Tuesday, October 14, 2008

what the world needs now...is love

I have been reading a lot lately. My bible, bible studies, books...I am no scholar and all I have to offer is my opinion and my heart...just like everyone else. I just read some articles about politics. Again, I am no scholar. But, I can tell you that the politics of the world, especially of our nation, are making me sick to my stomach right now. Everyone has an opinion...and in fact, I began to wonder why I was even reading the opinions of others when the only opinion on this election that counts for me...is mine. I was reading an article by Eve Ensler (feminist, activist and playwright who wrote The Vagina Monologues) against Sarah Palin. It was so harsh...so personally harsh. I don't know Sarah Palin...but, I have begun to wonder when people stopped being kind. At one time, surely, we were able to express an opinion, without being so downright...well, mean. I know that sounds a bit pithy, but it's true. I don't know...our opinions are about us and how we feel...granted usually how we feel about something external from us...but, still shouldn't we just focus on us rather than the external? How we feel versus what it wrong with someone else? There is nothing we can do to change the external...we can only change ourselves. Maybe these people that are being so unkind think that eventually enough people will listen to them, agree with them and then the external things will begin to change. Well, maybe. But, frankly I would have an easier time (and with a clearer conscience) changing my mind, opinions, thought or beliefs through love and kindness. Hate just makes my stomach turn over. And do people realize that when they try to win their argument and opinion with judgment and hate, every ounce of respect and credibility they had...just went out the window...along with their venomous hot air.

Eve Ensler has done a lot of good for violence against women and human rights...and apparently she really loves polar bears. But, all in all, she is an actress and playwright. Every opinion and voice has value, because there is a human created by God standing behind it. But why does it seem some people think theirs counts more than others? I understand that Angelina Jolie thinks Obama would be "nice" for families. And no, I have not bought any magazines or gone to people.com recently (I have given them up...it's a long story, but let's just say too many convictions about their negative impact on me). This was on the home page of the Yahoo News. Seriously?? Who Angelina Jolie thinks is a viable candidate is news worthy? Eve Ensler was able to write an article that blasted Sarah Palin and everything she stands for not just politically, but personally...and it's news? Why doesn't she thank her country, that was, yes, founded on faith in God and soldiers that died for her right to have her freedom of speech, for her opportunity to spout her harsh opinions? I don't watch "The View" that often, but I had it on when I was paying bills one morning. Again, it made me sick to my stomach. Poor Elisabeth was just being attacked left and right, not just for her minority beliefs on the show, but personally. They barely let her get a word in and belittle her when she does. And sadly, she is probably the most educated person about politics and the election than anyone else on that show. When did the opinions of people that make movies, plays, hit records or fancy pictures start to matter more than police officers, teachers, firefighters, doctors, moms, dads, soldiers on the front line? I know a lot of actors and such do some really nice things...but, frankly with as much as they have they should and could do a lot more. And just my personal opinion, if you choose to spend most of your time living in another country, I just don't think your opinion should matter that much.

Right after I read this article, I came to another one. This one made me smile from the inside out. It reminded of the book I read The Hiding Place by Corrie Ten Boom. If you haven't read it before, you must. It is the amazing story of a Christian family hiding persecuted Jews during the Holocaust. They all ended up in a concentration camp and Corrie Ten Boom lived to tell about it. About how her faith kept her from hate. How her love for her true Redeemer and Healer allowed her to heal from the scars of the war and share her healing story of faith and love with others. It was the love she received from her Father that allowed her to love like she did. So much so that she even spent her time after the war helping, not just the Christians and Jews, but the very people that hated and persecuted them...she reached out, forgave and loved the very ones that destroyed her family. She spent the rest of her life using her story to show the love and kindness of God to others.

Why can't we just all get along?? But, seriously...what's that saying..."It's easier to catch bees with honey?" When did we stop being nice? Can't we stand for our beliefs without having to put the other person down for theirs? There is a saying in recovery..."Do you want to be right...or well?" I don't know how right we are if the only way we can prove our point is to make the other person wrong. And not just wrong...but small. Everyone has value...because God says so. I think it's time we start treating people as such. Words can hurt. Love can heal.

Here is the article:

In the beginning, there was a boy, a girl and an apple.
He was a teenager in a death camp in Nazi-controlled Germany. She was a bit younger, living free in the village, her family posing as Christians. Their eyes met through a barbed-wire fence and she wondered what she could do for this handsome young man.
She was carrying apples, and decided to throw one over the fence. He caught it and ran away toward the barracks. And so it began.
As they tell it, they returned the following day and she tossed an apple again. And each day after that, for months, the routine continued. She threw, he caught, and both scurried away.
They never knew one another's name, never uttered a single word, so fearful they would be spotted by a guard. Until one day he came to the fence and told her he would not be back.
"I won't see you anymore," she said. "Right, right. Don't come around anymore," he answered.
And so their brief and innocent tryst came to an end. Or so they thought.
Before he was shipped off to a death camp, before the girl with the apples appeared, Herman Rosenblat's life had already changed forever.
His family had been forced from their home into a ghetto. His father fell ill with typhus. They smuggled a doctor in, but there was little he could do to help. The man knew what was coming. He summoned his youngest son. "If you ever get out of this war," Rosenblat remembers him saying, "don't carry a grudge in your heart and tolerate everybody."
Two days later, the father was dead. Herman was just 12.
The family was moved again, this time to a ghetto where he shared a single room with his mother, three brothers, uncle, aunt and four cousins. He and his brothers got working papers and he got a factory job painting stretchers for the Germans.
Eventually, the ghetto was dissolved. As the Poles were ushered out, two lines formed. In one, those with working papers, including Rosenblat and his brothers. In the other, everyone else, including the boys' mother.
Rosenblat went over to his mother. "I want to be with you," he cried. She spoke harshly to him and one of his brothers pulled him away. His heart was broken.
"I was destroyed," Rosenblat remembers. It was the last time he would ever see her.
It was in Schlieben, Germany, that Rosenblat and the girl he later called his angel would meet. Roma Radziki worked on a nearby farm and the boy caught her eye. And bringing him food - apples, mostly, but bread, too - became part of her routine.
"Every day," she says, "every day I went."
Rosenblat says he would secretly eat the apples and never mentioned a word of it to anyone else for fear word would spread and he'd be punished or even killed. When Rosenblat learned he would be moved again, this time to Theresienstadt, in what is now the Czech Republic, he told the girl he would not return.
Not long after, the Russians rolled in on a tank and liberated Rosenblat's camp. The war was over. She went to nursing school in Israel. He went to London and learned to be an electrician.
Their daily ritual faded from their minds.
"I forgot," she says.
"I forgot about her, too," he recalls.
Rosenblat eventually moved to New York. He was running a television repair shop when a friend phoned him one Sunday afternoon and said he wanted to fix him up with a girl. Rosenblat was unenthusiastic: He didn't like blind dates, he told his friend. He didn't know what she would look like. But finally, he relented.
It went well enough. She was Polish and easygoing. Conversation flowed, and eventually talk turned to their wartime experiences. Rosenblat recited the litany of camps he had been in, and Radziki's ears perked up. She had been in Schlieben, too, hiding from the Nazis.
She spoke of a boy she would visit, of the apples she would bring, how he was sent away.
And then, the words that would change their lives forever: "That was me," he said.
Rosenblat knew he could never leave this woman again. He proposed marriage that very night. She thought he was crazy. Two months later she said yes.
In 1958, they were married at a synagogue in the Bronx, a world away from their sorrows, more than a decade after they had thought they were separated forever.
It all seems too remarkable to be believed. Rosenblat insists it is all true.
Even after their engagement, the couple kept the story mostly to themselves, telling only those closest to them. Herman says it's because they met at a point in his life he'd rather forget. But eventually, he said, he felt the need to share it with others.
Now, the Rosenblats' story has inspired a children's book, Angel Girl. And eventually, there are plans to turn it into a film, The Flower of the Fence. Herman expects to publish his memoirs next year.
Michael Berenbaum, a distinguished Holocaust scholar who has authored a dozen books, has read Rosenblatt's memoir and sees no reason to question it.
"I wasn't born then so I can't say I was an eyewitness. But it's credible," Berenbaum said. "Crazier things have happened."
Herman is now 79, and Roma is three years his junior; they celebrated their 50th anniversary this summer. He often tells their story to Jewish and other groups.
He believes the lesson is the very one his father imparted.
"Not to hate and to love, that's what I am lecturing about," he said. "Not to hold a grudge and to tolerate everybody, to love people, to be tolerant of people, no matter who they are or what they are."
The anger of the death camps, Herman says, has gone away. He forgave. And his life has been filled with love.

1 comment:

AFJ said...

Hi Jen! Great post! Well said. And BTW, Happy Birthday!!!! You are finally as old/wise as me =)
At least for a few more weeks.