Victor Bremson's Reflections

I think a lot about a Spanish movie I saw 5 years ago called the “Butterfly”, "La Lengua de las Mariposas". It is a fairly simple movie about a young boy and his teacher during the Spanish Civil War. The teacher wants to teach about the awe that can be experienced in studying nature, like the tongue of a butterfly. The teacher doesn’t want to participate in the hatred that is filling Spain between those on the right and those on the left. But of course the extremists on both sides demand total allegiance to their point of view. As the teacher is driven away, to be executed the young boy runs after the truck yelling ‘butterfly’s tongue’. The boy was saying I understand.

I find myself identifying more and more with the teacher. A friend of mine recently shared a reading that highlighted the idea that ‘the human race defines insanity’. The main support for this argument was that we have killed over 100,000,000 of our own species in the last 100 years. Mostly because of our nationalistic or religious beliefs.

I was with a friend this weekend who supports our war in Iraq. The center of his argument is that we have to kill them before they kill us. He readily agrees that their were no weapons and no terrorism links and claims our president was justified in lying to the people in order to mobilize for war.

How do we stop this insanity?

We get so locked into our myths. They are all around us. Oil is plentiful and cheap. Our God is better than your God. Might make right. Non-violence responses don’t work.

Here is the only truth my friends. It comes from the teaching of the mystics.

Taking time to understand the complexity of a butterfly’s tongue, the vastness of space, the mystery of gravity, the experience of true love or the existence of a universal consciousness allows us to begin the journey towards sanity. Those of us that have begun this journey are changed forever. We certainly are not perfect but we no longer waste energy questioning the existence of God. Instead we begin to dream again and write poetry expressing things like gratefulness and blessing. In this state of being the idea of killing our brothers before they kill us is just not an option.

Victor Bremson
July 9, 2005