April 2015
Avoidance
29 April 2015 @ 15:07
As a child in the 50’s and 60’s, my days were spent playing outside with friends. Life was about people. Now I’m not talking people who we know through a one dimensional picture, but real flesh and blood people. We did not always see eye to eye and sometimes there were fights and bloody noses or lips but, with our parents encouragement (sometimes via a paddle or, in my case, a wooden spoon), we would shake hands and actually go back to being friends. We learned to get along and resolve issues that arose through the very games that we played. In the winter that meant snow forts, sledding and snowball fights. When you ran inside crying after catching a snowball in the face you were wiped off and reminded to duck the next time. In the summer there were fireflies to catch, games of neighborhood hide and seek to be played, sand castles to be built and crayfish to be caught. There were skinned up knees and those annoying cases of poison ivy; mosquito bites and sunburn, bare feet and mud puddles for jumping in. There were family picnics and trips to the community pool. We reluctantly paused for lunch and dinner. In the summer we were right back outside and stayed there pretty much up to bath time and bedtime. In the winter we would gather after dinner as a family to work on puzzles, play board games or watch some television. We actually had a magazine called ‘Life’ and it covered all aspects of life. It was a time when television was family entertainment that you could watch together without embarrassment.
And now I wonder, what have we become. It is the time of ’Self’ magazine and selfies. It seems that our reality is no longer found in the people around us but in the fictional characters that we stare at on the flat screens in front of us. We text a friend to comment on an episode of a television show we are watching, and mourn over the loss of fictional characters. War and natural disaster are piped into us 24/7 and we have become so conditioned to it that we seem to no longer care. 'Oh yeah, I think I did hear that the death count in Nepal is nearly 5000 and climbing.' We laugh at obscenities and change the channel when something starts to challenge us, preferring to find something to keep us amused. Television teaches us to put people down for being themselves because, heaven knows, they need a makeover to fit into the cookie cutter society. Politics are such that Republicans are Christians and Democrats are not. (I remember when it was a matter of following Christ). Heaven forbid either party would agree with something suggested by the opposite party. It matters not whether it is simply the right thing to do to care for others. We hear talk of being a ‘Christian' nation yet we continue to hate our enemies and promote war. A horrible act such as the terrorist attack on and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 which claimed several thousand adult lives was countered by a war that had killed untold thousands of men, women and children who had no part in the attack on the twin towers. All this in the name of world peace. We can pour money in a war machine yet allow people to go hungry and in need of health care. Why can’t we declare war on things like childhood cancers, cystic fibrosis, congenital heart disease and muscular dystrophy?
We are a nation that no longer seems to understand responsibility. Everyone is responsible for our troubles except us. We can not speak of God except to blame him for our miseries. The ten commandments are abandoned because they are of God and we can’t have that. The practice of ‘no moral rights’ has taken us to a place where there are ‘no moral wrongs.’
And now I wonder, what have we become. It is the time of ’Self’ magazine and selfies. It seems that our reality is no longer found in the people around us but in the fictional characters that we stare at on the flat screens in front of us. We text a friend to comment on an episode of a television show we are watching, and mourn over the loss of fictional characters. War and natural disaster are piped into us 24/7 and we have become so conditioned to it that we seem to no longer care. 'Oh yeah, I think I did hear that the death count in Nepal is nearly 5000 and climbing.' We laugh at obscenities and change the channel when something starts to challenge us, preferring to find something to keep us amused. Television teaches us to put people down for being themselves because, heaven knows, they need a makeover to fit into the cookie cutter society. Politics are such that Republicans are Christians and Democrats are not. (I remember when it was a matter of following Christ). Heaven forbid either party would agree with something suggested by the opposite party. It matters not whether it is simply the right thing to do to care for others. We hear talk of being a ‘Christian' nation yet we continue to hate our enemies and promote war. A horrible act such as the terrorist attack on and the destruction of the World Trade Center on 9/11 which claimed several thousand adult lives was countered by a war that had killed untold thousands of men, women and children who had no part in the attack on the twin towers. All this in the name of world peace. We can pour money in a war machine yet allow people to go hungry and in need of health care. Why can’t we declare war on things like childhood cancers, cystic fibrosis, congenital heart disease and muscular dystrophy?
We are a nation that no longer seems to understand responsibility. Everyone is responsible for our troubles except us. We can not speak of God except to blame him for our miseries. The ten commandments are abandoned because they are of God and we can’t have that. The practice of ‘no moral rights’ has taken us to a place where there are ‘no moral wrongs.’
What Really Matters?!
24 April 2015 @ 20:05
Since 1992 I have found myself immersed in the lives of chronically and critically ill children and their families. These have been years of incredible trial and pain and yet times of the most heartfelt laughter and joy. The faith of children, and their families, has changed me. It is in this place that I have come to know my best friends. Today Facebook had been filled with posts of sadness and sorrow over the ‘TV death’ of a character on the show Grey’s Anatomy, yet a child loses the battle against childhood cancer approximately every 6 minutes, and we don’t seem to be too upset over that. I just returned from the visitation for one of my little 10 year old buddies where his mother talked of this being the last time that she could dress her three boys alike. I have been visiting this little guy for the past 5 years since his diagnosis. He has touched me with all of the incredible faith, joy and magic that comes with childhood. Just three weeks ago he told me that he prayed for me every day. How humbling. I will be singing at his funeral tomorrow and I find myself wondering what it would take to get people on Facebook talking about the horror of this disease and becoming involved in finding cures. If not a cure for childhood cancer, how about a cure for congenital heart disease or cystic fibrosis or muscular dystrophy or one of the other diseases that take these precious children, my friends, way too soon? Sorry to put this out there but my heart is so broken tonight over one more senseless death of a child while our obsession seems to be over with the loss of a fictional TV character. I just don’t get it! Goodnight.