Sad Things

Yesterday I went over to the Cathedral of All Souls who are hosting, this weekend, the North Carolina incarnation of Eyes Wide Open, the exhibition put together by the AFSC on the terrible costs of the Iraq war. I volunteered for two hours: I sat there and talked to a few people, sold a couple of T-shirts and shivered a bit, since the weather has gone from unseasonably hot to unseasonably cold. The exhibition is heartwrenchingly sad and people's reactions to it were interesting, from the man who told us that the next war would be about oil (like, what exactly is this one about?) and that oil was worth fighting for, since without it the American way of life would end. I have about 10 million problems with this attitude, starting with 1) it's not our oil to fight over and going on to 2) war is never worth it and if we don't come up with a better way to resolve our differences than war than we are all doomed, which leads me to 3) the problem with the end of the American way of life would be what, exactly? We create something infinitely more sustainable, more community oriented, more peaceful, less gluttonous, less competitive, less driven?

But that conversation, which I've after all had before, and will have again, wasn't what really hit me. During the two hours I sat there two bus tours full of mostly older tourists pulled up to go through the cathedral. I find bus tours totally baffling as a phenomenon; I can't imagine any circumstances in the world that would end up with me willingly getting onto a bus full of polyester wearing camera toting strangers to sit for hours and then get out with these same strangers to look dutifully at a "sight" for 15 minutes and then get back on the bus. But I am in the minority, clearly: I am from Mars and these people are from Earth and Asheville is clogged with them all spring and summer and fall, so whatever. They got out and went into and around the Cathedral, keeping, for the most part, a wide berth around the attached chapter house with its Eyes Wide Open banner and people in War is Costly t-shirts. Two ladies did come over; they stopped below the two steps up onto the porch and asked us what was going on. S, one of the local AFSC people, told them what it was and they recoiled. "Oh," said one of them, "It sounds sad." "Well," said S, "War is sad." "Oh, I don't want to see anything sad." said the lady, and they beat a hasty retreat.

No, she didn't want to see anything sad, and you know, that's perfectly natural. I don't want to see anything sad either; nobody does. Sad things are awful; they're sad, they hurt, they lead you down into sad places in your own soul. But I sat there and thought about it and it occurs to me that the next rational step, after recognizing that nobody wants to see sad things, is to do what one can to make sure that there aren't any sad things for people to see. In other words, if we don't want to see sad, then we must work to ensure that there isn't any sad to see. War is sad; you don't want to see it. So working to get rid of war is what we must do, for ourselves and for the ladies who don't want to see war.

Granted my own work along these lines is pretty lame; consisting as it does mostly of drinking too much every Thursday and then sitting, mildly hungover, at a table on a cold day in front of an exhibition of heart breakingly sad things. It's small, but it's something, maybe, even if it's only something in my own soul and my own small life. It's acknowledgement, perhaps, recognizing the existence of this sadness, standing witness to it and trying, in the very act of not looking away, to make the source of sorrow end.