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Where there is darkness, let me bring
light!
Neglect is darkness,
Prejudice is
darkness,
Greed is darkness,
Condemnation is darkness,
Intolerance
is darkness,
Exploitation of the poor is darkness,
Exploitation of the
weak is darkness,
Contaminating the air and water is darkness,
Abusing
the planet is darkness,
Hatred is darkness,
Torture is
darkness,
Murder is darkness,
War is darkness.
Where there is
darkness,
let me bring the light of truth,
the light of simplicity,
the light of love,
the light of peace.
Let me live simply, that
others may simply live.
To light the fires of truth, we must first
seek truth, seek to understand the peoples with whom we share the planet, seek
to expose the falsehood of corporate greed and abuse, seek to hold those
accountable who destroy our world and our brothers and sisters through neglect,
abuse, war, genocide, and exploitation. Then we must dare to speak truth.
It takes courage to speak truth, for all too often truth is not
tolerated, and those who speak it are condemned. Are we willing to engage in
tolerance or condemnation?
Barrie Hartman, Denver Post columnist,
continues to speak out despite the flood of condemnation against
him. His understanding of Christianity embraces peace, the peace of the gospel,
the peace of the beatitudes.
In Christianity there can be no
condemnation, for if we condemn, we, too will be condemned. We cannot call
ourselves Christian if we let condemnation and hatred rule us. Christ's gospel,
his good news, is a message of love, tolerance, sharing, and joy. He asks us to
love all peoples as our kin, walking with Muslim, Jew, Hindu, Buddhist, and all
peoples of all faiths as our sisters and brothers, shining love as a beacon
into the darkness of hatred and despair. We have one home: Earth; and one
family: humanity. Our survival is a matter of sharing with one another, and
caring for our planet.
Bringing light in the darkness doesn't have to
be with a glorious display of fireworks and lasers, but can be as simple as
lighting one candle. Kit and Emily Condill, the founders of Revolution Seeds,
have lit a candle of truth and dare to make a difference in their corner of the
world. To quote Kit: “Too many poor countries are busy growing coffee and
tea and other crops (and beef) for export rather than concentrating on feeding
their own people, thanks to foreign powers reorienting their economies to make
money for corporations rather than to make their own countries more prosperous.
Traditional agriculture is under corporate attack worldwide, and with this
catalogue my wife and I join the effort to preserve plant varieties developed
over thousands of years by the ingenuity, patience and perseverance of
countless individuals in thousands of societies.”
Click here for
more information on REVOLUTION SEEDS.
It takes a
revolution to free the world from oppression, a revolution without bullets and
tanks, a revolution of the heart. Joan D. Chittister in her book, HEART OF
FLESH (Novalis, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1998, ISBN 0-8028-4282-8),
writes, “The revolutions that count come silently, come first in the
heart, come with the force of steel because they come with no force at all.
Revolutions of this magnitude do not overturn a system and then shape it. They
reshape thought, and then the system overturns without the firing of a single
cannon. Revolutions such as this dismantle walls people thought would never
fall because no wall, whatever its size, can contain people whose minds have
long ago scaled ad vaulted and surmounted it.... Feminist spirituality
challenges the legitimation of arbitrariness, the divine right of power, the
holy grail of control, the hegemony of maleness - in both heaven and earth. It
shakes the very timbers of history to their base.”
To read more of
Joan Chittister's work, see the
National Catholic Reporter
Hermann
Hesse, German poet and novelist, wrote: “We kill at every step, not only
in wars, riots, and executions. We kill when we close our eyes to poverty,
suffering, and shame. In the same way all disrespect for life, all
hard-heartedness, all indifference, all contempt is nothing else than killing.
With just a little witty skepticism we can kill a good deal of the future in a
young person. Life is waiting everywhere, the future is flowering everywhere,
but we only see a small part of it and step on much of it with our feet.”
LINKS:
George Monbiot: Apocalypse Please
Bill Moyers: Health and the Global
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