Thursday, September 26, 2019

Anger in the USA & UK - not sure of mine. I just feel hurt by power grabbing




PARKER PALMER writes::


Last night, I read the political news of the day from a variety of sources, left, center, and right. I went to bed deeply distressed—again—at the sad, sick mess American politics has become.


As I read, I kept thinking back on the two days I spent last week meeting in my home with three of the best people I know—two Americans and one South African who serve as peace-makers in South Sudan, where almost half a million people have died in a civil war over the last few years, and twice that number have become refugees.

In my friends, I saw the finest fruits of a fully evolved humanity—a capacity to transcend greed and self-interest, even the need for personal safety, in order to help a suffering people move toward love, truth, and justice.

But in my own country, all I can see at the moment is a hot, steaming, shameful pile of politics at its worst, driven by a depth of cupidity, corruption, and cowardice that almost defies description...

So this morning I didn’t read the news. I read poetry, focusing on this piece by John O’Donohue. It's a prophetic outcry against the world in which we are now lost—and a prayer that we might “find our way home.”

O’Donohue’s combination of honesty and hope—along with my friends’ courage against great odds—inspire me to not to give in to cynicism or despair. We must rediscover compassion here at home, and “kneeling down before the poor” is the place to start...

P.S. The woodcut is a famous piece by Fritz Eichenberg, “Christ of the Breadlines,” which he made to honour the life-giving ministry of Dorothy Day and The Catholic Worker.




BHP