Billy posted over at Swimming in the Divine Chaos about the Darfur crisis. Also a good comment from Joelinux as well. I have been meaning to post on this for a couple of weeks, but havent gotten around to it.
It feels like there is so little individuals can do to help, but I also feel that this should not be our excuse for failing to do what little we CAN DO to help. We can raise awarness, pray and give of our finances. Yes these are small things that seem to do nothing, but they do do something. We have to realize that we are connected with people beyond our house, friends, job, city, state, or nation. We are a global humanity, not just an American one. Jared posted a great Martin Luther King Jr. quote on his blog a couple of months ago: “All people are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality.” We are bound to each other because we are the human race. Our friends in Darfur are a part of us and a terrible injustice is tearing them apart. Will we recognize our inescapable mutuality with them? Will we “Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves; ensure justice for those being crushed. Speak up for the poor and helpless, and see that they get justice” (Proverbs 31:8-9). I sure hope that I will.
A few great sites where you can learn more about the issue and be a part of the solution. I will also be adding these to the Activism page.
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And that is what it comes down to. “I sure hope that i will.” Great closing statemet Ryan.
I just had coffee yesterday on the corner of Wilshire and Rodeo Dr in Beverly Hills with a client of mine. She’s Jewish, which I only point out as a reference for the amazing conversation we had.
We sat for over three hours and just shared life. It was amazing. And the conversation was centered on social justice, and that mutuality you referenced. That our voice and our life can never be what it is from our here, but that we find our true voice as we live in humble awareness of our interconnectedness as the human race. The majority of our global community weren’t born into a society where they had the luxury of indifference and safety.
“We must recogize, that we–all of us–are citizens in a world that allows children to die of starvation.”
And I think if we can grasp what it means to truly be citizens, then we would stop abdicating our innate, God-given responsibility to take care of those who bear his very image.
But profoundly and simply, you summed it up at the end of your post. It all starts with you.
And yes its inundating, and no, we probably wont effect global behavioral patterns in which human beings subject one another to cruel and violent abuse, but the face of just one that no longer lives in fear is enough to keep me going.
Love you. love your thoughts. keep pushing us.
My hope is that there would be a fire that would ignite a creative action, an action that would cure our culture of silence. We live in a time that is so brutal and unforgiving that it seems that we are witnessing a steady erosion of transformation. Again my hope is that we would live life like it is our “human duty” to humanize not dehuminize.