Ted Conlin

Mommy, What Was War? Ted Conlin

Mommy... What Was War? tells of a quest that began with a simple question that had but one aim: To help hasten the day when children will be able to look back on war as an 'inconceivable aberration' of their forefathers. The question was this: "How can we discover the sources of wholeness, healing and hope amidst a broken and suffering world?"

IT is a noble thing you are doing, said some, this quest for a solution to the problem that is war; but also it is a waste of your life. You are foolish! But all such protestations fell before my perceived essence of what it means to be a person, a human being.

Adopting Francis Younghusband's religion as that of an explorer with whom I'd felt a spiritual kinship, I began my search. It was into the wilderness and wastelands of war where Law is silent and Lie prevails where, ever since the Vietnam Nightmare of a long 35 years ago, I've all but kept myself embedded - but not without emerging with a solution. And not without having gone "outside the box" of things to find that solution. It was Carl Sandburg who wrote, "Little girl . . . Sometime they'll give a war and nobody will come."