In case anyone has not perceived/conceived the deeper element of this Christmas truce thingy, I will bring it to the fore just for the sake of it.
The ad portrays a real event that happened in the midst of the world's first largely mechanized war. It was a brutal affair where the tactics of the Old World ran face-first into the Maxim, tanks, and aircraft. Nobody really knew what to do, so they dug trenches in order to avoid being cut to ribbons by the unfeeling machines that cared no whit for where their handlers caused them to spew their messages.
Consider what must have gone on in the minds of those young men, most of whom arrived at the front all fueled up with the youthful lust for adventure and glory, and who had been raised on the romanticized stories of endless ranks of soldiers facing one another at range and taking their volleys in turn. Can you imagine the shock they must have suffered when they ended up in those sopping wet, cold trenches? Can you imagine the compounding of their bewilderment and horror as they watched entire legions of their fellows cut to bits by mechanized enemy fire? The comparatively insignificant Battle of Arras alone, a mere 4-day event, left over forty thousand soldiers slain. If you want a first-hand account of one man's experiences in shock, surprise, depression, and the fall into hopelessness, I strongly recommend the tome, "
War Birds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator" by John McGavock Grider. But I warn you that it may make you cry by the end. His last diary entry is heart breaking. He was killed one or two days later.
Now to the point: look not only at what
happened, but bear in keen mind the
context. The
chain of obedience was broken! How many times in human history have we seen this? Not too many and fewer still of this particular nature. This event has to be very nearly unique - certainly so in modern history. The soldiers simply
stopped. Halt yourself for a moment and do not proceed any further. Now go back and read that four-word sentence again and perhaps even a few more times. As you do so, let your mind penetrate deeply into the significance of the event - its sheer and utter simplicity and perhaps even more shockingly, the immediacy with which the choice was at hand.
Why did it happen? Because a young man stepped away from the noise of the orthodoxy in response to the silence that had descended upon that theatre, in that moment. Then, hearing the voices of his German brothers, that young man was illuminated by the Divine and he
saw. This seeing is sight that is perfect and penetrates everything. Nothing can hide from it and no truth can be obscured. When so gifted, during those moments anything is possible, and at that very moment something which seemed to everyone else to be completely and insanely impossible became real. Imagine the nerve it took to poke one's head out of the trench in that "three on a match" world! Snipers everywhere, ready, waiting, and willing to end anything moving within their field of fire.
I do not for a moment believe that that first young soldier did what he did with the intention of breaking command discipline. Rather, he did so because of his newfound sense of perception, coupled with I am sure was his weariness of the fear he carried with him day in and day out for his very life. And then, upon hearing those divine voices carried on the still air as they chanted plainsong that I am sure was sacred to most of those men in ways that perhaps many of us cannot fully understand, that boy fell into the courage that only the most profound and divinely sourced inspiration can bring. Even though his fear was almost certainly alive and well within his bosom, the courage that had come to well up within him pushed it aside and impelled him forward into that uncertain night. Try for a moment to imagine what must have possessed him. An act so surely suicidal was chosen because he no longer feared enough to cower. A desire for the love of his fellows was so compelling that he would brave death itself in order to have it at that moment with his "enemy".
Call it what you will - and many stricken with the timid, bitter, and frail cynicism of the "modern" atheist will find this all a great yawner - but I see the hand of the Divine at work. There was NO reason for anyone there to do what they did, yet they did it despite the apparently raving insanity of the act. Those men needed COMMUNION and they would have it, all risk be damned to hell. They acted in the tradition of man's finest bravery, and in so doing gave the world a precious lesson in the deeper truths about human relations.
Think of the simplicity of it. One merely stops. No effort required, save the drive to halt and see. Friction abounds everywhere and therefore when one takes his foot off the gas pedal, the vehicle eventually comes to a halt. And that is what happened here. They removed the mental energy and the war ceased IMMEDIATELY. That was all it took. Another of the deeper lessons here is that the entire deal resides in but one place: the mind. War as we see it in its boundless rage is but a symptom of the state of mind of those engaging in it. War exists
nowhere but in the mind. What we experience outwardly is merely the external by-product. Remove the cause and the symptom vanishes instantaneously. Stop shooting and nobody gets shot.
And so it is with most of the "collective" things in our lives, the differences between those voluntary and those compelled being the consequences of withdrawal. If I volunteer my time to the Salvation Army and one day decide I have other things to do instead, men with guns on their hips and mindless obedience in their minds do not show at my step with the will to demand I continue as I had, ready and perhaps even eager to do violence to gain my compliance or punish me.
Remember Nancy Reagan and "Just say no!"? It seemed silly, but there was a deep truth to it. And note how in those words there is no threat of violence. It is an appeal to will; to voluntary action; to free choice.
The video "Chain of Obedience" is endlessly valuable IMO. It strikes to the heart of these political matters and exposes the fraud on the one hand, and the power on the other. Theye are frauds, up one side and down the other. We are powerful. And yet...
Can you imagine the shock and rage the higher level commanders must have experienced when news of this came to them? That particular truth of just stopping what you're doing is one of those very special items at which Theye work tirelessly to suppress from the awareness of everyone. The power in it is staggering and it is one of the few instruments that I believe Theye fear and regard with the most venom-laden hatred. In numbers, passive withdrawal stands to undo Themme completely, which is yet another reason they have been so passionately forwarding the notion of interdependence in explicit favor to that of independence. The more completely self-contained people are, the less they depend upon others for what they need. The less dependent, the fewer the levers Theye have over others. The less you need, the less you have, the less you covet - the less Theye can threaten you and the more blatantly unjust the threats remaining to them have to become.
If you fear losing your cell phone, you will comply with unreasonable demands. If you do not fear losing it, Theye have one less string attached to you. Driver's licenses, work permits, business licenses, parade permits... the list is long. Theye have been endlessly diligent in corralling the obedience of the masses through this usurpation of power and we have meekly toed Theire lines every single time. All we have to do is stop; withdraw; turn our backs to them, breaking the chain of obedience and Theye are undone.
That is the shocking truth revealed in that sweet little TV ad. Good on Sainsbury for what they have done. God knows the world needs to see more of this. To all those half-blind half-wits who foamed their outrages at a company who made a tastefully conceived and beautifully executed, oblique reminder that they exist and what a certain holiday was supposed to embody, you should take a moment to walk away from your unbridled lust to be offended and make some attempt to put yourselves in a saner, kinder, and more practically rational state of mind. I promise you as God is my witness that you will benefit endlessly from so simple and act. But as always, the choice is yours; yet know you this: you injure not only yourself with the bitter poisons of ill-founded anger and hatred, but those around you as well, for it spreads like a cancer to most, helping nothing better than to aid in perpetuating the manifold diseases with which the Tyrant Class has infected the world at large. Is that really what you want?
