Heart Wrench

Fix it before it's broken.

So I'm watching TV and the next thing coming on is this long appeal about poverty.  It will probably include sad kids suffering from malnutrition telling their story along with their families. I know that watching will churn my very soul. Do I watch or turn away?                 

Reasons to watch - We might be curious what it's really like.  We might even feel it's our moral responsibility to know and be involved, and maybe even donate money.  We'd probably feel better if we did give; we'd be living up to our own principles.

Reasons to not watch - It will probably be heart wrenching to see what it's really like.  I'll likely feel guilty for my easier life and feel badly if I don't donate.  If my budget doesn't have a place for donations, I can get trapped between my conscience and my wallet.

Realistically, throwing a few dollars at it isn't the right answer anyway, it's just something to make me feel better. That's guilt-giving.

Helping others for real is a life choice.  Here's an easy way for us to get on track -

Step one - pick an area that our heart responds to, join with those who know how, and escalate from a little up to where it's in the budget well above Starbucks and miscellaneous.

Step two - get involved.  Go and see, perhaps.  Get to know some of the people we serve.  If we know them well enough to love them, then we're family, sort of.

If it isn't important enough to deserve a little effort, it may not be genuine.  (If you've got kids, they should be part of the discussions, decisions, and changes.)

Perhaps an important side benefit, we don't have to feel guilty when we skip watching those tear-jerker appeals.  We'll be way down the road past that sort of thing.

Top recommendations: World Vision, Step Up Sao Tome, and Our Father’s House Kenya ministries, but those are just my interests.

Step three if we're all-in - Study, inquire, learn from folks who know and serve well. Review and escalate. Keep that up for the rest of your life.

Over the years, we'll find ourselves continually refocused in personal development, career direction, and personal life investment. Start now. If we wait until the time is right or until we're better equipped, years will pass, and we'll miss so much.

Onion Wonder

PARIS—At a press conference Tuesday, the World Heritage Committee officially recognized the Gap Between Rich and Poor as the “Eighth Wonder of the World,” describing the global wealth divide as the “most colossal and enduring of mankind’s creations.”

 

“Of all the epic structures the human race has devised, none is more staggering or imposing than the Gap Between Rich and Poor,” committee chairman Henri Jean-Baptiste said. “It is a tremendous, millennia-old expanse that fills us with both wonder and humility.”

 

“And thanks to careful maintenance through the ages, this massive relic survives intact, instilling in each new generation a sense of awe,” Jean- Baptiste added.

 

The vast chasm of wealth, which stretches across most of the inhabited world, attracts millions of stunned observers each year, many of whom have found its immensity too overwhelming even to contemplate. By far the largest man-made structure on Earth, it is readily visible from locations as far-flung as Eastern Europe, China, Africa, and Brazil, as well as all 50 U.S. states.

 

“The original Seven Wonders of the World pale in comparison to this,” said World Heritage Committee member Edwin MacAlister, standing in front of a striking photograph of the Gap Between Rich and Poor taken from above Mexico City. “It is an astounding feat of human engineering that eclipses the Great Wall of China, the Pyramids of Giza, and perhaps even the Great Racial Divide.”

 

According to anthropologists, untold millions of slaves and serfs toiled their whole lives to complete the gap. Records indicate the work likely began around 10,000 years ago, when the world’s first landed elites convinced their subjects that construction of such a monument was the will of a divine authority, a belief still widely held today.

 

Though historians have repeatedly disproved such claims, theories still persist among many that the Gap Between Rich and Poor was built by the Jews.

 

“When I stare out across its astounding breadth, I’m often moved to tears,” said Johannesburg resident Grace Ngubane, 31, whose home is situated on one of the widest sections of the gap. “The scale is staggering—it makes you feel really, really small.”

 

“Insignificant, even,” she continued.

 

While numerous individuals have tried to cross the Gap Between Rich and Poor, evidence suggests that only a small fraction have ever succeeded and many have died in the attempt.

 

Its official recognition as the Eighth Wonder of the World marks the culmination of a dramatic turnaround from just 50 years ago, when popular movements called for the gap’s closure. However, due to a small group of dedicated politicians and industry leaders, vigorous preservation efforts were begun around 1980 to restore—and greatly expand—the age-old structure.

 

 “It’s breathtaking,” said Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, a longtime champion and benefactor of the rift’s conservation. “After all we’ve been through in recent years, there’s no greater privilege than watching it grow bigger and bigger each day. There may be a few naysayers who worry that if it gets any wider, the whole thing will collapse upon itself and take millions of people down with it, but I for one am willing to take that chance.”

 

 Added Blankfein, “Besides, something tells me I’d probably make it out okay.”

This article was published by The Onion, an American news organization featuring satirical articles on international, national, and local news. The Onion comments on current events, both imagined and real with the one above belonging mostly to the latter category.

Libya: the fear wall broke (CNN)

27 Feb: from CNN...

LIBYA: 'The fear wall broke'
Born and raised in Libya, the man in his 40s says this is the first protest he's ever seen in his native land. With no freedom of speech, no one ever dared to utter an ill word about the government or its powerful leader, Moammar Gadhafi, lest they risk jail time, he said.

But with Friday's protests, violent clashes and dozens of deaths, something changed.  "We can speak now," he marveled from a noisy street near the protest's epicenter. "The fear wall broke. Even after the killing, nobody is getting scared. Their numbers are increasing."

 What a wonderful phrase, "the fear wall broke!" 

Freedom; for all?

Our African friends, out to play at sunrise, home by dark.

Freedom: and Democracy.
 
   "Children and dogs run free!"  It makes you long for childhood again.  Kids are safe, loved, and watched over by adults who shape their world.  Adults make the rules, make the schedule, supply the things that are needed as best they can.  And who watches over the adults?  Communities do, I suppose, and government watches over it all.

Thus we arrive at a question of personal freedom.  There are individuals and cultures that want to be closer to the childlike life where they are watched over and cared for.  Then there are countries like my own that are pretty emphatic about freedom to live as we please.  We sometimes presume that our version of freedom is universally desired, but the truth is otherwise.  Many have come to America and been overwhelmed by the number of choices and decisions required to make it through any given day.  They've been stunned, overloaded, and gone back where they started where rules and choices are more narrowly shaped.

Now we watch as the Arab Spring blooms across Africa and the middle east.  At issue - freedom?  Yes.  Justice?  Yes!  And the 'American Way'?  No!  It will be many years before the body of law to support an emerging democracy will look familiar to us, and every institution must be restructured.  As we observe the eruption, it's worth listening and noting the differences. 

I'd prefer a safer, more stable and predictable world perhaps, but until mercy and justice reign, I'll stick with democracy and government by the people.  As a form of government, it sucks big-time; it's just better than the alternatives.

Western style freedom, then, isn't a truly universal value, as a friend pointed out the other day.  But fairness, justice, mercy, compassion; such things call to us so insistently.

Africa's February may be a landmark month ...

Bahrain's streets flooded with protesters 

Egypt's revolution, still tenuous, still dangerous, appears to not be the only such hot spot in Africa and the Middle East. Yemen and Iran, Libya and Algeria, Bahrain and beyond. Twenty protesters killed in Libya, others last night in Bahrain.

In Yemen, pro and anti-government protesters liven the debate.

The spillover from such unrest is likely to be global and significant. Bahrain looks to be troublesome as protesters demonstrate peacefully and riot police attack them. Deaths and injuries, lying government, haves and haven'ts, privileged and the voiceless.

TEHRAN, Iran -- Hardline Iranian lawmakers called on Tuesday (15 FEB) for the country's opposition leaders to face trial and be put to death, a day after clashes between opposition protesters and security forces left one person dead and dozens injured.

Iran protests continue to grow as thousands

of Iranians gathered in several Tehran

locations to participate in a

solidarity rally with Egypt and

Tunisia, officials said.

Speculations over what it all means floods the news. The collapse of stable circumstance, we're warned by some means the rise of radical Islamic regimes. The turmoil in Bahrain perhaps threatens the security of the U.S. Navy 5th Fleet based there. The Islamic brotherhood in Egypt will perhaps undo years of progress. Dire warnings abound. Few mention that people who've been deprived a voice in their own country's destiny are being given a chance. People who have been robbed by their governments are given a chance to change things. People who have been unfairly imprisoned will be able to breath freely, at least for now.

Notice in the photo, in Iran, protesters participate in solidarity rally with Egypt and Tunisia. Against Mubarak!

Friday morning, Feb 18, thousands in the square in Cairo, strikes continue, and the death count in Bahrain is up to six.

Such upheaval never goes smoothly or quickly.  Recovery will take decades, at least.

Regardless of the outcome, at least for now, some are achieving a little freedom, a little justice, and perhaps most important, a little hope.

To all the girls ...

To all the girls 
who are in a hurry 
to have a boyfriend or 
get married, a piece of 
biblical advice: "Ruth patiently waited for her mate Boaz."  

While you are waiting on YOUR Boaz, 
don't settle for any of his relatives; 
   Lyin-az,     Cheatin-az, 
    Dumb-az,   Drunk-az, 
     Cheap-az,  Crazy-az,
      Lazy-az, and especially his third 
          cousin Beatinyo-az.  
     Wait on your Boaz and make sure he respects Yoaz.

Volumes can and have been written on making this decision wisely. I think the brief instruction above summarizes it rather well.  

Today's households in the U.S. with the traditional married mom and dad plus kids, they have dropped below 50% recently. There are a number of reasons we might suggest.  The most compelling among the reasons; marriage isn't all that appealing in our culture any more.  Having had a good look, why would a person want to marry?

Marriage has changed and become progressively less relevant over the last few decades; the word 'marriage' has lost it's earliest meaning. Long before the issues of divorce and remarriage, of same-sex marriage, and of shotgun weddings, it was unique and more simply understood.

Marriage isn't:  the solution to your problems, the way out of a difficult family, the answer to an empty life, or the fulfillment of your dreams and desires.  And it isn't a ceremony; that has but little to do with your success.

Marriage is:  two becoming one, whatever that means.

Love and romance may flood us with feelings, but marriage is much more.
  Marriage is a choice.  Or more accurately, it's many choices, thoughtfully made over years, perhaps.  Learning to share joy, values, priorities, problems and solutions.  Choosing to care about the other.
       The choices mark the path you've chosen, and if you extend that line forward, you'll see your destination.
             In order to be wisely made, the choices cannot rest on feelings alone.

Happy Valentines Day.