Smell the Onion

Home is where one starts from.  As we grow older

The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated

Of dead and living.  Not the intense moment

Isolated, with no before and after,

But a lifetime burning in every moment

And not the lifetime of one man only…

Being cushioned, as I am, from most inconveniences and nearly all horrors, I try to stay mindful of the lifetimes burning in every moment.  To that end, I have a folder in my browser bookmarks labeled “awareness.”  The following links are from that folder.

When I was a junior in high school, one of the books required for my English class was  “To Destroy You is No Loss.”  It was the story of one girl and her family and their experiences during the Cambodian Holocaust
I had never heard of it.  Even though it took place in her lifetime, my mother had never heard of it.  Neither had most of the people I asked about it in the following months.  How, I thought, can millions– millions –of
people be systematically exterminated by their own government, and the rest of the world not bat an eye?  I still do not know the answer.

When I was pregnant with Maya, I read a National Geograpic article on modern-day slavery . I read it alone in a booth in the student center.  When I was finished, I sat there a long time stunned and unable to move, trying to fit this new information in with my existing world-view.

This ,of course, is one of my pet causes.  I am astounded at the lengths corperations will go to to make a buck, regardless of the people they harm in the process. Nestle is the target of a boycott in 20 countries because it agressively markets baby foods, breaking World Heath Assembly marketing requirements and cotributing to the death and suffering of infants around the world.

Becoming a mother has magnified my sense of injustice tenfold (and I don’t think it was dormant before…), and I can hardly read these things now without utter despair…

This breaks my heart.  In ancient Greece, babies with disabilities were left out in the elements to die. We in America rely on prenatal genetic testing to make our selections in private, but the effect on society is the same.

And one more .  There are no words for this one.  Why the children of Uganda are killing one another in the name of the Lord.

I keep running in to it, painfully, jarringly–this is a broken and dying world.  Utterly unredeemable on it’s own–too lost, too broken.  I stay so stupidly distracted.  I keep coming back to the same place of oblivion and apathy.

How is it that we have a Savior, an omnipotent God, who looks down on this mess and has compassion?

I am in love with citrus fruit.   Last week when I was shopping without a list and on an empty stomach, I picked up a organic blood orange.  (I never eat citrus fruit to speak of, because when I was little I hated the pith.)  I ate it that night.  It was spectacular!  Not only was it juicy and delicious, it was pretty.  The rind was soft and easy to peel, and it was such a sunny, orangey orange.  The fruit inside was almost purple.  It was a feast.

Since then, I have tried honey tangerines (eh), plain old tangerines (organic, and yummy), satsumas (tangy and wonderful), and minneolas (bordering on sour, but pretty good).

I’ve also been eating a lot of kiwi.  What sweet little fuzzy fruit they are. And such convenient packaging–slice ’em in half, and eat em with a spoon.

High-fructose corn syrup and red dye number 7 have got nothing on fruit.  Yay God!

We’re going to see the African Children’s Choir tonight.  I am very excited.   They’re going to be in
Little Rock, Conway and Cabot within the next month, too.  Just so you know.