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October 31^st, 2006

Happy Halloween (to all those who observe this festvie and long lasting tradition)

So it's a time in my life where I am faced with many challenges and thoughts of change and renewly. Ironic, it being fall. The weather is cooling off and my life is heating up. I'm looking at my job, my life, and my future differently all the time. I've hit the three decades point this year, with the change in perspective and of course the experience of an aging physical condition. But thats life we change with time and we gain wisdom in exchange for the loss of youth. Traumatic I will admit but well worth I think.

But that's not what I want to talk about this week... or this year judging by the frequency of my rants on this site.

What I want to talk about this rant is the dull ache that I have developed in my heart and mind whenever I think to the south. No not down there, the United States of America. Where I have many friends and have even visited and been impressed and yet saddened by many of the things I have seen.

I was recently blessed with the moving experience of hearing a presentation by a child survivor of the hollicaust. A wonderfully forgiving and strong woman who was 9 when the Second World War began and lived in hiding, under fear of death by the Nazis, along with her mother until the war ended. When she was asked about the beginning of the rise of power of the Nazi Party in Germany in the last 1930's she spoke about how the Jewish community was denied their rights and priviledges slowly at the beginning, subtly even. With the removal of the right to property and contractual rights, then the freedom of movement and where they could live or work was curtailed. This then was followed by people being rounded up and disappearing and then the mass murders of the camps and coordinated attempt at extinguishing an entire people.

Listening to the stories, tears in my eyes, I could think of a few things that really struck me about her story and how it related to me.

1) The first was my responsibility to never forget what was done, as no one should forget. So that we as a human race can never forget and never allow it to happen again.

2) How the horrors of an entire race, being difficult to conceptualise, are far easier to handle emotionally than the story of one little girl, huddled under a bed terrified that the next person she sees will humilliate, torture, and kill her - for the mere crime of being herself. As individuals we are struck far more firmly by the stories of other individuals.

3) How subtly the removal of the rights of any one group can be accomplished and how even members of that group can fail to see it.

This powerful and amazing woman, very astoutly commented that, seeing any government passing laws that refuse or remove the rights of any group is a sign to her of a problem that the entire world should find terrifying. This brought me back to point one, never forgetting.

Homosexuals were one of the groups that was rounded up and put in the camps as well as the Jews in the Second World War. Something struck me when she spoke of the curtailling of rights, as she spoke specifically of governments passing laws to block or remove the rights of specific groups, that I had heard in the United States that the rights of same-sex couples to have a contract of any kind was being blocked through the passing of laws to actually forbid it. I am not sure if it was federal or state laws, nor am I a legal expert so I may have my facts wrong, but I do know for a fact that the federal government of the U.S. was debating a "protection of marriage act" to not only deny the rights of gays and lesbians to marry by not extending the rights that heterosexuals in their country enjoy simply by being alive, but rather passing a law that would forbid same-sex couples from ever being married.

So a beginning is to remove our rights to share property, and then remove our rights to share our lives. What's next; saying where we can live and where we can work?

Not forgetting the log in my country's eye even the "enlightened" Canada has a government - particularly the "Convservative" members, who seem to think that the rights of one group or another is not constant but rather a way of gaining votes. I, having confidence in my country, hope that our elected officials will see the wisdom of our culture, and that we are not the United States, and keep Canada as the country which it is known to be. A country that respects and encourages diversity, that protects human rights, not destroys them.

It can be rather disheartening to see people discussing the rights of other humans like it's their job to choose who has rights and who does not. You want to take away the rights of others, don't forget, the next people to have their rights removed might be you. You want to deny the right for gays and lesbians to get married? Maybe we'll get involved in removing the rights of all people to get married. You want to deny the rights of First Nations' Peoples to have clean and healthy living conditions? Maybe they will get together and force you to give them back the clean and furtile lands we took from thei ancestors. You want to take your businesses to other countries to get away with paying less and ignoring environmental laws? Maybe your company will be the straw that broke the camel's back and the develping nations will stop letting you get away with it and begin demanding just as much of you as the rest of the world. Then we'll all be screwed - capitalism would well and truely fail. Then we'd have to learn how to look after ourselves and one another for sure. Who says a little chaos wasn't a good thing?

I am ashamed to say that I become very angry when I think about the ways that people treat others. Angry at them for wanting to harm others just for the sake of feeling better about themselves or improving their own lives. Angry that I'm not doing enough to stop it. Angry at the peoples of the world for allowing it to happen.

Something that the woman who told her story said to me afterward gives me a glimmer though. I had asked her that about her experience of God in that time of such death and fear. She replied that, of course she had prayed every day and practiced her faith as any devoted Jew would but, that where she and many other experienced the divine was is the thoughts of hope. Hope was what got them through each day. Hope that the world would wake up and do something. Hope of being rescued, hope of an end to pain. That hope gave them strength to go on, to persevere. From the story that I heard, that hope nurtured the love between friends, between family, and made people do extraordinary things. Like a mother taking her daughter and two other children out of the ghettos herself when the other adults had agreed that the only way to get away was to leave them behind. Hope - it's a small word but it gives us all something so big. When people are at thei darkest they can have hope for themselves, others, the world, the universe.

Hope, sprang up inside to nurture love. That hope came from their faith; not just in an image of God or in an ideal but in people, in the world around them. Faith - not just as a belief but as a trust. To trust that we will learn from our mistakes, that others will learn with us. That we can become better than we are than we have been. This is what keeps me from giving up.

To have faith, gives you hope, and causes acts of love. I think that's the best way to be. Don't just hope but trust and believe in something or someone, then find that drive to do what is right to show love, compassion, caring, and act. Act to make the world a better place. Act to understand and to stand up for what is right.

It is my firm belief that when we have hope we can act with love and be fearless that that love will persevere. Some may not get through, many will suffer and weap and claw at the world for the pain it gives us, and it will be terrible. But in the end, love will save us all if we have the faith to live in hope.

Just a thought.

Ryan

PS Don't forget to caontact your political representatives and tell them that you demand that they protect the rights of an oppressed people the next chance you get. (And no - conservatives are not oppressed - althouhg gay republicans may be a product of self-oppression [seriously boys you being rich and old doesn't make homophobia disappear from our streets and schools]).

Email me at ryan_fea@hotmail.com

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1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2006 Ryan E. C. Fea

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