Crosses, Stars, Crescents

This evening, the American Friends Service Committee and Veterans For Peace Bay Area are holding a candlelight vigil in San Francisco's Civic Center Plaza to commemorate 4,000 U.S. soldier casualties in Iraq.

There's also going to be a vigil at the crosses, and stars, and crescents, memorial in Lafayette, California: lafayettecrosses.blogspot.com/.

There's now a film about the crosses. I got this link from an email from Santa Cruz Monthly Meeting:

Now Showing--The nationally and internationally reported local project, The Crosses of Lafayette Iraq War Peace Memorial, a new Google video by Jesse Wipert: Click here.

Once a person asked me, "Why do Quakers always have peace vigils? Why don't have vigils for simplicity?" Good question, since a non-simple, high standard of living usually translates to someone else or some part of the earth's environment suffering. It in fact contains the seeds of war, through the doctrine of James*, as Fox pointed out. Still, it just doesn't have the same immediate deadliness of a war. Hence the need to vigil.

*James 4: 1 From whence come wars and fightings among you? come they not hence, even of your lusts that war in your members? 2 Ye lust, and have not: ye kill, and desire to have, and cannot obtain: ye fight and war, yet ye have not, because ye ask not. 3 Ye ask, and receive not, because ye ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your lusts.