A newspaperman all my life, I wake up each morning fearful of what news will await me in the morning newspapers delivered at my door. What will it be today? News from Iraq about the latest suicide bombings or insurgents causing havoc that will incense Shiites and Sunnis, the killing of innocent Iraqi citizens and American soldiers? Will it be more demonstrations leading to deaths because of the cartoons drawn about Muhammad? Will it be exhortations by the President of Iran inciting anti-Semitism? Will it be some more news about the threat of terrorism?
What kind of world has this become? I ask myself. Where is the good between people, the love we should have for each other? This is not the world I envisioned for my daughter when she was born soon after the tumult of the civil race riots and movement of the Sixties? I had thought that with time the world would get better and we would learn to live in peace. How wrong I was.
But there is also something good I read in the newspaper. It is an article by Nora Boustany in the Feb. 17 Washington Post, about a woman who has devoted her life to teaching children in war zones to sing and play instruments as a way to bring them out of their trauma. Her name is Liz Shropshire, founder and director of the Shropshire Music Foundation (www.teachingchildrenpeace.com). He has gone to places like Kosovo, Northern Ireland and Uganda bringing with her donated musical instruments and books. She goes to a war-torn area and teaches children how to play instruments. She says, ”This music therapy not only gives kids a sense of accomplishment and pride…Simultaneously reading music, counting rhythms and playing an instrument leaves little mental space for thinking about the atrocities of the war.” She adds: ”I want children to feel good enough about themselves so they can stand up and say ‘I am not going to be pulled into this war.”’
I am thankful to know that there are people like Liz Shropshire who are making the world a little better at a time when so many people are giving up hope. Do you know people who are making the world better, too? If so, please write.
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I hate the fact that all organized religions (including Islam and Christianity) brainwash people into blindly following a particular ideology. Where is the freedom to think? Why can’t the people be free to believe in God in their own personal way, according to the particular experiences of their life? Where is the spirituality if the believers just stick to a belief system without exercising their own judgment? Organized religions are just plain hogwash aimed at establishing political supremacy of one group of people over others. The only thing they promote is to make your thought process subservient to another (prophet, monk, mullah, priest, etc.). No one can find God through organized religion.
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