All is not dismal

It is easy to get mired in the ‘daily dismal’ (my words).  It is not difficult to find positive things (each of which can have their negative ‘sides’).

Some thoughts, some of which invite additional reading.

If you haven’t already, REGISTER to vote.  If you aren’t already, GET INFORMED ABOUT ALL THE CANDIDATES ON YOUR BALLOT.  SHARE your opinions and requests.  VOTE, and stay engaged for the long haul.

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Tomorrow begins the Nobel Peace Prize Forum at Augsburg University in Minneapolis.  All details are here.  I’ll be there.

Fresh Energy is, in my opinion, a super star in accomplishing results in positively addressing climate change.  Their annual benefit breakfast is October 3, details at their website.  Take a look at what they’re doing, which is to say, making a big difference.

Another group worth a look is Climate-Smart Municipalities, which I literally stumbled across at the University of Minnesota some months ago.

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals encourage activism at the local level.    Learn about the 17 Goals, and find some way, in your local area, to become engaged in helping make our planet healthier.  These goals are the successor to the earlier Millennium Development Goals.

A local group, Twin Cities Nonviolent, has organized a very impressive program on “10 Days Free from Violence:”, which begins September 21 and ends September 30.  Here is an opportunity to engage for the first time, or re-engage, in positive activities which benefit us all.  While this particular event is Minneapolis-St. Paul area based, it is modeled on a similar project in Carbondale IL.  Initiatives like these deserve encouragement, and support and most of all engagement.  Each of us can make a positive difference, but it requires personal engagement.

As many know, September 21, the first day of Fall, is also the International Day of Peace. First set in 1981, ironically, the annual observance was set as Sep. 21 each year by the United Nations during the week of September 11, 2001.

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Sex Abuse and the Catholic Church:  As today’s headlines state, Pope Francis is calling all of the Catholic Bishops to Rome in February, 2019.

I have referenced this issue before, with links.  See this 2013 post, and specifically look for links to two long and excellent pieces, published in 2003 and 2005 in a newsletter called Bread Rising, by Richard Sipe.

More recently, on Labor Day, 2018, my post  included, near the end of the post, three recent statements by a Minneapolis Priest, a Twin Cities Bishop and an Archbishop about this issue.

Those seeking a permanent and total resolution of the problem are seeking the impossible.  Catholics number possibly a billion members, tens of thousands of hierarchy of one sort or another, in every nation, all of whom are human beings.  I have watched the evolution of the abuse issue for many years.  The Church is not sitting on its hands.  I stay Catholic.

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There is a battle going on between the forces of Fear and those of Hope.

I stand with Hope.

A memento given to dignitaries who attended the 90th birthday of Harold Stassen in 1997.  Stassen was the last surviving signer of the United Nations Charter in 1945.

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