“Twin ISIL suicide blasts kill 29 in Afghanistan’s Kabul
At least nine journalists among the dead as ISIL suicide bombers launch double bombing attack in Afghan capital.”
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/04/twin-explosions-kill-20-afghanistan-kabul-180430051432828.html
I just watched a horrible movie, In The Land of Blood and Honey https://www.imdb.com/title/tt1714209/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
–horrible in that it really happened; and mankind can be abominably cruel. The sort of film that I understand that ‘good Christians’ are not supposed to watch because it goes against Pauline wisdom about mental purity… The Bosnian ‘civil war’ in the early 90’s—the genocide of the Muslim Bosnians. I checked it out because Angelina Jolie wrote and directed the film, and I admire her.
I wonder if I am complicit. I know that can’t be, in that it happened half a world away from me; and it was something that I never would have participated in. But it happened in my lifetime, and I did nothing to stop it. No one did anything to stop it…
My reaction is the question: “Am I complicit?” I was in my 40’s when it happened, and I only have a vague recollection. I see the barbarity and can only ask, how can the Creator love us when we are this cruel, and so much worse? Knowing that the Creator does love us; in spite of our lack of deserving love. When I stand before Jesus, having arrived Home, will He ask me why I stood by, doing nothing? He already knows how and why—the question, if it comes, will be for me; and for me to see myself.
One of my best friends commented, “the greatest surprise is that God hasn’t judged the whole lot of us by now. This isn’t unique to America or our time in history. We are all complicit. We are all felt offered grace. Even those who raped and murdered or sent others to do so. You are feeling the feelings of God. Feel the anger and heartbreak, but feel the mercy and forgiveness and coming victory too.”
This barbarity is going on today, somewhere. Women getting raped and brutalized, people being tortured; people being ordered to do abominable things. The history of the entire human race. It IS happening today, somewhere.
We Americans sit on our fat asses [speaking of myself] as if it doesn’t matter. And I’m sitting here writing about asking myself the question, instead of heading to the airport to get on a plane—where I can do little. We live retirement checks to retirement checks—can’t even write checks with lots of zeroes.
I’m ashamed of my complacency; I’m ashamed of my country’s complacency and complicity. Americans are complicit in that our government takes the money we earn, and use to pay taxes, to murder the innocent—by other names of course, we don’t murder…we supply governments with money to keep them from doing the horrible. And they do the horrible to someone else. We sell them weapons so that they won’t use them against us. We invade countries without their permission, without their even suggesting; we invade countries without Advice and Consent. We spend the largest amount of money in the world on “Defense”—the same Department of Defense that in 2017 started the first-ever financial audit of in history, “despite receiving hundreds of billions of dollars annually and having more than $2.2 trillion in assets.”
Note the two highlighted boxes in the upper right corner, above. The one that uses the same terms I find on my W-2s—those monies so ridiculously called ‘entitlements’ in Congress are actually taxes that we pay, every pay period. And the box that shows $1.8 Trillion of tax revenue from individuals; compared to $342 Billion [17.1% of Individual] from corporations.
Is it trickling down yet?
When do we say No!?
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Tags: artist, Christianity, depression, faith, freelance illustration, hope, intolerance, material poverty, Nerve Pain, pain, persistence, personal excellence, Polyneuropathy, self-employment, surviving
Chronicles in Ordinary Time 