A comparison of values: A family living on $2 per day or Charlie Sheen’s $2 million dollars per episode. In the grand scheme of life — where do you place your priorities? No one said life is fair – but this comparison makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck.
Any thoughts?
Evening comes early and often.
The nights, shortened by summers sunlight, are still extraordinarily long.
People walk furtively, ignominiously, avoiding eye contact.
Cautiously going about their daily business.
The streets are silent, dark, scary, intimidating.
Street lamps are dim: doors are locked: Children play inside.
Conversations are stilted, brief, superficial.
Who knows what? About whom? When?
Relationships are superficially deep
Extended families are at risk.
Who is watching? Who is listening
James Devita in his book “Silenced” calls them “Listeners”.
Fear is pervasive, encompassing, everywhere.
Fear of… how long is the list?
Imagine these factors being present in your life..always!
Where fear and intimidation are normal.
Where survival skills/ thought police/thinking only proper thoughts
Being obedient, compliant, living an existence based on robot behavior
Are essential to being alive.
Your neighbors in the apartment block – do not extend the hand of trust .
Some of your friends disappear.. forever
There are rumors about their being transported to the desert
Others talk about dark and brutal prisons .. no trials..no appeals
No visitors.. people just disappear into a netherland.
You learn early not to question, or think, or discuss freedom.
The shadowy hand of the government will harshly punish you and your family.
We remember the click of the phone-listeners- when living in Warsaw.
Yes my friends, this is the backdrop of East Berlin and now Egypt.
The courage needed to resist the State is difficult to put into words.
The tentacles of how deep the police monitored and controlled lives
Is worthy of a several volume set of detailed anecdotes.
Fear of failure in a job, or school, or relationship is real and serious.
Fear for your life, the life of your family, your country
Reinforced every day and everyway for decades is pure terror.
Knowing that demonstrating in the streets could mean death or at the
Least extended imprisonment in a middle age dungeon is courageous.
The demonstrators in Cairo literally and often risk their lives for their country.
This fact cannot be overstated or underestimated.
Take the time, find a way to visit these countries
Go to little Egypt in New York or Polska in Chicago.
Have a cup of tea, eat a pierogi: talk to the people about their experiences
An appreciation/comprehension of freedom in the U S and the courage of our brothers
Around the world will be a priceless gift which will enrich your life… forever.
Nature has uncanny methodologies for grabbing our attention
Wrestling thoughts and ideas from the unknown caves of our minds
As a writer, I daily scour my resources to be clever, witty or insightful
Then Mother Nature uses her laser pointer to grab my attention
Reminding me that clever, witty and insightful are not the reasons for
talents given, and so lightly received.
The meaning behind the meaning are subtle, inhibiting the inclination
To be lazy, pedantic, or slothful.
The snows of winter 2011 seem endless
Drifts: closed roads: grouchy chats over coffee in the morning.
Roads become hazardous with white out conditions
TV anchors drone on about the Great Blizzard .
Then the calm after the storm arrives: quietly, gently, like a warm white down blanket
Drifts rise and fall: mirroring the sand dunes of Egypt and Arabia.
Painting the landscape – Andrew Wyeth would be proud.
Nothing moves, all is literally frozen in time and space
Facing the morning sun, covered to his chest in drifting snow
Simple, draped in a peasants garment enduring our matter of
Season change, and human intervention
Is amass produced concrete molded replica statue of St Francis of Assisi
I know, a statue is a statue: Inert, man made, purchased at a local garden center
But what is it about Mother Nature? She clothes the surrounding acreage
Drifts 4’ to 6’ encompass the statue:
But he resides there, calm, protected
No matter the season, the climate, the locale.
Taking center stage amidst wintertime carnage
Seeming to protect animals and humans alike as is his legacy
Is there a message here?
Nine centuries after his death, why do we pay homage
To this stigmatized saint who turned away from a life of wealth?
He rejected (literally) all that was materialistic.
When the liberally leaning New York press in this year 2011 prints the
Prayer of St Francis on its front page as part of a tribute
To a deceased colleague by Bono… is there a message here?
Will we be remembered, revered, 9 centuries after our death?
I look out again at this simple statue: a man for all seasons and all times
A role model for consideration by all peoples of all faiths and for generations to come.
I know, I know, it is only a statue.. but then again…
This is the land of Moses, and a refuge for the baby Jesus:
The mathematical genius that are the pyramids
Luxor, Alexandria, the tombs of the Pharoah
What we call “ Ancient Civilizations”.
Forgotten? The people who we know as Egyptians:
Egypt – the land of freedom in Arabic
Nestled in the hot, dusty, difficult terrain of the Sahara
An educated people; passive – some would even say docile:
Polite to a fault: accepting of their fate:
Many highly educated: many unemployed
Living a bare subsistence of existence.
A complex nation of 80 million people
Shia and Sunni Muslim, Christians, others
Held together by history and geography
Torn apart by dictators and thieves
Standing on the banks of the Nile, watching the sun rise,
Listening to the call to prayer coming from a local mosques
( a sound that one never forgets – somehow inspiring)
It is easy to romanticize the time of the ancients
With Cleopatra, the Pharaohs, glimmering caskets
Regal palaces and international trade intrigue
Somehow, someway, the “common man” gets lost in this narrative
News media regale us with the observations that Mubarak is
Not listening to the people –such a simplistic view
It’s about dignity, independence, trust, and economic freedom
Thus the revolution of 2011.
Such a timeless lesson of history and human fate.
All civilizations eventually crumble and fail
Products of internal decay, excess, and weakness.
Let us consider that decay destroys from the inside out
From the epicenter to the observable skin and structural damage.
So it is with all societies. Destruction begins with the end of the nuclear family
Egypt is ending due to a lack of trust in the head of their family – their President
In the United States, we are faced with the erosion of the basic family unit.
With a high percentage of children born – fatherless : what does that create?
Another generation of trustless populace: Uncommitted, uncaring:
We are in charge of our individual and collective destiny
The question – do we have the heart, will and desire to make a difference?
The answer my friends is blowing in the wind.
HOLY FAMILY SUNDAY – A DAY OF REFLECTION
Face lined with pain, eyes red from blowing sand, back pierced with stabbing pain from the pressure of pregnancy
She rode the back of a donkey through the sand dunes, up the jagged rocky paths
Nine months pregnant – no bottled water to quench the raw raspy throat
Through the desert they rode: a pregnant woman and her fiancé
Compelled by the tyrannical government to register on the tax roles.
Then came the contractions – with no place to find privacy, or medical care
A dirty dark damp stable, germ ridden to say the least
Was all that was available… a stable with the animals of the farm, their stench, and their dung.
She suffered through labor: no medicines, no doctors, no midwife, no family to comfort her
Just her perplexed significant other: Joe: who was told this baby was conceived by
The Holy Spirit … and they both bore the shame of a pregnant, single woman
The child was delivered, in an incredibly humble place… by Mary and Joseph,
In a place where survival was a minute to minute, day to day struggle
And Mary – she is rendered isolated to her own resources to survive and feed her newborn..
Then the Angel unbelievably orders Mary :—pack up, leave, the King is sending his death squad to kill your child
Hurry, run south to the land called Egypt.
Weak, frail, traveling with provisions sufficient for a day to day at a time
Hot, humid, the mirror like reflection of the sun off the dunes saps the strength from the heartiest
Mary, weak from childbirth, her son barely surviving his 1st days: cling to the donkey and
Their faith… faith in God that they will survive.
Mile after trudging mile: becoming weaker and weaker as each day wears on: face blistering: feet on fire, eyes dried and sore red , Mary battles for each step and survival.
Yes, Mary was an intrepid traveler.. Like every mother.. sacrificing herself for the life of her son.
HOLY FAMILY SUNDAY – A DAY OF REFLECTION
Face lined with pain, eyes red from blowing sand, back pierced with stabbing pain from the pressure of pregnancy
She rode the back of a donkey through the sand dunes, up the jagged rocky paths
Nine months pregnant – no bottled water to quench the raw raspy throat
Through the desert they rode: a pregnant woman and her fiancé
Compelled by the tyrannical government to register on the tax roles.
Then came the contractions – with no place to find privacy, or medical care
A dirty dark damp stable, germ ridden to say the least
Was all that was available… a stable with the animals of the farm, their stench, and their dung.
She suffered through labor: no medicines, no doctors, no midwife, no family to comfort her
Just her perplexed significant other: Joe: who was told this baby was conceived by
The Holy Spirit … and they both bore the shame of a pregnant, single woman
The child was delivered, in an incredibly humble place… by Mary and Joseph,
In a place where survival was a minute to minute, day to day struggle
And Mary – she is rendered isolated to her own resources to survive and feed her newborn..
Then the Angel unbelievably orders Mary :—pack up, leave, the King is sending his death squad to kill your child
Hurry, run south to the land called Egypt.
Weak, frail, traveling with provisions sufficient for a day to day at a time
Hot, humid, the mirror like reflection of the sun off the dunes saps the strength from the heartiest
Mary, weak from childbirth, her son barely surviving his 1st days: cling to the donkey and
Their faith… faith in God that they will survive.
Mile after trudging mile: becoming weaker and weaker as each day wears on: face blistering: feet on fire, eyes dried and sore red , Mary battles for each step and survival.
Yes, Mary was an intrepid traveler.. Like every mother.. sacrificing herself for the life of her son.
rlhassociates 