JAMES CARROLL

Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

The very act of story-telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us.

American fighters of the Pacific War were not heroes. The desperation of island combat included exchanged barbarities of which no one would willingly speak for a generation. On the American side, there were foul racism, vengeful refusals to take prisoners, a generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war.

It takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the coalition is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement. The war itself is the American war crime.

Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world.

We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things....but, there are times when we must stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or in its memory. We listen, and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

Though based on the Law of Moses, Judaism had emerged as a community ordered not by legislation or decree but by the influence of its interpreters, reflecting on a compilation of the commentary of ancestral masters. This is the culture of Talmud, a culture not of codification but of conversation, written and oral; a culture not of hierarchy but of mutuality.

Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy.

There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

Though based on the Law of Moses, Judaism had emerged as a community ordered not by legislation or decree but by the influence of its interpreters, reflecting on a compilation of the commentary of ancestral masters. This is the culture of Talmud, a culture not of codification but of conversation, written and oral; a culture not of hierarchy but of mutuality.

The very act of story-telling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of the narrative, is by definition holy. We tell stories because we can't help it. We tell stories because we love to entertain and hope to edify. We tell stories because they fill the silence death imposes. We tell stories because they save us.

Telling our stories is what saves us. The story is enough... The very act of storytelling, of arranging memory and invention according to the structure of narrative is, by definition, holy.

There are times when we stop, we sit still. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things....but, there are times when we must stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or in its memory. We listen, and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.

American fighters of the Pacific War were not heroes. The desperation of island combat included exchanged barbarities of which no one would willingly speak for a generation. On the American side, there were foul racism, vengeful refusals to take prisoners, a generalized brutality that extended to a savage air war.

It takes a disciplined imagination to acknowledge that the less personal savageries of bombs, missiles, artillery and heavy weapons are, to those blown to smithereens, also barbaric. The main horror of what the coalition is doing is not a matter of the occasional soldier who, in the heat of battle, commits a war crime, but the steady destruction rained on cities, villages, the Iraqi people. This violence is wreaked calmly, from a distance, within the rules of engagement. The war itself is the American war crime.

Memory is a political act. Forgetfulness is the handmaiden of tyranny.

Before entering the seminary, I had not encountered the life-changing potential of reading as a source of meaning, as a way of ordering one's inner life, and being rooted in the world.