A Journalist In Darfur

This is Awatif Ahmed Isshag.

She's been a journalist for the last ten years.

She lives in Darfur.

When events like the ongoing crisis in Darfur come to the attention of relatively secure people like me (resident of the USA, not starving, and not seeing death and destruction every day), we feel particularly helpless.

It's going to take more than the combined efforts of all the aid organizations there are to help people in that country [not to mention the horrible happenings in other countries].

It's going to take a massive change of heart--massive change for each individual who could help in any way and massive change for every government and political person who has any influence on secular happenings--a thorough spiritual transformation.

Can you hear it?

The world is crying, screaming for change...

The Dynamist Blog carried a short article about Awatif Ahmed Isshag. Here's just a taste:

"Nearly a decade ago, at 14, Isshag started publishing a handwritten community newsletter about local events, arts and religion. Once a month she'd paste decorated pages to a large piece of wood and hang it from a tree outside her family's home for passersby to read.

"Her grass-roots periodical has become the closest thing that El Fasher, capital of North Darfur state, has to a hometown newspaper. More than 100 people a day stop to check out her latest installments, some walking several miles from nearby displacement camps....

"Isshag complained that despite international attention, the suffering of Darfur remained vastly underreported inside Sudan. There are no television stations in the area, and most newspapers operate under government control or are based hundreds of miles away in Khartoum.

"'The local media don't cover the issue of Darfur,' she said. 'We hear about it when one child dies in Iraq, but we hear nothing when 50 children die' in Darfur."

She is, in a way, blogging without a computer.

If you need some background on the bigger picture, the BBC News has Q&A: Sudan's Darfur conflict and Wikipedia has Darfur Conflict.


A more complete story on Awatif Ahmed Isshag can be had at the Los Angeles Times. Here's a telling detail from that article:

"An advocate for women's education, Isshag credits her parents for allowing her to avoid being tied down by housework and pursue her interest in writing.

"But she occasionally uses her columns to lecture other women on pet peeves. A recent 'For Women Only' article lambasted those who took off their shoes on the bus. 'It's wrong,' she said with a laugh."

True Love

Not sure what year that picture was taken (early 1900s to be sure) and I sure wish I could have found a different one...

I'll go with what I've got [seems like a possible attribute of "True Love", eh?].

Check out the two people in the extreme upper right. It's a white woman and a black man and they're married.

Louis George Gregory and Louisa Mathew showed true love in spite of the fact that their "marriage was a challenge to the social convention of that time, and was even a criminal offense in some states."

Now, let's move rapidly ahead in time (though we surely won't out run prejudice...).

This picture is from a BBC News article, Star-crossed lovers quit West Bank.

This is Jasmine Avissar and Osama Zaatar. She's a Jewish Israeli and he's a Palestinian Muslim.

I'll share just a few quotes from this heart-wrenching True Love Story:

"First they tried to live in Israel, but the Israeli authorities would not allow Osama to join his wife there.

"Then they tried living in the occupied West Bank, but some Palestinians made life difficult for them.

"Now they've given up and are moving to Europe....

"Jasmine already has permission to go. Osama hopes to follow her soon....

"Neither Israeli nor Palestinian society has accepted their marriage....

"They turn and walk the short distance to the checkpoint that leads out of the West Bank and into Israel....

"Osama cannot go through the checkpoint with Jasmine. They don't know when he will be able to join her in Europe.

"They are still a couple caught in the middle of the Israeli Palestinian conflict."

I want to leave this post on True Love with a quote from the Greatest Human Lover I've ever known:

"Know thou of a certainty that Love is the secret of God's holy Dispensation, the manifestation of the All-Merciful, the fountain of spiritual outpourings. Love is heaven's kindly light, the Holy Spirit's eternal breath that vivifieth the human soul. Love is the cause of God's revelation unto man, the vital bond inherent, in accordance with the divine creation, in the realities of things. Love is the one means that ensureth true felicity both in this world and the next. Love is the light that guideth in darkness, the living link that uniteth God with man, that assureth the progress of every illumined soul. Love is the most great law that ruleth this mighty and heavenly cycle, the unique power that bindeth together the divers elements of this material world, the supreme magnetic force that directeth the movements of the spheres in the celestial realms. Love revealeth with unfailing and limitless power the mysteries latent in the universe. Love is the spirit of life unto the adorned body of mankind, the establisher of true civilization in this mortal world, and the shedder of imperishable glory upon every high-aiming race and nation."

---

1. Selections from the Writings of `Abdu'l-Bahá (Haifa: Bahá'í World Centre, 1982), p. 27.

The god of War

"The god of War" is the title of this post. I had to write the word "god" with a lower case "g" because it's my firm belief that God wants All of Us to stop making war.

Strange that God is so Forgiving and Merciful.

He's also completely Just:

If we make war, He'll forgive us; but, His Justice gives us massive suffering during and after the war...

How does one explain the Creator of All That Is?

Best way I know of (that won't drive one plum crazy) is to look at what He created (and, even looking at these creations can make one Wonder...)...

Still, these days, we must look Very Deeply into what He's created to see HIM...

The { image credit } is a site with sights you may not want to see, like:
"She Survived Iraq — Then Shot Herself at Home"

Other Spaces you might look into, to give you more to ponder about what God may be up to with us humans, are the related studies listed after this explanation on scienceblogs.com:

"A few recent psychological studies about religious beliefs presented seemingly contradictory results: One found that reading violent biblical passages made readers more aggressive; two others concluded that mentioning "God concepts" made people behave less selfishly. ScienceBloggers dig into the nitty gritty of these experiments, and discuss how the results might apply to phenomena like terrorism."

Here are the study links:

In smite of my own thoughts on religion...

Psychology and Religion

Does Religion Make You Meaner or Nicer? Inquiring Minds, Etc.

Obey God — Kill!

Two Americas: Past, Present and Future

Happy Pondering...

Doomsday Revisited

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Back in the dim, dark past of this blog ( Jan. 18th in non-cyber-time), I had a post called Doomsday.
My cyber-friend (real friend not met in person), Jeanne, took up a challenge and asked some people what they thought about the ideas I'd expressed (check out the extensive comments with that post...).

Yesterday, she surprised me again and won herself the bestowal of the title Honorary E-Mail Reporter!

She sent the following (which I reproduce exactly as I received it...):

"This is a comment I got from a friend...

"The end of the world as we know it could be anytime considering the "as we know it" part. Think of the fact of how strange or foreign our everyday world would be to a person who traveled through time from the 1500's and saw what we have in the year 2007. Our radios, phones, and cars, not to mention other modern inventions would be mind baffling to a person of the 16th century.

"Now, let's think of 50 or even 100 years in the future. Modern science and advances will have leaped again. Who knows what we will possibly see in our lifetimes or what will become of our world after we are gone. But I can tell you this... The world of the future will probably be nothing like it is today. We live in the world 'as we know it', but that world is ever changing so one day it might be the end of the world as WE know it, but it will be the world as our great great great great grandchildren know it.

"Speaking about the 'end of the world' is a whole statement in itself. Religiously, I'm not sure if I know enough to answer this question. Spiritually, I think a person is screwed if they have not found God and it's the end of the world. You do want your golden ticket into heaven when it all goes down. There's that movie and book that focuses in on the worshipers of God being taken to heaven and spared of all harm or evil when the end comes. Personally, I don't think that will happen, but I do think that I want to be on God's good side and be one of his followers when the 'end' comes. I want to know that when I die I can go to heaven and face it... If a large asteroid comes hurling at the Earth and wipes out all life on Earth, we will all die. I think it's good to know you will be with all your loved ones in heaven with God.

"Also, I have heard some religious people push that the end of the world has to do with religious stuff. I am not so sure about that. God is all powerful. He can control a lot. But he can't control us from blowing each other up in a nuclear war. He puts so much faith in mankind, but it's mankind that I sometimes don't trust. Will we kill ourselves in the end and be our own doom?

"There are so many science fiction and horror movies and books focused on the 'end of the world.' I do believe that the images and ideals sometimes portrayed in our movies and books are sometimes a reflection of our own fears. Who knows, the end of the world may come out of an alien attack or a final world war or our destruction of the ozone layer or radiation exposure, pollution, or an asteroid destroying Earth, or melting of polar ice caps. Heck, I don't know... The 'end' may come from a natural event, our own undoing, or something unimaginable like contact with an alien race. I do believe if the end comes, it will have to be be because something happened that made it come. It won't just come. Did Y2K kill us all? No, but some things in life can happen. It would have to be something so powerful that it kills us all or kills many leaving survival near to impossible for the living. For instance, I would be screwed if we were suddenly stripped of modern electricity and put back into a time
of no outlets because I take medicine from a machine that plugs into a wall. In the 'end', it may become survival of the fittest or maybe... we'll just be all wiped out at once. But something will have to happen to cause the 'end' to come.

"Or maybe the end will never come and humans will continue to advance with our world changing with us. No one knows and time can only tell, but the end of the world will be a debate till the world does end. As it's ending, people will probably be discussing this question and debating it's answer.

"It kind of reminds me of that song, 'It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.'

"My question is what would you be doing if you knew that the end was coming?

"What would you want to be doing if you knew it would come and you could die?

"What would you want to be doing that last few minutes before the 'end?'

"That's my food for thought. You don't have to answer. Just curious...."


"...and here is her husband's comment:

"our world can end in a multitude of ways...it depends on what you mean by world...world as in our earth...earth will be here a long time, until of course the sun goes to red giant and sometime years after that nova...our world as in reality...it could be infinite because our new reality would be heaven if we die and heaven is infinite...while this reality here is finite in space and time..."

Poems Like Warm Wine

Many people are like me--we have some very good friends who we've never met in person. Something happens and the conventionally abnormal distancing that the Internet can instill is warmed way up and a true friendship blossoms.

This is what happened with Anna...

I'm a poet and she's a poet. She's young and I'm old. We're both religious (in "different" Faiths). And, we're both "weird"...

Not so long ago, I was blessed by technology. There, in my e-mail, was a link to an audio file of Anna Saying one of her poems!

I get nice chills just remembering the sound of her voice mingling with the meaning of the words...

So, prepare to be positively Enchanted...

Turn up your volume and relax into the magic of Anna's poetry...

strange



i

dusting for prints

Here's a link to Anna's blog...

Blogger Interview One with Nneka

I met this woman through my use of GoogleReader (it collects feeds from news sites, blogs, etc.). I immediately sensed a sincerity about her spiritual commitment so I posted a few comments to her blog. After the second or third comment, she asked me if I'd do a GuestPost (which was an honor...). Then, I asked her for an e-mail interview. But, before that brief exchange, here's some info about her from her site:

" Hi, I’m Nneka (pronounced en-nay-kah), the daughter of a musician and a closet fashionista. That’s me singing. I was born and raised in the southern-most island in the Caribbean, Trinidad. At 8, I was taught to meditate and I’ve been experimenting with it since (present commitment to daily meditation). I was exposed and acculturalized to diverse creeds and cultures.

"I’m passionate about expressing Spirit in my life and helping you do the same. For me, right now, that means writing about spirituality and how to apply it to life on Balanced Life Center. For you it may mean composing a symphony, being a conscious entrepreneur, a magnetic salesperson, or a patient, loving stay-at-home mom....

"I believe that God is everywhere present all the time. I write this here because a lot of the ideas that are discussed here will come from that premise. When I speak of God, I speak of the Spirit/Consciousness, the essence of all that is. It courses through our lives, our being, our world. It abides everywhere.

"I believe that within everyone lies their Divinity. Since God is everywhere present, He must be within each and everyone of us. Whether or not we choose to act out of that Divinity is up to us. Whether we are aware of it or not is a matter of our consciousness. Part of my purpose is to help everyone discover this Divinity within themselves and to help them uniquely express it."

The Interview (short and sweet):

Alex: Nneka, what led you to your current Internet activities?

Nneka: My husband started an online business in 2002. In 2003 when I wanted to start writing, he suggested I start a blog. I had no idea what a blog was at the time, or what a content management site was about. I was used to old school html. Anyway, I got the domain for Balanced Life Center and intended to start an online magazine about building a balanced life. That lasted for about 4 months before I got involved in the business side of his business. I ended up having to learn a lot about online marketing, pay per click, search engine optimization, and this new thing about building community around a business online.

I left the business in early 2006 to re-focus on what I consider my purpose. I resurrected Balanced Life Center, and here we are.

Alex: Is the Balanced Life Center Site a "shell" surrounding your blog or is the blog the "heart" of the Site or neither?

Nneka: At this moment, Balanced Life Center - the blog, is the heart of the site.

Alex: Are you able to sum up your "Sense of Spirituality" in 25 words or less? How about 10 words or less?

Nneka: In 10 words or less: God is All there is.

By that I mean that God is the essence of all things seen and unseen and that we are expressions of God. We may witness God to varying degrees and see "illness" in the world because of how much of our Divinity we allow to express through us and as us.

Alex: What might you say to the oft expressed "issue" where "Spirituality" and "Religion" are discussed, sometimes as antagonists, sometimes as parts of a whole?

Nneka: I think that religion is your chosen path to know the God of your being or the way that you choose to experience and express God. Most religions come with a set customs and rules that help frame the moral and social code of a community. It also sets up a framework to learn about spirituality from a given perspective.

Spirituality, on the other hand, is about your relationship with the Divine and your experience of it. Religion can help you find what works for you, but only you will know what that is.

Alex: What would be your "best advice" for healing the Illnesses of our World? (If you need to "define" those Illnesses first, please, go right ahead.)

Nneka: "Physician heal thyself."

We cannot heal the world until we heal ourselves. Then we can take up the yoke to heal our families, our schools, our churches, our communities, and the world. Ironically, we will find that once we heal ourselves, the world around us will take on a different hue. Much of the heavy lifting that we do to "make" things happen in our world today either won't be needed or will be done with different intentions.

Dangerous Blogging

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Blogging can be dangerous ( Check out two and three posts before this one...) .

Just this morning, on the way to a religious party with my best friend, the topic of blogging and controversy came up--the tact necessary, especially when one steps into the arena of Spiritual Commentary On Current Events...

The other day, as I responded to a discussion post on a spiritually-oriented site (mentioning my Faith), I was met with extreme prejudice--"How in the world can you believe that?!" I responded with as much tact and gentleness as I could muster and will lay low for a bit in that particular discussion thread...

I want to mention our B.I.D.E. Global Blog Feed again (down the sidebar on the left).
I found the meat for this post there: Free Kareem: Egyptian Bloggers Speak Out.

A blogger being jailed (if the appeal doesn't work) for speaking his mind. . .

Here's a snippet of a very interesting blog post:

"Once again a religious institution is confusing itself with God: instead of seeing that they are part of the problem, they interpret any criticism of the institution as criticism of Allah, whereas Karim only did what Allah has told every Muslim to do: [Qur'an 4:135]: “O you who believe! be maintainers of justice, bearers of witness of Allah’s sake, though it may be against your own selves or (your) parents or near relatives; if he be rich or poor, Allah is nearer to them both in compassion; therefore do not follow (your) low desires, lest you deviate; and if you swerve or turn aside, then surely Allah is aware of what you do.”

Reprise

Tomorrow's my guest post on the Balanced Life Center's Blog. The title will be The Great Spirit and the content's about my personal experiences with Native American Spirituality.

Even though I was raised by two Christian ministers (Mom and Dad), my Indian experiences were much more "spiritual" then what our family did...

Now that I'm in my 60's I can see the value in all Spiritual Traditions.

~~~~~~~~~

Since I wrote that guest post for Balanced Life Center, I've begun reading Black Elk Speaks
--had to; couldn't help it even though I had other, more "important" things to read...

So, here I am in a rather contemplative mood--a Caucasian with a love for Indians, a blogger who's actually a poet, a man who has his feminine side well-honed, a Baha'i who loves all religions, an American who's striving to be a Global Citizen...

And that Global Perspective brings me back to a focus in this blog's recent past:

Please check out the post, Be The Change.... It's only a couple days old but, in the Blogosphere, that's ancient.

I really want to shift from the Personal Commentaries to a more Global Perspective but I'd really rather have some of You steer me in the direction of the stories or topics or issues You'd like Spiritual Commentary on...

Blogospheric Response To Egypt's Action

Amazing speed of supportive action for the blogger arrested by the Egyptian Government!

He's being nominated for the 2007 Index Awards Ceremony.

Plus, the folks who created FreeKareem.org had this to say:

"This campaign is our way of fighting to further the cause of brave people who continue to practice their right to freedom of expression even when such rights are not recognized.

"Kareem is a writer who always found the courage within him to keep speaking his mind freely in the name of not only freedom of speech, but the freedom to think in an otherwise sheltered society. Because of that, he was interrogated and arrested this morning, but apparently not for the first time. We stand by and fully support Kareem through these difficult times and will continue working on this campaign until he is freed."

They also created a Forum to discuss his case.

Independent Investigation of Truth is sorely lacking in our world-at-large. Without this important principle in place, censorship and blind imitation of the past can unleash rank oppression:

"One of the main sources of conflict in the world today is the fact that many people blindly and uncritically follow various traditions, movements, and opinions. God has given each human being a mind and the capacity to differentiate truth from falsehood. If individuals fail to use their reasoning capacities and choose instead to accept without question certain opinions and ideas, either out of admiration for or fear of those who hold them, then they are neglecting their basic moral responsibility as human beings. Moreover, when people act in this way, they often become attached to some particular opinion or tradition and thus intolerant of those who do not share it. Such attachments can, in turn, lead to conflict. History has witnessed conflict and even bloodshed over slight alterations in religious practice, or a minor change in the interpretation of doctrine. Personal search for truth enables the individual to know why he or she adheres to a given ideology or doctrine."

Bahá'í International Community