Fame and fortune (or at least sort of the former): Number one son's picture showed up in the Catholic Miscellaney (diocesan newspaper) this week from a story on some folks from Florence, SC who traveled to DC for Pope Benedict's Mass at the National's stadium. (My son is the one with the red arrow pointing at the back of his head.)
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I can't recall a cooler spring or a wetter one. Showers yesterday brought a cold front through last night. Here it is the end of May and I think there have only been a handful of days in the 80's. I can recall May's where the temperature was 95 or above for most of the month. And the rain is beautiful (and it keeps the water bill in check.)
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But through all this, Immaculee prayed. She has been hiding in a 4' X 3' bathroom with 5 other women for over a month. She has come to the conclusion she will survive the ordeal: I was certain that God had a greater purpose for me, and I prayed every day for Him to reveal it to me. At first I was expecting Him to show me my entire future all at once-maybe with a flash of lightning and a clap of thunder thrown in for good measure. But I came to learn that God never shows us something we aren't ready to understand. Instead, He lets us see what we need to see, when we need to see it. He'll wait until our eyes and hearts are open to Him, and then when we're ready, He will plant our feet on the path that's best for us ... but it's up to us to do the walking. Interesting that unless we pray we will never be "ready to understand" and our hearts will never be open. Every solution always comes back to prayer!
I am about half-way through Left to Tell. I don't recall much about the genocide in Rwanda in the early 90's. I paid a lot of attention to the news back then, but my clearest recollection was not of a genocide, but of two peoples fighting. In reality, it was a bit more one-sided than that. (I don't know if it was my lack of attention or that the media and/or government did give it much play.) Reading Immaculee's account, she wonders aloud why no Western countries came to their aid. She believes because the apparent disregard of the situation by the West emboldened the Hutu government to intensify the genocide. They shut down all schools and business and handed out machetes and guns to the citizens to kill Tutsi. Unbelievable!
4 comments:
Nice thoughts Jim. BTW, you can also hear this book read here.
You know, the more I think back, the more I am unsure whether the Rwanda genocide wasn't on my personal radar screen or that it wasn't on the US govt and MSM radar screen. Were the details hazy because I wasn't interested so much or because there wasn't much available in MSM? I know in recent years I have been aware what happened, but years ago ...?
I can't recall either... I think part of it for me was simply that it was Africa and things like that happen in Africa and so it didn't register too much. Shameful, I know, and the movie "Hotel Rwanda" and this book you are reading changed my attitude. I want to say that maybe Rwanda became a big story only AFTER it was too late to do anything about it.
As I recall, the Clinton administration had been snakebit in Somalia and so there was an allergy to getting involved anywhere where our nat'l interest wasn't involved.
Hi Jim,
You bring up a great point. Until I read Immaculee's book (after which I saw Hotel Rwanda) I really didn't know much about the Rwandan Genocide. I can only imagine what she must have went through. She has been in the news a lot lately. Turns out she is taking people on a pilgrimage. Check it out: http://www.prweb.com/releases/Immaculee/Fatima/prweb1003344.htm
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