Friday, July 03, 2009

Are you residing in a place called cocoon?




I don't know how much you care.
I don't know your capacity to care.
I do believe we have, even because we are a human, a duty to care.

I try and live to be like that.
You don't know how much I try and fail.
You don't know how lazy I am.
You don't know what I give.
You don't know what I safeguard.

I think about it.
That is a start.
If we don't think these things, we are residing in a place called cocoon.
verb [ trans. ] (usu. be cocooned)
envelop or surround in a protective or comforting way : we began to feel cold even though we were cocooned in our sleeping bags.
• spray with a protective coating.
• [ intrans. ] retreat from the stressful conditions of public life into the cozy private world of the family : the movers and shakers are now cocooning.

I know humans who can barely survive.
Their whole life, often their whole family, is at survival level.
Sometimes it is debt.
Sometimes being without a home.
Sometimes it is a life full of physical discomfort - or the most extreme damage to the human frame.
Sometimes mental heath guts the whole of life, future, hope, direction ........

Often it is broken relationships.
The aftermath, the frozen soul.


It is easy to ask what did Michael Jackson do for others?
We will never know.
It is even difficult to understand his pain.
I don't really know or understand anything about him as a human.
Yet I believe he was a beautiful human person.
We know of his greatness and some of his vulnerabilities.
AND
We know and praise his music which has had an impact on most of the developed world.

I am looking at the man in the mirror.
It takes me all my time to try to understand myself.
Yet I think it is vital to get to know that beautiful human -
the hu-man in the mirror.

I feel that, if we know the human behind our shades, our mirror ball, our projected image to others - we can (be able) to say
'I am beautiful'.

I respect Bono - and more than that.
I think, from all he and others have projected, that he is pretty much a whole human person. I think I know enough about him to say that with confidence.
I believe he has the capacity to care and he does it. In large quantities.
No doubt there is the ugly bits which he does not display (like us all!!)
But respect to the hu-man.

People don't care how much you know
Until they know how much you care.

I always say
'An obnoxious person is a hurting person'.
'Behind the worst behaviour is a human who doesn't have the repertoire which includes behaviour that you like'.

I think the worst thing is to condemn someone through a lack of evidence.
Condemn on the image they/we portray.
(condemning is bad news man)

It seems to me that if we knew Michael Jackson, 
or that special one person in your life who makes your life hell,
a new gland will grow out of your soul.

A care gland
A compassion gland.
A love gland.


If we want to serve the true God,
we must break out of the circle of self-absorption
and pay heed to the bloodied faces of our fellow human beings.
If we do not share life with the oppressed,
we do not share life with God.

Leonardo Boff




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