So I take about 2 months between blogs, ... what's it to ya. Been catching up on my reading, ...moving Jule into her new digs on Temple's Campus...spent 4 weeks out of the last 8 on airplanes.....its been a busy time. In fact, 2 of the 4 weeks on the road were spent in Ethiopia and Kenya. Told my wife I'd be home for a while. She didn't believe me,.. and rightly so. No sooner than the school year ended, I was invited to join a team traveling to Ethiopia and Kenya to assess 3 hospitals for the Pan African Academy of Christian Surgeons. This is a training program aimed at reducing the "brain drain" of surgeon from these 2 countries so in need of retaining well trained medical professionals.
So there I was in Soddo, Ethiopia, Bomet and Kijabe Kenya.... On and off planes, little or no sleep, a plethora of lodging accomodations and unreliable electricity, but then I'm not complaining,...No need,....I live an amazing life,.. I get to go where I want, when I want, with whom I want,.. talk about freedom,.. GSK was never like this. But I wonder,.. is the freedom that all of us have, worth the cost, or the trauma of what is revealed to us. Freedom indeed has its costs,.. freedom to use our resources, freedom in how we spend our time,.... We are allowed to witness many of the horrors of life, horrors we see everywhere,.. if we keep our eyes open,... and sometimes,... even if we don't.
David was following the medical team from bed-to-bed-to-bed,... head cradled in his hands, ... a look of despair that 100 family deaths would be unlikely to rival. But this man of about 35 was following us as we made medical rounds at Tenwek Hospital in Bomet, Kenya as if his life depended on it,.. and in large part, it did. His wife, mother-in-law, and three of his children had been in an horrific road traffic accident. These individuals represented David's life. They were traveling on a bus that had overturned and collided with another vehicle causing several fatalities. In order to save their lives, David's wife, mother-in-law and two of his young sons needed left arm amputations, and the other son, about 3 years old, sustained a severely mangled left arm and hand. And David, who was not traveling with them, .. well,.. he gets to watch his loved ones suffer through this tragedy. But David is suffering too. What do you say? What is there to say? Freedom has its costs. We can seclude ourselves in our homes and offices, (or Churches for that matter), or, we can be with David. We can suffer with him. We can pray with him and for him. So the question, I suppose is,..do we want that kind of Freedom?
Road traffic accidents in Kenya are the leading cause of death in that country. David and his family are just one example of the traumas of this daily experience suffered by so many. On the way to Tenwek for example, we witnessed a car that had careened through a guardrail down a raveen of the Rift Valley. ... A daily occurrence for David and so many others. Add this to HIV, malaria, tuberculosis,.. you get the picture,... a recipe for disastrous quality of life anywhere on the planet.
If we choose to use our freedom of taking the poor into our hearts,.. as they suffer, it will cost. As our hearts aches, can we handle the pain? David's heart needs to be held by ours.
Welcome
Welcome to All. This blog is a discussion site, looking at our lives through our experiences, our spiritual, and, not so spiritual lens, ....what our lives look like at The Front. We are and some would argue, always have been, in interesting times. Servants, past and present have been at constant struggle with whatever the issues of the day have been. Where do we even begin to name them: poverty, hunger, education, shelter, .... and did I mention poverty? Fifty-one years ago, President Lyndon Johnson declared war on poverty, a war by the way, we're still fighting. Then again, we've always been at war with poverty, and yet poverty has remained steadfast. Jesus apparently got it right: "The poor will always be with you." But Jesus was a smart man. Did he mean what we think? Does poverty always have to be with us. Let's talk about this, and whatever else, in real and truthful ways. Let's view our lives from The Front.
If you have come to help me, then you are wasting your time. If you have come because your liberation is linked to mine, then we will work together.
----(Anonymous) Australian Aborigine Activist
--mailto:--neilpitts@aol.com
----(Anonymous) Australian Aborigine Activist
--mailto:--neilpitts@aol.com
Contemplative Action
The Rite of Initiation: You are going to die
A shocking statement. Perhaps. But the Franciscan Priest, Richard Rohr,,who has studied the Rite of Initiation has said the following::
"Every initiation rite I've studied had some ritual, dramatic, or theatrical way to experience crossing the threshold from life to death in symbolic form. Some ritual of death and resurrection was the centerpiece of all male initiation. It is probably why Jesus sought out and submitted to John the Baptist's offbeat death and rebirth ritual down by the riverside, when his own temple had become more concerned with purity codes than with transformation. It is probably why Jesus kept talking to his disciples, three times in Mark's Gospel, about the necessity of this death journey, and why three times they changed the subject (8:31-10:45). It is undoubtedly why Jesus finally stopped talking about it, and just did it, not ritually but actually. Death and resurrection, the paschal mystery, is the theme of every single Eucharist no matter what the feast or season. It takes us many seasons and even years to overcome our resistance to death.
"The transformational journey of death and resurrection is the only real message. It makes you indestructible. The real life, God's life, is running through you and in you already. But allowing it to flow freely doesn't come easily. When you do, the spiritual journey really begins. Up to that moment it is just religion. Everything up to then is creating the container, but you have not yet found the contents; you are creating the wineskins, as Jesus says, but you are not yet drinking the intoxicating wine."
