Waiting

Finally! We lost our internet connection on Friday afternoon, or so I thought. I spent all sorts of energy on looking for “lost” papers that might have contained the missing IP address for my connection. Frustrating! And finally, today, I found a piece of paper with the vital information on it. I entered it and then found that I had been looking at the error message on my wireless router, not the Intel connection. So I re-booted the wireless router and all was well again. I suppose it’s a good thing for me to be humbled every once in awhile. I am still baffled as to why this happened; and I have to try and make sure it doesn’t happen again. I guess my old skills are simply that…old skills.

OK, here are some odds and ends…

Tribalism continues to reign in every culture; no matter how advanced we think we are, we’re still just a stones throw away from the most primitive of our fellow humans. (Throwing stones is a good analogy) yesterday I noted how we all stood up when the song, “God Bless America” was played. Spontaneously. Patriotism is simply another form of tribalism. It just happens to be more acceptable when it’s called a “love for our country”. If we are all children of God, isn’t the whole world ours and not just a country? Does God’s love stop at some border we have created? An imaginary line created by man? Why can’t we love the world?

Have you ever looked at a border? I mean really looked at it? One side of the line versus the other side. Funny; they look exactly alike on each side. And how wide is that line? An inch? So who owns the space in between the sides of that one inch line? Of course you can carry this thought to extremes and wonder how wide it is all the way down to a sub-atomic level, a nano border. But no one wants to think about it, or think about the fact that the people on each side of that border (no matter how thick or thin it is) are God’s children. And we are all exactly alike; under our skin. A drop of blood on either side of the border and we can’t tell where it came from.

But we all know how to stand up and salute “our” flag. Yes, tribalism is alive and well.

What else was on my mind yesterday? Drunk driving. I don’t remember why that came to me; probably because of some news story. Since we, as a society, are so quick to punish drug abusers and send them off to prison; why don’t we do the same to alcohol abusers? Drive drunk and be sentenced to 5 years in the state slammer. Why not? It is drug abuse. And how about those who smoke and endanger the health of their families? That sounds like a felony offense to me! Endangering the lives of little children shouldn’t go unpunished. Let’s make that crime a one year prison term for the first offense. Three strikes and you’re in there for life! Alcohol and nicotine are dangerous drugs so I don’t see a problem with it.

I read that we spend about $35,000+ a year to keep someone in prison. Imagine what we might be able to do if were to spend that money…oh, let’s just say half of that money, $17,500 per “criminal” on therapy instead? A class where 10 drug abusers could learn to control their habits would cost $175,000 per year versus $350,000 spent to make certain they re-offend by keeping them unproductive and in a dangerous environment. Dangerous for them and for those who are supposed to be watching them.

Every time I think about all of these things, I wonder, just how civilized are we? Give us a natural disaster that wipes out all of our technological advantages and we would quickly revert to our primitive selves. Mentally ill? We would gladly rid ourselves of any among us who were different. In fact, being different in any way has always been dangerous for those who dared. Do I dare?

I ran across this old entry in my Journal, from February of 2004. “I have been reading the book, The Secret Life of Bees, by Sue Kidd and it’s been a great book. And in it I found a most powerful statement…”People, in general, would rather die than forgive. It’s that hard. If God said, in plain language, “I’m giving you a choice, forgive or die.” A lot of people would go ahead and order their coffin.”” It’s still a very powerful thought. So why do we do that? Jesus told us what to do and still we ignore Him. And the most baffling aspect of this is the fact that those who proclaim their Christianity the loudest have the least ability to forgive.