All things that have breath

I was talking with my mother about the fate of the women I helped train when I was in Afghanistan, one of whom I have heard has been hanged by the Taliban, I suppose for the crime of being educated and participating in society.  A lot of the commenters on rightish blogs and columns would like to do the same to American women, judging from their misogynistic blabberings.  They don't even want us to vote.

I digress.  

Anyway, my mother mentioned that while she was a volunteer with Children's Medical Relief International in Saigon in the early 1970s, she had gone up to the Central Highlands  to a Montagnard village to help inoculate the children against various diseases and to treat the injuries and illnesses of the inhabitants. After she and her team left, the communists attacked the village and exterminated every living soul, including babies. 

The photo of the girl above was one of the patients at CMRI's burn unit that my mother helped treat. How she was burned so badly my mother doesn't remember now; there were so many child casualties of the war, injured and killed in so many casually horrific ways that they all jumble together, and some the mind simply refuses to acknowledge. 

 I  understand that. In Afghanistan, I saw a bus that had struck an IED placed by...somebody...maybe the Taliban, maybe some tribal group feuding with another tribal group.  It was burning furiously when I arrived, all the passengers already dead.  As the fire consumed their bodies the heat turned the fluid in their brains to steam and their skulls burst open with loud pops and cracks.  Gratuitous nightmare-creating horror committed for no reason other than the wickedness of the human soul.  There is no evil, no cruelty man is not capable of; not only capable of, but relishes, commits with enthusiasm and pleasure.

American Indians say the reason man is so evil is because he feeds on souls, the souls of his fellow creatures that he kills and consumes.  The only way this necessary crime against life may be ameliorated is by proper respect for the creature slain, apologizing to it and asking for forgiveness for taking its life.  No one does this anymore, so the wickedness of the world increases and accumulates.  A silly superstition?  Maybe.

“O heavenly Father,
protect and bless all things
that have breath: guard them
from all evil and let them sleep in peace.”
― Albert Schweitzer