02:31 - 18.09.06
Satyagraha
It was one of those days where every time I tried to work on any project in the home, barriers arrived by the dozen. More time spent tinkering with this computer to get all the little bugs out. No connectivity with the Elections Canada computer - which usually acts as a paerweight most days anyway. However, there are a few bits of software we can only access through their line and I needed to complete some tasks using their databases. No go. Error messages on the one application. The other one just came up a blank screen and hung fire, even though the window indicated that the window I was trying to access was open. Arrival of company - the grandbabies - was welcome, but again I had set aside that particular time to get this work done and couldn't stop to play. My oldest and youngest did get some more of the tearing out work done, so that was a happy moment. I also found that I was further ahead than I thought on the election work. That is if the software will let me complete my tasks.
Add misery to that, I received another email from the finance department in Ottawa. We aren't going to pay you for the assignment you submitted in June, because we are missing one piece of paper. Nice time to tell me - if it was the truth. I went back to my messages and found three emails from them all confirming that they had received it at the beginning of July. Lets see, that's two months and counting now waiting for that payment. The pay for this work now and in October? I think I'll be fortunate if I see it before the end of the year at this rate. Right, dear diary? Then there was the call to my favorite supplier. Found out my regular contact is no longer there. It is Sunday, of course, but the voicemail was definitely a new person. Guess I try tomorrow to get a real person to see if the change is permanent.
The big kerfuffle with the Pope and the Muslim community is really bothering me. Obviously the statement he read from that one 15th century church leader was inapt, but to go on a bombing/burning spree to protest the mistake almost reinforces those comments as truth. One has to wonder why that error of judgement got blown so far out of proportion. Let's face it, a number of imams had made much more virulent comments with nary a march or a protest anywhere in the developed world. None of those men have apologized for their errors in knowledge about other faiths. Most of the churches damaged by adherents of that faith system weren't even those for Catholic congregations. That demonstrates that the Muslim world is as uneducated about the divisions in Chritianity - Catholic, Protestant, and the newer groups like the Latter Day Saints and Jehovah Witness - as North Americans are about the divisions in their faith - Sunni, Shia, Amadhi, Ismailis and the other groups, such as Bahai, Zoroaster and Sufi, which aren't technically recognized but draw a lot of their beliefs from same. Add in that all three faiths - Judeo-Christian-Muslim - all drew from the books common to the Old Testament/Torah/Koran to justify a fair amount of violent behaviour amongst each other and it just doesn't make sense.
The other curious comment from some Muslim commentators was that they felt the intent of the leader of the Catholic faith was to issue a renewed call to start the Crusades, because he was quoting that 1400's leader call to arms. The Crusades as well as the Islamic occupation of Spain and Portugal all ended late 1200's ad. Seems both sides finally figured out that going in their opponents' front door, meant that those same opponents entered their own back door - if you get my drift.
So being both rather cynical and paranoid, I asked the lawyers' and criminal courts' question when trying to figure out the true thrust of an event. That question? Qui bono? Who benefits. Certainly not the Pope. That poor man, in his 80's, now becomes a target and probably falls martyr to some poor fellahin who is as uneducated about the whole affair as the Pope was on this occasion. Did His Holiness write his own speech or was it done for him? Was it an error in transliteration - translating for meaning as well as for wording from the original language to the language used in that speech? When that one Turkish man shot Pope John Paul II he was forgiven. Will the Muslim world remember that any time soon? If what is being demanded is a greater understanding between faiths, isn't the willingness to forgive a misstep the first step?
Quite honestly I keep flashing back to the Cuban Missile Crisis, when some forces wanted very badly to tip the Cold War into a hot one for their own personal gain for power and financially. Yes I know, I'm ancient. But those who forget history are bound to repeat it. Is the Pope the stand-in for the role/trigger of John Kennedy? Yes very melodramatic, I know. Apparently there is a new Bollywood movie out about the actions of the ghost of Mohandas Gandhi. Probably one of the greatest spiritual leaders of the past century. The Satyagraha movement is now 100 years old. What a wonderful legacy if it could be applied to the current attempts to literally blow up any chance of peace the world has. Maybe everyone should take a time out to see what a real practitioner of non-violence would say - or do - in the same conditions. Don't let those demons clothed in human flesh cause a nuclear meltdown. Namaste. Ho!
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