El Niño
One day last summer the neighbor lady invited us to attend a piano recital featuring two of her three children, Antonio, 10, and Brenda, 9. We sat in the crowded auditorium fanning ourselves with our mimeographed programs and watched as the dozen or so children in white First Communion outfits showcased tentative versions of Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and Chopsticks. Next to us, adoring parents hung on every note. Feeling their devotion, I realized once again how primary the place of children is in Mexican culture.
Children are everywhere here -- in the streets with their older siblings, in restaurants, playing in the Plaza Civica with homemade toys, in the markets selling food and crafts alongside their parents, in the Jardin chasing down an errant balloon. They are eternally happy. So rare is it to hear a child cry that when one does, every adult within earshot turns to see what might be wrong.
And children are in the churches, not just as youthful worshippers, but also as the worshipped. Just about every church has a special 'Niño,' a child Jesus, on display. Usually the Niño statues are lavishly dressed little boys, crowned and holding a scepter and orb, the symbols of rule. Our neighborhood church has an entire side altar dedicated to the Niño, with the Niño enthroned in splendor, dressed in amazing laces and brocades and adorned with pearls. At its feet lay an assortment of toys -- plastic cars and trucks, dolls, stuffed animals. When you stand before the Niño, you are impressed with the emphasis this culture gives to the healing nature of the child, the spiritual power of the child.
Children and War
Worldwide, we have not done well toward children recently. Consider this, from the United Nations: since 1987, over 2 million children were killed in wars. In addition, 12 million children were made homeless during that time, between 5 million children were permanently disabled, 1 million were orphaned...and 10 million children suffered severe psychological trauma.
The UN estimated last year that the number of child soldiers -- children in combat roles -- had risen to more than 300,000. It also made note that the primary victims of landmines are children. There are presently 110 million landmines in the ground, killing 800 people each month. Landmines cost about $3 to buy and $1000 to clear away, so there is not much incentive for nations -- particularly poor nations -- to remove them. During the Iran-Iraq War (1980-1988), children were sent out ahead of adult troops in waves over mine fields.
Since children are the future of humanity, we would have to conclude that this is species suicide on an unprecedented scale. Something in us seems to be operating out of a death wish.
'Civilizational War'
Wars since the dawn of the last century have been public affairs. Previously, lines of professional soldiers assembled and fired against lines of other professional soldiers. At the end of the day, the side that ended up with more soldiers living won the battle; the side that won more battles won the war. Soldiers died, but the populations on whose behalf they fought, were left relatively untouched.
But since World War I, civilian populations have been included in the battle lines. Drop a bomb from an airplane, and you are killing not a line of soldiers, but families, ordinary people going about their lives, innocent children. Four million civilians were killed in wars between 1990 and 1996. War, which was always hell, has become a method for gaining world-wide philosophical dominance -- a way for one political/religious viewpoint to prevail against another by simply destroying everyone in the world who holds the opposite view. In this kind of war, whole cultures, not just lines of soldiers, must fall. Thomas Friedman, writing in the New York Times, says, 'I am increasingly worried that we are heading toward a civilizational war.'
The Child Within
At some point all this has to stop. I must stop being suspicious of you -- and you must trust that I will not hurt you. And nations and cultures and civilizations must begin living according to those principles, which are the principles of love over fear. 'Must' because so much is at stake now. We are not lines of soldiers firing upon each other; we are whole populations, whole realms of thought and creativity and spirituality -- we are the children, the future of our species.
When we think about the war of the moment -- a war with an ambiguous purpose and the vaguest of time frames -- may our thoughts go first to the children, who have done nothing to bring about the conflict, but are suffering its consequences in their small bodies, and millions with their young lives.
In Mexico we are preparing, as you are, to celebrate the birth of El Niño, the Christ Child. All cultures have a divine child symbol -- Jung called it the Child archetype, and he said it exists in the Collective Unconscious, and therefore in the hearts and souls of all of us. At this most sacred time, we have the opportunity to welcome the Child home once again -- to bring it into our experience and allow it to live in us. May it find there a place of love, not fear...of peace, not war.
Dwight Eisenhower, a professional soldier before becoming president of the United States, said, 'There is peace where the people are peaceful; you will find it nowhere else.' At this time of 'Peace on Earth,' let us resolve to be those peaceful people he spoke about.
Blessings for the holidays from LifePath Center in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.
