WHEN TWO WORLDS ARE ONE

I never met him. He saw a flyer I posted on his small college’s campus, Salve Regina University, in Newport, Rhode Island. I was told the students don’t read flyers…not to expect anything from the posting of the Torch Relay that I was organizing for Darfur for our state. www.dreamfordarfur.org I wrote my email address on it and left it in the hands of the person in charge of bulletin boards.

Within a couple of days I received an email from a student. We talked and it was clear from the first sentence or two that the flyer was welcome by Edward. Edward and his twin brother were born in exile from their country of Rwanda in Kampala, Uganda, due to the unrest after the 1994 genocide. He now is attending college 20 minutes from my home. We talked several times on the phone. I went off to Washington, D.C. and Edward and I called each other trying to find funding for him to come to the www.standnow.org National Conference “Make This the Year” (to end genocide). Having failed at getting him funding, we continued until I met him Thursday evening with several socially and morally interested students in supporting efforts to educate about genocide and the crisis in Darfur, Sudan. Edward is totally committed to this.

After the meeting Edward stayed and we shared our views about the genocide, the US and the world. Here is a young man that is conversant in the world’s stage. I sat talking to someone that I had had several phone conversations with and email exchanges.

The difference in our ages is 40 years. But the importance of our meeting is that we can help each other in our similar dedication to educate and act to elevate the issue of man’s inhumanity to others. Here I was hearing a young man, who knew personally what it feels like to have the international community turn its back on a people who were being hacked to death...yes, while we just went about our daily lives’ routines. While we were being inundated with OJ and Monica Lewinsky’s dress stories, we pulled out of Rwanda just as it was getting worse. We abandoned people in dire need. We did the opposite of what we should have been doing.

Matthew 25:31-46

"When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left.

"Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'

"Then the righteous will answer him, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you something to drink? When did we see you a stranger and invite you in, or needing clothes and clothe you? When did we see you sick or in prison and go to visit you?'

"The King will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.'

"Then he will say to those on his left, 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.'

"They also will answer, 'Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?'

"He will reply, 'I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.'

"Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."

As Edward put it: This is a man-made problem so we can change it.”

Edward’s uncle is a high officer in the African Union troops in Darfur right now.

I am currently spending all of my waking hours on the “Carry the Torch for Darfur” event in Providence, Rhode Island for October 27, 2007. (Except for writing this post.) This event is a part of the international and national Dream for Darfur campaign.

After a rehearsal of young people this morning at my house for the Darfur event, I needed a break from all of the pressured concentration on the event preparation, so I sat here at my computer and watched YouTube. Beautiful ones. And the stark contrast was, here on my screen, this is what humans can do…this beautiful work and yet what is happening in Darfur and the complicity of the rest of the world is the other side of what humans can do. A view from a distance is always easier. But......but, as Edward and I sat there in agreement over the fact that we must, must get well-informed and stop avoiding the truth of these horrific stories of our inhumanity. Inhumanity that includes this shameful, ignorant behavior of leaving a desperate people languish because we’re okay, so that’s all we care about. As Edward says he believes in karma...that what we do and don’t do in the name of what is good and right will come back to haunt us. What we are doing in Iraq will have repercussions generations down the historical road. And we both agree that those consequences will not be the ones that we HOPE we will be getting. Ignorance is not bliss and we have a President who has taken us down a road that will not have a good “return”.

I love the arts. Music, drama, dance, art work. Beauty really that is created at the hands and the conceptions of humans. I find these Youtube submissions an example of “Wow…that is what we as humans can do that is extraordinarily awesome and inspiring." Go to links and watch them in full-screen by clicking at the lower right of the little YouTube screen.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOhb7uc8IGU
Let Me Fall
Cirque Du Soleil "Bungee" from the Saltimbanco spectacular, performed to Josh Groban's collaboration for Cirque

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4KQ1EUhjI8
Cirque du soleil Water Ballet

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhHixicVS4k
Cirque du soleil
Show: Varekai - Handbalancing on Canes by Olga Pikhienko

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The Beijing Summer 2008 Olympics theme is
ONE WORLD, ONE DREAM

Nice thought, but China needs to be responsive to the Dream for Darfuri families who have not only been having genocide perpetrated on them by Sudan's governmentally-sponsored janjaweed - but China has blocked action on the United Nations Security Council many, many times. The Security Council's unanimous vote on July 31, 2007 to send U.N. Peacekeepers into Darfur must receive continued leverage by all and especially by China.

wwww.dreamfordarfur.org