FLOWER FRIDAY

As I listen to the radio during the day and watch the News about the war in Ukraine each evening, it is heartbreaking to see those affected - and along with millions of others, I feel so helpless.  I've had a sleepless night - been up since 3.30 a.m. - and took this photograph of these beautiful cowslips in our garden just before 7 o’clock this morning.

Just recently, I have been looking at the writings of Wendell Berry and found this, which although written 54 years ago about the war in Vietnam, seems appropriate for what’s happening in the many conflicts in the world today, particularly the war in Ukraine:

“We have become blind to the alternatives to violence. 
This involves us in a sort of official madness, 
in which, while following what seems 
to be a perfect logic 
of self-defense and deterrence, 
we commit one absurdity after another:

We seek to preserve peace 
by fighting a war, 
or to advance freedom 
by subsidizing dictatorships, 
or to 'win the hearts and minds of the people' 
by poisoning their crops and burning their villages 
and confining them in concentration camps; 
we seek to uphold the 'truth' of our cause with lies, 
or to answer conscientious dissent with threats 
and slurs and intimidations. . . 

I have come to the realization 
that I can no longer imagine a war 
that I would believe to be either 
useful or necessary. 
I would be against any war.”

Wendell Berry (b. 1934) 
American farmer, educator, poet, conservationist
“A Statement Against the War in Vietnam,” speech, 
University of Kentucky (10 Feb 1968)

Why, after all these years, is the world still in this heartbreaking position?