For Today- and Every Day

Complete annihilation of any nation is anything but a good Christian value- or a value of any kind. The results of such an action, whether with conventional or nuclear weapons, would be nothing short of one of the greatest war crimes ever carried out.

But all I can do is make this a daily prayer!

A Last Minute Post

Well, last minute in the sense that I am actually writing this just prior to posting it. Most of my work on the blog is, by nature, done ahead of time. That way it doesn't become a rush to get something written and posted at the last minute before midnight.

But because of scheduling up ahead of me over the next 10 days, I knew that if I waited to post these thoughts, it might be "old news."

So I decided to post this one today. That way it really is current events.

• It's about that lion in Africa and the Minnesota dentist who paid $50,000 to have it lured from a sanctuary so he could shoot it with a bow and arrow then track it for 40-hours in its agony and then kill it.

• It's also about the Cincinnati university police officer who has been arraigned for murder in a traffic stop gone bad.

• It's about the insanity of the alleged Planned Parenthood videos that purport to show that the organization is a venal, baby-killing group out to make money from fetuses.

• It's about the presidential [sic] candidates calling Mexicans rapists and accusing the sitting president of leading Jews to the ovens over a nuclear arms deal.

• It's about denying climate change because it will hurt business and profits to do otherwise and the hell with the health of the planet.

• It's about having to have 30+ women claim to be raped by a well-known celebrity- and even then saying it didn't happen until his own words describe exactly what they have claimed.

It's about our human tendency for hypocrisy, prejudice, narrow-mindedness and the belief that I am right and everyone else is wrong. (Myself included).

What got me started was seeing the incredible world-wide and national reaction to the lion killing. The reaction was far beyond that for any of the other killings we are hearing about. The reaction to a lion (and I AM an animal conservationist!), even a "famous" and protected lion, raises more anger than much else that is REAL news. Every time three is a mass killing somewhere in the country we are told to pray and NOT politicize. Yet every killing like that does have a political side to it. We are told to remember that all lives matter, not just black lives, even when it is the black lives that seem to be of far less value in how, when, and where they are killed.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• all black lives matter, and when they are being killed in traffic stops or as the result of incredibly far-fetched traffic stops, THEY matter and we need to pay attention.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of billions on the planet matter when we are facing potentially catastrophic changes to our environment that will put those lives in severe jeopardy.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE,

• the lives of the Israelis and the lives of millions of others in the Middle East matter enough to work hard at preventing nuclear weapons from continuing to proliferate and putting all of them at risk.

Yes, all lives matter, and THEREFORE, why do we ignore the cries of

• women who have been raped, 
• veterans who have been denied health services, 
• poor people who can't get health care, 
• police officers who are under incredible pressures and need better support, stress assistance and training for their difficult jobs, 
• bullied gay youth, 
• the mentally ill who are seen as crazy and to be held in contempt, 
• prisoners in overcrowded prisons that are filled with non-violent offenders incarcerated because they possessed marijuana
• the immigrants who, like most of OUR OWN ancestors are here to build the American dream and rape and pillage?

I could go on. I can rant on this for hours, but all I will do is get myself all worked up and feel like I am helpless and powerless to do anything about it. I had to get it off my chest, now, when it is news.

• Pray for peace
• Work for peace
• Uphold peace
• Make peace a reality 
• Live peace each day

We all matter- let's act that way and not just say it as a way to reinforce our ideology or put down someone else's life.

Let's live today as if each person we meet has a life that matters and then treat them that way.

Scary Times, Scary Memories, Nothing But a Heartbreaker

It has been a long time since we last thought so much about nuclear missiles. We have been living in the post-Cold War age when nuclear saber rattling has greatly diminished. Sure, from time to time we have heard of "dirty" bombs that terrorists might develop to do some major damage to limited areas and lots of people. But the BIG threat- nuclear missiles- Bob Dylan's Hard Rain Fallin'-- not so much.

Until now, when a 20-something dictator in N. Korea decides he has to show his power. There it is again. The nuclear threat. It is not something to easily ignore from such an isolated, secretive, and paranoid place. Not that we think the missiles can reach the United States. But South Korea or Japan? That's a different story. And Japan knows what happens when those bombs fall.

I watched the news this evening and was taken back to the earlier saber-rattling days. I remembered the fears that the image of a mushroom cloud could engender. I remember sitting under a desk in a nuclear bomb drill. As if that desk could do anything! I remember visiting family in New York City, which everyone agreed would be ground zero and the devastation would reach hundreds of miles.

That fear, while nowhere near as great as it was then, is still there in some ghost form; some communal memory buried deep in the 60s. This is not the same. Yet.

Because escalation is what happens next. Japan will want the bomb. South Korea will want the bomb. The arms race will start- and once started among small, frightened countries it is hard to stop. Not to mention what would start if North Korea actually did launch even a relatively small nuclear strike. It is been 68 years since one of those bombs was last used. I hope this isn't the times when it will once again rear its ugly presence.

Which is about all I can do. Hope. I am powerless over this, that's for sure! I can only trust that wiser minds and cooler heads will be able to prevail. War. Never a good thing. This one could be downright ugly.