Pope John Paul II was beatified May 1, 2011 in Rome - a step closer to canonization as an official saint of the Catholic Church.
His visit to Detroit in September of 1987 did make a significant diffeence in the lives of many Catholic young people.
I know.
Students were surveyed at four Catholic schools two weeks after the pope's visit, then, I studied the results in a doctoral program and project that I completed the following year.
Forty-five percent of the students surveyed at Brother Rice and Marian high schools in Birmingham, Pontiac Catholic High School and St. Joseph Elementary School in Lake Orion, Michigan, said they felt closer to the pope after the visit. Many students said they planned to put more effort into prayer (51 percent) and helping the poor (44 percent) because of the pope.
Tirty-two percent said they felt closer to the oppressed and 47 percent said they planned to be more sensitive to other races. The margin of error in my study was plus or minus five percentage points.
John Paul's visit affected people's lives, and, results proved that.
Jubilation will mark the majesty and Mass May 1st prclaiming the pontiff blessed. Amid, that
however, there are detractors who make a point. The unhealed wound of the Church's sexual abuse crisis exploded on John Paul's watch. And, even though he was apparently unaware of
information about this horror, it signals a flaw in the system, and, how communication is flawed in the Church.
Blame this on local bishops, but admission has to be owned, that they failed to inform the pope about this problem they were clearly aware of, but, perhaps in denial as they tried to push it
under cover.
John Paul II flew into Detroit on September 18, and, he spoke at Hart Plaza downtown about social justice, the Solidarity union movement in Poland that challenged Communism, and, against racism and abortion, while he praised the dignity of human labor.
Far fewer than expected packed Hart Plaza, and, Hamtamck.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Thursday, April 28, 2011
A Prince, Princess and Wedding - A Motown Perspective
So. . . the big Royal "to do" wedding, well. . . ?
That's what viewers enjoy, and, Royal treatment the media
will make of it, no?
The young couple is astounding.
What bride and groom wouldn't be with the hype and pressure
of the lone institution that has not yet been challenged - the press?
Media makes people dance to their tune.
Rain.
More rain.
Sun's out. Rain!
Afraid?
In the culture, one must be, of course. Readers and viewers notice when terror is
on every corner these days, or, so it seems from what one reads.
A reporter told me recently that news is what people want to read.
A wedding, terror, fear, crime - and, a Royal wedding.
We want to read about it, or, watch it, royal as it is, and little as the wedding affects
commoners daily living.
Go figure.
See what's on TV, and, read what's in the newspaper.
That what you want, so you get it, an editor noted to me, as he refuted my
definition of news - the new and different.
Not so, the editor protested.
It's what readers READ or watch.
A Royal wedding.
My blessings on the bride and groom. +
Children were interviewed and they said Royalty could help the poor, like Motown.
They could.
Power is influence to use for good, and, to fail to use the influence the Royals were born with
is abuse of power.
Like Diana, this couple will help, royally, I believe.
They are already, thanks be to the Creator, who knows all the good they do behind the scenes, and, out of the eye of the reporter, if that's possible at all.
Good Royal people, they are.
A good family they will create together.
Good.
Unless the media sets their agenda and navigates them elsewhere.
Or, those reporters who will hound them at every move they make for
good or ill.
Please let them be.
They matter, like reporters do, and, everyone else who matters.
After all, the Royals are sacred, and, social, like all of us in God's eyes, eyes that matter most.
That's what viewers enjoy, and, Royal treatment the media
will make of it, no?
The young couple is astounding.
What bride and groom wouldn't be with the hype and pressure
of the lone institution that has not yet been challenged - the press?
Media makes people dance to their tune.
Rain.
More rain.
Sun's out. Rain!
Afraid?
In the culture, one must be, of course. Readers and viewers notice when terror is
on every corner these days, or, so it seems from what one reads.
A reporter told me recently that news is what people want to read.
A wedding, terror, fear, crime - and, a Royal wedding.
We want to read about it, or, watch it, royal as it is, and little as the wedding affects
commoners daily living.
Go figure.
See what's on TV, and, read what's in the newspaper.
That what you want, so you get it, an editor noted to me, as he refuted my
definition of news - the new and different.
Not so, the editor protested.
It's what readers READ or watch.
A Royal wedding.
My blessings on the bride and groom. +
Children were interviewed and they said Royalty could help the poor, like Motown.
They could.
Power is influence to use for good, and, to fail to use the influence the Royals were born with
is abuse of power.
Like Diana, this couple will help, royally, I believe.
They are already, thanks be to the Creator, who knows all the good they do behind the scenes, and, out of the eye of the reporter, if that's possible at all.
Good Royal people, they are.
A good family they will create together.
Good.
Unless the media sets their agenda and navigates them elsewhere.
Or, those reporters who will hound them at every move they make for
good or ill.
Please let them be.
They matter, like reporters do, and, everyone else who matters.
After all, the Royals are sacred, and, social, like all of us in God's eyes, eyes that matter most.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Face-off for Neighborliness, Visits, Is Resurrection
When St. Clair Shores was wrapped in Michigan's frigid cold last
January, a feisty crowd gathered in that city's library on the icy edge of Lake
St. Clair at Eleven Mile Road at Jefferson.
An even larger group meets April 25th at 5:30 pm for a Spring birth
and resurrection of sorts with their State Rep. Anthony Forlini, teens,
residents, and, business leaders.
Once again, hibernating neighbors now emerge and poke out of thier homes like Easter flowers of yellow and white protrude for sunlight from the dark earth they force green blades and more.
Intensive Communities Uniting Neighbors, a proposed name for the organization by the watchful Macomb participants,will try to make sense of the Tucson shooting massacre that shocked some the same month planners began to meet.
Clergy and citizens everywhere in this nation spoke up about the virtiolic political culture, a ban on automatic weapons, and, a heightened sense for mental health referrals.
One reporter aimed elsewhere for the blame, however.
Jared Loughner, the deranged loner who killed six in a small mall marketplace in Arizona, seemed unknown to his neighbors nearby the home where he lived.
Everyone keeps to themselves.
That seemed to summarize the neighborhood's attitude, the writer discovered.
And, the scary part of that apt description of neighbors of Loughner is that it fits the wild and estranged killer as much as most neighbors today.
They keep to themselves.
We do, don't we?
Test your own experience, and, when you talked with your own neighbors next door.
"You got to be practical," a Warren woman said recently when a communal penance service this week nuanced love of God and neighbor, in Roseville's historic Sacred Heart Catholic Church that marks 150 years in the neighborhood.
"How do I know if they're checking out my house to rob if I greet them," she excused herself.
My own neighbors and I talk intermittently, it at all, only when I walk my dog, or, when home invasions occur, like weeks ago, for example, when two condominiums next to where I reside in Harrison Township, MI., were ransacked after being broken into a little after nine in the morning in Macomb County, miles north of the city limits of Detroit.
Everyone huddled together suddenly. Intruders in a big red truck parked close to the condominiums, stole what they wanted in one place, and were yelled at from the top of the stairwell in another unit by the owner who heared the front door breaking open.
The robbers, strange to admit, bridged neighbors who now need to build and bond as eyes of the neighborhood watch and work overtime, as if to say, "I see you!" Let's take time to talk!
If only neighbors would talk again like in the old days when I was growing up and people sat on their front porches as we passed or played touch football in the street.
Last week, in Dearborn, MI., inter-faith traditions came together under heavy camera and celebrity light when Pastor Terry Jones gripped media magnets in his attempt to protest in front of the Islamic House of Wisdom Mosque.
The decline of the social self and the common good runs rampant in this land that relishes individual rights in our U.S. Constitution that also serve the social side.
Shortly after the Industrial Revolution, people seemed to stop watching and staying awake to each other. Spirituality is about waking up, and, noticing.
My own parents, among so many others, and so varied of lands, who were born of Polish immigrants and frontier farmsteads in Cheboygan and Post Austin, MI., came to rural cities, such as Detroit's Motown in Michigan.
That was in the late 19th and 20th centuries, when they never seemed to lose that social and spiritual self that included a safety net that looked after their own sibings and society, and, their neighbors nearby.
Churches also were the social centers nourishing the deepest yearnings of the human soul, only to be replaced today by the marketplace malls, and more vying for the shopper's savings, or, serving as the gathering place for gangs of young people seeking acceptance of peers.
Anonymity was unheard of with neighbors who sat on their porch on Detroit's east side near the City Airport on French Road near Connor Avenue, where my family of nine grew up and marched daily in a long procession to Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, miles south on Van Dyke at Miller.
On our way back from school by 3 pm each day, neighbors who sat on their porch waved to us.
Porch mentors is a social system the young people of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion emphasized, and want to initiate again, the idea teens spoke up with ICU neighbors months ago when they met about reducing crime in St. Clair Shores.
At first, one young leaders said, "Why crime? There's no crime here." But, by meeting's end, she crossed of that thought on the large poster print paper.
The jobless, poor, friendless, and, needy of all sorts didn't seem to fall through the cracks so much a century or less ago.
Neighborliness was a goal built into each city block decades ago. Neighborhood Watch programs and signage of the 60s are popping up like tulips these days. And, ICU is reviving the watchful eyes.
Wakefulness of a sleeping Nation is not a nostalgic cry for the past, but a need now as it was in this land's revered story, and, lng before pilgrims arrived to get to know differance and diversity.
The two great commandments of all the world's religions, includuing Hinduism and Baha'i, for example, are as fresh today for application in the trenches of city life as when the Maker ordered them for wandering immigrants who quested for community and security.
Homeland security suggests that the best way to stop terrorists is for neighbors to know one another.
This Easter season, resurrecting and recouping of the neighborhood is a recipe that was tried, worked, and was judged flavorful.
Like the aroma of fresh-baked bread, my Polish neighbors, among others on Arcola Street, delivered when someone was ill or out of work, food still serves as a staple for circling others in homes next door.
Bread seems to have a way of reviving an old-fashioned idea of visiting neighbors nearby.
That has to be good, and, even imaginative at a time when such creativity to reduce crime, and, enhance the quality of life in town is overcome by that 9/11 fear that seems to cause paralysis for citizens these days, a decade after the towers tumbled in New York city, and, changed the landscape and minds of many.
To get involved with Intensive Communitieis Uniting Neighbors, contact Cindy Taylor at (313) 405 9645, or ckt29@yahoo.com, or 586 777 9116, http://www.interfaithwork.com/.
January, a feisty crowd gathered in that city's library on the icy edge of Lake
St. Clair at Eleven Mile Road at Jefferson.
An even larger group meets April 25th at 5:30 pm for a Spring birth
and resurrection of sorts with their State Rep. Anthony Forlini, teens,
residents, and, business leaders.
Once again, hibernating neighbors now emerge and poke out of thier homes like Easter flowers of yellow and white protrude for sunlight from the dark earth they force green blades and more.
Intensive Communities Uniting Neighbors, a proposed name for the organization by the watchful Macomb participants,will try to make sense of the Tucson shooting massacre that shocked some the same month planners began to meet.
Clergy and citizens everywhere in this nation spoke up about the virtiolic political culture, a ban on automatic weapons, and, a heightened sense for mental health referrals.
One reporter aimed elsewhere for the blame, however.
Jared Loughner, the deranged loner who killed six in a small mall marketplace in Arizona, seemed unknown to his neighbors nearby the home where he lived.
Everyone keeps to themselves.
That seemed to summarize the neighborhood's attitude, the writer discovered.
And, the scary part of that apt description of neighbors of Loughner is that it fits the wild and estranged killer as much as most neighbors today.
They keep to themselves.
We do, don't we?
Test your own experience, and, when you talked with your own neighbors next door.
"You got to be practical," a Warren woman said recently when a communal penance service this week nuanced love of God and neighbor, in Roseville's historic Sacred Heart Catholic Church that marks 150 years in the neighborhood.
"How do I know if they're checking out my house to rob if I greet them," she excused herself.
My own neighbors and I talk intermittently, it at all, only when I walk my dog, or, when home invasions occur, like weeks ago, for example, when two condominiums next to where I reside in Harrison Township, MI., were ransacked after being broken into a little after nine in the morning in Macomb County, miles north of the city limits of Detroit.
Everyone huddled together suddenly. Intruders in a big red truck parked close to the condominiums, stole what they wanted in one place, and were yelled at from the top of the stairwell in another unit by the owner who heared the front door breaking open.
The robbers, strange to admit, bridged neighbors who now need to build and bond as eyes of the neighborhood watch and work overtime, as if to say, "I see you!" Let's take time to talk!
If only neighbors would talk again like in the old days when I was growing up and people sat on their front porches as we passed or played touch football in the street.
Last week, in Dearborn, MI., inter-faith traditions came together under heavy camera and celebrity light when Pastor Terry Jones gripped media magnets in his attempt to protest in front of the Islamic House of Wisdom Mosque.
The decline of the social self and the common good runs rampant in this land that relishes individual rights in our U.S. Constitution that also serve the social side.
Shortly after the Industrial Revolution, people seemed to stop watching and staying awake to each other. Spirituality is about waking up, and, noticing.
My own parents, among so many others, and so varied of lands, who were born of Polish immigrants and frontier farmsteads in Cheboygan and Post Austin, MI., came to rural cities, such as Detroit's Motown in Michigan.
That was in the late 19th and 20th centuries, when they never seemed to lose that social and spiritual self that included a safety net that looked after their own sibings and society, and, their neighbors nearby.
Churches also were the social centers nourishing the deepest yearnings of the human soul, only to be replaced today by the marketplace malls, and more vying for the shopper's savings, or, serving as the gathering place for gangs of young people seeking acceptance of peers.
Anonymity was unheard of with neighbors who sat on their porch on Detroit's east side near the City Airport on French Road near Connor Avenue, where my family of nine grew up and marched daily in a long procession to Saint Thomas the Apostle Catholic Church, miles south on Van Dyke at Miller.
On our way back from school by 3 pm each day, neighbors who sat on their porch waved to us.
Porch mentors is a social system the young people of the Michigan Roundtable for Diversity and Inclusion emphasized, and want to initiate again, the idea teens spoke up with ICU neighbors months ago when they met about reducing crime in St. Clair Shores.
At first, one young leaders said, "Why crime? There's no crime here." But, by meeting's end, she crossed of that thought on the large poster print paper.
The jobless, poor, friendless, and, needy of all sorts didn't seem to fall through the cracks so much a century or less ago.
Neighborliness was a goal built into each city block decades ago. Neighborhood Watch programs and signage of the 60s are popping up like tulips these days. And, ICU is reviving the watchful eyes.
Wakefulness of a sleeping Nation is not a nostalgic cry for the past, but a need now as it was in this land's revered story, and, lng before pilgrims arrived to get to know differance and diversity.
The two great commandments of all the world's religions, includuing Hinduism and Baha'i, for example, are as fresh today for application in the trenches of city life as when the Maker ordered them for wandering immigrants who quested for community and security.
Homeland security suggests that the best way to stop terrorists is for neighbors to know one another.
This Easter season, resurrecting and recouping of the neighborhood is a recipe that was tried, worked, and was judged flavorful.
Like the aroma of fresh-baked bread, my Polish neighbors, among others on Arcola Street, delivered when someone was ill or out of work, food still serves as a staple for circling others in homes next door.
Bread seems to have a way of reviving an old-fashioned idea of visiting neighbors nearby.
That has to be good, and, even imaginative at a time when such creativity to reduce crime, and, enhance the quality of life in town is overcome by that 9/11 fear that seems to cause paralysis for citizens these days, a decade after the towers tumbled in New York city, and, changed the landscape and minds of many.
To get involved with Intensive Communitieis Uniting Neighbors, contact Cindy Taylor at (313) 405 9645, or ckt29@yahoo.com, or 586 777 9116, http://www.interfaithwork.com/.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Easter Sunday Spring
Ready or not, here comes Spring and it's still cold. . .and dreary, like the 80 percent of precriptions drugs worldwide are used in my good ole USA, imagine that!
We're a drug-addicted Nation. And, addicted to oil, and, vicodin, an opiate like heroin, is handed out more commonly than candy bars it seems from what our national news reports said tonight.
But, there's hope dispite bad news, or, is it if so many are hooked and liking it apparently?
Passover was observed Monday, now Christians, following their iconic and central figure, Jesus the Christ, mark holy week, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter vigil and Sunday, April 24.
And, the Light, Christians believe, is Christ overcoming death, rising from the dead, defeating destruction and the demonic and the depressing economy, and bad days we all entertain from time to time.
Light.
A big dose of it is needed this Easter Sunday. Big time.
No kidding.
America is in trouble if the reports are true about Americans addicted to 80 percent of the drugs used world-wide.
Sure, perhaps you denied the fact already.
You're in denial. So, join the other huge percentage of Americans living in some strange and
make-believe land.
We won't survive long if we continue on this spiral of destructive behavior popping a pill for every pain.
Whatever happening to "sucking it up" or redemptive suffering as my tradition of Catholicity teaches?
Are we wimps?
Easter and some fresh Light can't come soon enough, can it?
The alternative?
The same life. The same addictions, dysfunction and denial that will eat away this Nation's soul.
Dark.
I perfer light, how about you?
We're a drug-addicted Nation. And, addicted to oil, and, vicodin, an opiate like heroin, is handed out more commonly than candy bars it seems from what our national news reports said tonight.
But, there's hope dispite bad news, or, is it if so many are hooked and liking it apparently?
Passover was observed Monday, now Christians, following their iconic and central figure, Jesus the Christ, mark holy week, Holy Thursday, Good Friday and Easter vigil and Sunday, April 24.
And, the Light, Christians believe, is Christ overcoming death, rising from the dead, defeating destruction and the demonic and the depressing economy, and bad days we all entertain from time to time.
Light.
A big dose of it is needed this Easter Sunday. Big time.
No kidding.
America is in trouble if the reports are true about Americans addicted to 80 percent of the drugs used world-wide.
Sure, perhaps you denied the fact already.
You're in denial. So, join the other huge percentage of Americans living in some strange and
make-believe land.
We won't survive long if we continue on this spiral of destructive behavior popping a pill for every pain.
Whatever happening to "sucking it up" or redemptive suffering as my tradition of Catholicity teaches?
Are we wimps?
Easter and some fresh Light can't come soon enough, can it?
The alternative?
The same life. The same addictions, dysfunction and denial that will eat away this Nation's soul.
Dark.
I perfer light, how about you?
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
Monday, April 18, 2011
Disappearing Neighbors, and, Hoods!
I must admit that I don't know many of my neighbors in Harrison Township, Michigan, a town just north of Detroit. Now you know! Jared Loughner, the loner who murdered six innocent bystanders in Tuscon, AZ., months ago, didn't know most of his neighbors. I don't know many, I noted. Everyone keeps to themselves, it seems from my observations. Furthermore, while walking my dog, or, getting the mail, it's me who always seems to initiate what have become common civil courtesies, such as, "Good day," or, "Hi, How are you?" Americans pride their independence, and, individualism. We always have, always will, I suppose. Yet, mass murders, and massacres seem to be spiking in my good ole U.S. of A. Our U.S. Constitution is iconic for the rights of individuals, for sure. But, the common good, has always been front and center also. That seems to be disappearing along with neighbors and neighborhoods like the one I grew up in on Detroit's east side where gossip and "eye see you" was enough to keep me on the straight and narrow even 'tho I'm an alumnus of a Catholic school. Yes, one of those kids who was good-two-shoes in the classroom and after school or on the playground at lunch, I was, well. . . a hellion in gym shoes! A bit schizoid, wouldn't you say? The social self is built into our genetic composition it seems to me. Just as the spiritual self, that is, the awakened self, and, the phsyical and emotional self are part of my DNA, like your own, no? Town halls, community centers, the church, and, neighborliness. Things of the past? Front porches, touch football on the Arcola Street where the nine of us lived in a two-story-aluminum-side home, and, games, such as Mother May I. . .have gone the way of alleys behind our home, and, well, dinasours, certainly. So, what gives? You mattered. And, everyone else mattered, it seemed, then. Esteem seemed strong. His, her's and theirs! High technology? Did "techy" toys create this disappearing sense of neighbors, and, neighborhood I once knew and cherished (and, long for!) as a kid growing up in a Catholic ghetto, if you will? Did World War II bring on the demise and decline of neighbors and neighborhoods? Front porches were replaced by high fences between neighbors' yards. Where I live now, I have a porch with chairs on it, but do I sit on it? No! I prefer my balcony overlooking Lake St. Clair, and, the privacy my enclosed roof and sides offer. Unions are going. Neighbors and neighborhoods are going. Middle class neighborhoods are dwindling also, it seems. So . . . Do we still have a safety net in the neighborhood? Neighbors were over often caring for the seven of us children mending a bruised knee, or, fixing a broken bicycle tire, or more. It was common practice to visit. "Call if you coming," is the cry I hear so often. And, I want to throw up every time I hear it. It suggests that one's home has to be "perfect" before visitors enter. Not so in the old neighborhood I grew up in. We knew each other well, and we were better for it! All of us were, believe you me. Friends were plenty, and support abounded as much then. Loughner may have seemed friendless today where he lived, but I doubt that he would have been "to himself" decades ago. Others would have stepped to the plate, and, started conversation. The paralytic fear and timidity since 9/11, a decade ago this September has "walled" everyone in with fear, it seems. Help me bring back the neighborhood. Will you? Be a leader. Speak up and invite a neighbor or two or three over for a monthly conversation now thorugh December. Send me a note at Lventline@att.net so I may keep tabs and inch toward 500 home meetings by year's end. Not in a maudlin sense of nostalgia, but, rather, for interdependency and cooperation for the common good - a strength and virtue needed now, as then. Gather 'em in, will you? Inititiave 500 home meetings of your own calling and inviting, is a modest initiative to restore and recoup neighborliness and the 'hood all over again. You invite. Others show up. You get them talking. They speak up and engage. And, look at that, we get to know each other again. Eye see you! In a common good sense. Sense. Something we need again. Common sense to save the neighborhood. Eye to eye, person to person, one neighbor at a time, and two, and three and four in your home hopefully. Begin to build now. We'll be better for it. We all will, indeed.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Passover, Passion of the Christ Starts
The Jewish Passover begins Monday, while Christians will mark the holiest week of the year next week when their central figure is arrested, suffers, is crucified on a cross, and rises from the dead, followers believe. Easter Sunday climaxes the calender of Christians, rooted in the Jewish traditon. Jesus was a Jew, and rabbi, according to scholars. Special dinners will mark the Jewish observance of Passover with the ancient practice of the Seder Supper. Jews dine with family and friends to recall the struggles and suffering endured during their trek from the grip of Pharoah in Egypt to liberation in Palestine. Thursday of next week has Christians gather for the Lord's Last Supper, and, Mass that Catholics celebrate before they remember the crucifixion of Jesus the Christ the next day, called Good Friday. Workplaces close for three hours from noon on when it is believed that Jesus died at Calvary. Like a retreat of deep reflection, the entire week embraces feelings of highs and lows throughout as the book of Psalms in the Hebrew Scriptures best describe, while the Chrsitian Scriptures detail the accounts of what led up to the death of Jesus at the hands of rulers thousands of years ago. The penitential season of Lent ends next Thursday before the Triduum (three great days) starts. A forty-day season of instense prayer, fasting and almsgiving, Christians identify with their central figure's demise and rising from the dead. A longer, more festive fifty-day season of Pentecost follows with consolation from the desolation of Lent. Christians fill their churches on Easter Sunday, and all are encouraged to enter and attend the events of next week. Special services also mark Passover, a revered time for Jews.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
Compassion
Is mercy and compassion greater than justice - the giving of one her or his due? Karen Armstrong's latest tome, Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life is out of the ordinary in this 240 page book. World religions are her earlier topics and the history or religious practices and thoughts. This is a multi-stage project that produced the Charter for Compassion, online at www.charterforcompassion.org. Thousands contributed to the drafts and deliberations of leaders from many religoius communities around the globe that created this vital resource and clarion call for compassion. Is it needed? For sure, it seems to me. Compassion is an iconic virtue or strength that ties humans to each other in solidarity of roots and relations, let alone religion or values. Tens of thousands have endorsed the charter worldwide, it is reported, while it is translated into twelve languages or more. The charter contains the content of empathy and its effectiveness today within each of us and the planet we inhabit. Among the emblematic themes are alleviating suffering, honoring the sanctity of all in and outside the womb, and, on the war field, refraining from egotistic living and violence. How to better our culture is the prescription laid out here for individuals and communities around the globe. The charter is about growing an interior life - a chore celebreties and Hollywood would rather do without as they primp the outer physical world of glitz and glamour with little attention for the inner soul that thirsts and longs for more, and, the better, perhaps the best borne within the human spirit. This vision sees a more humane planet hatched over millennia of spritual thought that snowballs and attract like bees to pollen! The charter raises the bar and standard for living well today. I'm grateful for Armstrong's insights and call for compassion for the common good and future of this land I love.
Monday, April 11, 2011
Civil War About Prejudice
The anniversary of the battle called the civil war marks its 150th year since that conflict over prejudice and hate. How far have we come since those fateful days and years of North against South in these good ole United States in 1865? This week marks that war that marked out people of color. Places of civil wars currently in confict come to mind with Lybia, Syria and elsewhere, including Egypt. Genocide occurs every 24 seconds in the world. And, the Holocaust in St. Petersburg, Florida, among other places, shows man's inhumanity to man. War solves little. It witnesses to young people in bad ways. That is hard to believe, for sure, when the cycle of violence and murder that war is rages on in so many places today. If we believed that the life we have for a limited time may end physically, but as physicists teach us - matter and energy are not destroyed - consequently, our material body morphs and changes forms but will always be in some way alive. Back in the mid-sixties in my hometown of Detroit, Michigan, USA, civil unrest sparked a battle of hate and racism. Police brutality toward people of color, and, prejudice, shut down Detroit. Rage stirred as in the civil war of this country. How far have we come? While China, the United Kingdom, among other places follow the U.S. lead in weapons production and sales, when will we ever learn? When, asks the singer? We wonder about the epidemic of violence encompassing and imploding this nation, yet we do little to stop the sales of arms that destroy sacred humans of all those engaged in brutality and bullying, for that matter. If we were to put away this most primitive way of settling conflict we would have done it by now. This cycle continues since we choose to mass produce weapons for wars world-wide. What would America look like if we chose to stop the cycle? Can we imagine another way that works? That witnesses to love of life?
Friday, April 8, 2011
Ultra Sound in Florida Before Procedure
Before an abortion can be performed in Florida, a proposed measure for expectant mothers to have an ultra sound to see the baby in her womb may be required if passed soon. Seeing the baby in the tabernacle of the mother may make her believe that this is life beyond tissue we're dealing with in her womb. Countless ways to afford the most vulnerable life dignity seems to be the aim here. About half of women support the measure while men oppose it more than moms. Surprise, surprise! As the culture demeans life more and more these days with violence in and outside the womb and on battlefields or in schoolyards with bullies acting out, it seems that government actions are taking the lead from citizens who believe that everyone matters! You matter. And the person next to you, and the one in the womb also, no matter how one tries to cut it. Suggesting that life is not in the womb may be profitable for thoseperforming such ghastly deeds, but going down the tube in more ways than one is troublesome for a so-called enlightened society. God help us all!
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
Initiative 500 home meetings
How about a movement? A movement to meet with family, neighbors, co-workers? About what? About family, and values, or virtues, also known as strengths. Project 500 is a grass roots initiative to aim at five hundred homes to volunteer to host gatherings from now until December of 2011. You invite the participants. You welcome and thank them. You facilitate, or make easier the flow of conversation with and between participants on the theme of family, or values and virtues today. How about it? Let's move! Let's awaken a sleeping nation and call us to conversation as family and neighbors once more. Fresh talk amid much-needed conversation about a topic critical to our future and our culture now. Volunteer now. Set up a meeting or two, and, e-mail me at lventline@att.net, or call me at 586 777 9116. I want to keep tab. 500 is the aim. 500 meetings on family and values or virtues. Do I hear you want to volunteer? You can do this. We all can. It takes a village. It does. Let's do this together like neighbors did decades ago.
Monday, April 4, 2011
Why Bad Things Happen To Good People?
Short answer: I don't know. Life is a mystery. No copout but stuff does happen, sad to admit, and as horribloe as it is these days with violence as common here in my homeland that is as "normal" as "blowing one's nose." Why cancer? Why bullies? Why war? The Hebrew Scriptures notes that "man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward." (Job 5:7) We think we are alone often in trouble. We are not. How many have stomach flu? Financial hardship? Foreclosure of mortgage on homes? Tragic death? Jobless? We all struggle with hardship. We fall short of the mark. Standard bearers remind us of the better in life. They hold us to a higher standard. In traditons of faith, missing the mark is called sin. Bad things happening to good people can be character building. Look at people before us, and, embattled for ideals, including democracy across the globe? We rest on the shoulders of pioneers who pave the way for so much for us to enjoy? Troubles are a conduit that show the glory, greatness of God! Look up when heartache happens. Even "celebs" face difficult times like Billy Ray Cyris and his young singing daughter do these days. Fame and money brings on its own basket of woes at times. Be of good cheer.
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Drug Industry Must Stop in the U.S.
Drugs are a terrible thing, especially for youth who watch adults and want them, get them, and abuse them like the rest of the community. At St. Edmund Church in Warren, Michigan recently, addictions was the topic addressed to the assembly after the gospel of St. John, chapter 9 about the man born blind. People asked who sinned that he was blind? No one, Jesus the Christ responded. Bad things happen to good people as a consequence of sin, yet God does not lay physical illness upon one just to show power. No the greatness of God and God's glorgy shines through human suffering. And, God knows there is plenty of suffering to go around. The pharmaceutical industry seems to be skyrocketing out of control in this Nation. Every few blocks in cities there seems to be a new pharmacy and convenient food store all wrapped up in one. In the back room drugs galore are bought. There are more drug stores these days than there are churches and bars! Addiction to substance or process addicitions cripples life at any age. Heroine and other opiates and vicodin, sugar, caffeine, nicotine, carbs, chocolate can all be deadly when used. Gambling, sex, shopping, work, and other process addictions are as deadly but as acceptable here in America to keep the economy rolling it seems, like the war machine and weapons produced and exported at alarming rate with China, and other powers. We must stop the rise of pharmaceutical, or at least, put a hold on escalating and alarming rates of drug use - both prescription and illicit! A numbed nation is not a nice one. Dependency on chemicals is far from what humans are meant to be about. Is anyone listening? Does anyone care about what these ghastly drugs do? Clearly, when needed for healing purposes the minds who made them, are a blessing. Used at other times, these substances and growing pharmacies here, will sow what they reap, God help us! Why do we remain blind to the consequences of drugs? Cannot we not see?
Saturday, April 2, 2011
Roots, Poetry at Class of '71 at Orchard Lake
In college, at Orchard Lake St. Mary's, northwest of Detroit on Indian Trail and Commerce Roads, in Michigan, my instructors put me to work in English class. The Rev. Ed Skrocki taught the class and was also moderator of The Lake Oracle monthly newspaper, and The Orchard Lake Schools' annual yearbook that I cherished most days and nights as editor-in-chief. Gathering recently with a couple about to tie the knot in October, 2011, we met at Mr. Paul's Restaurant in Roseville on Groesbeck, north of Twelve Mile Road, we relished stories about college and life's vocations. The newly-wed couple about to enter "the good institution," as the pianist there tipped them off, told of the colleges they attend to major in media, and cardiac therapy. We shared yearbooks from high school and college as a way to get to know each others' stories of origin and faith. It surprised me to read what classmates noted to each graduating senior in high school and college. A poem in the 1971 Eagle yearbooks, I wrote surprised me: Life is my poem In rhythm and rhyme In the beat of defeat In the encounter we meet. Each letter in the Word Is sound to be heard In happiness and sorrow For those bettr tomorrows. Each phrase paves the Way To these beautiful days In community that shapes "me" and "thee" In rhythm and rhyme For our fulfillment of time. Roots, life as a poem, and my class of '71. Relations and religion. Much is about the good roots, relations and religion are today in praise of the Maker of you, of me. Couples to wed. What a delight to meet with them and share stoires of family, faith, and fun we are meant to savor each day amid work-a-day worlds and stress. God recreated, rested, and enjoyed daily, and, on the seventh day, as the book of Genesis notes in the sacred writ, God rested. God took the seventh day off to appreciate, I imagine, the life God created in all of the Creator's creation.
Friday, April 1, 2011
Play Ball!
Until his death September 1, 1989, former president of Yale University and of the National Baseball League, A. Bartlett Giamatti, celebrated the passion of play and the rite of baseball when he said: "Sports reiterate the purpose of freedom every time they are enacted -- the purpose being to show how to be free and to be complete and connected, unimpeded and integrated all at once." Those words came to mind again this week as my hometown-team, the Detroit Tigers played the New ork Yankees. That was an away games in the Big Apple, but when they start at home in Comerica Park, that awesome stadium will be the gathering place of countless lives longing for a puase and "seventh inning stretch" of sorts from the hard work of the fragile game of life. The pastoral green grass of Spring and whistling breeze will blow about stores of families and friends in lightheartedness and laughter only a park invokes. Fans will pause from the practice and tedius skills required for life's challenges and delicate balance. Like life, the ball is batted while fans forget the foul plays and missed catches of daily trials and struggles, if as simple as changing a baby's diaper or walking with an aging parent who no longer runs the bases of life once upon a time. Baseball has us tripping here and falling there, even being caught playing the game of life less than fully the player one can be to cheat or sneak by or be far from truthful about matters that matter most with my family. Baseball has me chasing my wildest dreams and daring ventures, dashing home in this temporal life that will end and stop and be breathless like the baseball in its final roll. There is something about the rite of passage in playing ball and life and Spring that is eternal in making one complete and connected and free. Bring on baseball!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)