Sunday Musings - November 18, 2018
No matter how old I get every time I travel to some distant place it feels like magic. Just last Sunday I was in the Dallas area and this Sunday I am in my home in Wheeling. Yesterday I was in Pittsburgh – approximately 60 miles from my home. Even that brief distance could have taken two to three days via horse and buggy although some military people traveled that far in a day. That would have been exhausting for both rider and horse. On Monday night I traveled the approximately 1060 miles between Dallas, Texas and Pittsburgh in about 150 minutes. Many of us have and do travel from coast to coast or from the East Coast to Paris or another location in Europe and back in the course of the same weekend. Travel to the space station takes less than six hours. I often receive notes via the internet in a matter of a matter of seconds. In fact, emails now travel 85,000 miles in a second. Telephone conversations are even faster.
All this is to say that we keep shrinking our world. I can be instantly aware of what is happening around the planet. I am also more aware of what is happening in the universe. Yet, the more our world shrinks the more we are aware of the unequal distribution of resources. We are confronted with the fact that we humans have more in common with each other than we have differences. We are forced to create more physical, social, and “moral” constructs in an effort to prove to ourselves that our worth is more so that we can convince ourselves our life has meaning and we can justify having more of the resources than we need. I have a relatively small house which is just over 1000 square feet which houses two places to eat, two full size beds, two couches which can easily accommodate four more people, more clothes than I can wear in a week even if I switch every day (probably more than I could wear in a month), enough food In the pantry and the freezer to feed many people for days, and a host of other stuff. Just this morning I talk to a homeless person and read about all those who were grateful for the Thanksgiving food basket giveaway sponsored by a local church. With the help of many in the community this church provided food baskets, school supplies and other necessities for hundreds of people. Other churches and organizations will assist many more in the community. Many of us pat ourselves on the back for sharing a tiny bit of the excess which we had no inherent right to in the first place.
The People University Class I am attending this week had another look at the United States Constitution and The Bill of Rights. The professor, Dr. Lofaso, challenged us to look at such phrases as “all men” within the context of the culture in which these European, Caucasian land owners penned these words. Our understanding of that phase has evolved and, yet, we live in a time when that evolution evokes fear and, thus new lies under the guise of new and old social constructs – immigrant, criminals, lazy, freeloaders, terrorists and many others.
Again, as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. I must ask, “Who am I?” What if my worth is independent of bank account, gender, sexual orientation, degrees, age or other superficial factors and social constructs? What does generous mean when I have more than my share?
Witten November 18, 2018
No matter how old I get every time I travel to some distant place it feels like magic. Just last Sunday I was in the Dallas area and this Sunday I am in my home in Wheeling. Yesterday I was in Pittsburgh – approximately 60 miles from my home. Even that brief distance could have taken two to three days via horse and buggy although some military people traveled that far in a day. That would have been exhausting for both rider and horse. On Monday night I traveled the approximately 1060 miles between Dallas, Texas and Pittsburgh in about 150 minutes. Many of us have and do travel from coast to coast or from the East Coast to Paris or another location in Europe and back in the course of the same weekend. Travel to the space station takes less than six hours. I often receive notes via the internet in a matter of a matter of seconds. In fact, emails now travel 85,000 miles in a second. Telephone conversations are even faster.
All this is to say that we keep shrinking our world. I can be instantly aware of what is happening around the planet. I am also more aware of what is happening in the universe. Yet, the more our world shrinks the more we are aware of the unequal distribution of resources. We are confronted with the fact that we humans have more in common with each other than we have differences. We are forced to create more physical, social, and “moral” constructs in an effort to prove to ourselves that our worth is more so that we can convince ourselves our life has meaning and we can justify having more of the resources than we need. I have a relatively small house which is just over 1000 square feet which houses two places to eat, two full size beds, two couches which can easily accommodate four more people, more clothes than I can wear in a week even if I switch every day (probably more than I could wear in a month), enough food In the pantry and the freezer to feed many people for days, and a host of other stuff. Just this morning I talk to a homeless person and read about all those who were grateful for the Thanksgiving food basket giveaway sponsored by a local church. With the help of many in the community this church provided food baskets, school supplies and other necessities for hundreds of people. Other churches and organizations will assist many more in the community. Many of us pat ourselves on the back for sharing a tiny bit of the excess which we had no inherent right to in the first place.
The People University Class I am attending this week had another look at the United States Constitution and The Bill of Rights. The professor, Dr. Lofaso, challenged us to look at such phrases as “all men” within the context of the culture in which these European, Caucasian land owners penned these words. Our understanding of that phase has evolved and, yet, we live in a time when that evolution evokes fear and, thus new lies under the guise of new and old social constructs – immigrant, criminals, lazy, freeloaders, terrorists and many others.
Again, as we prepare to celebrate Thanksgiving in the United States. I must ask, “Who am I?” What if my worth is independent of bank account, gender, sexual orientation, degrees, age or other superficial factors and social constructs? What does generous mean when I have more than my share?
Witten November 18, 2018
RSS Feed