Ian McKellen reads a poem called The First Letter to the Corinthians.
It was written by Artur Dron, Ukrainian Defender, writer, poet.
Please listen to it. These words are powerful and true.
"Love digs trenches and lives in them, gnawing on ice from a hacked up plastic bottle. When it suffers thirst at minus 20, love goes out on combat duty, enters firing positions with hernias, fever, prostatitis, with vast concussions, asthma, and allergies, with a high probability of not making it back.
And sometimes love closes its friends' eyes, wraps them in sleeping bags, and carries them away. Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease.
Where there are tongues, they will be still. Where there is knowledge, it will pass away. Because sometimes when the shelling ceases, friends close love's eyes, wrap it in sleeping bags, and carry it away.
And then it passes on to the living."
(I've quoted my post with another essay by Artur Dron. If you haven't already, I strongly recommend that one, as well.)
📹: Ukraine WOW
I’d like to share with you an excerpt from the book "Hemingway Knows Nothing" by Ukrainian Defender, poet, writer Artur Dron.
Artur Dron is 24 years old and has defended Ukraine for over three years. Recently, he published a collection of essays called "Hemingway Knows Nothing" - his reflections about war, faith, his brothers-in-arms, life and death. This book made a very strong impression on me, so I've subtitled a video of Artur Dron reading one of the essays himself for you. It's a longer one, but I do think it is worth watching.
This essay is called Trench God and in it, Artur reflects on faith during the war.
"It’s easy to blame wars on God - after all, among all of us, He’s the only one who’s almighty. But it wasn’t God who drove tanks into Northern Saltivka in Kharkiv. It wasn’t God who sent a bullet into Tourist’s chest. It wasn’t God who shelled hundreds of churches in eastern Ukraine. It wasn’t God who destroyed Bakhmut and Mariupol.
People did that. About 143 million of them. Russians. They made the choice to destroy Ukrainians. They crossed Ukraine’s borders with their military equipment. They kill our people and destroy our homes. Every war is started and waged by people. This one - by Russians.
This is not a divine test, not a trial of national maturity, or any of those things people say. It is a crime - against life, against nature, against humanity, against God Himself. The consequence of someone’s choice to kill and steal. War is the opposite of God.
So where is He, when such horrors are happening to us?
With us. Inside the horror. In the buildings of Saltivka. In Tourist. God is in the wounded, the tortured, the raped, the traumatized. In the persecuted, the missing, the imprisoned. In every innocent killed, executed, shot. In the fallen on the battlefield. In all who have made the hardest choice of our time - not to flee, not to hide, not to surrender, not to disappear - but to defend life."