the week in review

Over the past week I have been reading and watching the events in Myanmar (formerly known as Burma). On Friday night as I lay down to sleep I reviewed the information from the week. I reviewed the things I had done and said to increase awareness and inform my family and friends of the events. I thought about the amount of wealth, time and power we have as Americans and how little we use those things in defense of others.

I admit that I feel powerless and overwhelmed in the face of global crisis. I have information at my fingertips and see injustice. I want to be able to change things and to use my power as a person to make it right. However I can’t change it with a keystroke, a signature, and all the funds in my bank account or with the sheer force of the emotion that I feel in my heart. I know that the only thing I can do is provide information to the people who want to listen and be faithful to my beliefs. I am one person and I stand against violence, hatred, injustice, cruelty and evil. I stand against the things with every fiber of my being.

The situation in Myanmar is declining. People around the world held their breath at the end of last week hoping that the UN Envoy to Burma would bring Peace to the crisis. Unfortunately those prayers and hopes weren’t answered. A UN statement from Sunday said that the special envoy Ibrahim Gambari has so far been unable to talk to Burma's most senior general, and he is extending his stay in an effort to secure a meeting. The politicians and the head of the Burmese military have ignored the international community and the UN’s effort to bring stability and peace to the region. The news has begun to trickle out again despite the loss of internet and phone lines and it seems that much to our horror the real death count is much higher than anyone could have imagined. Today a photo was released of a monk floating dead in the river beaten and tortured. Thousands of people have been arrested. There are monks that are being tried in mock courts after being forced to take off their sacred robes and cruelly abused in prisons – their only crimes being that they will no longer quietly sit and allow the dictatorship to subject the citizens to poverty, genocide and rape.

I found the words below to really put things into perspective for me.

“We are just the ordinary people struggling and working for our family’s needs everyday. We stage our protests out of our courage to fight against the dictatorship. We are not well-funded, well-supported nor well-organized. Against all the odds and all the bullets from the soldiers rifles, there are monks, students and people out there in Burma marching and sacrificing their lives for what they believe and what they have been longing for - free Burma where everyone is free from fear, free from dictatorship, free to think, free to express one’s belief, free to do a business and free to have a control over one’s own life. For many ordinary people in Burma, their only glimpse of hope to stop the military regime's act of atrocities, is the intervention by the international community. They keep praying that UN or international forces will miraculously appear in Yangon where people are being killed and evidence of corpses are being removed by burning them.”

I know that I cannot sit idly by. I know that I cannot sleep well with the freedom and comfort that has been inherited by my citizenship. I feel that I owe it to myself to give everything I can in an effort to make the world a better place. I received a response the other day after my first email out about this subject and it simply said “I should be removed from your list. I’m not much for changing the world.” Now I realize that there are different ways of living and different ways of looking at the world but that was shocking. That was a friend that I have spent years listening to and supporting. I have given my time and love to someone that will not return kindness to people that cannot help themselves. Please don’t misunderstand my words – I don’t think everyone has to feel the way I do. I don’t think that everyone has to sign a petition to be friends with me but I DO believe strongly that there is no room in my life for people that are simply selfish. Who thinks to themselves ‘I have the power to change the world but I don’t really care and so I’m choosing NOT to. I’m making a conscious decision to deny hope, change and peace to people in need.’

It’s not that I think I am better than anyone. It’s not that I think I know all the answers. It’s that I think and feel and act with compassion and with love towards others. I’m simply trying to be the best person I know how and using my voice. I hope that the world will one day be a place in which war and atrocities are a distant memory. I pray for it everyday.

May I become at all times, both now and forever
A protector for those without protection
A guide for those who have lost their way
A ship for those with oceans to cross
A bridge for those with rivers to cross
A sanctuary for those in danger
A lamp for those without light
A place of refuge for those who lack shelter
And a servant to all in need.

Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama