re-read

Antoine de Saint Exupery’s Flight to Arras.

    I just read Antoine de Saint Exupery’s Flight to Arras. This French reconnaissance pilot, his navigator and gunner accept an assignment they know will give them less than one in three chances of surviving. All three know France is losing their war with Germany and that the information they gather will probably never reach the chaotic central intelligence to do any good in planning. Yet they accept with a mild, “Very good, Sir.”

     St. Exupery, author of Wind, Sand and Stars, describes his thoughts during lulls from attack during the flight and how his musings allow him to grasp his connection to the long, tangled lines of refugees. Once home to base, battered but safe, the pilot walks in lonely silence unraveling the strands he has come to understand. His insights give me constructive clues as I try to understand what is happening around me now: Acceptance, brotherhood, sacrifice have come to mean little as we have lost knowing we are part of something larger than ourselves and settle for the limitations of self.

glaring standard

friends with mettle tell me

only after i ask

what calamities

have near-felled them

their courage not to whine

makes all the more glaring

and pathetic the current standard

of men’s behavior

not alexei

i guess no one taught you manliness

so bluff, bluster and bullying

are all you know except to whine

when things do not go your way

blame is due someone else

anyone else but self, though you

claim credit for all that goes well

near you

no, despite your attempted comparison,

you are not alexei navalny

healing greater than wounding

“Healing has greater power

 than wounding and inflicting pain”

implies that love has greater power

than fear, and i wonder at that

given that fear is so abundant

and primitive a newborn reacts

in fear to falling yet accepts warmth

and nourishment as part of self

so overcoming fear with love

is a learned response

but overcome, it does

for those with courage  

and it takes love to even attempt

to try to heal

Pastor David

a gentleness of spirit

warm and giving despite disappointment

fighting spirit without violence

but with love and generosity

he draws my admiration

every Sunday with his sermon

and his supportive smile

gracious response

a brilliant thought of an author

who has captured and wide, loving

audience for her work

 and then the gathered courage

to reach out to Jane Kirkpatrick

with her own loving story

of mother’s courage growing up

amid annihilating weariness,

ill-treatment and poverty

 the response, far more gracious

than our Susan could have imagined

  ah, the difference between big and small

coping

courage under pain

calm while acknowledging fear

willingness to take one day

at a time in order to heal