They will beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into pruning hooks.

-Isaiah 2:4

Look beyond the earth-ripping, flesh-tearing tanks and the silent so-soft sliding of munition-laden drones  through springtime skies, pouring fire on enemies, wedding parties, and some guy standing there in the shade.

Look beyond- see beyond, imagine beyond, hope beyond- dirt and metal embedded  in the torn skin of young men with pictures of children in their wallets, and of young, such young women, bleeding.

Look beyond the desire for plastic bags, air shows, beach balls, Styrofoam cups, plastic forks, bead-filled shampoo, another car, another tv, another dress, more shoes, Styrofoam peanuts for the packing of plastic-wrapped plastic electrical replacement components for plastic encased computers on plastic counters, 73 degrees of warmth instead of 65 and a wool sweater, and hair gel.

Look beyond the 18.5 billion dollars being spent monthly on death and injury instead of water wells and pipes and salves and wind generators and schools and Alzheimers research and levees and bridges to somewhere.

Look beyond, see beyond, imagine beyond, and pray. Pray not for a supernatural miracle to appear in the eastern sky, but for the strength and the courage to cause one to happen.