Another Statement regarding International Relations

1. I am chagrined by the state of affairs. I no longer envision a peaceful conclusion to the current disaster in Ukraine while still wishing to be surprised that Putin will see the futility of his efforts. 

2. I am against our nation’s direct involvement while supporting their efforts to provide whatever is possible to support Ukraine. My bottom line is that the United States has not had a productive involvement in any warfare since WWII, e.g.,Vietnam,Afghanistan. 

3. I fear that Putin will, in desperation, use a nuclear bomb which, then, will convince others nations, including ours, to defend themselves by using their nuclear weapons. Then, we will experience a nightmare, assuming that we survive. 

4. I do not know how much I have shared about my understanding of God. It all started when I was in the seminary and started to read Pierre deChardin,the Jesuit paleontologist, who saw the Divine in the rocks that he examined in China. From then on, there are few thinkers dealing with the Cosmos  or evolution that I have not read. Given this, I am now wrestling with what we are doing to Mother Earth. Except for New Zealand and Ireland, nations are in conflict, most often with homogeneous violence, e.g, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Syria, etc. etc. Given now that I am considering the possibility of nuclear warfare, I am trying to wrestle with my basic understanding that Christ, the Divine, is always present in all, persons, plants, trees, etc. I pray that way,i.e., I simply focus on the moment, knowing the Divine is present. Given all this, I have wrestled with the idea of the DIvine’s present and the possibility of nuclear annihilation. My current conclusion, the Cosmos is so wondrous and huge that scientists have not discovered the far extent of its parameters. So, I now consider that the Divine will still be present in all, but the destruction of Mother Earth will only demonstrate that evolution has still further to go to advance from its primitive beginnings. We sort of thought that our satellite was the Best Ever, only to find out that it was just a step in the long story of evolution.