Ah the classic Beatles song, "The End". Ringo Starr finally rips out the drum solo he'd never been allowed to play, it's followed by the groups philosophy on life. What's interesting about the song "The End" is that it was actually the 2nd to last song on the 2nd to last album. I feel it's appropriate to cite now because I'm going to have at least one, maybe two more blog posts for this "album" if you will. Then I'll go home and figure out what I'm going to do next. It's definitely been a ride. Anyways, here's the update:
I got back into the swing of things. Started really committing time to St. Maurus and seeing what I can do for my last few weeks here on the whole. So far, I've bought two basketball hoops and two balls. I'm hoping to set one up at the Street Kids Project and one at St. Benedict's primary school. My Dad has also collected a bunch of rosaries to be sent over here to give out to different communities.
I was going to do some more painting at St. Maurus this weekend, but unfortunately just a *little bit* of gun violence sprouted up over the appeals of the recent presidential election. I've been in my room watching episodes of "The West Wing" on my computer for about 4 days now. There was also a major power outage that spanned from Easter Sunday into Easter Monday. During the day I started reading a book, but at night time it was really too dark to do anything at all. I just sat and thought about stuff(dangerous, I know).
One thing that flew across my temporal lobe was a question. How is it possible that people can disagree with me on things. Yes, that's broad. And of course I'm not always right, but even still. If you ask me a question, I will answer it with certitude and knowledge. Then I remembered when I was younger, I was so eager to explain my point on something as menial as going up to the front of class to sharpen a pencil that the teachers or other students would cut me off before I'd said a third of what I wanted to. I then also remembered someone once telling me that speeches should be no more than 5 minutes because people lack the attention span to care any longer than that.
So then I thought, well that's kind of a sad state of the public. Sure that doesn't apply to all, but it applies to many. Are you secure enough in your own mind to count yourself out of that many? I can't make the call on myself yet. I do seem to remember a lot though. Anyways.
This triggered another thought process. Well, I can't change the state of the public mind. So how do I go about it? What can I do? I guess the solution would be to try and explain things more simply or at least with fewer words. At this point I had an entire conversation in my head with a friend back home. The argument devolved into: "Dude, you're wrong." and "Dude, I'm not." Unfortunately the "I'm not" is technically shorter than "you're wrong". So I still hadn't found the solution. So I went a different direction. Instead of talking TO the state of mind why not talk ABOUT the state of mind. Anyone know the seven deadly sins off the top of their head? Sloth, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Lust, Gluttony, and Pride. Pride being the king. I don't know many people who can name you all the fruits and gifts of the Holy Spirit, but I guarantee that even if they knew them all they'd have to spend 10 minutes on each one explaining what it means. The deadly sins however are pretty simple. You gotta explain a little bit, but everyone will get it and be on board pretty quickly. No wonder they're everywhere.
How do you fight evil when it grows like a weed and good grows like an oak tree? Well, finally late into the night I had an epiphany. Love. Yea, it sounds silly, I know. But think about it. Love is 4 letters long, and it is its own definition. One word. I realized that reducing my state of mind to the simplicity of that word could be the key. Sadly, I also started to realize that people don't have the same understanding of love. People think "tolerance" or "punishment" or "ignorance" or "emotion", they think these are love. Love is even simpler and less political than all these things.
I can't give you the answer because I don't know it. Well not just anyway. I know this entire blog in fact undermines my whole argument! a 1000 word essay to discuss how the answer is one word? But it's because I don't know the answer yet. I thought maybe it'd be something nice to share out loud though. So people can read about what I'm thinking on this trip and not just what I'm doing.
Ok, well now that's done. Quick clean-up of things. If you're interested in any part of my trip whether you're thinking about coming or donating, please please please let me know. harris.moriarty@gmail.com. My dad is collecting rosaries at my house. 692 Ellsworth Avenue Great Falls, Va 22066. If you want to mail it straight here, send me an email and I'll give you the details. I'll try and post again soon.
-Harris Moriarty
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