Chapter 14 · 3 min 13 sec
Stop the War
The simplest and most radical demand — the one that should not need to be made, and yet must be made again and again.
Lyric Video
Lyric Video
Lyrics· 237 words
In the shadows where the silence weeps Voices rise from the ashes, our hearts still be Mother Lando, you're torn apart Greed and destruction, it's breaking my heart But hope's a flame that refuses to die Stop the war, let the rivers run free Connect to our roots, just do a need Rise as one for a brighter tomorrow Together we'll fight through the pain and the sorrow Through the smoke we can see the light Ancestors whisper, got us through the night United will stand, let the rhythm flow Together we can heal, let the love grow Time for action, hear the cold Stop the war, let the rivers run free Connect to our roots, just do a need Rise as one for a brighter tomorrow Together we'll fight through the pain and the sorrow Time for action, hear the cold Stop the war, let love lead the way In harmonies embrace, we'll find the new day Stop the war, let the rivers run free Connect to our roots, just do a need Through a need We'll fight through the pain and the sorrow Time for action, hear the cold Stop the war, let the rivers run free Connect to our roots, just do a need We'll fight through the pain and the sorrow Time for action, hear the cold Stop the war, let the rivers run free Connect to our roots, just do a need
Short Story
*A story about the demand that shouldn't need repeating*
Every week for two years, the same small group stood silently in the town square holding handmade signs that said only three words: Stop the war.
People walking by sometimes asked the obvious question. "Don't you get tired of saying something so simple, over and over, when nothing seems to change?"
Old Senhor Bahnsen, who organized the vigil and had been doing it longer than anyone could remember, always gave the same answer. "Of course I get tired. The exhaustion is not the question, though. The question is whether the thing we're asking for has stopped being true. It hasn't. The war hasn't stopped. So the sign stays the same, however tired my arms get holding it up."
"Doesn't it feel pointless, saying the same three words week after week?"
"It would feel pointless if the demand were complicated," he said. "But this isn't complicated. It never needed to be. Some demands deserve elaborate arguments and careful diplomacy. This one is simple enough that repeating it, plainly, again and again, is itself the whole point. The moment we start dressing it up in more sophisticated language, we risk making it sound negotiable. It isn't."
A young volunteer, new to the vigil, asked him once what kept him standing there, week after unrewarded week.
"The fact that it should not need to be said even once," he answered. "And the fact that it is still being said, every week, somewhere, by someone, until it finally isn't necessary anymore. I don't know if my sign will be the one that changes anything. But I know that the silence of not holding it would change nothing for certain."
He held the sign every week until the day he died, three simple words, repeated without complication, exactly as necessary at the end as at the beginning.
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*Some demands are too important to be made complicated. The most radical thing we can sometimes do is keep saying the simplest, truest thing — plainly, patiently, for as long as it takes to finally be heard.*
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