Yesterday I had an 11 am start at work. The lights were not working when I got off the highway. Everyone was very courteous and stopped at each light, behaving like it was a 4 way stop. I climbed 8 flights of stairs and we sat in the heat, with minimal lighting until 4 when they sent us home. Aside from not being able to do our work, the one thing that seemed to bother most people was the ice maker not working; we had running water. Boy, what an inconvenience! At one point I mentioned that I had a large gourd back at my desk and they could borrow it to go down to the river to fetch some water.
This is what my daughter calls a first world problem. I think of the hundreds of thousands pouring out of Syria into the desert refugee camps with no running water, no sanitation, very little shelter. I think of poor villages all over the world where people walk far to fetch dirty water. I think of babies dying from dysentery simply because there isn't clean water and I think, "we can do better."
My having clean water does not alleviate the need for others to have clean water. In this world we share resources whether we want to or not. There are reports that the radiation from the Japanese reactor meltdown is affecting the fish in the Pacific ocean. "Don't eat Pacific seafood" people are saying. But how long before that water covers the Earth? The air pollution in China affects everyone. The acid rain from American power plants affects lakes in other countries.
The Baha'i prophet, Baha'u'llah, proclaimed that "The Earth is one country and Mankind it's citizens." I believe that. Today is the start of the Jewish New Year. My wish for my Jewish friends and family is for love and health, laughter and compassion. My wish for everyone else is this, love and health, laughter and compassion. Let's work to wipe out greed, misanthropy, small mindedness, religious intolerance, political intolerance, preventable death, cruelty, sexual and other slavery, hunger and dirty water.
Happy New Year, dear friends, happy new year.
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