Vietnam - ManTeiv

Acirema - America

This is not your typical Vietnam anti-war memory or interpretation. Look at the picture of the Holy Mass below. When all is said and done, that's what happened during the time called "Vietnam." Sacrifice. Bloody, yes, but more, Holy.

When we Americans set off The Bomb, only one person looked at it positively from a spiritual perspective. This was Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit paleontologist. J. R. Oppenheimer who headed the Manhattan Project quoted a Hindu script, "I am become death. The destroyer." Teilhard wrote, "To me it seems that thanks to the atom bomb it is war, not mankind, that is destined to be eliminated."

Destiny, it appears, unfolds on a time scale not of our choosing. But our life span - yours and mine - is all we have to work out this destiny. So, what are you doing?

This site links to the writings of a communal one who sought to become a Sacrificer in the traditional mode but celebrated his first Holy Mass inside a Selective Service draft board in rural Minnesota offering Draft Cards in consecration. Like Oppenheimer he became a Destroyer. Like Teilhard he saw a different Fire. Unlike either, they locked his radical ass in prison - where the Sacred Slaughter is celebrated unendingly.

The insight you will find here is that War is a Liturgy. A ritual act. Requisite for the Warrior Culture - which is what Western, Biblical culture has always been.

But there is more, a lot about Eros, sexuality, Beloveds, prison ... but link on, read, download. Destiny awaits.

Excerpts, Chapters & Downloads
Essays
Links

The 1971 pre-prison story - with excerpted transcripts of the trials of "The Minnesota 8" - titled "Patriotism Means Resistance." Still a challenge to the youth of The Sixties! Re-written in 2007 for release of the play, "Peace Crimes: the Minnesota 8 vs. the war" as "Outlaw or American Patriot?" See, www.minnesota8.net

"Presidential Evangelist for War" - written for the Iraq situation in answer to nephew, Gary. Do you understand the compulsion to rituals of bloodshed which is America's sacred Story of Origin? That America is a splinter sect of the Protestant Revolution? That the Civil Religion's theology is secular? ... We need to know who we are so that we can envision the Earthfolk!