Washing the hog ...

The quantity of meaningless speech (Hogwash!) is stunning.

At the end of any given business day, we sit down to relax, and perhaps shed the pile of pointless words that accompanied our hours.  

The next morning we begin again, straining to understand or to express ourselves clearly, consuming great amounts of time and energy, trying to construct an agreement about what we will do next in yet one more meeting.

Stymied is a good description, perhaps; at least it's not profanity.  Aaaaand .....  life goes on.

It's worth remembering that the joy of life is inside, not outside.  We can choose what affects us and how much.  An evening laughing with my wife outweighs a business trip through the desert on a horse with no name. An afternoon with my granddaughter is priceless.

Memory-worthy moments usually include smiles and understanding.  Personal victories usually include wise focus on good things and breezing past the foul stuff.  Family successes usually include comforting heart connections and understanding.

Just for comparison, moments that deserve to be seen and dropped include argumentative attacks pointed at us, misunderstandings and disappointments, hard work that just passed the time with little progress.

Walter befriended me when I was a stranger in his country

and taught me the necessary things about crooks and scams.

He came to visit me when I was bedridden with broken

ribs.  He's a good friend.

I was reminded by friends in Africa, joy in life is a choice for now rather than some distant horizon.

Walter, my friend in Mombasa, had polio as a child and has lived his life in a wheelchair.  His smile works well, but the rest of his body is generally uncooperative.  He's a surprisingly gracious fellow.  We spent hours together, telling stories and laughing and talking about politics or faith or life in the street.

"You pray for me, I pray for you, my friend," he says as he concludes our frequent phone calls.  What a joy.

Zionism is not a religion

Israeli police detain Palestinian protesters in East

Jerusalem. A 14 year old American boy was killed

there by a police bullet.

24 OCT 14

It's troublesome, listening to governments. Obviously, the Israel we know is right and good and should be defended. Obviously, the Palestinians who oppose Israeli rule are the immoral players in the current conflict.

At least, that's one story we're given.

Objectivity paints a larger picture.  As in all national conflicts, the short explanation is inadequate.

Today, Palestinian children get less water and food than Israeli children.  It's national policy, enforced by the military.

Today, a Palestinian family, supposedly citizens of Israel, can be evicted without cause from their house where they've legally lived for generations.  For no other reason than that of their Arab roots.

But the community tolerated Palestinians in their midst, didn't they?!  Then came Hamas, the Islamic Resistance movement ... Well, yes; things have escalated, perhaps because for forty years, Palestinians been without redress when they were arrested or killed for peaceful protest.  They've had no peaceful recourse to being driven from their homes and denied the means to feed themselves.

Palestinian activists, human rights defenders, journalists and academics are frequently picked up off the streets, out of their homes in the middle of the night, in front of their families – Israel's thug soldiers take them off to jail and inter them without trial, often in conditions of torture and isolation. Military courts then rubber-stamp the actions of Israel's military and spy agencies.

In just over one year of unarmed demonstrations
in Nabi Saleh, a small Palestinian community
in the West Bank, 155 of the village’s 500 residents
were wounded (about 60 of them children); 35
homes were damaged and dozens of the village’s
people were detained. Yet even after the protest’s
leader was put behind bars by the army, the struggle
for the Nabi Saleh’s land continues

(25 OCT 14) There was one salient example of their regime only this week. Abdullah Abu Rahme, one of the main organisers of popular resistance against Israel's apartheid wall in the village of Bil'in, was convicted by one of the Israeli military's kangaroo courts of "obstructing the work of a soldier". In a 2012 incident, Abu Rahme tried to stop a military bulldozer from clearing land on which to build the wall.

The Temple Mount, holy to both Jews and Muslims,

is a frequent focus of unrest. Jews and Muslims

come to pray, each sees the other as a

desecration, a defilement. Police restrict

entry to one or the other, depending

 on the occasion, in an attempt

to limit violence.

In the city of Jerusalem, a Jewish citizen lives under regular laws.  A Palestinian citizen lives under military law on the same street in the same job in the same community.

The administrative issues, like permits and driver's license and business documents are different and more difficult if you're Palestinian.

The segregated society is supported by policy, by practice, and law.  A young Jewish boy in the city would not likely ever have occasion to sit down in a comfortable setting with Palestinian kids his own age.  Much like white South Africa under Apartheid, Israel is a segregated nation.

OK, that's another story we're told.

"The borders [of Israel] are determined by where Jews live,
not where there is a line on a map."

  ~Prime Minister Golda Meir, 1971
This map narrative is refuted by many; the land was unoccupied
until filled with illegally migrating Muslims according to some.

From inquiry, we find that 1947 and 1967 were turning points, but not the defensive response of an attacked nation.  They were opportunities for conquest by a militarily prepared nation against less capable neighbors who had not initiated conflict and posed no identified threat.  Minutes recorded in cabinet and military meetings in 1967 clearly identify the preemptive actions as seizing opportunity, not defense.

The Zionist agenda;

• conquer the land from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean
• remove the Arab people, their culture and history

The first is complete.  The second is continuous.

Palestinian girls run away after an  Israeli air strike
in the  northern  Gaza Strip. November 18, 2012.

In September 2008, in supposed response to Hamas rocket attacks, Israel began carpet bombing in Gaza ... on a school day ... at precisely 11:25 AM, the turnover time for morning and afternoon school when the most children would be concentrated in the streets.  The attacks on civilian population areas continued for 21 days, the bloodiest period in the nations history since 1967.  Much was made in the news of destroyed Hamas sites, but no mention was made of the cost.


OK, that's another view we're given. 

Four hundred Palestinian towns were 'depopulated' in the 1947-9 war. Most houses were destroyed, mosques and churches put to other uses, and cemeteries plowed under.  The communities were driven out. Refugee Palestinians have since carried their village names, memories, and possessions with them into the diaspora.

Their villages and towns continue to be captured, cleared, and  renamed. Their monuments from the last fifteen-hundred years are destroyed.  Their rights are cancelled.

While the borders of Israel are internationally recognized, it remains an occupied territory as defined under international law.  The Israeli treatment of the nation's occupants is discriminatory oppression under international law.  The annexation of East Jerusalem was ruled "null and void" by the UN Security Council; Israeli sovereignty over the annexed territory has not been recognized by any country.

Israel claims to be democratic and to support universal suffrage, yet there are more than 50 Israeli laws that discriminate against Palestinian citizens of Israel in all areas of life, including their rights to political participation, access to land, education, state budget resources, and criminal procedures.

Israel has broad anti-discrimination laws that prohibit discrimination by both government and non-government entities on the basis of race, religion, and political beliefs, and prohibit incitement to racism,^[1] yet extreme racism against Arabs in Israel exists in institutional policies, personal attitudes, the media, education, immigration rights, housing, social life, and legal policies.

Us and them, or us against them?
 

Zionists see themselves as refugees from around the world, fleeing the pogroms and persecutions, returning to their homeland from which they were driven fifteen centuries before.  They were denied citizenship in the countries where they lived, they were driven out of their homes leaving everything behind.  They were hunted down and killed along with their children.

Critics of Palestinian resistance see them as irrationally violent, ethnic/religious murders whose goal is to wipe Israel from the earth.

Palestinians see themselves as refugees in their own land, victims, driven from their homes, denied citizenship and the means to provide for their own, attacked and killed along with their children.

Critics of Zionism see it as a colonialist or racist ideology that has led to the denial of rights, dispossession and expulsion of the "indigenous population of Palestine".

So that's yet another few perspectives we're offered.

It is worth noting, the Arab nations that surround Israel were created not by Arabs but by decree. England and France spent five years in secret negotiations following the WWI. The resulting borders were arbitrarily written without regard to the occupants.

The prevailing rationale behind these artificially created states was how they served the imperial and commercial needs of their colonial masters. Iraq and Jordan were created as emirates to reward the noble Hashemite family from Saudi Arabia for its loyalty to the British against the Ottoman Turks during World War I, under the leadership of Lawrence of Arabia. Iraq was given to Faisal bin Hussein, son of the sharif of Mecca, in 1918. To reward his younger brother Abdullah with an emirate, Britain cut away 77 percent of its mandate over Palestine earmarked for the Jews and gave it to Abdullah in 1922, creating the new country of Trans-Jordan or Jordan, as it was later named.
And on, and on.  So ...

All these stories are widely accepted among various hearer groups.  Each considers their view to be the definitive truth.  So how might the issues be resolved?  Can they be resolved?

Lots of possibilities going forward.  Switzerland has managed well as a confederation of states, as has Belgium.  It's a known viable option.  Not a difficult choice, perhaps, unless you require everyone to be like you.  That's apartheid; it's been tried before.

What we know for sure is that if you've chosen to agree with just one side against the others, there are a lot of people who think you're wrong, and for quite good reasons.

Arrived!

OK, this is the last of
it. I've graduated. I
know pretty much
everything.
I've arrived!

Having completed our education and embarked on life, the most stunning of truths is how little we know and how much remains to be learned.

Our minds continue to learn and change over time; we're taught continuously by that to which we give our attention.

It's up to us to choose.  Reality TV is a brain-shaper, as is the news media.  Work, family, relationships, and inquiry (more studying) continue to shape and add to our thinking and behavior over time, for good or ill.

Too, we learn by doing (or not), perhaps more than in any other venue.

There's always more, and the best is discovered by deliberate choice.  Whatever is right and good and noble, those are the things worth learning to understand and do.  Got a list?  Is it the good stuff?  Go and do, now while you have the chance.

There's always more.


There's always more.


There's always more.


There's always more.

Don't miss the good part.

the helper

Helping others is a better purpose in life than a lot of the choices

we see being made these days.  True?

This helper fellow was making his way to the capital city. He was walking, and it was still miles and miles away.  So, these really sick and contagious guys, huddled together away from regular folks on the edge of their village, they saw this helper fellow as he came along.  Somehow, they knew who he was, and keeping their distance, they waved and hollered to him for help.  He spoke to them graciously and sent them off to be checked by the folks in town who did such things.  As they went, they were healed, and apparently it was pretty spectacular.  One fellow, and only just the one, was so over-full of happiness and appreciation. that he turned around and ran back to this helper fellow who had spoken to him and the others. There, he collapsed on the ground in tears, but he was crying for joy as he tried to speak about his deep thanks and wonder.  He was from some foreign country, not a local.

The helper fellow received him graciously, of course.  Then, probably with a smile and one eyebrow raised, he says to the folks there, weren't there ten who got healed?  And just this foreign fellow comes back to honor the gift and say thanks?  Then quietly to the man there on the ground at his feet, he says with a smile, you can get up now my friend and get along home; you believed and that brought you the healing you'd been wanting.

That sort of thing happened a lot around this helper fellow, apparently.

Homeless

"I didn't know at the time how I could possibly fit into their world, and if they wanted me to fit into their world."

Paul Simon wrote this song with Joseph Shabalala, lead singer of Ladysmith Black Mambazo.  The group's name comes from the town of Ladysmith, South Africa. 

It was the 1980's, and Paul Simon was among those supporting the anti-apartheid movement. Life in South Africa was a horror story if you weren't white. Afrikaners held that it was impossible, impracticable and ungodly for the different races and cultures to live as one.
Simon had seen Ladysmith Black Mambazo on a BBC documentary called Rhythm of Resistance: The Music of South Africa, and traveled to South Africa in 1985 to meet them.  Shabalala gave him albums the group had recorded.  Simon listened to them every night. 

In the documentary Under African Skies, Simon explained: "I was bewitched by Ladysmith Black Mambazo because they were so beautiful. The music was enchanting - it was all a cappella, and it was so beautiful that I was intimidated. They were so good at what they did and it was so contained that I didn't know at the time how I could possibly fit into their world, and if they wanted me to fit into their world."

• Regarding the meaning of the song, Joseph Shabalala said, "We're far away from home and we're sleeping. Our fists are our pillows."

Afrikaners (the white folks) held that it was impossible, impracticable and ungodly for the different races and cultures to live as one.

High school students protest in 1976 Soweto.

This is Hector Pieterson, the first casualty, being carried by Mbuyisa

 Makhubo after South African police fired into the crowd of children.

His sister, Antoinette Sithole, runs beside them. Hector

was declared dead on arrival at the clinic where they'd 

taken him, hoping for help.

The death toll; 176 to 700 depending on the

data source.  More than an additional 1000

people were wounded by the police action.

In 1976, thousands of black children in Soweto, a black township outside Johannesburg, demonstrated against the Afrikaans language requirement for black African students.  The police opened fire with tear gas and bullets. 

The protests and government crackdowns shattered all illusions that apartheid had brought peace or prosperity to the nation.

The United Nations General Assembly had denounced apartheid in 1973, and in 1976 the UN Security Council voted to impose a mandatory embargo on the sale of arms to South Africa. In 1985, the United Kingdom and United States imposed economic sanctions on the country.  In early 1994, it was finally over.

The English portion of the lyrics...

Strong wind destroy our home
Many dead, tonight it could be you
(repeated)

And we are homeless, homeless
Moonlight sleeping on a midnight lake
(repeated)

And the Zulu lyrics translate approximately ...

Steep cliff

We sleep on the cliffs

My heart and the cold 

My heart, my heart 

My heart, and the cold 

My heart, my heart 

My heart sleeping far from home

My heart, my heart 

A suggested meaning, "My heart/The cold has already killed me." 

The years pass, the world changes, often for the better.  There's a price we pay for the change.  Is it worth it?  Yes and no, and it's huge when there are children involved.  It's hard to balance that equation.

True Religion vs. True Politics

Where are the boundaries?

Faith and belief are personal, I suppose.
We acknowledge truth and build our personal convictions as an issue of good conscience; they can't be required of us by others.  True?

Then there are rules.  Imposed, mostly.  Rules for membership, for being 'in' the religion.
And there are rules about everybody outside the group.  But these don't have much to do with faith and belief.

Then there is the money for government of the group and its rule.  There is a lot of money required for salaries and buildings, governing bodies and meetings and mountains of literature; all business and corporation-type things that cost money.  It's big business, or it can be.

Then there are the speeches and policies to keep people in line.  Politics, really.
And then there are more speeches and policies to persuade others into compliance or out of the way.  Is that like propaganda?

Then there are the campaigns and conquests, harsh activities where religion says people have to get on board or die.  At the extremes, it's deadly.

It first occurred to me to ask these questions as I sat on a hillside in Spain watching our softball game.  A bunch of young folks from several churches had informally started playing on that sunny afternoon.  Everybody was hot and sweaty and laughing a lot as we only occasionally made a good hit or a good catch or play.  The exception; the ladies from one church sat on the hillside in their long homemade skirts and head scarves.  Their rules didn't allow them to wear sports clothes or play baseball.

That's okay, I suppose, but how far do rules and rule makers get to go with that thinking?  Is there a known limit?  And is compliance with such rules the choice of the believer?  Or are such rules imposed on the group by those who rule?

True religion's heart, we're told, watches over those in need and works hard to avoid being corrupted by the culture in which we must live. 
(The culture's ways?  The culture's governance and rule and intolerance and its willingness to deprive another of life and of a chance to find the good part?)

"Real, true religion from God the Father's perspective is about caring for the orphans and widows who suffer needlessly and resisting the evil influence of the world."

I recall being told that the practical work of the catholic church, things like hospitals and schools and charities to feed the poor, those are all secular and don't count for anything because they're not spiritual.  

It requires a bit of a sense of humor to make a place for such thinking, perhaps.  It's not funny, though; not funny at all.