More sadness now, global and at the hands of Vladimir Putin. It seems inappropriate to talk about all those lovely, simple, ordinary and mindful things we do each day to nurture ourselves and others, when Ukrainians are hiding in subway tunnels and lining up at checkpoints to enter neighboring countries as refugees. They are running for their lives.
I read Putin's speech justifying his full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The transcript is online at Bloomberg.com and elsewhere. It is a speech, as historians know far better than I, that echoes Hitler in the 1930s. Analysts call Putin's speech "bizarre" and "irrational." He is a last-century man avenging a past that began with the fall of the USSR, and creating a victimhood for his country beyond which he cannot see. The speech reflects a paranoid fear of the West and NATO. The result in real terms, so far, is a powerful country crushing a smaller sovereign nation. People are dying.
So much, this reminds me of the annexation of Austria by Germany on March 15, 1938, just this time of year. My mother was a historian who studied under Chancellor Kurt von Schuschnigg of Austria after his exile to America. She talked often of those times. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy of Ukraine has refused offers of exile. If the world needed a hero, this brave Ukrainian Jew is he.
So, we will watch and pray and vote and some of us (younger and better than I) will be activists, while governments sanction and vigils are being held and protests against Putin's War all over the world, and in Russia as well. And Ukrainians will defend their homes and cities. And we will admit that there is evil in the world and that all is not well. We don't know what is to come.
Dear God, help the world find peace. In the name of the Gods of every nation, time and place. Amen.
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