you hardly know where to begin. Just after I posted the prayer thread below, I discovered this comment from the ever-wise, ever-peaceful Welshman (that stalker.) It’s a good counterpoint to my “Word for the Week” diary, which, as Welshman points out, has a tinge of underlying violence to it.
No sooner than I’d read that than I found an e-mail from my mom, with this story from the Washington Post:
It begins in southwest Uganda near Mount Rwenzori (Mountains of the Moon) in an area called the Kasese district. Kasese is home to about 520,000 mostly illiterate people. During the war in nearby Congo that ended four years ago, more than 150,000 of Kasese’s residents were displaced; many ended up living in camps.
The insurgents have faded away, only to be replaced by another deadly enemy: HIV-AIDS. Kasese has the highest rate in Uganda, with five people dying of AIDS every week. Would that HIV-AIDS were Kasese’s only danger. Each week, malaria also kills about 20 of its children. The 1996-2001 insurgency has left much of Kasese broken and with pressing needs: schools, dispensaries, homes and morale, all in need of repair. About 70 people who lost their legs to land mines are still living in the area.
All this has become known through a written appeal for help issued by Jackson Nzerebende Tembo, Anglican bishop of the South Rwenzori Diocese, which serves the Kasese district. Bishop Tembo, a native of the area, prayed in his message that “the Lord will bless the Diocese with resources needed” to continue the church’s work with the desolate and forlorn people of his community.
The bishop’s desperate call for help was heard and answered by the Anglican Communion on the other side of the Atlantic: the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania, headquartered in Harrisburg.
The Pennsylvanians pulled together more than $350,000 for Kasese to support HIV-AIDS patients as well as a little extra money for the Bishop Masereka Christian Foundation to help pay for the education of Kasese’s orphans. The Pennsylvania Episcopalians also arranged to send a group of physicians and other medical personnel to the South Rwenzori Diocese this summer.
…
Then, darkness and betrayal.
Last week Bishop Tembo suspended all activities with the Episcopal Diocese of Central Pennsylvania. He withdrew his request for $352,941 to support his HIV-AIDS program, including money for orphans’ education, and he postponed the visit of the medical team. What, pray tell, could have led the bishop to refuse this help for people in need?
In every large organization, there’s always that 5 percent who never get the word. The Anglican Communion is no exception. In a March 8 “Dear Friends” letter, Bishop Tembo said he had just learned the week before that the Diocese of Central Pennsylvania had voted “yes” to the election of openly gay Gene Robinson as bishop of New Hampshire. The election, by the way, took place two years ago.
Asserting that the South Rwenzori Diocese “upholds the Holy Scriptures as the true word of God,” and implying that the Pennsylvanian diocese — by supporting a gay bishop — does not, Bishop Tembo proclaimed the two dioceses to be in “theological conflict,” thus leading him to reject all ties to his brothers and sisters in Christ living in and around Harrisburg.
Harrisburg, if you didn’t know it, is about 35 miles from Casa Pastor; Lancaster is part of the same synod. I can vouch that it is anything but a hotbed of radical support for the “homosexual agenda.”
And I’d hardly finished reading that when I found this diary by PBJ Diddy on “Desecrating Jesus AND the Flag,” on some of the crazier crazies protesting outside Terri Schiavo’s hospice.
Is it just me, or does our world seem to have gone off the deep end in the past couple of weeks?
Is it just me, or does the world seem to need our prayers and actions more than ever?
I don’t think the world is any crazier than usual. Sometimes though terrible stories seem to converge into the public consciousness at the same time. I sometimes just want to stamp my foot like a little kid having a temper tantrum and say enough already to people.
However due to my age I realize obviously that won’t help and that these kinds of stories go on daily without as many people hearing about them. The only thing I can then hope is that something I’ve done during my life has hopefully at least changed one person from predjudice to being for rights and compassion for everyone.
I just have to shake my head, for nothing else seems to do any good.
I have decided to keep faith, that mankind, will see the error of it’s ways.
It is only hope, and without it…..
PastorDan, I am almost silent from shock after reading the full WaPo story. Oh dear god.
I wonder if you saw the image of the t-shirt that rightwing hate radio host Glenn Beck put up on his site. (scroll down a bit to see it.)
What would we do without you? Whenever the world seems too crazy, I find sanctuary in your words.
I think we know each other sufficiently well by now that I am sure you did not think my comment was really in relation to your fine thoughts. Just in case anyone else misreads what PastorDan says above, it wasn’t.
It was very much a general statement about reactions to issues that I have been seeing elsewhere constantly on our web sites. Sometimes the language has made me worry because it is the language that is a prelude to a deeper antagonism and loathing, a language which responds violently to the violence in thought and deed of others. It escalates the sense of fear and fear is one of the most corrosive of human conditions.
I am a wuss – but I quite like living in a land of wusses 🙂
I think you have a real point. If we don’t want to live in a world overwhelmed with violence, we need to be careful not to practice it, even on a subliminal level, as in my story.
It’s a good reminder.
I’m so glad to come across this exchange. It gives me a chance to respond to Welshman’s earlier diary (where’d it go???) I’ve found myself thinking about it, since my first read. You know, gotta say, I’ve had something of the same reaction to the emotional turbulence of the dKos constellation of sites– including my own occasional rawness & fury. Sometimes, it’s posters’ feelings that get to me. But most often, it’s the news they post that churns my insides.
A few weeks ago, I thought, hey! this is getting to be positively toxic. What to do? Limit my exposure? Or… (dot dot dot)..
My solution was a little bit of both. I began to see it as a demonstration of a genuine need for detachment. The sort of detachment that allows for measured action, not just reactive emotion.
So, I decide to reread & study the Bhagavad Gita, again, with Jnaneshwar Maharaj’s masterpiece of a commentary (published by SUNY under its popular title, Jnaneshwari, in case you’re interested) Personally, for me, the understanding there of dharma (understood as duty & right action or righteous action) helps a lot. It’s not just a question of perspective but of approach.
I don’t know if this rings your bell or not, Welshman, but the basic situation of the Gita corresponds, for me, to our present situation. You know, the desire– on the battlefield– to throw down your weapons & refuse to fight, is definitely one I can relate to. Oh yes, George Bush’s America.
As for the violence of lingo, specifically, my reactions to it vary. I often feel people are claiming/celebrating the freedom of the net as much as ranting. But yeah, it can be a burden. What world do we want to make after all?
That’s it. That’s what’s been on my mind to say.
should’ve pointed out that the Jnaneshwari is a 13th century commentary, not a modern thingie.
About the WaPo story, my daughter is here — she reads constantly about Africa, knows something about Uganda — and is saying this:
Africans are very homophobic, she says.
And, Christians here in the U.S., etc. have a lot more freedom to go against what God says, but someone like the bishop in Uganda, who is surrounded by so much more misery and death, fears more what God might think if he were to go against what he believes is God’s word. She says: He doesn’t want to piss off God more because he’s already in hell.
One reason for the homophobia, she imagines, is that the men in Africa have already been made submissive by colonialism, etc., and they want to be perceived as more manly.
Tell your daughter she’s quite insightful.
thanks for stopping by!
PastorD,
Here’s what also works for me these days. I know it’s famous, a KLASSIC. But every time I read it a different image captures & restores. So I’m typing it in. Here goes:
Prayer The Churches banquet, Angels age,
God’s breath in man returning to his birth,
The soul in paraphrase, heart in pilgrimage,
The Christian plummet sounding heav’n and earth,
Engine against th’Almightie, sinners towre,
Reversed thunder, Christ-side-piercing spear,
The six-daies world transposing in an houre,
A kinde of tune which all things heare and feare;
Softnesse, and peace, and joy, and love, and blisse,
Exalted Manna, gladnesse of the best,
Heaven in ordinarie, man well dress,
The milkie way, the bird of paradise,
Church bells beyond the starres heard, the souls bloud,
The land of spices, something understood
by George Herbert
but it’s all good. Thanks for sharing that.
I think Welshman’s comment clarifies something of what I’ve been feeling/thinking lately, as does Tulip’s. As the anger and rhetoric have escalated in Florida, there’s been a corresponding escalation on dKos. Perhaps here, too, but if so I haven’t seen it. The energy here seems less confrontational. Some of it is anger, but a lot of it is frustration with the perceived idiocy of unthinking ideologues.
I, too, find it necessary to limit my exposure to vast amounts of negativity lest I become swamped in fear and anger. So I go away. I read some diaries, look at most of the headlines, make a few comments, but detach myself. I try to think good thoughts, to meditate, to do constructive things.
It’s not particularly easy, given the incessant rattle of factoids against the windows, and the pervading miasma of fear and anger in which this country has been steeped for the last four years. So I am particularly grateful for comments such as theirs and diaries such as your, PD.