Faith Fractured
Greetings, Master Quill.
I am not usually one to reach out unless it’s important. Late fees, overdue returns and the likes, but just this once there is something I have been thinking about for a while now that I can’t seem to stop thinking about on a daily if not hourly basis. From our brief interactions on Manaan I felt that you might be someone who would at the very least understand. Perhaps you could give me a good take on the matter or just tell me straight to my face what is wrong.
What I am meaning to say is that it’s taking a lot out of me to rid myself of this feeling that we have lost our way again. I was still a child when the masters on Ossus used to grumble over their scars in secret when they thought the younglings couldn’t hear. We constantly heard them through the metaphorical grapevine as they shared intimate stories of the war and what they had done between each other. Some bad, some good, and they spoke of how with each day that the Republic grew increasingly desperate to win, us younglings would all be paying the same price if things didn’t change.
I have been fortunate enough to avoid war to any greater extent, or at least so it feels like when I look at the rest of my Order. My conscience is burdened by the lives that I have taken but soothed by the fact that I gave them repeated chances to stand down before I was left with no choice but to end their lives in self-defense. I always told myself that as a Jedi it is my duty to accept and to protect. At the point where we are now as an Order, the New Jedi Order, I think that sometimes we’d do well to remember that. After all,
Passion for a cause, no matter how righteous, is not peace.
Knowledge without understanding is ignorance.
In knowledge there is a harmony to be found.
The Jedi Code for as simple as it is has plenty of interpretations for this exact reason. Far be it for me to determine what is the right and wrong with a personal take on such a vague piece of sacred scripture. But, I struggle to find the part where the core tenets are the result of violence. Peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, and the all too mystical force; these are the natural state of the galaxy and what we should all strive to accomplish. And yet when I look at how my order is acting, what I see in these actions that my brethren and sisters have taken as of late — the ones that put children in graves — is emotion. I see ignorance and misguided passions, chaos and most of all death.
If we continue like this it’ll be hard to keep to the claims that we are protecting the light when we are so hellbent on keeping it to ourselves and those that we deem worthy enough to feel it. If salvation is the dead bodies of an entire school of misguided youth, then what truly separates us from the ones we claim to protect others from? How do we come back from this?
Yours,
Aeris Lashiec, Archivist.
I am not usually one to reach out unless it’s important. Late fees, overdue returns and the likes, but just this once there is something I have been thinking about for a while now that I can’t seem to stop thinking about on a daily if not hourly basis. From our brief interactions on Manaan I felt that you might be someone who would at the very least understand. Perhaps you could give me a good take on the matter or just tell me straight to my face what is wrong.
What I am meaning to say is that it’s taking a lot out of me to rid myself of this feeling that we have lost our way again. I was still a child when the masters on Ossus used to grumble over their scars in secret when they thought the younglings couldn’t hear. We constantly heard them through the metaphorical grapevine as they shared intimate stories of the war and what they had done between each other. Some bad, some good, and they spoke of how with each day that the Republic grew increasingly desperate to win, us younglings would all be paying the same price if things didn’t change.
I have been fortunate enough to avoid war to any greater extent, or at least so it feels like when I look at the rest of my Order. My conscience is burdened by the lives that I have taken but soothed by the fact that I gave them repeated chances to stand down before I was left with no choice but to end their lives in self-defense. I always told myself that as a Jedi it is my duty to accept and to protect. At the point where we are now as an Order, the New Jedi Order, I think that sometimes we’d do well to remember that. After all,
Passion for a cause, no matter how righteous, is not peace.
Knowledge without understanding is ignorance.
In knowledge there is a harmony to be found.
The Jedi Code for as simple as it is has plenty of interpretations for this exact reason. Far be it for me to determine what is the right and wrong with a personal take on such a vague piece of sacred scripture. But, I struggle to find the part where the core tenets are the result of violence. Peace, knowledge, serenity, harmony, and the all too mystical force; these are the natural state of the galaxy and what we should all strive to accomplish. And yet when I look at how my order is acting, what I see in these actions that my brethren and sisters have taken as of late — the ones that put children in graves — is emotion. I see ignorance and misguided passions, chaos and most of all death.
If we continue like this it’ll be hard to keep to the claims that we are protecting the light when we are so hellbent on keeping it to ourselves and those that we deem worthy enough to feel it. If salvation is the dead bodies of an entire school of misguided youth, then what truly separates us from the ones we claim to protect others from? How do we come back from this?
Yours,
Aeris Lashiec, Archivist.