Witness Wednesday

RantWoman WILL get to the actual material offered for intro and prompt at the FCNL Witness Wednesday. RantWoman is honored to have been asked to offer the prompt. It's just that the #RussiaUkraineWar is live on so many dimensions that RantWoman should not even try to hit all the themes at once.

Earth to RantWoman. You know that post you wrote the other day about Franklin Graham's suggestion that Christians pray for an Easter season cease fire ? You realize, don't you that now is the season not only of Easter, both western and Orthodox, but also of Passover and Ramadan? It's also Khmer New Year. Anyway, regardless of what anyone knows about President Zelenskyy's religious practice as opposed to cultural background, does anyone suppose it's a little weird to ask a Jewish President to have a cease fire for a Christian holiday, especially if Brother Franklin has not asked anything of the Russian Orthodox Church? 

Likewise, #RamadanMubarak, regardless of actual religious practice by the Muslims of Bashkortostan as well as greetings to the Buddhists of Buryatia perhaps the world needs to honor data gathered carefully from various official and unofficial local sources: brown-skinned people from economically depressed parts of Russia are over-represented in war casualties. 

There are big economic incentives to enlist. It would be interesting to know whether the professional soldiers endure the same levels of , frankly, torture / hazing new draftees are subjected to. Moving up means that after enduring treatment guaranteed to turn many troops into monsters means the authority to inflict the same brutality on soldiers who come after. Add to this longstanding Russian / Soviet military practice of just pouring cannon fodder into battle; then do not forget scorched earth policies that seem to be deliberate. Nor should we forget the colossal logistical and command and control failures plaguing the "special military operation" in Ukraine. The Russian military just does not sound like a place one would want to be.

RantWoman was thinking of all this last week in worship. It's the season of the spring draft call-up. RantWoman is grateful to learn that the same soldiers' mothers groups critical to turning Russian public opinion against the war in Afghanistan are now operating about the current invasion. RantWoman recalls an effort in the 1990's supported by Quakers to create actual pathways to implement the right to conscientious objection included in the post-Soviet constitution. RantWoman has no current information and would not expect easily to find such in an environment where people in Russia are getting arrested for holding up signs saying "Do Not Kill" or even blank pieces of paper.

With all of that as background, reproducing a 4/4/2022 post from Alternatives to Violence program representatives in Ukraine.

Love is the center.

Our long-time friends, the anti-violence trainers at AVP* в Україні have been forced to suspend their usual activities, but they are working to strengthen their mutual bonds and commitment. On April 4, the group posted:

It is very painful to absorb everything that is going on. It is hard to restrain one’s emotions, while hearing the testimony of witnesses or looking at the photographs, photographs of people who have been killed, photographs of towns that have been destroyed. Yet, still, we bear in mind, that within us is the Transforming Power. This is the Power, which enables us to transform hot anger into inspiration, despair into help for those around us, horror into love for those near to us, rage into readiness to set to work. Now, as never before, we need each other. And this means that we we are called to stand faithful, to stay emotionally in equilibrium.

Stop for a moment, take a pause. You will find, either within yourself or without, a lever, which enables us to shift all the force out of hatred and into making peace. This is us — we are the peacemakers. Creators of peace, defenders of the light.

*AVP – Alternatives to Violence Project – was brought to Russia and Ukraine by Friends and continues to be supported by Quakers.

Once RantWoman started to read as introduction it was very easy to find a strong voice. Being able to detect facial expressions would not have been terrible.