic] perpetrated in an act of madness" (Le Figaro).

Surely the strong, the balanced, must be unaffected by war. It is the weak, the sensitive, those unable to objectify the enemy who die inside and become a hindrance to the mission. Or those on the other side who—to stay in the “arena of war”—must come to bestialize the enemy, and so kill out of hate or sport.

Well, I make these observations from a distance. I write them out to help me live in a world of violence, perhaps to keep insanity kept at bay.

Still, does not killing another human require a shift of mind? Something’s required that goes beyond bias and approaches the xenophobic. The human made inhuman. Racial slurs devolve, enemies becomes bugs.

Or is it possible to engage in war with the belief you are only and always a defender and so maintain a certain innocence?

But then, isn’t it the defenders that end up wanting war? And from here, as Rene Girard has said, battle lust always ends up overwhelming reason.

There are no romantic wars, no wars fit for cinema. The enemy is never courted as equal, how is he loved?

I read about the pacifist churches. They talk of the contagion of violence, the un-bleachable stain of slaughter. They talk of the Christian imperative: that the nonviolence of Jesus is not an addendum but an inseparable element of Christian faith.

GK Chesterton, not a pacifist, would take offence at my use of his quote in this context. No matter, it fits: "The problem with Christianity is not that it has been tried & found wanting but that it has not been tried."

Consider the current Republican race. Candidates claiming fastness to their particular version of the Christian faith. All with swords up and out rattling one another in defence of God and America. Iran the new demon and scapegoat.

Our own Christian Prime Minister, while more circumspect and temperate, has at the same time sounded like the Likud party.

But the casualties of war are always an afterthought of the waging.

In our own city, the Single Men’s Hostel—now Hope Mission’s Herb Jamieson Centre—was built primarily in reaction to the human fallout of WW2. Soldiers returning home—the flush of welcome over, haunted by memories handled by intoxication, unable to rise to domesticity—found themselves on the street.

These "bag men" of the 1950′s and 60′s were experiencing what we’ve now named as post traumatic stress disorder. It’s important we have named this, as it gives us some hope of treatment.

Presently, veteran homelessness in Canada is more a potential problem. And thankfully, it will not reach that of the last world war.

But what does that matter to the soldiers who are even now struggling under the weight of what they’ve experienced?

PTSD of course is not isolated to veterans of war; but far and away, soldiers—who have seen "active duty"—remain the most vulnerable. Certainly the US Army sergeant was in some way a sufferer.

The cure? Nonviolence. Yes, I see the unreality of this. But at least let’s start supporting those in America who are campaigning for troop withdrawal in Afghanistan. (Remember Obama’s promise about this four years ago?)

In the meantime, we can move toward nonviolence in our own lives. One heart at peace with itself affects a thousand hearts.

a) Wait for his immediate neighbours to intervene and report him.

b) Arrange for an opportunity to make friends with him, perhaps borrow one another’s tools, watch one another’s pets when away, and over time, as you build a relationship with him, tell him that what he is doing to his kids is wrong and that you would like him to stop.

c) After reporting him, confront him and tell him that until he stops the abuse or releases his children into proper care there can be no normal neighbourly relationship; and that until he finds help, you will continue to work to have his kids removed.

2. There is a country across the ocean that is abusing its citizens. Do you…?

a) Wait for nearby countries to intervene and show their disapproval through sanctions.

b) Arrange for opportunities to create close economic ties, sign dozens of trade agreements that gives your country access to billions in capital in exchange for raw resources and clears a path for an unfettered free trade agreement; and in the mean time, express deep concern about their human rights record, and ask the leaders to curb their violations.

c) Work to expose the hundreds of thousands of human rights violations, imprisonments and executions, and refuse political and economic ties as they would serve to undermine any condemnations or political pressure.

In 2006, Stephen Harper said he would do c) two day ago he did b).

In 2006, Stephen Harper said, “…I don’t think Canadians want us to sell out important Canadian values – our belief in democracy, freedom, human rights. They don’t want us to sell that out to the almighty dollar.”

Yesterday in a speech, after signing 22 separate agreements worth 3 billion dollars Harper stated, “…in relations between China and Canada, you should expect us to continue to raise issues of fundamental freedoms and human rights, and to be a vocal advocate for these just as we will be an effective partner in our growing and mutually beneficial economic relationship.”

Later in the same speech, he said, “We are an emerging energy superpower. We want to sell our energy to people who want to buy our energy. It’s that simple.”

But apparently not all Tories would have gone this route: Tory MP Garry Breitkreuz noted, “Some of the most serious atrocities are happening in China at the present time and I think we have an obligation to speak up.”

Finally, Zhang Tianxiao, whose sister, Zhang Yunhe, disappeared in China in 2002 and whose brother-in-law is among the confirmed 3,400 murdered by the regime for refusing to renounce his belief in Falun Gong, cited the principle Canada is now in search of:

There is only one principle about trade, it is just that Canada should never sacrifice human rights and moral principles for any material benefit.”

Photograph by: Christina Ryan, Calgary Herald

Here’s a letter by Mark Maxwell, President of Prairie Bible Instituted, who first informed the RCMP.

This is a sad and tragic story—one that we’ve heard within the halls of Christian faith all too often. Of course abuse happens in other institutions; but as one who tries to still follow the faith, the question this specific allegation raises for me is this: Is there anything in the way the Bible is interpreted within conservative, fundamentalist, neo-Calvinist institutions that enables and harbours sexual predators? Beyond this, is there something about the way a literal interpretation of Scriptures fosters the injustice of patriarchy and so supports the ongoing “soft” abuse of gender inequality?

My wife Deb attended Prairie for one year. She says, "I can certainly agree about the unhealthy, unbiblical male dominance teaching that was taught. At the time when I was young it was harder to ‘think’ against it but even then I knew within me that something was not only unhealthy but wrong about their teaching."

And if only we could grasp the truth of metaphor, this wouldn’t be unreasonable language to help describe instances of evil. If we could, imagine.

But this is our modern problem, our hangover: the keg of Scientific Method long tapped, the many draughts of spiritual materialism downed before grey dawn, our Christian heads aching and pounding, now thinking that a literal reading must be the only true reading, a fundamental reading, an inerrant, authoritative, infallible, inspired reading.

And in the empirical fog surrounding our Thomas Nelsons and Scofields, our imagination sputters out leaving us self-condemned by literalism’s stasis. In this exegetical irony we bind ourselves to errancy and ignorance.

Certainly a literal reading, what pre-Enlightenment folk called a "plain reading," is often a true reading. But many times a literal reading is an inferior reading or simply a nonsensical reading.

Biblical writers’ understanding of the nature of reality could not be more removed from our own. And too, our understanding of the purpose of literature is not that of a writer in the first-century. So to adopt a reading without wrestling with this is lazy and dishonest.

Because the problem of literalism is mistaking a flame for the fire. One facet for the whole gem. One colour the whole spectrum. You get my drift.

And so, Satan, is just that volitional metaphysical entity jamming up the works, devouring the undevout and looking for any chance to trip us up. What comes of such a failure is to miss the satanic, the evil, that hides within dehumanizing institutions—systems of domination. That lives at the heart of state repression—from forms of socialism to fascism—that exults in racism and patriarchy, and hides within bureaucracy and capitalism.

We live in a violent world. That’s hardly a secret. We have been formed by a culture of war and violence, the nature of which we are mostly unconscious of, and from which we wilfully keep ourselves hidden. Violence is so embedded that it’s impossible to imagine a world without it. That we live in an incarnate world sustained by intrusions of grace, well, that’s a little less obvious—almost imperceptible.

Two days ago our country intentionally remembered war. “Lest We Forget" was on billboards and on the front of buses. We remembered, so to honour the war dead, and we remembered so that we can in some way dispel war, so that at least violence of the scale once experienced, can be named and thwarted. And we hope that in the naming, in the remembering, something like grace and peace may appear.

Of course war cannot create peace and violence is never the cause of grace; but it can, in its gross distortions of social solidarity and communal life, reflect back to us our own propensity toward envy and rivalry, and in this uncovering, perhaps give us the unwelcome gift of seeing ourselves as we truly are—which if it happens is an occasion of mercy.

A personal and writerly goal I repeatedly come short of, which is never less a goal, is to stay awake to those intrusions of grace and occasions of mercy. And such was this past Friday where 30 or so people took the afternoon to study peace, and then took the evening to walk and pray, from City Hall to Canada Place, from the Gandhi Memorial to the War Memorial.

And we sang that old promise: to study war no more. But with the understanding that if we are blind to the nature of violence, and if we miss the intrusions of grace, then war, rivalry, ongoing reciprocal violence will remain our reality.

Once in our history the nature of violence was laid bare through a definitive intrusion of grace. And no one wanted to see. Once, the truth about human and social identity was spoken, and no one wanted to hear. Two thousand years later, through two global wars, the invention of a nuclear end, many genocides, and an imminent ecological disaster, and still we refuse to see and hear.

To take a day to remember and honour those who died fighting for our country is good. But it’s not, and never was, good enough. For if we stop short of trying to authentically identify with not merely our own, but all victims of war, and all the fallen, then we have already forgotten. Because failing to see ourselves as original combatants, failing to understand the (Good Samaritan) point about who our neighbour is simply leaves all the old mechanisms of sacrificial violence in place.

In effect, continuing to believe that war is occasionally necessary and normal, and that violence is in some way part grace, smothers every intrusion of grace; and it is this that even now is ushering in our apocalyptic era. That we Christians, above all, have failed to see and hear the living words of the one we purport to follow, and have even used the texts as justification for war and sacrificial violence—unconsciously giving the nod to Caiaphas over Christ—is perhaps our greatest shame.

Yet, despite our failure there are still intrusions of mercy. And if time is no longer one of them, perhaps violence’s own undoing is. For we are, as no other age has been, witnesses of violence’s growing excesses; and in this, we see its utter ineffectiveness to create or change anything—except, as Rene Girard says, to escalate to extremes. The choice is now plain. To not choose complete repudiation of violence is to choose annihilation. Seeing the truth behind the false reality of violence to the extent that these two alternatives are now clear, is not a prelude to despair, but of hope—a luminous intrusion.

Hegel perfected his dialectical theory which was adopted by Karl Marx. Clausewitz wrote On War, a book still read by Generals the world over. And Holderlin withdrew.

Holderlin’s "madness" was precipitated by the proximity of the gods. His torment was acute. He oscillated between self-glorification and self-repudiation. The gods were never at a proper distance.

Holderlin desperately wanted to be like his mentor and poet friend, Schelling. Along the way however he became conscious of his own "insatiable ambition" and knew his desperate campaign for the world’s affection, represented by the affection of a few, would destroy him. He rented a tower from Mr. Zimmer, a Tübingen carpenter, moved in and set up living there for 40 years. He paced, recited poetry and would lay prostrate for hours at a time.

He withdrew into silence; still, he received guests. Most thought him mad, but those who visited knew him to be lucid and engaging. (I like to think that his friends Schelling and Hegel visited, but there’s no record.)

He saw that a God that could be appropriated was a God of destruction; he gave up believing in the Absolute, and found his way by finding the right distance from God.

And he wrote. He wrote through the red sunrise and east wind of self-loathing—wrote through the starry nights, electric and voluptuous—his mind rising above the world. By years of practice he endured the prodigious swings.

He kept an internal Farmer’s Almanac and was able to forecast a poem. He saw when a line was ripe for harvest and when a single word needed weeding; he waited on his body to inform his meter.  He knew fairly well, the time for planting a notion.

His conversion came slowly—40 years of walking and lying prostrate. He returned to a simple form of Christianity; a reverence for Christ. Having suffered from his mentors, and from the pressure of friends and fashion he entered a relationship that was without rivalry. Rising to the nobility of silence; he found a presence in absence that was not present in proximity.

Settling into a mysticism of hope, Holderlin wrote these words:

Near is
and difficult to grasp, the God.
But where danger threatens
that which saves from it also grows.

(This post was gleaned primarily from the book, Battling to the End – Rene Girard)