Common Wonders
Co-creating a culture of peace
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Good Guys with Guns?
By Robert C. Koehler Ready, aim, fire: “I believe in Jesus, guns and babies.” So declares Kandiss Taylor, GOP candidate for governor of Georgia, in a campaign ad. Or how about: “I’m Eric Greitens, Navy SEAL, and today, we’re going RINO-hunting.” This is not about killing rhinoceroses. “RINO” stands for Republican in Name Only – […]
Embracing the Complexity of Peace
By Robert C. Koehler “Just imagine for once if we led the world in funding peace and not wars.” Just imagine! The words are those of Robert Weissman, president of the organization Public Citizen, in response to the legislative efforts of Reps. Barbara Lee and Mark Pocan, who are the co-chairs of — glory hallelujah! […]
The Collateral Damage Comes Home
By Robert C. Koehler “They were at places that seemed safe — but few spaces in America are guaranteed safe anymore.” This is CNN, doing its best to stay atop America’s mass shootings and keep the survivors (by which I mean us) informed. Yeah, 13 gun massacres this past weekend, at strip malls, nightclubs, graduation […]
Sexual Abuse and the American Way
By Robert C. Koehler And another sex scandal pops into the news. This time it’s the Southern Baptist Convention, the country’s largest Protestant denomination, cringing in shame upon the recent release of a “bombshell” report detailing two decades of sexual abuse by pastors and other church officials, along with ongoing official coverup of the crimes […]
Beyond Gun Control, We Need Hatred Control
By Robert C. Koehler Another terrorist slips into the classroom, into the news. Does anyone understand this? Even if guns are easily, readily available, why, why, why? I find it impossible even to be angry — it’s hard to be angry under incomprehensible circumstances. Instead, I find myself imagining George W. Bush giving a speech […]
The Heart Is Mightier Than the Sword
By Robert C. Koehler They’re coming for me! Sounds like a horror movie on permanent rewind through the brain, through the soul. Catch your breath, buy a gun. What other choice do you have? It’s called, among other things, “white replacement theory” — but my sense is that the fear itself (fear of God-knows-what) comes […]
Eve’s Choice: Patriarchy No Longer Rules
By Robert C. Koehler “Then the Lord God said, ‘It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.’” — Genesis 2:18. RSV One chapter later, after Eve was held responsible for the First Sin (Adam, the submissive male, just did what she told him to), […]
A Promise to Our Kids: We Won’t Kill You
By Robert C. Koehler At a certain point, as I was reading the book I’d recently been sent, a strange transformation began occurring: Gradually, as I moved ever deeper into it, I wasn’t so much reading as quietly singing a hymn . . . participating in a chant. The book is A Promise to Our […]
The Global Suicide Budget
By Robert C. Koehler “Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron.” I truly wish these words of Ike, uttered seven decades ago, were no longer quite so relevant. Perhaps what he should have called it was a “cross of irony.” In 2021, the human race, in order […]
Humanity: Evolving in Spite of Itself
By Robert C. Koehler As wars rage, as cruelty shatters lives across the planet — as nuclear Armageddon remains a viable option for all of us — I think it’s time to claim some stunning awareness in this regard. The human race is evolving in spite of itself — evolving beyond war, beyond empire, beyond […]
Nuclear Weapons and Cranial Winter
By Robert C. Koehler Nuclear sanity: ultimate (or, God help us, immediate) disarmament. Nuclear insanity: ongoing development and deployment, endless investment, eventual (either accidental or intentional) use. Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., addressing Congress several weeks ago, made a heartfelt and powerful case for nuclear sanity, for a revamping of the system of mutually assured destruction, […]
Standing Together for the Sacred
By Robert C. Koehler The soul of humanity cries out from the crowded streets of Moscow, from steps near the Kremlin, as a man — an artist in the deepest sense — brings the slaughter of civilians in Bucha back to the home country . . . not by killing a bunch of Russians, but […]
Save the Planet, Behead the Military Budget
By Robert C. Koehler Americans “need to imagine their vote has an impact on policy, an illusion the media encourages them to believe in.” Ouch! Peter Isaacson, writing in Fair Observer, seems to be saying . . . oh my God, democracy is a cliché, a big sham. I stand up, put my hand on […]
When Jim Crow Greeted Black Veterans
By Robert C. Koehler I figured I’d better write this column while doing so is still legal (at least I think it is), but I don’t recommend reading it aloud in a third-grade classroom. There’s a piece of legislation sitting in the House Veterans Affairs Committee — H.R. 5905 — that cuts a swath 75 […]
Transcending the Certainties of War
By Robert C. Koehler Peace, in the deepest sense — in the midst of war — requires a clarity and courage well beyond the boundaries of linear understanding. The warning lights flash. World War III has entered the red zone. Can we stare into hell and refuse to see . . . an enemy? This […]
Life Goes on, Right?
By Robert C. Koehler I had a breakthrough yesterday — and I don’t mean metaphorically. Wars rage, countless humans suffer, the rich get richer, life goes on. I still have my morning coffee. But not yesterday. What happened — about 5 a.m. — was a fleeting . . . oh so fleeting . . . […]
The Frailty of Peace in the Midst of War
By Robert C. Koehler Prior to any analysis of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, prior to the casting of blame and outrage — at Putin’s hubris, at NATO’s pernicious eastward expansion over the last three decades — there’s this: “Our world has become so interdependent that violent conflict between two countries inevitably impacts the rest […]
Creating Peace Means Changing the World
By Robert C. Koehler Only threat, pain and inflicted hell preserve peace, right? Get the bad guy! Russia: bad. If it invades Ukraine, such a “voluntary war of aggression,” according to David Leonhardt of the New York Times, “would be a sign that Putin believed that Pax Americana was over and that the U.S., the […]
Afghanistan on the Brink of Disaster
By Robert C. Koehler Gay rights, women’s rights — in reality, these are a nuisance to many U.S. conservatives, but purporting to protect these rights on the other side of the world is a great excuse to play war. And you don’t need bombs to play. All you need is the will to dominate and […]
The Court of Ecological Awareness
By Robert C. Koehler Pssst . . . here’s a little secret. Don’t tell anyone, OK? It might cause trouble. In recent years, there have been more than a thousand lawsuits filed around the world — including a few in the United States — challenging corporate or governmental negligence about climate change and ecosystem damage. […]
Ukraine and the Nuclear Paradox
By Robert C. Koehler Somewhere out there in the geopolitical wilderness of Eastern Europe, two powerful beasts stalk each other. One of them is good. One of them is evil. The future of all life on this planet is at stake. We’ll be back after these messages . . . (or maybe not). This seems […]
Jim Crow Wails in Anguish
By Robert C. Koehler “The concern is misplaced, because if you look at the statistics, African American voters are voting in just as high a percentage as Americans.” Even if Mitch McConnell’s viral gaffe last week is as innocent as he claims it to be, the stench of something deep — the unexamined racist fear […]
A Citizen of the World (Still) Speaks
By Robert C. Koehler I decided to honor Martin Luther King Day this year by reading — and trying to absorb, more fully than ever before — the entirety (nearly 7,000 words) of the iconic speech he gave at Riverside Church a year to the day before his assassination. The speech, “Beyond Vietnam: A Time […]
Untangling Ourselves from the Dark Side
By Robert C. Koehler Guess what? I direct the following insight to, among others, the U.S. Congress, which annually and without comment, with only a few objectors, passes a trillion-dollar (and growing) military budget, by far the largest such budget on Planet Earth. “You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war.” The words are those […]
The Myth of the Good War
By Robert C. Koehler Love thy enemy? I get a chance to do so on a regular basis, thanks to the email (or nasty-mail) I sometimes get in response to my column, e.g.: “Must be a dearth of anyone with anything intelligent to say for the News to put your drivel out for us to […]
