« August 2005 | Main | November 2005 »
"The Way Home" - Tandi Venter
Deb has written a poignant and painful story about her friend "L", who struggled for years with an addiction to alcohol and died yesterday of that disease. Please go and read about it.
Alcoholism is a horrible disease. Peace to all who are on the journey to freedom.
And tonight, deep peace and rest to you "L". May you find in death what you could not find in this life.
"Covered in White" - Lizette Luijten-Daas
This week's Time magazine (Canadian Edition) is reporting on one of the horrors of Darfur, the rape of thousands of its' women. It is being called the weapon of choice. In March of this year, Doctors Without Borders documented 500 rapes over a four-month period. The alleged response by the Sudan government was to arrest senior aid workers for, among other things, "publishing false reports". The charges were eventually dropped, however the government still denies the reality facing thousands of women.
That reality includes husbands, fathers, brothers murdered in the course of trying to protect the women. Pregnancies, the result of a rape, a permanent reminder of hatred and trauma and injustice. Disease. Alienation from community.
I pray that every atrocity of this conflict will be named and responded to. That every aid worker will be protected as they bring hope and healing to the women of Darfur.
And for the women. Dignity. Healing. Protection. Redemption. Love. To be seen, heard, embraced.
Heads held high, covered in white.
"Mother Earth's Tears" - Maxine Noel
I have been pretty silent here for the last month. Yes, I've had company and life has been busy. But the truth is, I have felt overwhelmed with many things of life. Things around me, things I have seen and heard and become a part of. I wish I was one of those people who gets so enraged with the injustice of it all that I tell everyone who will listen and write about it here and call my local politicians and mobilize action and the rest of it.
But I don't. I feel it. Not just empathize, not just a sad look and a comment about how terrible this or that is. I really feel it. And then I shut down, paralyzed, mute as if a big warm, wet blanket has been dropped over me and I'm rendered useless.
Today I watched CNN and am now officially anguished, disgusted, angry and completely cynical and mistrustful of anyone in the political arena. What is happening in the US right now has brought into light, again, issues of racism and poverty and the injustice of it all makes me sick.
This afternoon I spoke with a mother who is desperately trying to keep her fifteen year old daughter from being lost to the streets of my city and a life of prostitution and drug addiction. She is only one. In my work I enter into the lives of many women who, right now, are lost to those very streets. My work has also led me to begin researching the global crisis of human trafficking. Every year, millions of women and children are unknowingly sold, traded, kidnapped and deceived into the sex trade and suffer the most horrendous of injustices.
Tonight, I saw the movie "The Constant Gardener". A powerful film, and a shocking and sad look into the financial agendas of many pharmaceutical companies who knowingly profit at the expense of some of our world's most desperate and impoverished people.
I know I can do my part, I can help this one or that one. But sometimes, like tonight, that just feels like it's not enough. Sarah Maclachan sang it best. The world is on fire...it's more than I can handle.
Truly, tonight, it is more than I can handle. More than I can bear.
