Tis The Season For Thought...

Have any of you watched the American sitcom Golden Girls? It's what the younger generation refers to as an old show. (Golden Girls: re-runs on daytime and late night TV) Tonight I watched an episode. It really made me think. The episode was about the girls going to a homeless center to look for a lottery ticket. Disturbingly, it really made me think about how much we ignore the needy. IN the USA we think of homelessness as a problem that is at the root of it a personal problem. Our answer is to prescribe 'pull yourself up by your boot straps' or occasional charity. Really, How dare we sleep in our warm houses every night and shrug off helping those who need it. The least we could to is give our time in volunteering or donating money for shelters, medicines, hosing, job training, life enrichment programs. The majority of homeless in the US is Mentally ill and Veterans of the armed forces. How dare we turn our backs on them? During this holiday season...give more than just one glance when you see a chance to help. No matter how small the act, everything counts. A warm blanket, a cup of coffee, a few cents or just a small smile, Give dignity and respect to all. You think your so different, that just in one minute you could be sharing their circumstances. We are all fellow servants on the journey of life.

Inspiration in Waite

One day you wake up and realize this might be your last....that in the blink of an eye you could cease to exist...or that 5, 10, 15 years of your life can be taken away from you, all for the good of a cause...an ideology. Ideology is a righteous thing...when founded in natural virtue, human rights, life and liberty, but it is a bloody wicked force when in the hands of extremists. For Terry Waite his life became a symbol for a body of people ruled by ideology, religio-political extremist ideology. Mr. Waite's inspiration was not in his words truly, because words can be practiced, theaterized and subterfuged. His inspiration was in his person. He stood before us as a man surviving 5 years of death for many years of affirming life. In some ways Mr. Waite is the Responsible self that Niebuhr speaks of....He is a Relativiser and affirmer of life. I hope someday, I have the pleasure to say, I've lived up to my responsibility as a human being. That I have turned a philosophy of death into a philosophy of life.

What Will The Icons Of Our Time Be?

What will our century be remembered for?
Will we be enlightened? Primitive? Destructive? Bloody? Genocidal?
Social disorder,
Genocide,
Environmental destruction,
Divorce,
Abuse,
Death,
War,
How about Hiroshima and Auschwitz? Have we done anything in the years after WWII to further the advancement of Humanity? Not technology, but to further Ethical behavior, Human decency, Equality, Respect? To bring health, to end suffering, to insure life?

"What will intelligent people one hundred years from now regard as the icons of our times?" (David Blumenthal)

I don't want to be remembered as a citizen of the only country to drop an atomic bomb. I don't want to be remembered as the person who watched others starve as I ate and got fat. I want to be remembered as a human, who worked to empower the humanity of others by remembering and taking responsibility. Yet, I must be remembered as this person who was apart of this as all human must, in order for the memory to live on. David Blumenthal asserts that in order for humanity to respond to human suffering we must feel guilt and responsibility for what happens in the world. He rightly asserts that the icons for our century will be Hiroshima and Auschwitz because the terror of these events and their effects on our lives far out ways any advancements that have been made. With out identifying with victims, how can we ever come to know them. Be with me, stand beside all victims, all those who starve, need, cry, hurt, and die, feel and be horrified for them, so that we can find cures, solutions and ends to their many sufferings.