Update: This blog is another piece to the whole picture. Like I said later in this post, we can’t take care of our own, can we?  http://anarchistsoccermom.blogspot.com/2012/12/thinking-unthinkable.html 

It has been a while since I have been here. My heart goes out to the Sandy Hook Elementary folks and I do have to feel a slight fear as I work at a local high school teaching ASL.  What I experience now and what I experienced back in high school, totally different. I have two children, my oldest, close to the age of the children.  Now we have the Westboro Baptist Church coming in to picket the school all because of the existence of gay people?

One can’t help but wonder….. what are we coming to?  I have said this before, things are going to be changing. No matter what folks say about the Mayan calendar…

Do you want to know an irony?

It just hit me.

We go to war with countries that have religious fanatics such as Shiites and other factors of Islam religions.  We complain or bemoan the fact that our soldiers go to war in those countries.  We do have the First Amendment which grants us 4 freedoms: the right to assemble, the right to practice whichever religions we practice, the right to speech (public proclamations, not spoken language) and the freedom of the press.

It falls to this…we cannot even take care of our own. We just can’t, can’t we? 230 some years since the Founding Fathers came together to create the Constitution, I ever wonder if they truly ever thought this far ahead?  I imagine they would be like the older people, resistant to the inevitable change that is coming.  It would be unfathomable to the Founding Fathers that we would remove what is dear to our hearts, the ability to pray, from schools.  Every religion, from its extreme and to barely non-existent; we pray.

While we have words, like the “Lord’s Prayer” to guide us, we must question ourselves, do we believe in what we pray for?  Consider what you pray for, is it truly relevant to the way we live our lives now?  What services are we rendering ourselves with those kind of prayers.  When we pray for other countries whose religions are different from ours, do we pray for peace and mean it, or pray for God to strike them dead?

We have yet to truly try to stay at home, look into ourselves as individuals, as citizens and as Americans (regardless of what kind of person we physically are) and make a difference.  We say this but mean another.  We all have a part in the actions of the nation.

Gun laws, increased regulation for gun control? Not the answer, the politicians do not care (most of them) because with power comes money.  Day by day, many of us will continue to be disempowered and disenfranchised by those who believe they have the ‘power’ while they have the money.  Not only is it a continuation, many join our ranks from all four corners of our country.  It is people, not guns, which is the problem. Westboro Baptist Church is a good example of what kind of damage a group of people can do, utilizing situations that are of deep importance and significant impact on families, communities and our nation, to battle something incomprehensible.

The Texas A&M students and faculty fought back.  Locally, the honor guard fought back. Each of us have contributed one way or another to the folks who lived through Hurricane Sandy and the storm system that came after that.  That is hope.  Or from Star Wars, where Luke tells Leia about their father and she asks why Luke has to face him. “There is good in him, I know. That is why I have to do it.”

Hope, one of our strongest emotion.  Do we Love our nation enough to fight back, regardless which party you belong to? Regardless which religion, school of thought, or scientific practice?  Do we hinge our lives on being a superpower nation by ignoring our problems at home?  We will battle this and that, we are fragmented and broken.  While we are not at war at home, this I believe to be far worst that the War between the North and South.

Hope, we must have hope.  We must remember that our Love outweighs many things and brings us through our sufferings. We must not forget the significance of prayer, Pray as you mean it.

Pray. Hope. Love. Cherish. Forgive. Temperance. Kindness.