FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 780

Our community in conversation creates life. If we converse well, we get life. If we choose to converse about death and dysfunction and duality, we breed assassination, rape, terror.

We can choose to take our world into our hands and make it a living place that works for all. This is the issue of our age. We can choose how we meet it.

We do choose how we meet it every day: sometimes we choose to converse with others about what we might do—and then do it; most often we shake our heads and go back to our half-pounder with cheese and bacon and fries—eaten alone inside our SUV. We get what we converse about. If we are to deserve more, we need to take the risk of starting the conversation.

This does not mean we close our eyes to assassination, rape, and terror, and turn our news programs into sugar-coated fantasies. What we can do is turn our attention to the ways people are meeting these challenges. This is the real news, not the sensationalism which leads us to despair and felt terror. This is the really sensational: humans meeting the challenge. We can pay attention to the challenge, or we can invest our attention into the work of meeting the challenge. So our news becomes stories of people working between the bombs and in the burned-out places to bind wounds, build new things, and grow people. No more just Hell only. Hell and grace.

But the key lies not in our news programs. We can choose today to turn them off. The key lies in choosing today: life or death? Hell only, or Hell and grace?

Please pass it on.

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