The Reinvention of the Wheel

Isn't it odd how life can roll full circle? I remember listening to U2's Joshua Tree and the Rattle and Hum album until the wee hours of the morning when I was a teenager. It was a cassette, actually, and I'd lie in bed with my mon's old lava lamp, think about the famine in Ethiopia, those horrible commericials with flies in childrens' eyes and wonder why more isn't done "in the name of love"? It broke my heart. So, I went to Jamaica to serve on my first foreign mission. That broke my heart even more. Old women without arms and legs shouldn't have to rock in a rusted baby crib like Weeble Wobbles in rags with chickens pecking the bugs off of the floor. And that poor woman should not have had the joy to be able to sing Amazing Grace with me. Not when I was whining about the hot water running out in the shower at the hotel that morning. People were still dying. People were still living unequally. My heart was still broken.

I've learned recently from a friend that I could be described as a passionate person. When my heart is convicted, pricked of a need, an injustice, a desire to love, I have to do it. I have to go; I have to put out the fire. I have to heal my heart ache. Don't think I'm wonderful. This can be what is known in Shakespearean literature as a "tragic flaw".

Flash forward twenty years... Ethiopia's famine is over, though the land and people haven't recovered from its effects. Three years ago, I laid on my bed in Phnom Penh with the newest U2 album (a CD this time)-How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb-while finishing paperwork to assist on a medical mission several hours away the next morning. Pills for pain, dressings for landmine wounds that won't heal; rice for starving babies, numbers to hand out becuase only 150 people can be seen... All the while listening to Bono scream to God and people:
Lay down
Lay down your guns
All your daughters of Zion
All your Abraham sons
I don’t know if I can make it
I’m not easy on my knees
Here’s my heart and you can break it
I need some release, release, release
We need Love and peace
Love and peace

Sometimes I want to scream for release.

Somewhere in Ethiopia a soul is carrying a child that will become my son or daughter because she will die of AIDS, malaria, or can't find food. That breaks my heart. I don't want this to be a depressing post; I'm just expressing some thoughts I've had lately. I'll try to write something more humorous next week. I'm not drepressed; just not content with all parts of the planet. But I do hope you are passionate about something, and that that passion helps make the world a more equal place. I know this video has been around-especially among those interested in African issues, but it seemed appropriate to post it today. Just sharing a little of my passion (peace, Bono, ending hunger, establishing global equality, etc...) with you. And maybe when this wheel makes full circle again in twenty years all people will have been provided with a $10.00 mosquito net; they'll be a cure for AIDS that pharmaceutical companies choose to share with the poor; there will be no more orphans in Ethiopia, and my heart will find release.