Tag Archives: Courage

America, Where is Your Moral Compass?

It’s been a bit over two and a half weeks since Governor Andrew M. Cuomo signed a law in the State of New York legalizing the abortion of a baby up to birth. I said to myself, “But wait, isn’t he a Catholic?” Where are the cardinals and the Pope on this? Shouldn’t he be excommunicated? I just cannot get that awful image out of my head: a fully-formed little baby being forcibly taken from its mother’s womb, a person to be who will never be.

Maybe it’s because with me it’s personal. Back in 1958, my life was saved the day I was born by a surgeon of great skill. I won’t bore you with the details, but I narrowly made it. I think the only reason my life was saved was that my mother was in the hospital in New York City where she had access to then state of the art heath care.

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What about the Book? Wasn’t this the basis of all laws in the Judeo-Christian tradition?

I posed these questions in Facebook, on which I am most likely shadow banned because so few people ever see what I write:

“What kind of a people are we that we are so willing to kill the defenseless unborn and celebrate this as some kind of rite? If you can kill a child in the womb right up until the day it is born without remorse, no life is sacred.”

And: 

“What does it matter that our nation strives for ground-breaking lifesaving medical technology when in some states a fetus doesn’t even have the right to be born? America, where are your priorities?”

I just posted this on Twitter and have posted similar sentiments in the past: “Maybe the Democratic Party wouldn’t be so slavishly devoted to importing illegal immigrants if it stopped aborting the next generation of babies.”

I plan to write Governor Cuomo a letter. I tried to email his office just now and am unable to do so due to an “unknown error.” I’ll bet. Here’s what I was going to say:

“I will restrict my visits to your state until this shameful law is repealed. What you have done is legalized murder. How can you stand for any person’s rights, if you will not stand for the rights of the unborn? Shame on you, sir!”

I know there is no chance he’ll ever read my letter, and even if he did, that he would have enough of a soul left to care, but in the words of Edmund Burke: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.”

This blog gives me chest pains….ouch. 

Sandman

 

Photo credits:

Bible: ireneuke/Shutterstock

Compass at top of page:  Dmytro Amanzholov/Shutterstock

Speak up!

Speak up!

Over the years, many have urged me to keep quiet—“You cannot say that”—some even to change my political affiliations. “Come over to the liberal side, and you’ll have more chances with women.”  I do not know how to be silent when my heart calls me. I cannot become a man whom I am not, even if it means I frustrate people, lose friends and have fewer companions at my dinner table. Tonight, though I would rather be in bed, I feel compelled to write, so write I must. I know no more disturbing subject to discuss than the Holocaust. Looking through the Shutterstock images under that title is almost more than I can bear. I just need two.

On this Holocaust Remembrance Day, I urge you to speak up when you see injustice. Speak up while you still have a right. Speak up while you still have your voice. Never let anyone dissuade you from your truly-held convictions, no matter the promises, no matter the cost. It takes courage to take a firm stand when you are one of the few; it takes courage to take a firm stand when you are the only one. Stand you must, however, to avoid living what Henry David Thoreau referred to as “lives of quiet desperation.” Speak up, but keep your emotions in check in the same manner as one bridles a fine horse, not to break its spirit, but only to focus its exertions.

Listen. Listen first. Harness reason in all your arguments. Quietly persuade. Persist. My late friend, Charlie Maust, whom I knew for less than one year—age 89 to age 90—taught me an invaluable life lesson. One night, as we were preparing to attend a city council meeting to try to keep the proposed City Hall building off the Village Green, he suggested we ought to sit back and let everyone else talk first, believing that the majority of people would not have much worthwhile to say: “They don’t know what they are talking about, said he. “They love to hear themselves talk.” How right he was. Thank you, Charlie. Listening, I discovered, would arm one with all the ammunition one needed to make sound arguments, to defeat the enemy by carefully dismantling his arguments. Listen. Reason. Speak up! Persist. You can have all the guns in the world on your side, but without wisdom, without reason, like an unbridled horse—recklessly emotional, you will ultimately lose the battle.

On this sorrowful day, with profound reverence for all who fell victim to the Nazi regime in Germany during World War II, I cannot write more poignant words than those of Martin Niemöller:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

April 12, 2018: I shall let these words stand for all those who whose voices were silenced.

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Photo credit: Everett Historical/Shutterstock

The haunting, ghastly, ghoulish, ghostly nightmare of the Holocaust is over, is it not?  Yet, by our silence, sew we the poisonous seeds anew? 

Sandman

 

(Photo credit at top of page-photo collage: Giuseppe Crimini/Shutterstock)

Prayer for Courage, Strength and Wisdom

Almighty eternal Father!
As I pass through this life,
I humbly ask for three gifts:
Strength, courage and wisdom:
Strength that I may be victorious over any and all challenges set before me.
Courage that I may press onward resolutely despite the odds.
Wisdom’s guidance in all my endeavors,
whether they bring me good fortune or ill,
such that I may learn their lessons.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost.
Amen.

Sandman

 

(Photo credit Praying Man-Halfpoint/Shutterstock)