Mike Brown and Ezell Ford; Black in a Black and White World.

I went wading yesterday on the beach at White Rock.  Found myself thinking about Mike Brown, the teenager who was shot in Ferguson Missouri, shot by police like Ezell Ford, the 25 year old boy in Los Angeles.  Racial strife in this day and age is so hard to understand.  

And I feel the same about religious wars.  Who’d have thought in the 21^st century we’d be having religious wars the same as in the 12^th?  

The level of intolerance in our world is surely in some aspects at an all time high, and in others, it seems we have an amazing level of global understanding.

Take for instance Craig Kielburger who founded the Free the Children foundation when he was just a child of twelve himself.  He has worked tirelessly to aid children who are abused and locked in poverty, and equally to understand the economics behind child slave labour and why and how it continues to operate in certain countries.  

His approach is educated and intelligent, not dogmatic.

There is hate in the world, and there is beneficence.  Would it help to concentrate on the good?  On the examples of tolerance and understanding, of fairness and kindness?  Or would that just be pulling the wool over our eyes?

If you've read my book, "Unforgiving, Memoir of an Asperger Teen"  you know that I am aware of the need for people to see the reality of an abusive situation. 

So knowing that people of colour are still discriminated against, often violently, in some parts of our world is vital to getting people to work to correct the problem.

Often I think that police abuse of first nations people is covered up in our own country, in Canada—in Prince George and Winnipeg to name just two areas where the problem seems to be deeply rooted and ongoing. 

Is there anything one person can do to help the situation?  What comes to mind are the words of Mother Teresa.  

Three things in life are important.  The first is to be kind.  The second is to be kind. The third is to be kind.

mf

Proof of Heaven Author Eben Alexander States This World A School For Souls.

Vancouver, June 13, 2013.  A white-haired lady from Squamish lined up behind a freckle-faced blonde in capris, while at the front of the line, a dark haired young man tucked his motorcycle helmet under his arm and hurried up the steps of the Memorial United Church on Fifteenth Avenue West.  We were a varied lot, this amalgamation of people who had come to hear Dr. Eben Alexander, noted neurosurgeon, speak to us of his personal experience of heaven.

Brain dead, and in a coma for days, Dr. Alexander had a very unique near-death experience. He spoke of images so impressed upon him that they are literally unfading and unforgettable, unlike images we see with our conscious mind.  He said he experienced knowing without words, without hearing or seeing; a form of conceptualization.  His explanation?  

"The conscious mind is the veil through which we experience reality." 

And this world?  Is a school for souls.  A learning opportunity.  A preparation for our next realm, for our soul's ascendency.

What is real?  Emotions. Love.

According to Dr. Alexander, love is "so much bigger than anything else, than any other force in life."

Love, he said, is tremendously healing.

Good news for those of us who came to the light from a dark portal.

Emma Donoghue's ROOM: Rare Insight Into A Dark Portal.

Have you read Emma Donoghue's book, Room?  If not, you're missing a powerful insight into a dark world.

Donoghue was born in Dublin in 1969, and now lives in London, Ontario.  It takes guts to devote an entire novel to such dark subject matter.  I found that I had to think about reading the book for about a year before I could bring myself to approach it.

To research and write on such a dark situation must be a daunting task.  Yet Donoghue does it formidably well.

In Room, Donoghue explores the world of an abducted teen, now grown, who births a child in captivity.  With the recent headlines regarding Amanda Berry and her daughter, the book couldn't be more timely.

In spite of the grisly subject matter, Donohue writes with an arresting humour, describing the world of the room in the only innocent voice available, that of the child born therein.

Five year old Jack, who was conceived, born and raised in the eleven by eleven foot room, has known no other world, and it is his ingenuous voice that narrates the story.  

Using Jack as a vehicle allows Donoghue to apply humour and show how love can bring hope and purpose even to a person stranded in seemingly hopeless circumstances.

The ending is unexpectedly powerful and moving.  I highly recommend the book, which seems a perfect expression of Hope From a Dark Portal.

Life More Horrific Than Fiction...Amanda Berry.

"Two women who were kept for years against their will in an Ohio house finally returned home on Wednesday.

Amanda Berry, 27, was brought under police guard to her sister's home in Cleveland and was welcomed by a huge cheer from hundreds of neighbours. The house was festooned with balloons and placards, one saying "We never lost hope" and another reading "We missed you very much". Gina DeJesus, 23, had a similar rapturous welcome home. A third woman who was imprisoned, Michelle Knight, 30, remained out of the spotlight on Wednesday. When they went missing, Berry was 16, DeJesus 14 and Knight 21.

Berry burst free from the house on Seymour Avenue on Monday, with a six-year-old daughter born in captivity, leading police to the grisly scene where they discovered ropes and chains. Since their release, the women had been staying at an undisclosed location with expert investigators". (UK Guardian)

Recently, I finally resigned myself to reading "ROOM" Emma Donoghue's fictional account of a girl growing into womanhood while being imprisoned in an underground room.  In the course of her confinement she becomes pregnant and bears a son, whom she raises inside the dungeon-like enclosure.  

But that was fiction.  These headlines are reality.  A horrific and intolerable reality.  

One of the captors was a school bus driver, which brings me back to what I was once told about pedophiles:  They will always find jobs or professions in fields where they can work with children.

As a school bus driver, Ariel Castro had plenty of opportunity to develop a bond of trust between himself and various female students.  In addition, he would be able to identify those who were special needs, and whom he would possibly find eaiser to lure away.  I doubt that there was anything random about this crime.

I applaud Amanda Berry.  She is a heroine of the first water.  And like Ma in Donoghue's Room, she never gave up not just hope, but planning for that day when she would again be free.

May God go with you, Amanda, you and your daughter.