The Responsability Project

Reaching out to people we don’t know just because we care. If we all did a little, our world would be very different for all of us.

Honesty; A Path To Freedom

We tell lies when we are afraid… afraid of what we don’t know, afraid of what others will think, afraid of what will be found out about us.  But every time we tell a lie, the thing that we fear grows stronger.  ~Tad Williams

Honesty is our greatest liberator.  I’m not so much referring to giving the right change type of honesty, although that is important, but the honesty to be who we truly are.  When we can embrace all parts of ourselves and our actions, we are free.  When we can embrace what we are proud of about ourselves and with the same enthusiasm what we are not so proud of, we are free.

As we try to hide from others the parts of ourselves we don’t appreciate, we are denying ourselves of our humanity.  As humans we are not “perfect” and changing our “imperfections” can only come from acknowledging them.

When we know who we are there is no shame.

Honesty is the first chapter of the book of wisdom.  ~Thomas Jefferson

Embracing Pain

We must embrace pain and burn it as fuel for our journey.  ~Kenji Miyazawa

We have all been hurt or will be hurt.  Pain is part of living.  But with every scar comes an opportunity to stop and reflect on who we are and how we want our lives to continue.

Not embracing pain is pushing aside the opportunity to come face to face with ourselves.

Not embracing pain is missing the opportunity to be profoundly human.

But once the pain becomes ours it turns into love because pain humbles and shows us we are part of a huge community of people who want the same; love and compassion.

Love is the only sane and satisfactory answer to the problem of human existence.  ~Eric Fromm

With No One To Protect Them

I just came across this video. It is hard to watch but it is the truth of the world we live in. We forget how privilege we are to live in this country and as we seek happiness in all the gadgets in the world we find emptiness. Maybe reaching out and bringing a smile to a hurt face might. Happiness means meaningful acts towards ourselves and others.

The Only Thing We Have To Fear

Is fear itself .   That quote was made famous by our 32^nd President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, more than a half century ago.   It still is heralded as one of the monumental statements of modern day politics.  A close look at the state of the world today would serve as a reasonable catalyst to have us use it with more frequency. 

Surely as the Earth’s population grows, so do the complexities of everyday living.  Unfortunately, in many instances, diversity is met with suspicion, distrust and, yes, often times fear.   As our ethnic, religious, political and economic boundaries continuously mesh, we tend to cling more to what we know rather than open ourselves up to learn more.  When we can sensibly conclude that whether we profess to be Christians or Jews, born of Nordic or Sub Saharan parents and are diametrically opposed on every matter that our representatives stand for, we all also have undeniable commonalities.  

The more we attune ourselves to this fact, the less fear will play a part in our growth.  Some of you, depending on what your birth certificate indicates, will recall a telephone company ad campaign that used the memorable slogan, “Reach out and touch someone”.  Well, we need to do more of just that.  Not by using our credit card to place a call, but by using our stored up kindness and offering it to a Republican or a Democrat; a Muslim or a Buddhist; a businessman or a farmer; an Ethiopian or a Korean.   We need to extricate our pent up anxieties and replace them with well- intended assurances. 

Let’s face it, the world is getting smaller as we become more enjoined with others.  There’s no stopping that.  Simply put, adjustments have to be made.  There will always be a few that will want to play dirty and arouse the worst in people.  These are the nay sayers to peace and good will.   They thrive on the maligned concept that what or who you don’t know is bad for you.  Rubbish!  Just as when we were children, the “boogey man” was always in the dark and he was always gone when we turned the light on.

The Dark Seed

Where is the dark seed

that grows the forget-you plant?

Searching, now I see

it grows in the frozen heart

of one who has murdered love.

- The Monk Sosei

(D. CA. 909)

What is this thing the Zen monk-poet Sosei calls love, invoking it to anchor his poetic statement? What is the place of love in a tradition as unsentimental and austere as Japanese Zen? In what way does such love serve as the ground of remembrance? And what has been forgotten by the one in whose frozen heart the dark seed has spread its roots? Sosei implies that it is by the loss of connection to living pathways of feeling that we lose our own humanity. The poisonous plant of forgetting in this poem obscures any sense of personal authenticity, leaving its victim unable to recognize his soul within his own skin.

The poet points to the heart, to the body of living, human emotion, as the causeway whose flow must be kept open, in order to attain the wisdom and understanding toward which Zen aspires. The recollection of the true self, he suggests, comes by way of an open, compassionate and tender heart. This, from the most unsentimental of spiritual traditions.

Sosei also confronts us with a thoroughly unsentimental conclusion. No one can “murder love”, or destroy the capacity to feel fully and deeply, from without, but each one of us can allow it to perish from within. While the world may be filled with accomplices to the crime, the ultimate responsibility lies within each human heart.

NPR recently broadcast the news that one of the most wanted war criminals of the Rwandan genocide had just been apprehended. He was number 6 on the most-wanted list; apparently 1-5 are still roaming the African countryside. The coverage of this event included an interview with a man whose family members had been brutally killed by one of the criminals still at large. There has been a “Truth and Reconciliation” movement underway in Rwanda for some time, an endeavor to bring stability and a modicum of justice and closure to the victims and to the society as a whole. The movement unites perpetrators and the survivors of their crimes through a process of acknowledging culpability, and the absolution that such acknowledgement confers. In the report, this man called out to the ones who had committed the killings, asking them to come forth, in order that he might forgive them.

Through his poem Sosei offers his conviction that no one, or thing can extinguish love from without. The Rwandan man’s readiness to forgive strikes me as a living testament to the truth of this idea. Nelson Mandela once said that there was no force in the world that could separate him from his own dignity. It seems that in the case of this man, there was no trauma brutal enough to separate him from his own humanity.

If there is any evidence for God’s existence, it is in the graceful hearts of such people, who have not forgotten their own humanity in the face of such violence and suffering.

Sadness

As you know, you people that read my blogs daily tomorrow will be the one year anniversary of my husband’s passing.

This has been a strange week.  A couple of Chris’ friends, who I had not met before, contacted me through Facebook when they realized it was a year since his passing.  They wanted to share how they had met Chris and one of them even included an anecdote about Chris which had me laughing.  I also got a prayer from someone I had helped a while back.

Today in my boot camp class my Argentine teacher who is always teasing me asked: “Brazil, are you okay?  You’re so quiet you almost seem like another person.”

I’m sad, and sadness makes me quiet and introspective. So I thought I should write about sadness and try to turn some of it into something positive.

First what is sadness?  According to many psychology books sadness is a natural emotion that usually accompanies loss; loss of a love, a person, an opportunity. 

What to do about sadness? Feel it, embrace it. If unfelt will just stay in our array of unresolved trauma knots.  Sadness also allows us to get in touch with our deeper selves and with the things that really matter to us.

Why is that sometimes we avoid feeling the sadness? Maybe some of us are afraid that if we feel the sadness and its accompanying partners, grief and crying, we will never come out of the hole. Or maybe we fear that others will judge us weak.

In my own experience there is great strength in pain and there is great wisdom in sadness. Of course I’m not advocating for anyone to go out there and purposely find pain and sadness to achieve strength and wisdom because trust me it isn’t necessary. The truth is; pain and sadness will come to us, on their own accord, at different times in our lives. 

What I’m saying is that when pain and sadness happen to us to honor their existence.  From them we learn that we survive most situations as well as the value of happiness. 

I also think there is great strength in being vulnerable, in being human.  When we are sad and vulnerable we tell the world that we are strong enough to experience your humanity without fear.  That’s strength.

So today I’m staying quiet and am allowing my sadness to have the room it needs to express itself.

Texas Man Brings Hope To ‘Forgotten’ Disabled Iraqi Kids

BAGHDAD, Iraq (CNN) — Brad Blauser lives in war-torn Baghdad, where he doesn’t earn a paycheck and is thousands of miles from his family. But he has no intention of leaving anytime soon.

For the past four years, the Dallas, Texas, native has been providing hope to hundreds of disabled Iraqi children and their families through the distribution of pediatric wheelchairs.

“Disabled children — they’re really the forgotten ones in this war,” said Blauser, 43. “They are often not seen in society.”

Blauser arrived in Iraq as a civilian contractor in 2004, but quit that job last year to devote himself full time to his program, without compensation.

“There’s no paycheck. It’s not really safe here. But this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” he said.

An estimated one in seven Iraqi children ages 2 to 14 lives with a disability, according to UNICEF. Illnesses such as Spina bifida, palsy and polio leave them unable to walk.

Some parents carry their children every day. For these children and their families, limited access to health care has taken a toll.

“A number of families don’t know what’s wrong with their kid. There’s not a doctor available for help [and] there’s no pediatric wheelchair source in this country,” Blauser said.

Blauser first learned about this situation in 2005 through Maj. David Brown, a battalion surgeon. His friend shared heartbreaking accounts of helpless children pulling themselves along the ground, or living motionless in back rooms, too big to be moved long distances very often.

“So I asked him, ‘What do you need?’ ” Blauser recalled. “And he surprised me by his answer: ‘I need children’s wheelchairs.’ ”

Blauser began researching and campaigning for help from friends and family in the United States. In 30 days, 31 pediatric and small adult wheelchairs arrived in Mosul for distribution to children in need. Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids was born.

“The experience for me in the first distribution was awesome,” said Blauser. “To see the smile come across their face and [to] look over at the mothers and fathers — they’ve definitely been changed.”

That’s the case for 3-year-old Ali Khaled Ibrahim and his family. At 8 months old, Ali was struck by a mysterious fever that left him partially paralyzed. He cannot speak and experiences increasingly frequent and violent convulsions.

“Ali’s handicap affected the family a lot,” said his father.

His mother said she couldn’t carry out her daily chores and her “psychological state worsened.”

“When I heard the news of the distribution of these advanced wheelchairs, I was very happy deep down,” she said. “I thought maybe that will ease my work as a mother in the way I deal with my son.” Watch Ali and other children receive their wheelchairs from Blauser’s group »

Today, Ali smiles at home as he sits in his new wheelchair. His siblings giggle and sprinkle his face with kisses. The toddler’s parents are thankful for the relief it has brought not only to Ali, but their entire family.

The boy is among hundreds of disabled Iraqi children to benefit from Blauser’s generosity. Since 2005, Wheelchairs for Iraqi Kids has distributed nearly 650 pediatric wheelchairs.

To obtain the specialized chairs, Blauser partnered with Reach Out and Care Wheels, a nonprofit pediatric wheelchair organization in Montana. The organization provides wheelchairs designed for rough terrains in developing nations, making the devices “perfect for this environment,” said Blauser.

Through sponsor donations, his group purchases the chairs from ROC Wheels for about $200 apiece, and USAID donates shipping. Members of the the U.S. and Iraqi armies, Iraqi police and border patrol work together to carry out the distributions.

Blauser and his group help adjust the children into their wheelchairs, which fit their bodies as they grow. Watch Blauser demonstrate the specialized wheelchair »

For Blauser, who provides part-time security consulting in exchange for room and board, an initial plan to stay for one year has become a dream to get wheelchairs to every Iraqi child who wants one. And he’s determined to see it through.

“By providing what they need, I’m hoping to start a movement to change the way people think about disabled children,” said Blauser. “They are not a curse, they are a blessing and they deserve to have their needs met.”