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We are God's eyes God's hands God's heart - Jewel "51k" 640x480 | "74k" 800x600 |
focus 5% on who to blame and 95% on how to healWe can't fix it. We can't ignore it. Bout all that's left to do is improve it. What can I do, you might ask. Here's all we've come up with around here so far.
I know from personal experience that music can and does influence us. The songs "deacon blues" and "so lonesome I could cry" have both pushed me up to the edge of suicide in the past and "A Hero" by Mariah Carey, "Ya Gotta Be" by Desiree, "The Greatest Love of All" by Whitney Houston and "We Shall Be Free" by Garth Brooks were all on a tape that I put together and listened to for a year to pull me out of the bad habit of chronic depression. By the way, it worked too and as you can probably see, considerably better than we expected.
We can write to our favorite song writers and ask them to write five times as many songs that glamorize love, friendship, acceptance and peaceful resolutions. I know in my heart that many of them began writing healing songs as soon as they heard of Columbine. But we need even more than that. It seems that the more we fight against musical groups, movies and computer games that glamorize and encourage murdering people, the more we empower conflict and that sells even more of their products. Hating them doesn't help. When I see them I pray for their hearts to be touched and turned. Besides, there are too many entertainers that have good hearts, if we could get their help, get them to sing five times the good and healthy stuff, that would overwhelm the cancer, dramatically reduce it and even possibly.... defeat it. But defeat isn't necessary, even improvement is worth our effort. If it saves even one child it's worth it, especially if it's your child.
We can each reach out to more people with kindness. This is my friend Deanna's work, normally used to help reduce suicidal depression and feelings of alienation. But it works beautifully with kids that are having a rough time at school too. Parents, teachers and even classmates can do these things. It's a checklist of ways to help each other feel accepted and loved every day. It's important because it's beautiful, effective and most of us thought it went without saying. We were wrong. Curious about how you've been doing? Look and see for yourself.
Students, here are a few stories from Chicken Soup For the Soul For Kids and also from Chicken Soup for the Teen Soul, that offer some interesting recipes you might like to follow.
People kill because they are in a state of intense anger. Anger rises in us when we feel one of our rules has been broken. And it doesn't matter how wise or ignorant that rule is either. So one thing I'd especially like your help with is creating a collection of rules that kids can look at to help them suffer less anger of their own or anyone elses.
Please e-mail me any rules you live by that make it difficult for someone's hateful, rude or disrespectful behavior to get to you. For example, if your rule is that "Every communication is either a cry for help or a loving affirmation." then it's going to be very difficult to be upset by what someone says or even the way they say it.
Also, please e-mail me any rules you live by that prevent you being rude or disrespectful to anyone different from yourself. For example, if your rule is the same as Mother Teresa's, "Quit trying to live like Jesus Christ, and start treating everyone around you as if they are Jesus Christ." then it's going to be very difficult to be rude to anyone. Least it will be if you're a Christian. What's amazing about that rule is that it's just as effective when you use the name of anyone you look up to, even if you look up to Marilyn Manson.
As soon as we can get a decent list together I'm going to send it to the manager of every teacher and/or student web ring and see just how fast we can get it passed around. Do I think for a second this will end school shootings? No. But I know that it has to help a little. And I know that evil will prevail when good people do nothing and I don't know about you, but I'm getting pretty sick and tired of evil prevailing so much lately.
Oklahoma City, Jonesboro, Springfield, the others, now Littleton..... these are some of the largest and most horrible alarm clocks of our times here in America. They are calling good people like you and me to get up and take action to spread more light, love, joy, acceptance and forgiveness throughout ourselves, our families, our communities and our world. If you haven't felt called yet, if those families waiting at the last in Colorado aren't enough, thats okay. Perhaps it will be the next alarm clock that will compell you to take action. I never took a step until I felt called either.
Evil will fail when enough good people take action.Every terrible thing that happens to us either makes us think more or think less, makes us stronger or weaker, kinder or more cruel, sit down or step up. I personally refuse to allow evil to make me think less, be weaker, more cruel and it will never get me to sit down. Never. Evil is ignorance and the only time ignorance and cruelty beat wisdom and kindness is when good people keep waiting for "someone else" to take action.
About this picture: Regular visitors to this site know I put these wallpapers together myself, most often using public domain images and original text unless noted otherwise. This last week when the horrible news of Littleton hit, my friend Bill's alarm clocks went off, but he hit the snooze button and immediately asked, "What on earth could be good about this one?" His answer was, "It's a chance to do something to keep some of this from happening again. A wallpaper..." He called me and asked if I'd do one. Instead, I thought, since it was his idea, and he's a former teacher, it would be better for his personal healing to create it himself, including the text.
Bill says that ideas are like dandelion seeds. We never know where they'll take root and grow, so this dandelion picture taken by Bill's dad in the early 1970's was the perfect image. Bill said his dad, Cornelius, took over 10,000 photographs as an amateur photographer before he died in 1997.
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