Entertainment.
Psychological conditioning.
Behavior modification.
Energy Frenzy.
Contamination.
Starvation.
Disease.
Americans making hundreds of thousands, ... millions, to tell us lies on the nightly news, distract us from that which we should be most concerned about as we walk off to work everyday in the name of 'I want'. Is it the quality of 'I want' that separates us?
Desperation, when paired with 'I want' plays out before us like a rhapsody with no audience. All are playing on stage........no one watches, or listens for anything except their own part, their own noise, those who sit in a chair with 'director' silk screened on the back of the canvas, cross their arms, put up their feet and continue to be fascinated with their successes.
It is not about death. Iraqi's die, Afghan children, Iranian grandmothers, South African school girls, Irish sons, Chinese daughters, Philippine sisters , Turks, Indians, Vietnamese, Palestinians, and Americans. Many other lands that seem far off and which many of us do not even think about know a greater degree of unnecessary suffering then we ever will. What do the suffering have in common. Is the answer in our understanding? Feast or famine, war or peace, in love or hate, on a dark night or in the blazing afternoon, on a tree lined street where school buses come and go, or in a debris ridden walled up refugee camp in a country we don't care about.......... the truth is simple, really. The suffering has an end result. Many of us care little as long as we don't have to look at it, much less experience it. All we've been sold on is salvation through prayer by Christians who now call for the end of compassion. They call it from city councils, court rooms, the Supreme Court, from the squad room ...
There are powerful wealthy individuals who sit down to a table spread with unimaginable delicacy, laid by the hands of another, just after making a deal they know will kill someone, ...many.... leave others destitute, starving, hungry, wounded, crippled and will wonder why the table is bare when they requested, planned, a table perfect for the evening. They can crane their necks in search of the people who feed them, clean them, raise their children... what would they do if we weren't there?
Instead we ask for a strategy when revolution is done, look for a new leader, mark our ballot believing we've just participated in democracy, run for school board, post an article, shout our disdain from a broad banner at public events......... whatever, just don't tell me or anyone else who has been paying attention that it matters anymore. It doesn't. The hour is past.
there is no work to be done.
the time for surviving has returned.
who will you kill ............ to say that you are living.
There are those who will smile at the players on the stage, who are dancing to the rhythm of their want fulfilled.
Tonight, when the hour is late, an individual will be removed from her last warm place to sleep. she will move out into the darkness, and those who made it happen will tell themselves that there were others more deserving who needed that warm dry spot. They will find a way to live with it.
My contribution is to use the space here and ask you to think of her tonight. Think of all of those we pass by daily and find a way to live with it when we lay down to sleep. Until we do it will be a restless sleep. Until we acknowledge how far away from our part in compassion we have moved... we will continue to toward surviving until it is our time to leave that last warm spot we found for ourselves.