Cause, Courage, and Consequences

February 24, 2022 I found myself sitting in the dentist’s chair enduring that period of anxiety between when they give you the freezing needle and when you get to find out for sure that it worked.  It’s time spent alone to think your own thoughts and listen to the high pitched whine of drills being used on other patients. The dentist’s chair is not my happy place.

But this morning there was lots to think about.  Putin was on the move. His plans of war had been put into motion during the night. Cities full of people were being bombed; hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians were on the run. By nightfall, how many innocent people would be dead because of this evil man’s ego? And this was only day one; wars don’t end in one day.

The office where I sat was warm and safe; Garth Brooks sang The Dance on the music system. Soon that nasty cavity would be a thing of my past and I could go have lunch and visit with a good friend; plans we made weeks ago.  And yet I couldn’t get the news video of almost deadlocked traffic trying to escape Kyiv out of my mind.  Those poor people had made plans for February 24 as well ... every day things like dentist appointments, dance lessons for their little girls, soccer for their boys after school ... and now, here they were crowded into their cars with everything they could squeeze in, not knowing where they were headed, watching their gas gauges go down and distressing about being able to buy more. 

My generation is acquainted with war ... or I should say stories of war.  We have heard about our grandfather’s Great War (although I’ve never felt that any war should be given the designation ‘great’), we’ve watched countless movies of the second world war, and our window into the Korean War was the show M*A*S*H  on TV.   We see war through the safety of a camera lens.  We don’t know the smell of death in the streets.  We don’t know the terror of running for bomb shelters or the sick feeling of living through the attack to find our house is nothing but rubble when we try to go home.  We can’t imagine what it would be like to be stopped by soldiers and asked for proof of who we are, knowing that this man has the power to decide if we live or die.

Tonight one of the news stories is not of Ukrainians fleeing but of Russians protesting against their government, against Putin himself, for starting this war. Imagine that. Standing up and saying “NO” to a man who poisons and imprisons and murders anyone he sees as an obstacle to his plans. They know that being arrested – even a Russian arrest – would be the lightest penalty they could hope for.  And yet they came and marched and sang their anthem in an effort to stop the war and save both Russian and Ukrainian lives.  The stakes couldn’t be higher.

Their cause is larger than just themselves, they show great courage in the face of real peril, the consequences of their actions could well be fatal, and yet they make their stand.

These are people who recognize they have a responsibility to humanity to stand up for what is right.  They want Putin to stop and they want the world to know that they don’t support his actions. As I sit in my safe dentist chair on the other side of the world I feel humbled by their sacrifice and pray that some good will come of it.