The world is raging with war, killings, destroyed lives....still. We've barely left the most horrible century for human murder, the twentieth, and there is no sign that it will let up.
It is end of May 2015 and there are more refugees and displaced persons now than at the end of World War II.
Boat loads of people escaping turmoil, failed states, chaos, murder, hunger, running to find a better life. As Thomas Friedman of the N.Y. Times put it, they're escaping dis-order, seeking order. Most likely it will only get worse, as climate change and income inequality become more prevalent. In California and large swaths of the western U.S., drought is taking its toll on the lives of the poorest. Large industrial orchards suck groundwater deeply leaving poorer more shallow wells to run dry. Towns in central California have had no running water for months now.
But I continue to Trust. Continue to Accept that the arc of human destiny can only improve. Continue to Understand that this movement for the better is a slow, almost imperceptible process. I am hopeful...still.
So I share a long quote from Amos Oz, the Israeli author, taken from an interview in the Jewish Journal (http://www.jewishjournal.com/) May 15 - 21, 2015. Oz is interviewed by Rob Eshman, Editor-in-Chief for the Jewish Journal and they're discussing the prospect of peace in the middle east and the necessity for wearing the uniform of armies:
Oz states: "Look, you have to live in this complicated world. You have to be clearing the sewage from time to time, clean a blockage in the sewage. And you do that, and you do that as well as you can do. But there is not much pride in coming out of the sewage, stinking all over - you take a quick shower, you don't walk in the street claiming, "I just cleaned the sewage." No, I don't feel any pride in wearing uniforms. I find necessity. I don't find...any beauty in bars on the windows and locks on the doors. But they are a necessity."
I don't have a solution for this tangled, complicated, messy dis-ordered world we live in.
I don't know how to stop ISIS and other fanatics from killing, destroying, leaving terror and horror.
But I wanted to share Amos Oz' words because they echo how I feel.
May there be Peace, Shalom in this Dear World .......soon.
