Dear John, Diane and Michael,I did not know Jim myself, and I have never met you and do not want to intrude on your grief, but I also want to say that I am thinking of you and grieving also, for Jim and for the others who were tortured with him and are now being killed, one by one. My daughter was a close friend of Claire Willis when she and Jim were captured in Libya, and she worked with the effort to free them. In the process she got to almost-know Jim. She told me then how much she liked the person he seemed to be, and how much, she, as a journalist herself admired his courage, and his honesty, and his determination to give a humane, loving honest look at the complex world of the middle east. After the prisoners were, amazingly, released in Libya, my daughter remarked to me how much she liked Jim: in the midst of all the emotional turmoil and release and stress that comes after such an experience, he took the time to think of the people who had thrown their hearts into trying to free him, and he said "Thank you." It was a real gift to people who had put their minds and efforts into trying to find a way to free him.What a lovely guy. God bless him. I hope he is peaceful, I hope there is a heaven, and I hope he is enjoying it--and I suspect that God is enjoying him.I wanted also to say how much I have admired you for your doggedly loving response to all this. I rather think I understand how Jim got to be the person he was, (and perhaps is--I think of him and I feel only quiet and peace, although when I turn my mind toward the others I feel fear and numb loss and grief.) Who knows if all of that is imaginary, but I rather think that even if it is, it is a good guess about where your Jim is emotionally. May he be peaceful, and proud, and perhaps grieving, but also happy. And may you be the same.And I find, to my astonishment and rather to my horror, that I am also praying for the man with the British accent who is carrying out these executions. Surely he is sick, psychopathic to seem so pleased at what he is doing to his prisoners; he is perhaps also in some sense an idealist, but a badly warped one right now. His soul is pickled--full of poison (and in this, poor bastard, he is in much worse shape than Jim, who had unshakeable integrity, I think, and a sense that his life was mattering and good). I find myself praying that he will stop this, and that the people who are giving him his orders will stop this, and that it will begin to strike them all that one of the names of Allah is "the merciful" and that good Muslims know this to be essential to his nature-- but I'm not too optimistic.
areudirty
snowghoul
theartofmadeline
dededos