The Clock is Running

I'm off to sesshin for a week, starting this evening. I have agreed to be the timekeeper for the retreat. I'm one of the few who will admit to enjoying the job. The relationship between time and consciousness becomes very clear. And even better, I'm excused from washup after meals.

In what might appear to be other news, I've been trying for some time to compose an essay that discusses the war from a personal point of view —not in the abstract, but in terms of its impact on ordinary people in small towns in Oregon.

It's all to easy, even in Corvallis, in the circles I frequent, to forget that real people from our community are serving and fighting and dying violently. The reality of the war as it is actually experienced is so easily buried under ideas and principles and reflexive beliefs—on both sides.

This essay in today's Oregonian does a better job than I ever could, and I must confess I don't mind lacking this young man's qualifications to comment on the war's impact.

I am particularly struck by how the piece concludes. (In my own life, the senseless and violent death of an acquaintance forced me to address some burning questions about the purpose of this life. Eventually, this propelled me to the Zen practice. In talking to others, I have found there there is a sizable demographic of practitioners for whom a senseless death in their lives marked the beginning of a search for truth: a dharma gate.)

Finally, the piece is political in that it deals with a political event: the war. It is not particularly partisan, however, and it asks us all to investigate the question "Is this suffering worth the benefits?" Everyone will have a different answer to this question, and even that may change with time. Regardless of the answer, not to appreciate the price paid for one's current lifestyle and circumstance is shortsighted, even arrogant.

Finally, at the end, a poem by William Stafford. Whatever is needed to snap us into awareness of this moment: masterful poetry and senseless death are both our teachers.

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When the wake of war rips at the heart

Monday, February 20, 2006

My cousin Adrian Stump was killed in the mountains of Afghanistan a few months ago. We grew up together. We were going to share our first legal drink when he came home for Christmas.

He didn't show. The helicopter he piloted was shot down by a rocket-propelled grenade launched by one of the "terrorists" we often hear about, the ones who hate freedom. It took the military three weeks to gather his body, which was ripped apart by the impact of the grenade into his helicopter.

Christmas was depressing. My aunt and uncle had lost their first-born child; I had lost a great cousin and even better friend.

I tuned the world out. I didn't come out of my room for three days except to make attempts at eating. I drank more than usual. I smoked more than usual. The numbing effect made Adrian's passing slightly more tolerable.

I gave up on the news because every time I turned it on, a slide show of my life with Adrian would reel inside my head, and I would cry until my body became limp from exhaustion.

I almost cried during the recent State of the Union address when President Bush asked us to never forget the families who have lost a loved one in this war. I thought of what my family has been through these past months.

I was told that neighbors could hear my aunt's scream blocks away when the government vehicle arrived and uniformed officers told her that she would never see her son again. Human brains are not wired to handle the emotion that floods a mother's body at the moment her son's heart no longer beats. The brain cracks, and the body collapses. My aunt's eyes are empty now; I have a hard time looking into them because I don't see her pain, I feel it. And it's at that moment that I realize I'm experiencing only a fraction of what's coursing through her body.

As I watched the president speak, I heard him say that freedom is on the march, and I wondered, is it? I thought it odd that freedom is the bastard offspring of military intervention and mass murder. I thought it odd that in a world so large, a single man has the power to kill thousands of people without answering legitimate questions from the people he is supposed to be serving.

My friends and family went out for drinks on the day we had planned. Adrian didn't make it because his body was blown to pieces, cremated, then spread in the Blue Mountains in Oregon.

Now I sit through my classes and wonder if the discussions we have are even worth the mental energy. Are we talking about the meaning of life? No. Are we talking about how to realistically arrive at a better world? Or is it simply liberal fantasy? Probably the latter.

I don't like being alone because there's too much time to think about how sad and angry I am that an Oregon National Guardsman is dead because the soldiers in Afghanistan were transferred to Iraq and replaced with guard units who were supposed to respond to local catastrophes.

Everyone tells me that my cousin's death was not in vain. I look into their eyes and know they are lying to me and to themselves. I know they are trying to make me feel better; I nod my head. There are people -- good people -- who honestly believe that Adrian's death wasn't in vain. And to them, I shake my head but say nothing.

Our existence on this planet is not very significant. The world keeps spinning when we die. People move on. But when the world loses someone like Adrian, it should stop, if only for a moment. Rains should pour. Our collective self should pause and reflect: Are we acting as pawns to some other powers that distract us from what truly matters in our life: family, friends, ourselves? Are we doing what we truly love in our lives?

Religious or not, it is a miracle that we are here. We don't have much time, though. Time eventually catches up and runs its course on our bodies. My cousin's death called me back to the nucleus of my life: family, friends and myself. So much had distracted me for so long.

I won't attempt to explain what a great person my cousin Adrian Bovee Stump was because words just don't apply. Emotions do. You listen to him with your eyes and your heart because words lack substance. They cannot describe Adrian or people like Adrian.

After his death, I envisioned myself on my deathbed, staring blankly out a window and asking, "What was it all about?"

If your life isn't on the path you would like it to be, begin a new one. The clock is running.

Harry Beckwith of Pendleton is a senior at Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, Calif. Adrian Stump of Pendleton died in Afghanistan in September. This essay was originally published in The Santa Clara, the university's student newspaper.

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You Reading This, Be Ready


Starting here, what do you want to remember?

How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?

What scent of old wood hovers, what softened

sound from outside fills the air?

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world

than the breathing respect that you carry

wherever you go right now? Are you waiting

for time to show you some better thoughts?

When you turn around, starting here, lift this

new glimpse that you found; carry into evening

all that you want from this day. This interval you spent

reading or hearing this, keep it for life -

What can anyone give you greater than now,

starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?


-- William Stafford