This Obscene Silence

This Obscene Silence
by Jeff Ostrander

Eerie, isn’t it?
This sense of well-being?
This sleepy, dreamy ocean of regularity
that gently laps against our consciousness;
cautioning against extremes, reciting the need for security,
reminding of little jobs to be done around the house;
all in a voice so smooth and steady and faint
that we hear no voice at all.

This tender wooing toward self-absorption
does not deny the reality of bigger principles;
ideas that brave men might swallow death to defend.
No, the quiet voice commends such ideas as marvelous,
acknowledges their defenders to be saints and heroes.
“Amazing people,” it croons, “People of destiny.”
“Worthy of admiration, not the normal sort like us.”

And so our hunger for justice is lost.
Not demolished, but disarmed.
Not attacked, but abstracted beyond use.
Like a highly-polished sword,
glimmering in the museum
while the unprotected city
is slaughtered outside.

“Jesus loves the little children.”
Of course. And here they are,
being dismembered all over town.
Too bad, really. Someone should do something.
Seems like the saints and heroes
would have shown up by now.

It is quiet in the city, quiet in the churches.
We have built a peace that dying children do not disturb.
Funny, isn’t it, how life goes on?

“Deliver those who are drawn toward death,
And hold back those stumbling to the slaughter.
If you say, “Surely we did not know this,”
Does not He who weighs the hearts consider it?
He who keeps your soul, does He not know it?
And will He not render to each man according to his deeds?”
Proverbs 24:11-12

“Defend the poor and fatherless;
Do justice to the afflicted and needy.
Deliver the poor and needy;
Free them from the hand of the wicked.”
Psalm 82:3-4