With Putin’s war in Ukraine raging, as many have been, I’m thinking a lot about life and tomorrow and what is happening today. I’ve been thinking about how I can help from here, and how I can best support friends and family in Ukraine. It’s difficult to reconcile my comfortable, privileged life with what is going on in the lives of so many who have lost loved ones and homes, or those have been displaced from their homes, or those who are still waiting for a drink of water and a piece of bread in a cold basement bomb shelter while airstrikes are going on around them.
Since the war started, I have been trying to reconcile continuing to go about my life, and maybe even still enjoying some of the things I take for granted…a hike in the forest, a walk on the beach, some time looking for agates, while for so many their everyday lives have exploded at the hands of a man mad. How can I begin to enjoy those things again, when so many have lost it all?
The answer came to me from a Ukrainian/American poet, via our daughter, Hannah. I was visiting with her the other day about this very conflict that I have been feeling. Ilya Kaminsky was born in Ukraine and paints beautiful images with his words. In an interview in 2019, he tells the story of another war in Transnistria, a breakaway region of Moldova:
"Here is another image from the early 1990s, from a different war: Transnistria, just sixty-five miles from our apartment in Odessa. I am fifteen years old. People knock on our door saying they fled without a change of underwear, asking to please let them make a phone call. In this chaos people lose their pensions, their homes, but they still go to the city garden in Odessa and dance while old men squeeze their accordions. Old women polka across the street, their medals clinking, beer bottles raised in the air as the rest of us clap from the benches. Time squeezes us like two pleats of an accordion.
Is it foolish to speak of little joys that occur in the middle of tragedy? It is our humanity. Whatever we have left of it. We must not deny it to ourselves."
Did you read that? In the chaos, the people still went to the city garden to dance and be together and to enjoy simple pleasures. We must never forget the suffering of others. We must never stop doing what we can with what we have to help in some way. Nothing is too small. Never forget. Never stop praying. Never stop giving. But in that, remember Ilya’s words, “Is it foolish to speak of little joys that occur in the middle of tragedy? It is our humanity. Whatever we have left of it. We must not deny it to ourselves. It is our humanity…”
Take a hike. Go to the beach. Pick up an agate. Sip a glass of wine with your loved one. Savor those moments. Honestly, we don’t know when the last grains of sand in the hourglass might run out for those moments, and we could find ourselves needing the very help we should graciously be providing to those around us who are in need.
If you want to help meet needs in Ukraine, please contact me. We have direct connections for help, and our Ukrainian son just returned to Ukraine to carry needed equipment and medical supplies to those fighting and fleeing war. The people of Corvallis, the sister city of Uzhhorod, Ukraine, and those far away have been so generous to help provide the resources needed there.
Remember those in need, but enjoy your chocolate while you can.
I took this photo in the Lviv Chocolate Shop in Uzhorod, Ukraine, on Christmas Eve, 2014.