Stories and Stingyness

My thoughts today..The world is so much smaller than it once was. And we are all connected. I know that people blow that statement off as a bunch of spiritual hoo-haa, but as I read all these news reports and see the news in the last several days, I see that maybe it is hitting home.

Money, wealth, privilege, skin color or race etc does not register on the scale when The Universe/Mother Nature is concerned.



I have thought of how we are constantly jamming metal drills into the Earth to suck oil out of her, spilling oil into their oceans, and over-fishing her seas. But we expect no repercussions. We treat the poor terribly and do not pay them what their service is worth, only enough to enable them to continue to live in poverty, claiming they can't handle having the standard of living for financial resources the rest of us have. We think things do not touch us because we are not in their shoes. We think it is God's will that there are have's and have nots. But this earthquake and tsunami disaster really brought it home. We are all connected.



I find myself in grievous tears at various times of the day, reading the articles on the tsunami disaster: The woman who had to rip off all her clothes except her bra and cling to a floating tree in the ocean in order to survive; and the mother who was left naked when the tsunami ripped the clothes from her body, and in that naked state she was forced to quickly decide which of her two children (ages 5 and 2) to save; and the heartwrenching innocent response of her mud-covered older child who managed to survive the deadly waters by doggy-paddling and clinging to a hotel door while waters rushed past him: "My hands are dirty. I need to wash my clothes".



And in the USA, it seems this helped to increase US donation ten-fold:



The New York Times Editorial: Are We Stingy? Yes