Faithful Philly Forum

Poor Jesus. For all the people who truly heard his message there were so many more who did not get it. Even among the people for whom he worked miraculous healing. One day it was two blind men who were given sight, at least of the material kind. He asked them to keep quiet but they ran off shouting the news. Another time he healed ten men and women with leprosy and only one of them turned back to praise this work of profound, incarnate, power and love.
Buddhist monks incarnate the hopeful, outraged, spirit of love and march in the streets of Myanmar. People notice for a minute when the monks are brutalized, but then they rush off to shout about other things. And see Frank Rich’s op-ed piece in the NY Times on Sunday. The US is using torture techniques developed in Hitler’s Germany. Where is the outrage? Daily we are called see and hear the Incarnation and that which would destroy it … to notice and to choose.

If 20,000 clergy took to the streets in support of democracy in Iraq I find it hard to believe that the US couldn’t find the resolve to encourage such efforts to continue. The Buddhist monks in Myanmar whose number of 400,000 is equal to theat of the military have lent a moral voice and physical presence of protest signaling to the populace they have every right to demand a change in the dictatorial government. So why is it that the US and the rest of the world seem so helpless in the wake of such atrocities? I simply don’t understand how our politicians can be so exorcized about Saddam Hussein’s brutality but plead impotence in the current situation of gunning down citizens, especially unarmed, peaceful ones. Oh yes, I forgot. They don’t have any oil under their soil.

May God bless their efforts because it is clear they are getting no help from the self-declared ‘police force of the world.’