SWORDS INTO PLOWSHARES, SPEARS INTO PRUNING HOOKS©
George G. Epp
Forward: There’s a prevailing view in our world that
militaries and their tools are necessary to protect us from aggression by the
militaries and their tools of other countries. My Anabaptist/Mennonite heritage
and 80 years of living have taught me that it’s not so, that this philosophy is
the same as saying, “We are untrustworthy and misanthropic, hopelessly selfish and greedy and
so we must assume that other nations are probably as evil—and likely more—than we
are.”
The
settling of differences is often achieved through diplomacy and negotiation but
sometimes through violence that escalates until terrible damage and death is
the result. The difference lies in the possession of weapons, pure and simple.
The Kingdom Christ promised will be a disarmed, peaceable realm, where
(metaphorically) “the lion will sleep with the lamb and the wolf and the sheep
will graze side by side,” and (metaphorically) “every man will enjoy life
seated peacefully under his own olive tree, being blest by the summer sun and
the trilling of birds.”
To this
end, I offer this parable.
On
August 5th, 2022, he rolled over, sat up gently so as not to wake
Anika and padded into the walk-in closet to retrieve the uniform Anika had so
carefully brushed the night before. It wasn’t there. He backed out of the
closet and closed the door in response, probably, to the
ubiquitous advice that unplugging a thing that’s not working usually cures the
problem. He opened the door again, but a white robe hung in the precise
spot where his uniform should be. He woke Anika. She was as befuddled as he
was.
His
duplicate uniform was at the cleaners and they wouldn’t be open until 10:00. He
donned street clothes and drove to the barracks. A barrack’s-load of raw
recruits were wondering around the parade ground, some in pajamas, some in
their underwear. They gathered around Drill Sergeant Hauptmann and informed him
that where they’d hung their uniforms and street clothes last night, there were
only blue jeans and Hawaiian shirts. Also, that they’d been awakened at 7:00 by
what sounded like a choir singing something about sheep grazing.
With
that news, DS Hauptmann took out his cell phone and dialed headquarters in Tel
Aviv. They already knew something was up, had already decided that Iran was
retaliating for the previous week’s bombing of a nuclear enrichment facility by
Israel. “The air force has been ordered to scramble all fighter jets, and
land-based-missile command to be ready for further orders. Do your best to …”
The
call was interrupted by “Hang on, Hauptmann,” and the click of a phone being
hung up.
The
news flashed down the chain of command via Twitter. When pilots (in street
clothes) ran to the hangers, they found every jet had been replaced by a
skateboard and where bombs were stored ready to be attached to planes, there
was a bowling alley. Missile command examining the silos’ contents found that
the ICBMs had mysteriously turned into massive heaps of Swiss Cheese, complete
with holes.
The
entire base was gripped by excruciating fear. Officers and privates ran back
and forth between rooms, between buildings and the parade ground was awash in
Hawaiian shirted civilians carrying baseball bats, hockey sticks, anything they
could get their hands on.
Fortunately, relief followed hard
upon all this devastating news: Iran, Saudi Arabia, the USA, Russia, Australia,
Great Britain were all struggling to understand how their entire military
apparatus had turned into food, flowers, game venues and identical Hawaiian
shirts. Nobody knew who was who, rank and privilege lost all their markers and
most amazingly, every economy discovered that the last year’s military spending
had been reimbursed and governments were awash in cash.
Prince William was up early,
dressed for a portrait photograph to be taken by Amelia Standingstill, Great
Britain’s most celebrated female portrait photographer. At 7:00 precisely,
Amelia gasped as she saw poor William through her viewfinder without hat, coat,
pants, epaulets and medals and him looking down and wishing he chosen boxers
instead of briefs.
Several
arms manufacturing CEOs took their own lives, too hastily, turns out; their
factories remained intact, except that all had been retooled to produce solar
panels and tidal generators. Go figure!
Jerry Pinkstable and Hank Surinamy were neighbours on
Colonel Wogey Street in Denver Colorado. Jerry’s first thought when he heard
the news of very strange doings was to prepare to defend his family. He reached
in and felt around in his night table drawer, but his pistol was gone. In a
panic, he ran downstairs to his gun cabinet and found when he opened it that
his hunting rifles had turned into gardening tools and his last-ditch, assault
rifle was now a cricket bat. Jerry has never, ever played cricket. Somebody
goofed.
He ran out to make sure the gate in
his chain link property fence was locked and discovered no fence and no gate.
He ran back into the house and placed Jonathon’s and Sidney’s miniature
baseball bats near the door, then ran back to the kitchen for a knife, but
wherever a knife had been, there was now a pizza cutter. He felt silly holding
one in his hand and making a few ridiculous thrusts with it. He dropped it back
into the drawer.
He
picked up a bat and stepped gingerly out onto the front porch. He was startled
to see that “that bastard Hank” was mirroring his stance and his weapon on the
Surinamy’s front porch. Hank’s six-year-old son stepped out beside Hank, looked
at Jerry and said, “Daddy, if your guns went away, and Jerry’s guns went away,
prob’ly everybody’s guns went away.” Jerry’s defiant demeanour left, replaced
by a sheepishness at the wisdom of a child. He dropped the bat on the lawn, as
did Hank and both felt that a ton of rocks had been lifted from their shoulders,
although it would take some time before they could admit it.
A chapter of Hell’s Angels had bought three adjacent houses
on Grady Street in Summerdale, Ontario back in 2019. Every other house on that
block had been FOR SALE ever since, but they didn’t care. They tore down the
middle house and erected a large garage for their motorcycles. Their weapons
were kept on their persons or at their bedsides. Not prone to early rising and
having no use for establishment news, they would experience the upheaval of
theirs and everybody else’s world for themselves.
At
10:15, a bearded, barbed-wire-tattooed Jason Farthing awoke, sat up, scratched
his ample belly, pulled on a black muscle shirt and reached for the leather
jacket that he’d left hanging on the bedpost. What came away was not his
jacket, but a plaid sportscoat whose only nod to leather was in the elbow
patches. Jason hung it back up, shook his head, went for a pee—in response,
probably, to the ubiquitous advice that unplugging a thing that’s not working
usually cures the problem—and came back. The plaid sportscoat was still there,
hanging from the bedpost. What’s more, the hand gun he kept under his pillow at
night was not under his pillow.
Jason
pounded on every bedroom door in the house screaming, “OK, you jackasses, who’s
the wise guy. Joke’s over!” A few doors opened, a few arms appeared, a few
hands gingerly held out plaid sportscoats with leather elbow protectors and
every coat with a pen clipped into the breast pocket.
Eventually
the world news registered via Aaron “Frisky” Patterson’s Facebook account. He
rushed out to the garage and, you guessed it, where fourteen Harleys and
Yamahas and Phantom Blacks had stood, there now were fourteen high-end racing
bikes.
Aaron was probably the most astute
of the chapter membership. First, he thought, “Strange, this is not military
hardware.” Then he thought, “Military hardware intimidates; motorcyclists in
packs wearing Hell’s Angels decals are intimidating, that’s what we set
out to be. Whoever did this is smart, like me.”
He ran his hand across the new
leather of the bicycle’s banana seat. It reminded him of the first back he’d
had as a kid back in Laird, Saskatchewan. He went back upstairs and put on the
plaid sportscoat with the leather elbow pads and took the racing bike out for a
spin.
It felt
really good except that the jacket didn’t match his leather pants. He stopped
on a country road, took off his pants and hung them over a barbed-wire fence
and gleefully headed west in his boxer shorts and the greenish-plaid sportscoat
with the leather elbow protectors.
He was enthralled
by the singing of the birds on the fence wires.
Joe Biden was nearing the midpoint of his presidency and
like everyone, he was shaken by the news as it unfolded from around the world.
Most astounding to him were the images of the Pentagon on TV—before and after.
Whoever or whatever force was at work had exercised some cosmic geometry and
turned it into a circle. Furthermore, it was now a school; offices with their
maps and strategic planning documents and international intelligence apparatus
were all gone, replaced by classrooms. The signage out front and back now read
“Plowshare College,” and President Joe chuckled because he’d actually been
listening in church and knew where the name came from. His attorney-general
opined that it must have something to do with agriculture, an easy mistake to
make.
Prime Minister Trudeau in Canada approached the new
governor-general with a request to prorogue parliament, a request that was
denied. “You’re suddenly befuddled and clueless, Justin,” she said. “and you
can’t wrap your head around no fighter jets, no tanks, no army. Well join the
club. Go back and write a budget and a throne speech. Trust me. It’s gonna be
fun with all that new cash and all those personnel freed up to fight climate
change. Right up your alley, nuh?”
And the
world unfolded as it should. War- and terrorism-refugees started to drift home,
people (who seem always to need some kind of a war) became obsessed with saving
the planet, cleaning up oceans, rivers and lakes, planting trees, building
renewable energy infrastructure, building better hospitals and better schools,
ensuring food security, all these and more creating jobs, jobs, jobs.
Street gangs filled their pockets
with rocks at first, but gave that up when their thrown stones would turn into
potato chips the instant they left their hand. Everyone knows how hard it is to
throw a potato chip with any degree of accuracy. A few, in desperation, turned
themselves into book clubs.
Most
importantly, the world of the poor, the rich, the powerful, the ordinary,
celebrities and heroes, artists and poets, writers and readers, laborers and
thinkers, all could finally count on a good night’s sleep. The sounds of
snoring could at times become deafening.
CBC
reported later, two years later, actually, that Putin had made a demeaning
remark about the Ukrainian president at an international conference.
Apparently, the Ukrainian president stuck his tongue out at Putin in response,
at which the UN general secretary was reported to have remarked, “My goodness,
will this aggression and counter-aggression cycle never end?”
In
Israel/Palestine all the walls and barriers came down, missiles and personnel
weapons were nowhere to be found. And amazingly here, the power that had
demilitarized the nations had added a twist: whether faces and clothes were
different or just appeared to be, observers could no longer tell who was Jewish
and who was Arab. Authorities soon tired of having to ask people whether they
were Jewish or Palestinian before telling them whether or not they were allowed
to stand or walk, here or there. There was nothing for it, finally, but to
declare the entire area a democratic, secular state with politicians elected by
universal suffrage, police armed with little more than good will and
compassion, and everyone worshipping the same spirit of God’s goodness and
mercy … side by side.
The Beginning
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