This is one of twelve sunflower depictions the Dutch artist Vincent Van Gogh created between the summer of 1888 and the winter of 1889 in Arles France. Van Gogh, an often sad, disappointed and self-destructive man, even to being committed to a sanitarium, wrote that sunflowers were a symbol of gratitude for him.
This painting is titled Six Sunflowers. It was sold to a Japanese collector and shipped to Japan in 1922, but was destroyed in a fire after the U.S. bombing of Osaka on August 6th — the same day as the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima at the end of the Second World War. The other Van Gogh sunflower paintings are found in museums in Munich, Tokyo, Amsterdam, London and Philadelphia. One is in a private collection. We are fortunate to have this photograph of the painting that was a casualty of war.
We seem not to be able to stop making war. We call some of them, great, but they are not. Wars are waste. Wars are born of human stupidity, hatred and increased by revenge. Wars solve nothing. We always seem to come up with an excuse as to why they are needed. Wars are sinful, especially when people (even Christians) make money off of them. They are called war profiteers.
Wars create orphans,
widows and widowers.
Wars kill children,
their mothers and fathers.
Wars create starvation,
homelessness and
refugees.
Wars destroy forests,
rivers and streams —
they poison the ground
turned to dust.
Wars kill animals and plants —
they leave species extinct.
Wars steal from the poor —
they leave people depressed,
emotionally and physically shattered,
tearful,
mournful.
Wars destroy churches,
great cathedrals that took centuries to build,
synagogues and mosques,
markets,
museums,
zoos and parks,
gardens and farms.
Wars destroy works of art,
like Van Gogh's sunflowers.
Isn't it interesting — the sunflower in the upper right hand corner is vibrant and alive, even fiery perhaps, while the sunflower in the painting's bottom left has died and is even in a state of decay. Are we prisoners to living in this tension?
Every day we might do something to advance peace. "When you send your Spirit, they are created, and you renew the face of the earth." Psalm 104:30. Putting away old thoughts of others, some stereotyping, ignorance or indifference. I'm thinking of the voices of prejudice and anti-Semitism I heard from neighbors and even relatives when I was a boy. The many nasty names for anyone who wasn't like us. To list them here would be embarrassing to our nation. This hatred seems to be experiencing a new life. Something awful has been unleashed. But peace is created when we respond to those messages with intelligence.
AA says, "If it doesn't apply, let it fly," in which case — what fresh learning is there for me to undertake that might promote peace? A couple of thoughts:
- Every group that comes here is at first hated.
- Once they become acclimated and accepted they often become haters of the next group.
- We often think we know the history of groups that come here - but history is written through the eyes of the winners.
- The story of religion in this country is not infrequently soiled with hate and the desire for power — even up to today.
- Do groups that come here necessarily lose their souls?
