As Americans we care. About a lot of people, a lot of
things, a lot of ideas. We see someone suffering and we respond. In many ways.
Older citizens in small towns who can no longer paint their own home because of
mobility and physical ailments, or cannot afford to hire someone to do it for
them, get the house painted by volunteers. These folks come out of their
churches on weekends and paint the house.
Others spruce up a yard the resident no longer can care for.
These two instances demonstrate the need for elder housing
alternatives. Not all people can properly care for themselves or their homes
due to age and finances. It is a simple fact of life. Even more so in this era
of upside down markets for housing.
My mother told me once that she and dad never earned more
than $20,000 a year. I’m not sure I believe her, but she is now 100 years old,
and 40 years ago $20,000 a year was a decent income. Usually from one worker in
the household. Today $40,000 a year doesn't properly support a family of four,
let alone two.
Only the fortunate live to ripe old age without suffering
severe economic problems. Care is needed for the survivors.
Caring is important in several ways. First, of course, it
takes care of the person in need, easing the way for them day by day. But
second, delivering the care does something for the care giver – usually the
volunteer, you and I. The act of caring and delivering on that care pulls us
outside of our own narrow internal existence. For a moment or two we forget our
own problems. We enter a sphere of peace and calm that is focused on others.
A third way caring is important: economic benefit. The
person in need receives the goods and services they can’t afford to pay for,
but those who have the means pay it forward. The providers or vendors get paid
for their supplies and that ratchets up economic activity. But more…the
business partners gain from market knowledge working in these programs. To them
it is a tax write-off maybe, or perhaps an economic disposal of surplus goods,
a charitable endeavor that benefits their public image; but it allows them to
gain understanding of the market place. Markets do not work for everyone’s
benefit. This is a reality we all need to know.
Caring is also a concrete means of putting to work those
fine and lofty principles we often speak of but rarely act on. We all are
guilty of this lapse, aren’t we? We say
we are a Christian or Jewish or Muslim faith which means we ought to…but we
rarely do.
Oft times it is imperative that we do practice what we
preach. It’s good for us. Plain and simple.
I share with you this message from the internet the other
day, it is an message printed on a tee shirt worn by a teenager:
“If religion were the key to
morality, then mega-churches would look more like charities and less like
million dollar businesses.” ~Author Unknown
Point well taken!
Delivering of care, however, has other dimensions. There are
huge institutions created for and devoted to caring for special
populations. Harold Itzkowitz has it
right when he said:
“You know what’s an even bigger
scandal than the one at VA hospitals? The Iraq
Imagine that! A government that claims to care, then messes
up with an enormous war of mistakes, damages and kills our own troops, and
millions of innocents in Iraq along with the ‘enemy’, then doesn't care for our
own veterans and families when they return home suffering, dying or deceased.
It is a shame our nation must shoulder. If we make war we must make lifelong
reparations to those affected by it, especially those here at home.
You know, there is accountability for caring. There is also
accountability for missions undertaken in our name by our political machinery.
The latter does not discern among the Judiciary, Executive or Legislative
branches of our government. State, federal or local, our governments work on
our behalf for our behalf. They are accountable, sure; but so are we. We put
these folks in those positions to do our work for us. And then we walk away? We
let bad things happen in our name without correcting them?
The final quote today is this one:
“Back when I studied the
Holocaust in school, I remember thinking, ‘how did Hitler get over 6 million
people to follow along blindly and not fight back?’ then I realized, I’m
watching my fellow Americans take the same path.” ~
Anonymous
The holocaust in our age is the damage done to youth who
feel aimless and hopeless sucked into a life of underage booze and drugs, or
elders dying homeless on the streets and under our bridges and overpasses. Or
maybe it’s the under educated young people who fail to be motivated to learn
and take charge of their lives in productive ways.
The modern holocaust is anti-gay prejudice, continuing
racism in America ,
anti-immigration hate groups, private militias well armed and filled with rage
and hate that spills over to produce mass killings and bombings.
When global militants misled by religious zeal – the
religions kidnapped do not support militants or extremism so exhibited –
capture innocent tourists, kill them and torture them as symbols of
anti-Americanism, or anti global economics, or any other ism, then we have a
new holocaust to contend with. ISIS in the Middle East
is a good example of this holocaust. They are not elected. They are not
educated. They are not religious (they say they are but they have their
religion completely backward!), yet they march into the dessert, capture towns
and entire countries, destroying homes, lives, economies and histories. Their form
of nihilism is catching. It reverberates in anger among many other innocents
who take up arms and join forces.
How sad. How horrid it is for the UN to combat, or NATO, or
any other peace keeping force on earth. America is not the peacemaker. The
job is too large. We Americans can make a different through our government and
foreign policy, but we are not the sentinel of security for the globe. That job
belongs to each and every person on the globe.
It begins with each of us, though. And we must step up to
the plate and do our job.
Don’t be a victim of the new holocaust. It is very real. And
it threatens us all.
August 26, 2014
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