This has got to be the rainiest June I can remember. It comes after a winter with near record snowfall, and the gardens are thriving. I have planted one hill with mint and it loves the rain, and the ferns and other forest growth are beginning to remind me of the lushness of a rain forest.
I have a fire going downstairs and have spent my morning making phone calls, responding to email, combing Kenya's tangled undercoat over her tail bone ... the part she can't reach, and reading The Book of Negroes by Laurence Hill.
I received a note from "The Perfect Man" ... the one who was just TOOO perfect. He said he really liked me but got the impression last year that I was not interested. But then he decided to try again. Oh dear.
Someone emailed me to tell me that one of the victims in the tragic fire in Labrador was the twenty year old niece of a former colleague. Suddenly the news reports became more meaningful. That shouldn't happen, but it does all the time, to most of us. We feel sorry when we hear bad news but we keep our hearts at a distance.
Only the massive destruction of lives in a 9-11, a tsunami in Thailand or an earthquake in China ... natural or manmade disasters that attract the attention of the whole world seem to make us empathise.
We feel the pain of the victims because the media inundates us with their images and tells us their stories. We cannot ignore the fact that we are all human and that the tragedy belongs to all of us. Paul Coelho would say that we are suffering with them because we are all part of the Soul of the World.
Stephen Lewis reminded us during the tsunami that there are people whose suffering is hidden away, people whose suffering is no longer news, and we must not forget them either.
Our humanity is what connects us to all human beings ... our souls to the Soul of the World.
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1 comment:
Oooh ... and here I thought this was a real person ...
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