The words of a dead man...

Tonight, I am sodden in this.  I, too, am a human.  I, too, feel the unjust in what has just happened.  When will we stop killing?  For EVERY reason.

Below is a letter from Troy Anthony Davis, his body now dead and his soul returned to its source.  His work in this lifetime brought us to this pivotal point in the growth of the Collective Soul of Humanity.  When will it stop?

To All:

I want to thank all of you for your efforts and dedication to Human Rights and Human Kindness, in the past year I have experienced such emotion, joy, sadness and never ending faith. It is because of all of you that I am alive today, as I look at my sister Martina I am marveled by the love she has for me and of course I worry about her and her health, but as she tells me she is the eldest and she will not back down from this fight to save my life and prove to the world that I am innocent of this terrible crime.

As I look at my mail from across the globe, from places I have never ever dreamed I would know about and people speaking languages and expressing cultures and religions I could only hope to one day see first hand. I am humbled by the emotion that fills my heart with overwhelming, overflowing Joy. I can’t even explain the insurgence of emotion I feel when I try to express the strength I draw from you all, it compounds my faith and it shows me yet again that this is not a case about the death penalty, this is not a case about Troy Davis, this is a case about Justice and the Human Spirit to see Justice prevail.

I cannot answer all of your letters but I do read them all, I cannot see you all but I can imagine your faces, I cannot hear you speak but your letters take me to the far reaches of the world, I cannot touch you physically but I feel your warmth everyday I exist.

So Thank you and remember I am in a place where execution can only destroy your physical form but because of my faith in God, my family and all of you I have been spiritually free for some time and no matter what happens in the days, weeks to come, this Movement to end the death penalty, to seek true justice, to expose a system that fails to protect the innocent must be accelerated. There are so many more Troy Davis’. This fight to end the death penalty is not won or lost through me but through our strength to move forward and save every innocent person in captivity around the globe. We need to dismantle this Unjust system city by city, state by state and country by country.

I can’t wait to Stand with you, no matter if that is in physical or spiritual form, I will one day be announcing,

“I AM TROY DAVIS, and I AM FREE!”

Never Stop Fighting for Justice and We will Win!

The greatest dichotomy...

It isn't black versus white.
It isn't good or evil.

It's the cavernous and almost endless stretch of pain, injustice, abuse, neglect and power that extends the distance between poverty and wealth.

Poor versus Rich.
Give versus Take.
Life versus Death.

It is no longer a catchy and kitschy theme for a Hollywood television show or comedy a la the rags to riches variety.  It's a terrifying and ever worsening two-headed dragon that humanity has single-handedly created.  It's a beast that has been fed  with the blood, fear and lives of countless human beings.  And it is a beast that is killing hundreds of millions of people around the world.  Tens of thousands while you read this.

You know the headlines.  You've seen the pictures.  But it's worse than you think.  It's worse than even I can imagine.  The "causes" themselves are the new players in the game of wealth versus poverty.  We believe that good people and organizations are doing their best to address the needs of those trapped in man-made poverty/war/starvation all over the world, but more than you can begin to imagine, we are led to believe something is happening (with, perhaps, our own money) but in reality, we're being lied to about what is really happening.

In this article in TIME, an employee who works for one international aid organization admits:

"Western aid agencies aren't reaching many of the starving. Some, incredibly, are pretending they are. Oxfam is one agency raising money for Somalia and claiming to be reaching hundreds of thousands when, as a spokesman admitted to TIME, it doesn't actually distribute food and has no staff in the famine area. Less disingenuous agencies will admit the emergency operation is not going well."

This, sadly, is one admission to the crimes being committed in the world by the very people we put our faith and home in to do the work we cannot do ourselves.  Or can we?

It doesn't seem impossible once you begin to consider that the starving child in Somalia is your child.  When you look at another human being as yourself, as your loved one, as your own child then everything in your heart changes.  What you pay attention to changes.  What you advocate for changes.  What you can do grows bigger.  You grow bigger.  And it is in the growing bigger that you do within yourself where the change in the world begins to happen.  Your single consciousness can ignite a fire powerful enough to spread across the globe - and change the hearts and minds of people you'll never know as it catches flame between you and your friends - to their friends and their friends' friends.

It's the pebble in the pond.  It's one small change in your world that can make a change and bring balance to the dichotomy between extreme wealth and poverty-disease-starvation.  It's your heart - and your informed mind - that can and must insist on fairness and equality in the world.

One day, we can and WILL live in a world where hundreds of thousands of human beings don't die of starvation mere miles from stockpiles of food.

Heal the world... You can make it a better place.

There'd better be a good excuse for a blogger with a fair number of regular followers in all corners of the globe - from Demark to Hong Kong, Romania to Sri Lanka and Argentina to Israel - to disappear for six weeks, right?  Well, I've certainly got a good reason -- and countless stories to tell.

I've spent six weeks in a part of the world with the greatest dichotomies I can imagine.  I've seen the richest of the rich living fat and happily on one side of a concrete wall while the most poverty stricken human beings live on the other.  That these extremes exist is heart-wrenching in and of itself - that they exist within a stone's throw of one another is unfathomable.  That they live daily with the reality of each other is heartbreaking.  That nothing is being done to change this is criminal.

I've seen poverty, slums, starvation, corruption, child prostitution, abuse of power, child neglect, beggars, crippled outcasts, blatant pollution, hard labor, bare feet on city streets, animals and children eating from dumps, trash in national parks, exploitation of natives, parading of culture for commercial consumption, exploitation of those doing good and false promises by those who should be doing good.  I've seen it all, I've felt it all, I've been changed by it all.

There will be many stories to come but this is the opening of the box of souvenirs I brought home in my own heart - a collection of vile and screaming injustices that must be changed in the world.  I ask you to join me, if only in your heart.  Open up, ask yourself to give your attention and compassion to any of these stories and you will have made the first step.

I'll see you there - where we are changing the world, one step at a time.