First memory, first understanding

Not me; just a kid in the mud.

His first memory is of sitting in the front yard, playing with some toys in the mud.

The years that follow are fascinating.  He tells us his story ...

"I watch and learn, trying to find the rhythm of this world where I live.  I observe and cooperate.  I float along with the current.  I make a conscious effort to smile, nod, stand, and perform the millions of gestures that constitute life on Earth.  I assimilate the thoughts I'm given, study the actions and choices until they become reflexes.

Why am I here?  I know there's more; this world can't be all there is.

Finally, I remember that long letter from Dad.  It arrived years ago, and I only read a little of it; I was very young at the time and the letter is really long.  So I find in the letter that this world isn't my home, and it's not all there is.  It's just school and work, and my Father has laid out a long path ahead of me with good opportunities along the way.

Nuts.  Now I have to undo all that assimilating and cooperating.  I have to dump all the 'normal' thinking I've worked so hard to learn, and I have to learn skills this world doesn't teach if I'm going to graduate.

I had a brief view of the sun and the 'real' world the other day.  Seen from the classroom window, the curtains were back and the horizon was just visible in the distance.

Flooding it all was this blazing light that somehow filled out everything it touched.  Nothing soft and gentle about it, it was powerful enough to shake me to the core as I stood watching.  That's probably why the curtains aren't open all the time; we'd never get any work done."

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From Dad's letter - instructions

Whatever it was that he saw, it was not a gentle occasion.

The Courage of Conviction

The problem with having a conscience is that there's a price.

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A sixth-grader found an article in the library about cruelty to animals. She studied it through, how animals were treated by the food industry, how they were bred and raised for the slaughterhouse.  It troubled her; soon she made a choice and became a vegetarian.  There was a price.

She walked her path alone, mostly, with no such awareness among her friends.  She was teased regularly for her choice.  She became stronger as the days and years passed.  There were many choices about life and purpose that followed, every issue and personal value, each affected by conscience and courage.  As an adult now, her life reflects an unusual depth and breadth of character and conviction.  A healthy conscience will affect life-actions every day.  As it should, of course. Every day.

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Opinions and anger are common in conversation, but thoughtful life-change based on conscience is perhaps less so.  If you live according to personal convictions, it will include personal sacrifice.  Your life must change rather regularly, and the common pathway is not an option.

The world around us has changed over the years and without much thought, just humankind following appetites and desire for personal gain.  It's been doing that since the earliest times.  Most of us and our children have been carried along by change whether we noticed or not.

If, however, we choose to live guided by conscience, we'll find some interesting upheavals along the way to freedom.
- Clinging to wealth and luxury will change, perhaps to generosity and simplicity.
- Our focus on us (our in-crowd or race, our party or country) will expand to see more, perhaps all of humanity.
- Judging others will change to self-awareness, a real world-view, as justice rises above prejudice and preference.
- Oh, and learning will blossom, often fed by folks with opinions different than ours.
- There will be less anger and more laughing, more joy and fewer regrets.

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If anything about our life looks normal, perhaps it could benefit from another look.

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Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

Forgive our foolish ways!

Reclothe us in our rightful mind,

In purer lives Thy service find,

In deeper reverence, praise.

Why It Works the Way It Does

From American history - and today ...

In our earliest years, survival was the primary task for everyone.  Getting established as productive communities, working out trade arrangements and skilled artisanry, such things occupied more than a century.  Everybody was focused on making it from year to year.  There were a few wealthy and privileged, but most were working hard, building their homes and barns, tending crops and herds, and watching out for each other.

Then came taxation from a distant sovereign.  It began in 1733 with a tax on sugar, and things went downhill from there. Across the colonial communities, the accumulating taxes and trade restrictions were viewed as unjust oppression.

Majority/Minority

It perhaps made perfect sense to the British ruling class to balance the empire's budget by extracting wealth from the colonies, but it was a crippling burden.  As the colonial population increased from a few hundred thousand to 2.5 million, their ability to resist came to the front, and revolution followed.

With a similar story, there were slaves in the colonies; by 1800, slaves were one-fifth of the population, and revolution followed.  The slave revolution in Haiti (1791-1804) succeeded.  The slave uprising in New Orleans, 1811, failed, and the rebels were hanged.  The slave revolt in Jamaica, 1831, resulted in a thousand deaths and the eventual abolition of slavery in the British Empire, 1833.  ... and there was our own civil war.

There were 20+ slave rebellions and insurrections in North America during the 16th-19th centuries.  A pattern, perhaps.  Today, while only 13% of Americans are black, they are 40% of our prison population.  While the issue is complex, we do know that inequality and oppression are effective provocation for antisocial actions.

Why it works - the majority shrugs off problems faced by the minority.

If most folks feel that they're doing well enough, they'll be unwilling to rock the boat or let anyone else do it.  They don't want to risk any loss.  The fact that the bottom 20% on the economic ladder are unwillingly trapped in poverty and oppression is not enough reason to tip the balance.

No one wants to lose what they've got.  It seems reasonable to hold on to the status quo, and those down there at the bottom of the ladder are almost invisible anyway.  Besides, any disruption can be a long-term disaster.  The American revolution disrupted culture and economics for decades.  France and Europe followed suit, and recovery took most of a century.

Class discrimination and oppression - personal or institutional - we know why it works.  Selfishness, greed, and fear of loss are the motivations that can override principles of justice and equality.  Everyone fights that battle in their heart.

Some countries do better than others with issues
of inequality, poverty, opportunity and mobility.

Preferential opportunity remains the norm today, and the gap widens.  Some countries do better than others.  The helpful discussion, rather than 'why it works' would be 'how to end it'.

See it.
For the privileged,
- they never go hungry.
- they never go without healthcare.
- they never worry about kids finishing school.
- there will always be enough for them and their children.
- there will always be a way forward.

For the unprivileged, none of those apply.
- obstacles appear on every path.
- it takes more guts to be a black businesswoman than a white businessman.
- it takes more strength to be an inner-city teen with character than to be a suburban teen who just cruises through.
- finishing school is a huge uphill climb.
- healthy parenting is almost impossible.

End it: 

• It takes a magnificent family to raise thoughtful children these days when most are swept along by materialism and commercialization, entertainment, and conformity, all the public norm.
• Be deliberate, proactive, spell it out, discuss it face to face.
• It takes a skilled team to assist a community in developing school programs, agricultural practices, and effective health skills.
• Find those with good programs and transparency, and join in, all the way in.
• It takes personal effort and inquiry to understand the reality of discrimination and injustice.  
• Do the work.  Get a legitimate worldview.  Become a critical thinker and immune to the media rhetoric.  Speak clearly.
• It takes a gathering of sincere, good-hearted folks to form a common understanding of what's just, what's true, and to serve well.  
• Find them and join them; be a contributor to the work and the vision for change.

Can the church be a centerpiece in changing things?  Of course it can, and it should be.  You are the church; make it so.

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Update from a friend:  "You gave your LIFE to God, and that includes everything you care about: your position in society, the food on your table, and the flag you love. Trust Him to defend it, and go back to the ministry of reconciliation you were called to, showing yourself humble, and quick to listen/slow to speak (James 1). Reach out in love to those trying to represent the oppressed (YOUR JOB Prov 31).
Or else renounce God and get on with all the ugly name-calling and rejection I am seeing across Facebook today. Pick ONE."

Ideological Dishonesty -- an old perspective

From ninety years ago:  Ideological dishonesty in national leadership is the same as sloppiness in a surgeon.  Both inevitably lead to infection of the organism. Dishonesty in a leader, however, is not an accident; it flows from a contradiction between established principles and the determination of  leadership to exercise control.

A ruling elite will slander outside opposition.  It will gain cooperation within the bureaucracy (the apparatchik) by requiring absolute loyalty to leadership.  The press will become the bureaucracy's press. The non-influential masses will be propagandized and kept in the dark regarding decision-making and negotiations.  Transparency will be selective.  Objective discussion will be limited.

~ Lessons from the post-revolution era in Russia and Stalin's rise to power. (ref)(ref)(ref) 
Trotsky was a leader of the opposition which simply wanted to explain its views and participate in public discussion.  He was opposed by the bureaucracy - including the editors of Pravda.

Trotsky -- he goes on to note that, "The dying out of inner-party

democracy leads to a dying out of workers' democracy in general.

His response (below):

" ... It is quite a different matter when you have an unceasing,
furious, one-sided discussion being conducted in the press
and at party meetings ..."

The increasing separation between leadership and the general population erodes the very heart of democracy.

Leon Trotsky was Lenin's choice to succeed him as head of the party.  He fought for open discourse during Stalin's rise, hoping perhaps to limit the runaway corruption of the powerful.

He failed. After leading opposition to the policies of Joseph Stalin and the increasing role of bureaucracy, Trotsky was removed as Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs (01/1925), removed from the Politburo (10/1926), from the Central Committee (10/1927), expelled from the Communist Party (11/1927), exiled to Kazakhstan (01/1928), and exiled from the Soviet Union (02/1929). Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy from exile. He was assassinated on Stalin's orders in 1940 and removed from history books.

The Soviet Union was launched with high hopes.  Planning was to be done by a central committee, insuring plenty for everyone and serving the common good, but their course changed quickly.  The Soviet state became one of the most oppressive in the world, and millions of Russians starved in the 1920s and 1930s.  

Communism, fascism, socialism, capitalism, even democracy -- as we've seen, each reflects the ethics of the leadership segment.  Every sociological and economic construct includes opportunity for dishonesty and corruption.

Page images are from "Leon Trotsky and the Organizational Principles of the Revolutionary Party" By Dianne Feeley, Paul Le Blanc, Thomas Twiss 

Cause and Effect

Narrowing things down to something we can point at ... this is what we do.

We point at politicians and say they're this or that ...
We point at a kneeling athlete and say he's this or that ...
We point at countries, racial groups, political groups, ...
We point at government ...
We point at organizations like schools or churches ...
We point at people ...

... we categorize, judge, and dismiss, then move on without further thought.  That's the western cultural norm.

Having simplified things ... we tend to place ourselves outside the equation so we can observe and evaluate and perhaps think we're not a contributor.

For the record, nothing is quite that simple.  We can't explain our own thinking with a few words on social media, much less the reasons others might have for their life decisions.  It can take decades to understand our own choices, to understand the overlap between reasoned and self-justified response.  It can take even more years to grasp the impact our lives have on others ... unless we ask that question today.

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Without any religious interpretation, there's a practical truth in 'judge not lest you be judged'.  If we point and categorize, judge and dismiss, others will see us rather clearly and judge us accordingly.  True?  Of course.  You needn't take as many years as I to understand.  :)

Alan Kurdi, age 3

Little Alan Kurdi (lower right photo) was found, having washed up on the beach in Turkey.  He was 3 years old when he and his brother drowned while escaping with their father from the violence in Syria.  The photos captured international attention for a few days.  In the years since, thousands more have been driven from their homes, and another 8,500 have died like little Alan did.  

When we think of the crisis in Syria,
we think in broad strokes, but it's
personal.  This is Abdul Hamid
al-Youssef whose wife Dala and
twins Ahmed and Aya were killed
in a sarin gas attack.  He released
photos of himself holding the 
lifeless bodies of his precious
twins. He lost his wife and
children and a dozen more
family members.  He wants
us all to know.

There are five million Syrian refugees now, regular folks who've lost everything, running for their lives and the lives of their children.  The Assad regime has used chemical weapons, and the civilian casualties (Ref: NC-17) are horrific. Following an attack in April, rescuers found adults and children, conscious and gasping for breath as they died before their eyes.  It was the latest chemical attack the war-torn country has witnessed. (Ref)(Ref)

A sarin gas attack in April this
year killed 89 including
20 women and
 27 children.

Hundreds of civilians have died in the last 30 days, collateral damage from strikes by all sides.

Here, if we felt that there was a need to protect our kids, we'd do a neighborhood watch or ramp up our police presence.  If folks were threatened, we'd defend them, and our community would step up and help.  If some radical group sprang up, armed and violent, we'd mobilize at whatever level was needed to squash such wickedness.  Folks in Syria have tried everything, and 400,000 have died.

How might we respond to such need so far outside our own community?

Our own disaster in Houston is on our minds, of course, and we'll respond appropriately.  Volunteers and givers and governments will step up and help.  Our neighbors in Mexico have joined in to assist like they did during Katrina.  
Let's remember the larger world as well.

There are good organizations we might support.  

The Salvation Army is perhaps at the top of the list for crisis response, in Houston as well as international work.  

With a long history of helping effectively, World Vision is among the best developmental assistance organizations.  They're extraordinary.

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"World Vision has scaled up our response in places where families have fled, and your help is needed more than ever.

We must help Syrian refugees, half of whom are children, by giving them the vital resources they need to keep their children safe, healthy, and secure. Please pray for these families, and give a gift that to help them today."

Photojournalist Steve McCurry commented , "In seeing this current global refugee crisis, it's almost like people in Europe and the US are scared of refugees. Or they simply don't want the burden of hosting them. But we forget none are actually more scared than the refugees themselves. They are forced from their country, their homes."