CURBS

In response to the journal writing which I posted on yesterday's BLOG, my very close friend Bob Smith sent me the note which I have posteds below. His words are more appropriate for the BLOG today than anything I can think to say. Bob lives in Anchorage.

In some ways I benefit from the advantages and privileges of citizenship, gender, and race. I am a white male citizen of the USA and that puts me at the top of the socio political economic food chain at this point in time. All that is artificial in terms of intrinsic value as a human being. On most days I see myself as other, neither here or there, neither a citizen of a particular county, member of a particular gender or race. I am a person, a human being, like every other human being struggling to be part of humanity. There are no boundries really, there is no natural selection to privilege, there is no divine right of anyone or anything...it's just us...globally universally us! Sometimes it's just me and a man from another place on the face of the earth, our paths cross and for a rare and precious moment we travel together. That moment can have no impact or it can change my own course or worldview. The tension is always between believing in nationhood, race, gender, and any other artificial category or believing in life. I choose to believe in life...so that my descendents can live peaceably alongside everyone else on this planet. Wise religious story tellers ascribed such a belief as a mandate from one they called God. And God said: "This day I call heaven and earth as my witnesses...I set before you life and death, blessings and curses. Now choose life, so that you and your children may live..." The tension around your experience with the man from Honduras is the tension between the life you live and the destructive forces of naming another human being by nationality which is not where you live. A brother is a brother is a brother is a brother, you who have met many have met another one. I'm glad our paths crossed and I fully understand, appreciate, and celebrate the impact of our meeting. I'm glad to be your brother too. Bob