Tag Archives: peace

Audacious

Audacious: (adj) showing a willingness to take surprisingly bold risks.

dictionary with letter A

I am very curious exactly how many miles one would have to run with a stick before actually tripping, falling, having the pointed end of the stick lodging in the eye.

Yet we were led to believe that such careless running with loosely held wood would ultimately most certainly lead to blindness.

We were not raised to be risk-takers.

So rather than ending up with a generation of people who are careful planners, adept at common sense, we have an “earthful” of cautious, lazy folks who occasionally rebel by actually doing things that are dangerously risky.

If you continue to avoid activities which merely demand a certain amount of skill because you think they’re risky, you’ll eventually get fed up, go out and enter a jalopena-eating contest.

Somewhere along the line we have to teach our children that the pursuit of excellence does bump up against risky endeavors, but the power of planning and the presence of practice does enable us to run with a stick without gouging our eyeballs.

I have taken audacious risks all my life.

I will tell you this–simply writing a blog on the Internet is risky business. The possibility for obscurity, criticism or being stalked by a person with a manic disorder who doesn’t like to swallow pills is always prevalent.

But it will take some risks for us to avoid greater risks.

It will take the frightening thought of negotiation to keep us from negotiating another war.

It will take risky conversations about racism to eliminate dead young men in the street.

It will take brave souls insisting on the common humanity of men and women to bring about the true peaceful interaction which will prevent us from being constantly at each other’s throats.

What is worth the risk?

Any time we have the chance to advance the cause of peace, liberty and justice, it’s well worth getting up out of our easy chair and grabbing our baton (which is just a stick)… to start running. 

 

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Armaments

dictionary with letter A

Armament: (n) Military weapons and equipment.　

Do you realize that there are people in the world who get up every morning and go to work to try to come up with new ideas for weapons that are bigger and meaner than the ones we’ve already manufactured?

I don’t want to be self-righteous, but it’s certainly not a job I would want to pursue.

After all, once you’ve discovered an implement that’s capable of killing someone, doing it more effectively or with double power seems to be…well, over-kill.

There was a point in the 1960’s when both the U.S. and the Soviet Union touted that each was able to destroy the world ten times over through nuclear weapons.

Did they really intend on procuring nine other planets?

Or was this just little boys on the playground boasting on how far they could spit?

As long as we have a military budget which is built on discovering more creative ways to be destructive rather than maintaining an existing prowess that encourages peace, I think we may be guilty of some misappropriation of funds.

Armaments scare me. It’s not because I’m afraid to die.

It’s just because I don’t like to discuss modes of death… before I get there.

 

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Aghast

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter AAghast: (adj.) filled with horror or shock: e.g. when the news came out they were aghast

I was trying to figure out what horrifies me.

Like most human beings, I think I’m horrified by violence, destruction, death and mayhem. That’s good. (I mean, it’s bad. But it’s good that I think it’s bad.)

But there are other things that horrify me. I’m talking about that shock that startles your heart and makes your bowels tingle.

  • As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become horrified by the notion of performing activities I am not presently suited for in any way, shape or form.
  • I’m a little bit horrified when I watch television and realize that we have sunk to an era of fantasy, presumption, silliness and self-involvement.
  • I’m horrified by killing. I think I already said that.
  • I’m horrified by pornography. I think what horrifies me about that subject is the notion that women, who consist of half of the population on the planet, can so easily be trivialized and brutalized through a medium which is gaining more acceptance every day.
  • I’m aghast at prejudice–so much so that I’m willing to root it out in myself.
  • I’m aghast when I get around people who are overly confident in their abilities because it shows that improvement is so far from their minds.
  • I don’t think I’ve ever been horrified by a horror movie. That’s rather bizarre.
  • Yet I am truly horrified by death–my own in particular. I know as a person of faith, I should welcome the experience, or at least not be terrified of the journey, but that isn’t really my sensation. I enjoy life and I’m just not relishing the idea of seeing it end, especially since I am fully cognizant that things will be able to continue without me.

I guess what leaves me aghast is the notion of how easy it would be for us to be kinder to one another, yet we make the more difficult choice to conjure evil.

The thing I know above all else is that human beings don’t need any help from the dark regions of hell in order to come up with a way to destroy one another. Yes, I guess that makes me aghast.

For the truly horrifying part of life is realizing how easy it would be to create peace … as we blithely purchase more weapons for war.