So Does This Mean My Brother Can Come Home Now?

No.

I was just noticing that these last few days there has been a lot of chatter on facebook but not so much on the blogs I read. Not even the ones I expected to have something to say about it.

Bin Laden is dead. Seal Team 6 killed him.

This happened in Pakistan, just over the border from Afgahnistan where my baby brother is deployed. Spring is the most dangerous time he said.

So now what? More death and more violence and more rebuilding and more celebrating and more...?
He wrote this on his wall today,

"The human condition is far too complicated for any one world view or over simplified answer. there is nothing that is always the answer not love not hate not pacifism not violence. Any emotion can be positive or negative if felt for the right reason. The belief that any feeling is inhearently bad is the real problem. All of our emotions exist for a reason and this includes hate and fear."

My prayers lately are for him to come home to his wife and daughter and Iowa, but I also know he is doing a lot of good helping rebuild the region he is stationed in. That good will spread. 

So while some people may be celebrating and others mourning and even others astonished at the celebration and more scared, all of these are a valid reaction and have a personal meaning. All are authentic. In thinking about this today, I had a moment of silence for all of the death that has happened around the world, all the loss, all the rebirth that will come of it. I'm hopeful that the world my children inherit will be one of peace and health. I hope the same for Bin Laden's children. 

This I do know. I do know that we are a very blessed and privilaged America. I know that food is plentiful and my children have so many toys that they have to sometimes bag them up for charity to make room for more. I hope that they will always have enough to keep them warm. I know that on the other side of the world there are families who live, actually sleep, on top of municipal trash heaps. The freedom my brother fights for is one of comfort and security and he's fighting not only for us to keep ours but for others to be lifted out of poverty and suffering and into that freedom. Yes, there is suffereing and poverty right here in Iowa too, but there is at least a chance that folks can pull out of it. We don't have to worry about roadside bombs while heading to the gas station or to the grocery store. The world is getting smaller though and each time it shrinks, it pulls all the good and bad closer together. 


Just rambling thoughts here as I ingest all of the news. I know, it's not like me to ramble blogside.