What is it you need to know,
You don't already understand?
When you offer me a drink,
I just keep you at arms length.
--Bill Mallonee, Judas Skin from Slow Dark Train
I suppose that is the struggle and tension we live in. Is it our incessant need to survive on our own, to learn it ourselves, to be independently powerful, wealthy or secure? Is it that same independence that isolates us, allowing us to believe we are insulated from the chaos of this present darkness?
I'm thirsty.
When I see that the violence of the 60's between racial divides becoming the violence of the new century that exists within one's own communities, without discrimination of one's own people, I get thirsty.
When I see a war in Iraq that has diverted funds from our own social porgrams and has left the "underclass" and those struggling to keep their heads above water without a life preserver or a prayer, I get thirsty.
When I see America getting richer on the backs of nations beyond debt with little hope of escaping their corrupted leadership I get thirsty. Not because I am myself righteous or even over zealous, but because America more often chooses the side of money than of love and so often supports warlords and tyrants rather than fighting the genocide that occurs in so many parts of Africa today.
Sadaam needed to be dealt with but realize he was not the most urgent of the threats...except maybe to economic moguls in America.
If there is anything else you read today, please read Dr. King's Beyond Vietnam speech (www.hartford-hwp.com/archives/45a/058.html). Not only will you get an outstanding perspective of AMerican Foreign Policy but you will read a man who understands the gospel of love more intimately than any other I have read in recent history.
The more I hear the speech, the less I find myself keeping you at arms length.
