In Flanders’ fields there are beautiful red poppies that have been immortalized in a poem about World War I, about the struggle of life to overcome death, about how one of the charnel houses of Western Civilization was able to spring up in blood-red flowers that mirrored the blood of men that was shed there almost a century ago. A war that was called the Great War, and the War to End All Wars, ended up merely being a prelude to an even bigger war that killed more people in Europe and around the world. People poisoned by bitterness did not take the chance to root in the soul of the new Europe and bloom where they stood, but rather sought to blame others for their losses and seek vengeance where they should have sought success. In the rubble of that second war, seventy years ago, leaders thought it better to let their cities burn and their nation be destroyed than to lose a hold of the power that they had used to terrorize and oppress and murder so many souls so much more innocent than they.

Vengeance is one of those dark emotions that tends to threaten the good that we seek in life. It is easy for us, in the hurts that we feel over what others say and do, respond according to the hurt that we feel and not according to the hurt that was meant. Other people, being like we are, will tend to do the same, and the result is a mutual set of recriminations and hostility. Over and over again we see this dynamic in life, where even apart from real abusers and bullies unnecessary conflicts develop simply because people are careless and thoughtless about what they say and do, and others are hurt and respond in kind. It is out of such mutual insecurities and sensitivities that hurts become more serious. Because we cannot control ourselves well enough not to hurt others, and because our apologizes, in the absence of changed behavior as the outward sign of a repentant heart, seem like mere empty vapor, we create enmity and hostility where none should exist. We turn those who should be friends or lovers into even more wounded souls than they were before, unable to trust in the kindness of others.

As a child of about nine or ten, I would often take long baths and use the opportunity to mourn privately, since I had no private space of my own as a child to inhabit outside of my own mind. It is pretty inevitable that as soon as my teenage years hit the interior world I built would find its way outside, and the repercussions and consequences of that are still making themselves felt. There is always a delicate calculus going on—does something hurt more inside, where it reverberates inside my own heart and mind, or does it hurt more outside, expressed openly and exposed to the outside world for ridicule and abuse? These choices must be made day by day, moment by moment, for once something is brought into the light it can no longer be hidden, but there is a great deal that is terrifying in the shadows and in the darkness but it is not so scary when brought into the light, where one has faced up to it and owned it and accepted it for what it is. If I only had myself in mind, there would be little that needed to be covered over.

Yet one must think of other people as well, for the affairs of life always involve others. It is love that covers over an offense, that does not use it as a club against others over and over again, but rather accepts the hurt and deals with it, and accepts that despite our intentions we too hurt others with what we say and do. It is easy for us to lash out in our own hurts, but we must remember that the people who hurt us are themselves often hurt people too, who have not overcome their own tendencies to cut or to lash out. The best revenge is not to lash back, as satisfying as that may be for a moment, for what we do not want is for other people to nurse wounds that we have given and to give them cause to strike back at us. Rather, the best revenge is to live well, not merely for ourselves but others as well, for if we must have our own hearts and bodies and spirits and minds cared for and find healing for the scars and injuries of life, so too there are many others who need this also, and only a healed world can be safe or just. If our broken lives are testament to the brokenness of our world, then our healing and wholeness, as difficult as it may be, can be a model for others to follow for themselves, where we do not hide the scars but rather show how the scars have been made into something of beauty in the Artist’s loving hands.

For the scars on the earth that sent up the blood-red poppies of Flanders’ fields are mirrored in the scars on the bodies and hearts and minds and spirits of so many on this earth. In some ways, for new life to spring up the ground above must be broken up, so that the seed may break open and buds and shoots can burst up through the broken soil to bloom into life. We too are gardens, upon which the hoe breaks up the soul so that the life within us may blossom and be visible on the outside. Yet the harvest is a difficult one, requiring a great deal of care and at least a little bit of divine providence, for no farmer controls all of the factors that lead to a profitable harvest. We all tend to remake the world as we are inside, and if we are scarred and deeply wounded, we will tend to wound others unless we take the difficult effort of restraining our native responses until we by nature are kind and gracious in our ways, even in difficult situations. For we too, like the blooms of a damaged land, bloom in soil that rests over graves and the sites of massacres where the guilty and the innocent have been slaughtered alike. In time, the blooms may overcome the horror our lives have seen, even if we never forget it completely.