FROM THE HALLS OF MONTEZUMA TO THE SHORES OF TRIPOLI 

(The title refers to the Official Hymn of the US Marine Corps)

Hanns F Skoutajan

“I have a dream!” Fifty years ago those four words sounded again and again from the podium under the Lincoln Memorial in Washington DC. Thousands had gathered and were energized by the power of those words. They rang across the United States and indeed around the globe.

President Obama himself is a sign of the impact of that dream. But he also warned that the dream is anything but fulfilled. True enough there are no more lynchings, passengers on a bus can sit anywhere they want, “whites only signs” have disappeared , children black and white are educated together, well more or less.  The pejorative term “nigger” has largely disappeared from the American vocabulary. 

But the dream needs more fulfilling as Obama pointed out. Blacks still vastly predominate in the prisons of the United States. They are also more likely to be among the poor. One can go on. But the amazing thing about that dream is that all of the fulfillment was accomplished in peaceful ways, at least on part of the blacks and many whites. King’s movement was non-violent. 

Gandhi’s ways have proven more effective in bringing about change. It won India’s independence.  King and his associates walked in his footsteps.

I have a dream that disparities  and injustices still so rampant in our world can be resolved in non-violent ways , that people of different religions and skin colour, language and ideology will live together in peace and harmony. 

But I also have a nightmare, particularly in these days as the guns of war resound throughout Syria, as thousands die by cruel means and other thousands flee their  homes and stream across the borders of Lebanon, Turkey and Jordan.

My nightmare has been sharpened by American sabre rattling as the US prepares “to punish” Assad for his atrocities. Assad is not a nice man, nor was Saddam Hussein. However, the question is whether this “punishment” will make any difference to the Syrian leaders and its people other than bring them more death and destruction. 

Ann Wright, a retired US army Colonel and former diplomat who has served in virtually every hotspot on this globe shares my nightmare. In an article published in Common Dreams ( Aug 31) she lists the possible consequences of cruise missile deployment from US navy ships in the Mediterranean:

“As U.S. warships gather off the shores of Lebanon to launch Tomahawk Cruise missiles at targets in Syria, we can make some educated guesses of what the “unintended consequences” could be:

1. Syrian anti-aircraft batteries will fire their rockets at incoming U.S. missiles.
    
2. Many Syrians on the ground will die and both the U.S. and Syrian governments will say the deaths are the fault of the other.
    
3. The U.S. Embassy in Damascus will be attacked and burned, as may other U.S. Embassies and businesses in the Middle East.
    
4. Syria might also launch rockets toward the U.S. ally in the region—Israel.
    
5. Israel would launch bombing missions on Syria as it has three times in the past two years and perhaps take the opportunity to launch an attack on Syria’s strongest ally in the region, Iran.
    
6. Iran, a country with a population of 80 million and has the largest military in the region untouched by war in the past 25 years, might retaliate with missiles aimed toward Israel and toward nearby U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, Turkey, Bahrain and Qatar.
    
7. Iran could block the Straits of Hormuz and impede the transport of oil out of the Persian Gulf.”

Her nightmare is no mere dream but has about it an air of irrefutable reality. A Middle East conflagration is a very real possibility.

The difference between a dream and a nightmare is between peace and violence, between the way of Rosa Parks of Montgomery, Alabama and Bull Conners of LIttle Rock, Arkansas fame.

The US and the United Nations face a daunting situation to which there is no simple solution militarily or negotiated. Peaceful action has never been construed as an easy road. Results are never guaranteed. On the other hand, violence guarantees one thing, more violence, death and destruction. Iraq is proof of that.

Martin Luther King’s dream is not an easy dream. There is no ready made solution to the Syrian crisis. However, my hope and prayer is that the US Congress will not grant Obama his wish but opt in favour of non-violence.

I know some of  you will say, “Dream on!”

SQ 01/09/2013

   

THE SHADOWS LENGTHEN AND THE EVENING COMES....

Hanns F Skoutajan

My spouse and I were avid campers. We particularly loved Killbear Provincial Park near Parry Sound, Ontario. The essay below was first published in my book The Road to Peace: Memories and Reflections Along the Way.  As the days visibly shorten and summer seems to portend its end, I reflected on those final days of camping.

WOOD NYMPH OR WATER SPRITE

There is a sweet sadness about the fall. It is how mourning ought to be, an acceptance of the inevitable, of natural change, nature’s ageing process which leads from the seeming eternity of summer to an awakening of the passage of time. Suddenly one morning there is a change in the air. It is not only cooler  but a different texture can be felt in the warmth of the sun. 

It was Labour Day and throughout the campground  one could hear the tinkling of metal tent poles as they were being dismantled, a familiar sound indeed. There exists a kind of last day routine among campers. A reticent urgency to return home manifests itself among them. They are not quite holidayers any longer. They sense that ahead of them stretches the long slow drive back to the city with its traffic jams in cars loaded to the gunnels.  Thoughts of tomorrow’s resumption of the workaday life intrude rudely on the mind  that has been used to relaxing in what had seemed like a timeless sun. The young campers anticipate school with a variety of emotions  from sheer horror of classroom confinement  to the joy of meeting old friends again. 

By noon the exodus is well under way. Trailers are hitched up and creak out of their comfortable place among the trees. “Byes” can be heard  from a variety of voices as vacation acquaintances depart. “Stay in touch!” is a much heard farewell word. Thus loaded with boats, bicycles and lawn chairs, they rattle down the road toward the gate. It could be sad  but somehow they have already entered a different space and time.

By mid afternoon the woods are almost empty. The squirrels are well aware that it’s all theirs now  although they will soon discover the absence of the fast food supply that was once so plentiful. The beach which is usually crowded with sun worshippers  is almost vacant. Do the sea gulls miss them? The tour boat with almost empty decks still glides past  at its usual time, but its wake goes unwelcomed  by rubber rafts  and swimmers bouncing in the waves. The roar of seadoos has finally died, thank God.  Out on the Sound  the sails have largely disappeared. Convoys of cruisers  are heading for their berths in port. There is every indication that the season of pleasureful timelessness is over.  The first day of fall may still be several weeks away but  here in the park there is no doubt that a season has ended.

We are fortunate to be able to stay another day, a time of special quietness which we enjoy. As evening comes the setting sun puts on a final show. Only a few spectators gather on the rocky ridge for one more look. A strange camaraderie prevails among us . We are the few, the remnant, quite different from those who have left. That night there is an absence of campfire smoke which usually hangs heavily among the trees. The night seems darker, certainly quieter. A feeling of mystery pervades the groves.

Change is ever mysterious but now it takes place before my eyes. It also unfolds within me and between myself and my spouse. We have another night and day together. We spin out the time, visit once more those familiar places, the rocky ledge, the island, and paddle along the now deserted shores, take a final dip in the water that’s certainly cooler now.

We witness a figure emerging from the woods. She walks  pensively across the sand, then stops. Her hands go to her hips. She faces out toward the sea and looks into the past. What events does she recall? After a few moments she turns and retraces her steps, more slowly now and disappears among the trees, a kind of parting grace.

Finally, we too are ready, our time has also come . There is now no one left to bid farewell except the maples, oaks, the rugged pines, the rocks and sand, the water and the autumn sky. The car is packed, the trailer hitched. Our camp has lost its lived-in look. 

I see her in the rearview mirror, standing there directing me as I nudge our camper from between the trees out into the road. Sadness clothes her summer-warm features. I see her among the vegetation taking on a mellow glow , framed in the car mirror, like a colour slide . It seems as though she belongs among those trees, her natural abode. 

A strange thought comes to my mind. She must remain here to be found again another year. I feel as though I am leaving her . Perhaps she is unreal , this summer friend  with whom I played and loved and shared these weeks . Is she perhaps a wood nymph  or a water sprite who for this season  has taken on mortal flesh? And now she waits as I depart. She waves good-bye.

Already I see her taking on a phantom-like transparency . She turns and walks  toward the distant glistening shore. Once, twice, she motions me to go. The mirror blurs , tears becloud my eyes. I shut them hard and squeeze their lids  and then open them to see a new reality. 

The car and trailer bump onto the pavement , my partner and I are on our way.

SQ 28/08/2013

ON LAND, IN SEA AND IN OUR EARS

Hanns F Skoutajan

“One of the world’s most sophisticated and beautiful nations ( Canada, our home and native land) is being ransacked by barbarians,” so writes George Monbiot in the first paragraph of his most recent book “Feral: Rewilding the Land, the Sea and Human Life.” 

The barbarians that Monbiot refers to are “the nation’s elected government. The world has watched  in astonishment as your liberal, cultured, decent country has been transformed into a thuggish petro-state.”

Monbiot has spent much of his career as a journalist and environmentalist, working with others to defend  the natural world  he so loves. It is obvious that he has a high regard for Canadians, all the more reason for taking his harsh words seriously.

His passion is the restoration, or rewilding, as he calls it, of our damaged ecosystems. In his native Britain, particularly Wales and Scotland, he takes issue with sheep farming. He claims that it has absolutely devastated large areas of the country leaving virtual deserts with no trees.

A few years ago on a flight to Edinburgh  as we proceeded towards landing I was utterly amazed to see from my window hills upon grey hills  totally devoid of vegetation. Later hiking through the Ochill Hills east of Stirling  I saw at close quarters  the terrain  and the sheep that had shorn it clear. The only trees left were in crevices too inaccessible for the sheep to reach.

Monbiot wants such ecological devastation to be “rewilded,” that is restored  to what it once was.  Those same bare hills that I wondered about from the plane and later visited on foot , had once upon a time,  been covered with thick forest and hosted a variety animals now sadly missing.  And, as he maintains, it can be returned to somewhat that state but at a cost to the wool industry. There is a price for everything.

 Monbiot has travelled the world over  and has seen other devastation. Not only is he concerned about the land  but also the sea around us.  He harshly, but justifiably, attacks the fishing industry  which has virtually raked the ocean bottom totally disfiguring it, wrecking coral reefs, while sucking up the fish population indiscriminately.

He is not without hope for he believes and gives examples of nature’s resilience. Once its inhabitants/owners return to more responsible practices of farming and fishing the environment can make a comeback. What is lacking is not the means but the will.

My most recent read is a book called The End of Night: Searching for Natural Darkness in an Age of Artificial Light. Paul Bogard, the author, teaches creative non-fiction at James Madison University in the United States. His description of what a London and Paris might have looked like in the age of the gaslight is beautiful, when “The Old Lamplighter of long, long ago, made the world a little brighter” as the romantic song has it.  But that was before electric power transformed not only cities  but the world.  His book contain photos from different times that show how electric light has brightened the world  such that night seems to have been banished in a good deal of it.

We live in a 24/7 work world where employment schedules have totally changed the lives of working people. He interviews nurses in an emergency ward of a hospital, in factories where employees work in three shifts keeping machines running at all times, in stores open 24 hours a day and elsewhere.  Shift work has made family life difficult and indeed it has been the source of much illness for the many who have been exposed to light 24/7.

As I finished the two books it occurred to me that there was one more aspect of our living that had not yet been covered by my readings. I am sure that the subject of noise pollution has been written about and I am looking for a book with a title  such as “The Death of Silence.”

Both light and sound are made possible through electricity powered by wild water harnessed as well as atoms split, all of which impacts our environment.

Recently I have heard a documentary on the CBC  about noise in our restaurants and bars. My last venture out for dinner was in one of those blessed but scarce eating establishments where the sound system was not overwhelming and allowed us to converse without raising our voices. And by the way the food was excellent. At a bar that I visited a few nights earlier the clientele  vied with each other to be heard above the blare of the speakers  emitting what I suppose passes for music.  But, oh, I am getting old!  We are enveloped by sound and light.

Once again I must take you back to my youth. In the spring of 1939 after a five hour trek by horse and wagon my parents and I, our two friends and a bachelor moved into a remote, decrepit one room log shack in northern Saskatchewan. Later that evening when we had made our homes in the four corners of that one room we all stepped outside. For the first time in my life I encountered total darkness until the moon rose over the neighbouring woods. I also experienced total silence except for our own voices, the occasional hoot of an owl and the baying of coyotes. It was awesome and unforgettable.

I doubt that we can totally rewild as Monbiot advocates. Too much has changed. Our lives depend on power whatever its source may be. But there is no doubt in my mind that humans, and lets start with ourselves, must learn to live mindfully , mindful of our environment, the flora and fauna and of each other. It is becoming more than obvious to many, hopefully soon to most, that the sole arbiter of our economic decisions cannot be just “the bottom line.” There is more to life than what meets the accountant’s eye. 

SQ 18/08/2013 

WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

Hanns F Skoutajan

It has been said that a picture is worth a thousand words. That’s a bit of a come-down for us who slave over syntax and spelling, who strive  to make sentences flow,  who try not to play too loose with facts.

Would that I had become a graphic artist, a painter or photographer like Edward Burtynsky who tells  the awful truth  of man’s profligate ways with the environment through the lens of a camera. He shows the story with photos pf mountains of used tires, endless vistas of oil pumps and derricks, the hell holes of Fort MacMurray and much much more. I have recently visited his gallery at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa. Should it be “anti nature” in this case? Surely those pictures are more powerful  than any multiple of thousands of words.

All this became very personal for me a few days ago. I had engaged in one of my frequent forays into Google to check how I might have been misquoted. Better than not being quoted at all, I suppose. To my surprise I saw my name but the narrative was in Dutch, a language that I do not understand.

I clicked the symbol which said “Klicken” and before me unfolded “de Beelderbank,” an album of photos from WW 2, postwar and prewar, of soldiers, farmers pushing carts loaded with mattresses and other worldly goods out of war’s way.

There were also pictures of refugees from other lands e.g. Czechoslovakia. Among them to my utter surprise was one of a young Hanns Skoutajan, age 9. It was taken in November 1938 - 75 years ago, at the YWCA in London, England  where my mother and I were located prior to our ongoing journey to Scotland and reunion with my father.

As one of the more politically endangered activists he had been shipped out ahead of us.

On this photo I sport a radiant smile . No wonder for I had just unpacked my miniature electric train which according to the caption was the only toy my parents allowed me to bring along. I recall “back home” wrapping the tracks, the engine and five cars in my shirts, socks and underwear and stuffing them into the back pack to be portered by me to Britain and beyond - who knows.

 

Mother and I had managed to circumvent our enemy, Hitler’s Reich, by travelling through Poland by real train and then by ship from the Polish port of Gdynia to Britain .  There was one, at least one, hot spot on that journey - the Kiel Canal that crossed German territory from the Baltic to the North Sea.

I witnessed with some trepidation as officers in their hated/feared Nazi uniforms with the swastika held in the claws of an eagle on their caps, boarded our ship. Was it to arrest us? Happily it turned out that they were the canal pilots. There is a reason why I have a warm place in my heart for the colourful Union Jack. I first saw it flutter from the mast of the MS Baltrover and trusted in its protection. It was another ten months before the war broke out.

On the photo my little train sits on the floor in front of me in this new exile. I beamed at the camera at the presence of my beloved toy now free of laundry.

But the Trix Express train’s “Odyssey From Tragedy to Freedom” was far from over. It was yet to cross the stormy Atlantic and half a continent, yes, by train, always safely tucked in the rucksack on my back.

The train, no longer functional, is long retired like myself. It rests on a bookshelf in our living room as a memento of my life’s journey. 

That photo on the Dutch Beelderbank is indeed worth thousands of words. I have written many of them about that journey, its circumstances and destination and the many adventures en route. Indeed the picture has invoked these words that I gladly share with you, my readers.

Welcome! 

SQ 11/08/2013        

     

YESTERDAY

Hanns F Skoutajan

“Senescence,” the dictionary tells me, is “the condition or process of deterioration with old age.” Why did I have to look it up when I have some very personal acquaintance with that condition, such as my forgetfulness? As I write, but more embarrassingly when speaking, the right word escapes me  and leaves me groping.

There is another condition that manifests itself with the advancing years. I call it “anecdotage.” While the right word or expression flees my stories, especially reminiscences, only too readily come to the fore. I vividly recall events from the past. Indeed, many of my Spirit Quests are loaded with those reflection on bygone times.

I have always enjoyed the stories of Mary Cook in which she describes  life in rural Renfrew County. Having ministered in that area of eastern Ontario for five years I have some appreciation of the setting. They used to be published in the local paper, alas no more.

There is also some wishful thinking that colours these stories that turn them out to be rosier than in their reality. Thus memories of my childhood on that farm in remote northern Saskatchewan lose the despair and hardship that were a daily fact of our life. I cherish the memories of my dogs  as I described it in a recent SQ, of Blacky, the placid horse on which I learned to ride, the pigs we named after Nazi leaders that we had managed to escape.

I remember the newsboy in Prague with his bundle of papers under his arm brandishing the latest  copy calling out “Halo Novini!  and with a loud voice proclaiming the unhappy headlines of the day. In the fall of 1938 they were unfortunately plentiful. 

My parents and I had managed to escape the Nazi invasion of our hometown. We were forced to exchange our comfortable apartment for an attic with other refugees. We slept on straw mattresses and went for our meals to a soup kitchen set up for the many who had flooded into this still free city. I often wonder what became of that news vendor or those who stood in line with us at the kitchen window. We were among the fortunates who were helped by conscientious Brits to make it out of the caldron of central Europe. True, on coming to this land we were faced with hard and unfamiliar work and lived in unbelievable hovels that were minus the most basic of amenities. 

 

Having struggled with learning disabilities had made my education process a bit of drag. In those days there were no learning disabilities, you were either smart or dumb. Guess what! I was forced to work very hard and was deprived of those times that are meant to be so much a part of college life. I have a better recollection from the distance of years. Queen’s University is one of the highlights of my life and I felt greatly honoured to have an honourary doctorate bestowed on me by my alma mater. 

I also remember fondly the congregations that I served as minister and the people with whom I worked and worshipped and came to know quite intimately.

Those times are not forgotten but form the matrix of 84 years of my life. What I am today is made up or at least enhanced by the memory of those events  of long ago. I wonder what my own  children will remember of their childhood and youth. What funny stories will they tell of their father years hence.   

I spend much time at the local coffee shop with other octogenarians and some much younger than I exchanging our tales of life. I know that there are some who would rather forget the past and live in the now.  I pity them for the wealth of the now  is constituted by the events of long ago. 

I have called it “Spirit Quest,”  the opening of the mind to the past that made us what we are, to discover that there is a Spirit that has accompanied us on our way and still is with us now. 

01/ O8/ 2013

JUL

16

LIFE AMONG THE DRY BONES

Hanns F Skoutajan

There are various kinds of screams, at least two I can identify. There is the scream of pain and horror; it begins sharply and ends just as abruptly as it began. There is the kind of scream  that starts suddenly  and then trails off. Like steam from an engine, it blasts forth and as the pressure diminishes so does the intensity of the sound. It seems to announce a release. It was the latter kind that pierced the air and echoed through a poplar grove on an abandoned farm in northern Saskatchewan.

A few weeks after arriving in this remote setting that had become home for us , mother ventured from our primitive log cabin to explore the surroundings. She walked behind the barn, an empty and partly collapsed building unsafe for man or beast. Someone a long time ago had hauled logs from a distance, there were no such trees in our area, to build this barn. The builder had been quite a craftsman with the axe. He had squared the timber  and fitted them neatly together, but now the whole structure was rotting away.

It was spring and the leaves were bursting from their winter weathered branches. Winters in this northern country were long and severe as we were soon to discover. But now all of nature was speaking messages of hope . Grasses and  ferns were rising from the ground as if rudely thrust from below. We were amazed at the speed of growth.

Mother was alone for the day. Father and I, along with others, had gone some miles to another farm to fetch some cows which we would now have to learn how to milk. She, nor any of us, had ever touched a cow before let alone extrude milk from the beast.

She had time on her hands. It was good to be alone with her thoughts. She walked slowly along the edge of the woods behind the barn taking in all that was so strange but now was ours, something she found hard to accept.

She felt a sense of ambivalence. She was aware of how far she was from her former home across the sea. With the growing hostility between Britain and Germany the link with her family seemed like an elastic band  almost stretched to the breaking point. War seemed inevitable and with that, of course,  a total separation. 

Her thoughts were often with her mother, her sister and brother and their families. She wished that they too might have emigrated. How wonderful it would have been to have them all nearby sharing the hardships as well as the freedom offered by this new land. Certainly her brother-in-law Max, a man skilled with his hands, would have been far handier on this pioneer farm than her intellectual husband, although he was quickly learning.

She walked on and at length came upon an opening among the trees that looked like it might have contained a narrow farm lane. From directly behind the barn  it entered the woods, no more than two ruts  and even these were overgrown with weeds while the space between them was well on the way to returning to the bush from which it had originally been cut. 

She decided to follow this trail to see where it would lead. Occasionally the ruts turned into mud puddles and she had to resort to stomping  through the brush along the side.  She felt curious about the destination, indeed, she almost felt drawn.

The road mother was following took a number of turns to avoid some willows that grew along the edge of a swamp, or slough, as the locals called it. Then the road opened into what must have been a clearing  some years ago, now, of course, it was filled with tall weeds and low brush. Even some saplings made an effort to grow among them.

She stopped and looked. The road seemed dead-ended. She was puzzled  by white objects she glimpsed among the grass. Advancing a few steps further she saw a good many more and recognized them  to be weather-beaten bones. There was a whole carcass lying there, the rib cage of a large animal, a cow or a horse perhaps. She felt strange as though she had entered into some macabre mortuary. Then she spied a skull. She had never seen one before. Afterall she had been a city person.  Obviously this road she had been following had been used to transport dead animals to be left in the woods to rot.  Now all that remained were their whitened bones. 

“Is that all that there is to life when it is past?” she wondered. “We too share this mortality.”

Mother wasn’t sure of her beliefs. From a scientific point of view she saw no evidence of an after-life, only whitened bones and even these eventually crumble into dust. If religion, the belief in God and life beyond death, could make people decent and responsible , then fine and good, but should we need such primitive incentives? Surely humankind can rise above such superstitions. But on the other hand she remembered the SS brutality, the horror of concentration camps that we had been fortunate to avoid, just barely. The very thought of father caught in their hands could still make her shiver. 

Thus mother reasoned as she stood among the piles of bones. But there was another thought, or perhaps it was only a feeling, that presented itself; had she not experienced something unusual, well, perhaps spiritual, at St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague less than a year ago when not only November weather had darkened the sky? The future seemed bleak indeed. Her Catholic upbringing had planted some seeds of spirituality that had lain dormant  deep inside her psyche. There were times when they gave slight signs of life, “intimations of immortality” perhaps.

Suddenly she glimpsed something crimson, like a burning ember. There among the grass and scrub, it glowed. It seemed to have discovered her almost as she discovered it. Or had this fiery eye seen her as she came through the woods, perhaps had seen her a long time before and drawn her to itself?

The red eye held her as she held her breath. They confronted each other, the red eye challenging her to draw near.  A lump formed in her throat. She was aware of her 

aloneness in this valley of dry bones. Slowly she advanced across the clearing and then recognized what it  was that had bound her in this spell.

A scream formed in her throat, pressed out and rang among the trees and bones. A Tiger Lily growing straight and tall between the piles of skulls and ribs dared to announce life among the dead. The scream was long as the pressure  of the anxieties and stresses that had piled up over the months  of uncertainty and waiting  were vented. 

Her arms, at first flung into the air, came slowly down and embraced her chest. Her scream diminished into sobs . Her eyes gushed tears  that blurred the glowing, crimson flower.

She did not kneel to pray or utter invocations, intercessions or words of confession. They were all there, unspoken, yet most real  and clear in this Epiphany.

Many years later mother confided this event to me. It had been a turning point in her life, a spiritual awakening, an experience that confirmed for her that she was not alone.

*                                                          *                                                           *

The above story was taken from my book Uprooted and Transplanted: A Sudeten Odyssey from Tragedy to Freedom, 1938 - 1958.  I was reminded of it as I walked along the street in the New Edinburgh area of Ottawa. Along the side of the avenue there were large clumps of very tall Tiger Lilies with big crimson blossoms just like the one that mother had encountered. 

Hopefully this story has meaning for you as it has for me. There is a Spirit that is alive among all of nature. Dare to discover it.   

SQ 15/08/2013

See SKOUTAJAN’S PAGE  for previous writings