thoughts on the film "Shake Hands With the Devil"

I just now got through watching the film "Shake Hands With The Devil", a documentary based on the experiences of Romeo Dallaire when he was in command of the UN forces in Rawanda in 1994, and based on the book by the same title which he has written about the genocide.

This is an important film because it talks frankly and without mincing words about what the world refused to do in that country, and the responsabilities the world continues to shirk in places like Darfur.

There is a naked hipocracy about our lamenting the genocide which took place in Europe during World War Two. It is a hipocracy which makes it seem ok to erect monuments in stone, in words, in films, paintings and theatrical productions, to convince ourselves collectively and individually that the kind of wholesale slaughter which happened in the 1940's is behind us. All that we have to do to keep this illusion alive is to turn our backs to the TV, to skip past the news story in the paper or change the radio station.

How can I look at myself in the mirror and think about these things? Why doesn't the whole world feel the shame which should come from knowingly turning an entire country into one big cemetery? What can I do to help ensure that this kind of thing never does happen again. I don't know, but I'm fairly certain it has to be more substantial than writing in a blog or waxing mournfull in a coffee shop or some other thing like that.

Knowing that genocide is happening in the world even as I write this but that I lack the courage even to read about it; that I find it easier to turn my back makes me feel a little ill.

The cries of the dead should dog us to our graves for what we the "civilized world" do and what we ignore.

I pray for a massive sea change to take place within the hearts minds and souls of every single person on the planet.I pray for the courage and the ability to do my part in ensuring that the world sees no more nation sized graveyards. I pray for the politicians, the authority figures, the leaders of humanity to wake up to this, and I pray for the people who are content to be ruled by these men and women, that we all can bring real peace into the world. Not the uneasy peace of diplomacy, not the faulty peace that's kept by men in blue helmets, not the peace which follows a nuclear blast, or the peace in the eye of a hurricane, but the peace that wells up within the hearts of individuals, the sort of peace which comes with the recognition and acceptance of our enemies as our brothers and sisters, people who share in a common humanity with us. The sort of peace which we each bring out into the world from inside of us.

This is the only true peace, it's the peace of love, acceptance and humillity, not the peace of the status quo but rather the peace which supplants or destroys the status quo, because business as usual is destroying the planet and everyone on it.

I make this prayer in Jesus name and in full confidence that he who asks shall recieve. And in the understanding that we reap what we sow.

* * *

Oh Lord please make me an instrument of your peace,
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is discord, unity,
Where there is doubt, faith,
Where there is error, truth,
Where there is dispair, hope,
Where there is sadness, joy,
Where there is darkness, light.

Oh Divine Master,
Grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled, as to console,
To be understood, as to understand,
To be loved, as love.

For it is in giving that we recieve,
It is in pardonning that we are pardonned,
it is in dieing that we are born,
to eternal Life.

Amen