On most days, I thank God I don't have cable/dish/rabbit ears for my TV. I get along quite well, thank you, with watching a couple of shows online every week and keeping up with the major world events through Yahoo. And this time of year, most definitely, I'm especially grateful. I've been exposed to enough "Get up EARLY and don't miss the bargains!!" Black Friday commercials while at friends' homes the past couple of days to reassure me that I could live quite contentedly for the rest of my life without bringing any of that back into my peacefully oblivious existence.
I chose to participate in "Buy Nothing Day" today...a grassroots movement of sorts to attempt to take back this day from the mainline, media-driven, blindly-accepted, consumer insanity. While people are dying in the name of Black Friday bargains (yes, DYING--a WalMart employee was trampled to death early this morning in a 5:00 AM stampede) and getting injured, I stayed home, slept in, ate some Thanksgiving leftovers and started working through the backlog of snail mail/email/blog updates that have been piling up on me during the busy last couple of weeks.
And here's what I learned:
While people are mindlessly stampeding others for the sake of a $200 Xbox or an $800 50" plasma TV or an $88 Barbie Jeep or a $20 Hannah Montana beanbag chair, my C4C Disaster Relief (formerly God's Katrina Kitchen) friends Vickie, Vance and Ryan Weesner, Steve and Lezlie Anderson, and Mary Edna Thompson are serving those in Galveston who remain homeless after the devastation of Hurricane Ike (the mostly forgotten because politics were more important, but third most costly disaster in the US at $21 BILLION in losses). And Beverly Hayden, an amazingly talented lawyer-turned-photographer-turned-world-adventurer, is trampling through the garbage dump in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, handing out bread, apples, oranges, hugs, and love to the more than 300 hungry, sometimes naked and shoeless, beautiful children who live there in the midst of the stench and toxic waste.
A vast chasm between worlds, eh? One that leaves me feeling helpless and hopeless and broken and paralyzed...and wondering how the hell we got here. And if there's really a way to get out...or if it's too late to even have the smallest shred of hope that things can ever change.
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5 comments:
I am so glad to hear I wasn't the only person not shopping on Black Friday. I think it is ridiculous people chase after the cheapest buys and continuously buy stuff upon stuff, when things your friends witness and live through are happening in this world. Many people strive to just drink water...not even clean water at times, and that makes me disheartened. I keep thinking, "what would Jesus say about all of this," and I frankly am thinking He has already said something. He gives over to those who are gluttonous and sinful over to their temptations. May people start turning to God and to helping the plight of others!
Wee said, dear friend. How many opportunities are missed when we succumb to the likes of Black Fridays? Thanks for this.
that should read, "Well said..."
We observed buy nothing day as well. It was nice to do nothing as well as buy nothing.
Love you.
there is always hope...always.
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