WHY GRIEVE NOW!

Despair, hatred, wrath, negativity, even "depravity" juggernaut down
on all of us at present.

The Ocean of Darkness overwhelms.

Destruction and despairing theologies and philosophies ramp down.

Not only in the shocking debacle of contemporary politics
in the U.S., Turkey, Russia, etc.,
but
even worse a nigh-endless despair or theological negativity has shown up among so many Friends leaders:

Friend Micah Bales: "I believe that the concept of depravity is vital to the experience of the church in the West today.If we are to live in the truth, we must begin with the devastating realization: You and I are ourselves depraved. We are liars, self-seeking, potential murderers. We are dishonest with ourselves and others."
http://www.micahbales.com/good-humans/

Friend George Amoss Jr.: "At last I learned that there is no salvation. I had retreated from belief in God and Jesus to the seemingly finer ideas...But life proved the emptiness, as it were, of such enlightenment. Eventually, I saw that those concepts, too, had functioned as superstitions, attempts to make something of nothing. I had to acknowledge that there is nothing to believe or hope in."

"There is no salvation. There is nothing I can do, or anyone do for me, that can rescue me from being what I am: a human animal conditioned in every sense. No deliverance from guilt, pain, death. No act, belief, or experience that would make acceptable the unacceptable. No person, institution, concept, or intuition to hope in."

"Nothing to hold, seek, or look forward to. Nothing anywhere any better than this... ultimately, not even love remains."
https://postmodernquaker.wordpress.com/2017/02/06/no-salvation/

:-((((((((((((
Even the hard atheist Ernest Hemingway's infamous short story of utter despair and negativity, "A Clean, Well-lighted Place" doesn't get as negative as these Friends are writing and sinking into.

And there are so many other humans turning to, getting drowned in, giving way to such negativity, letting in the Ocean of Darkness:-(

Why?

I don't have any quick answers for them, but only deeply grieve.

And ask them, to turn from this dwelling on "depravity" and "emptiness."

Let us live in the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

Doss: Conscientious Objector, Medic, Medal of Honor Winner

from the TIME Review by Eliza Berman:

"Doss, a Seventh-Day Adventist who refused to bear arms but enlisted as a medic in the U.S. army, is on the battlefield on Okinawa in the spring of 1945."

"Armed with nothing but a bible, he’s carrying his wounded comrades to safety, one by one, through enemy fire,
repeatedly beseeching God to “help me get one more.”

http://time.com/4539373/hacksaw-ridge-movie-true-story/


'He would spend more than five years after the war being treated for his wounds, losing a lung to tuberculosis. Because of his injuries, he was never able to work full-time, and he devoted the rest of his life to working with his church."

--

Thanks to ALL the veterans who sought to protect and save
those who were oppressed,
and especially the young men who wouldn't kill,
but who rescued
and saved as many of the suffering that they could.

The conscientious objector and medic Desmond Doss was one of these protectors.

He refused to kill, became a medic and rescued many wounded Americans, including 50-100 off a tall cliff.

And our hearts go out to the millions of young men who have been sent off
to wrong wars,
to unjust wars,
caught between bad politics
and moral questions.



In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox

from Beyond 5: Ask Questions about Syria

Ask your Syria Questions
from Beyond 5

"Beyond 5 is a community of everyday advocates...who refuse to accept that 16,000 children should die daily of preventable causes before reaching their fifth birthday. We are committed to working together through 2015 and beyond to help dramatically lower that number."
__

March 14, 2016

"Stephanie Hammond, World Vision policy adviser for global conflicts and natural disasters, recently returned from Serbia where she visited World Vision relief programs along the Balkan refugee migration route.

"Walking down the row of buses in Šid, I noticed a refugee mother and her young child getting water at a pump attached to the back of a truck. As I began to talk with her, she told me more about her 6-year-old daughter."

Majida’s daughter holds her mother’s hand. ©2015 World Vision/Stephanie Hammond

"She pointed to her daughter’s left leg and said she had broken it when they were taken by smugglers through Turkey. Majida’s hands rolled up and down as she told me about the mountainous journey through Turkey."
--

“I dream about my daughter’s future in Europe and the person she will grow up to be,” Majida told me. As she said these words, I looked down at her daughter, who was smiling back and me and making her two hands into a heart. When our eyes met, she blushed and hid her head against her mother’s side.

"Let us not forget these refugees: they have endured year after year of war, lost loved ones, and have had their homes destroyed. Now they simply want to regain for themselves and their children a hope for the future they once had and a place to call home."

"This week Beyond 5 will be in Washington, D.C., to mark the five year anniversary of the war in Syria – a war that has forced more than 4.8 million people to flee their homeland, including an estimated half of these people being Syrian refugee children.

What are your questions about the refugee crisis?

What do you want to know?

What would you like to tell Congress?

Email your question to advocate@worldvision.org

Share your question on Twitter with @WVUSadvocacy and #MySyriaQuestion

...our panel of experts who will convene in Washington, D.C. In addition to answering your questions, our experts will testify in front of members of Congress and meet with the State Department to talk about the impact Syria’s war and the refugee crisis is having on children.

Frances Charles...is the Advocacy Director for World Vision International’s Syria Crisis Response. Frances oversees policy development and humanitarian advocacy programs across Turkey, Northern Syria, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan.

Frances is a conflict policy specialist with over seven years of experience in research and practice across Africa and the Middle East. She has been based in Senegal, Mali, eastern DRC and now in Amman, Jordan. Frances holds a Masters of Science from University College London, specializing in international public policy...

Wynn Flaten...is currently World Vision’s Syria Crisis Response Director based in Amman, Jordan. In this role he oversees World Vision’s work related in North Syria, Jordan, Lebanon and the Kurdish Region of Iraq related to the crisis.

Stephanie L. Hammond serves as the World Vision policy advisor for global conflicts and natural disasters. In this role, Stephanie focuses on the global refugee crisis and humanitarian emergencies and response.

Stephanie previously was a foreign policy advisor in the U.S. Congress for over five years and focused on human rights, religious persecution, global health, religious freedom, and refugee issues....Stephanie graduated summa cum laude from Washington University in St. Louis where she completed a thesis on the early history of the British eugenics movement with the history and biology departments.

Mark C. Smith works as World Vision’s senior director for humanitarian emergencies. Prior to joining World Vision’s team in Washington, D.C., Mark was the senior development and fundraising specialist for the American Red Cross. He has also worked with World Relief as the disaster response director..."
http://beyond5.org/2016/03/14/ask-your-syria-questions/
--

Rescue the perishing!

Live in the Light.

Rescue the Perishing, Care for the Dying...The Best Way to Help Syrian Refugees

Read the Vox article “The Best Way the US Could Help Syrians: Open the Borders”

By Dylan Matthews

“Bombing is rarely the best way to help people.”

“Morality in foreign policy isn't about bombing bad guys. It's about helping people. And usually, the best way to do that won't involve bombings at all.”

Here’s a brief excerpt:

“Ultimately, the choice was whether to commit tens of billions of dollars, and tens of thousands of US ground troops, to implement a strategy that might have toppled Assad and saved thousands of lives, but which also might have made the conflict even more brutal than it's been. The latter was probably more likely, in fact. The cost would have been considerable in any case, and the benefit very uncertain. Compared with the benefits of letting Syrian refugees into the US, which we know are great, and the costs, which we know are small, that's not a very attractive proposition.

The best humanitarian interventions don't involve the military.

Cash transfers are an extremely effective humanitarian intervention that doesn't involve the military at all.

But [military bombing] enables a strange hypocrisy. The humanitarian interventionists who would've attacked Syria, and now mourn our failure to do so, aren't [increasing our] foreign aid budget in general, perhaps to 1 percent of gross national income, like Sweden, from merely 0.2 percent.

They're not calling for reforms that make it easier for USAID and other aid agencies to spend on highly effective projects that reduce child and maternal mortality. They're not calling on the US to eliminate all quotas and tariffs on goods from poor countries, as well as farm subsidies that make it harder for poor farmers in sub-Saharan Africa to export their goods. They're certainly not calling for a massive expansion in levels of immigration to the US from...the world's absolute poorest countries.
--
Plenty of people in Washington like restricting immigration, especially low-skilled immigration from poor countries. Plenty of people in Washington like the idea of cutting the foreign aid budget, or perhaps eliminating it altogether.

But it's not too late to help refugees. The boats are still sailing, and sinking. Children are still dying. People are still suffering. It's not too late for the US to heed the International Rescue Committee's call for us to resettle 65,000 refugees, not the paltry 1,434 we've resettled so far. It's not too late to do the International Rescue Committee one better and let in 200,000, 500,000, 1 million even. It's not too late to make Syrian refugees' lives dramatically better.
--
Morality in foreign policy isn't about bombing bad guys. It's about helping people. And usually, the best way to do that won't involve bombings at all."

by Dylan Matthews

http://www.vox.com/2015/9/4/9258149/syria-refugee-humanitarian-intervention
END OF EXCERPT

Yes, what if the U.S. and many other wealthy countries such as Saudi Arabia, Germany, Iran, and many others drastically reduced their weapons and bombs budgets and funneled that money into restoration, reconciliation, development, and in the short-term immigration and refugee rescue?

In the Light,

Daniel Wilcox