Help Me, Amaziah!
Two things, closely related, recently caught my attention.
The Children’s Art Gallery in Dayton, K12, put out this call to artists: “K12 Gallery for Young People and Former Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin request creative design ideas for a new city beautification project called “Fighter Jet – Dayton Takes Flight”. K12 has fifty (50) fiber glass fighter aircraft 4’ x 3’ wide – a blank canvas sculpture if you will. We are calling all artists of all ages to get involved in adorning the fiber glass sculptures to give them flight. These will be placed on public display in the downtown Dayton area. Proposals are sought for decorating the fighter jets.”
The second item that made me widen my eyes and go “Say what?” was the announcement that my church, the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Ohio, is going to hold her annual Diocesan Convention in 2011 on a United States Air Force base, Wright Patterson in Fairborn, Ohio.
What’s wrong with these pictures?
Kids, beautification project, art, decorating fighter jets, killing machines.
Church, Prince of Peace, “strive for justice and peace among all people, and respect the dignity of every human being,”(we say at our baptisms), meeting on the grounds of the leading research base where they “research” ever newer, more efficient ways to kill people.
Kids, church, killing machines, killing people?
There must be something wrong with me. All these good people who love kids and do art and all these good Christians who are committed to peace and reconciliation in the world . . . they don’t seem to be bothered by the incongruity that’s staring me right in the face. But I haven’t heard another voice raised. Somehow I must be thinking about this wrongly.
Help me, Amaziah, to understand how I’m out of line here.
Why are so many of my thoughts darke?
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I walked from Christ Church to the Kettering Tower the other day and for the first time in my life, I really, really wanted to become a vandal. I was not surprised by the model airplanes because I had read about them in the newspaper, but when I actually saw them, I was horrified. I stopped short, which was not hard because I am, in fact, short, and began to imagine myself a character in a strange land, an alien coming upon a seemingly ordinary cityscape and then finding she was part of a military camp. I felt strange and oppressed; how is it that we can glorify bombers and aircraft whose sole purpose is to kill people and then give prizes to children who can make replicas of them? I looked around cautiously to see if there were any guards watching me and seriously considered just shimmying up the poles and destroying these terribilia. I imagined myself with a cape and the Wonder Woman outfit of my childhood heroine. I would capture all these planes, destroy them and spread the word about love and justice and peace and suddenly, in a flash, everyone would come to their senses and behave, for once. But I just walked on, grieving and praying and surmising. And then to learn that the Diocese will celebrate all of this on site! This is too much.