Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Morning Thoughts Beyond my Borders

Guess what it's hot outside, can you imagine? As I get older or fatter don't know which I have a harder and harder time tolerating heat and humidity. When the windows are dripping I chicken out and stay in the house. COWARD. The garden needs work, the house is being painted by myself and some friends....I do a lot of trim work that is in easy reach. Right now I am just plain chicken. I don't want too..boo boo lip pout face.

My own response to discomfort shames me. I have been paying more and more attention to the "state of things" in this world. It is a hot mess. No matter what "party" you belong too they are both screwed up. We are still at war, we are poisoning our own food supply, our health care is absurd and broken, we consume about 90% of the worlds resources for ourselves while the rest starve and would give anything to drink water as clean as our toilets have. We are sick.

It started with Sammie. When I saw a real life starved dog there was this immediate response in me to take him home and feed him. I had compassion for a dog. He weighed 24 pounds and now he weighs 44 pounds and he is beautiful. He IS a NINNY of a dog with huge separation anxiety issues but he is a rescue so of course he has issues. There is no telling what his life was like for his first 3 or 4 years. It's amazing he survived.  That experience got me to thinking about the difference between REAL LIFE and the media. REAL LIFE has impact and the media is numbing. We can look at pictures and do nothing.

What if WE THE PEOPLE began to live differently. What if we the people began to share our resources with the starving children in Haiti, Africa and other famine stricken places on this planet?
What if we began to take an inventory of all the little bargains we indulge in and total that up and realize it could save the lives of entire families. What if thinking about children who don't eat for days and drink warm salt water for their pain broke our hearts?
http://www.loveachild.com/
I wonder what would happen to me if I went there and saw them. I wonder if I was ladling bowls of porridge into the bowls of starving children what I would do and feel when the pot was empty but the lines were still there and those children would not eat.  I want my heart to break.

Some friends of mine are coming over and we are doing a study together on the book, "7 an experimental mutiny against excess, by Jen Hatmaker"   Our minds are being blown wide open to what has been going wrong on this planet.  The government can't fix this mess. It's us.
We the people who have been sucked into consumerism, and can turn our eyes away from the plight of the rest of the world.

To whom much is given, much is required. We have so much, even our poor are not poor. You are poor when you are a grown woman weighing 69 pounds struggling to find anything to feed your children whose bellies protrude and bones stick out. You are poor when the earth around you is so cracked that nothing will grow. You are poor when the only water to drink is dirty and you know it will make you sick, it will make your children sick, but you are all thirsty and that is all there is.
You have no shoes so your feet get wounded scouring the dumps for anything to eat or sell.
You have no clothing so you are naked.
You lie on your stomach to try and sleep because it hurts less from starvation.
http://kissesfromkatie.blogspot.com/

I can't hardly put anything down the garbage disposal anymore. There are hundreds of food items in my kitchen, refrigerator and pantry.  My closets could probably clothe a small village. Most of what hangs up in there I don't even wear that much. I usually have 2 pairs of favorite jeans and about 3 favorite tops. I confess I love my bling....but do I need as much as I have?

Why am I saying all this?  I want for us to wake up. We are mothers, we are women. We could not watch an infant cry all day and not feed it or look at our children's faces  with their empty dust filled bowls. This is the plight of our "neighbors" those across the water whose lives are not blessed like ours are. Yet these people will do ANY work, and SHARE anything. They do not hoard up for themselves there is too much pain everywhere to even consider it.
http://www.lifetoday.org/
We have so much to learn. We have so much to give. If only we would wake up.

2 comments:

Kat said...

I feel the same exact way. It really does make me sick to my stomach how much we have when others have nothing. Sick. Sick, sick, sick.

And you're right, it is not the government or a particular party. It's us. We have to fix it.

Karen Deborah said...

I know you share my heart I this Kat, you always have.