7 Bits of Good News

I don't know about you, but every now and then I have to pull back from the unrelenting bad news of the world and just take a break -- stare out my window, listen to the birds and watch the sunlight filter through the full-on green of the forsythia bushes that run along two sides of the house, even taking in the sounds of intermittent truck traffic as somehow reassuring.

Then I go trolling like a junkie in search of some good news.  It's always there.  I simply forget it sometimes as the noise of the catastrophes (and they are real) drowns out what I know is also there -- small and large glimmers of the glorious.

Here are 7 I found today:

1.  Acts of kindness in Ferguson, as neighbors help each other and good deeds all but escape unnoticed by the larger world.  Huffington Post

2.  Sir Nicholas Winton turned 105 today.  He helped smuggle over 600 children destined for the camps out of Nazi strongholds to Great Britain.  And Great Britain took them in.  Something to remember, I think.

3.  An Imam in Calgary speaks out against ISIS.  And so does Saudi Arabia’s Grand Mufti (top religious leader in the country), who calls ISIS and Al-Qaeda ‘enemy number one of Islam’.   Huffington Post  Yes, ‘they’ do speak out – they, Muslims, they, religious leaders, they, not of ‘us’, they.  ‘We’ just don’t always know it.  The Daily Beast

4.  People of faith, like people of no faith, struggle with things like illness and dying every day.  For people of faith, contrary to all objective reason, often their faith is deepened rather than not by the challenges they face.  And people of faith experience that as a good thing.  It's happening again today.

5.  Nuns are still getting on the bus.

6.  Governmental minds can be and are changed.

7.  Enemies became friends today.  I’m not sure where exactly, but it happens every day, so I’m pretty sure it happened today.

That's my list of good news for today.  I wonder what's on your list?

The Good News Clock

Friend Hank sent me this link today – it’s a clock – well, sort of.  I mean, there is a measure of time, but it’s

Doomsday Clock

not really measuring time, this internet ‘device’ – it’s measuring the annual accumulations of the world in numbers . . . people born . . . people dying . . . (both at least implicitly seen by the counting creators as bad news) . . . murders . . . fuel consumption rates . . . how we’re dying . . . what illnesses are piling up on the collective body human . . . extinction rates . . . how much we’re consuming . . . well, you get the picture.

What grabbed my eye, however, is the category Smile (it ain't all bad news).  I’m not sure what I expected, but beyond ‘# of 1st kisses’ (which I keep wondering how on earth they claim to measure), I find their categories pretty depressing: # of divorces . . . beer (and wine) consumption rates . . . cars purchased . . . Coca Cola’s drunk . . . and # of Google searches.

Really?

Even tongue-in-cheek, this is the best you can do for smilie-good news?

In the tongue-in-cheek mode (or not), how about # of FB friends made . . . or # of blades of grass growing without human help . . . or # of cat videos posted on YouTube (you know you watch them – and hey, if someone’s making a cute cat video, chances are they’re not up to mischief – a good thing, I’m thinking – and yes, on a scale of the good, I put cat videos ahead of drinking a Coke) . . . # of Top 10 lists posted . . . # of times people turned off their computers . . . # of good dreams (I’m guessing if they can measure first kisses, dreams wouldn’t be much of a stretch) . . .

Or better yet, if it’s a measure of genuine good news we seek, how about measuring and reporting on the number of new species found . . . trees planted . . . hungry fed . . . those who went to bed safe the night before . . . have adequate clothing . . . found shelter . . . received needed medical attention . . . went to school . . . have loving parents . . . were not murdered . . . lived to a ripe old age . . . heard a kind word . . . spoke a kind word . . . read a book . . . created something . . . preserved something worth saving . . . had an idea . . . served someone . . . loved . . . worshiped . . . praised . . . laughed . . . danced . . . enjoyed the sunshine . . . were brave . . . got their dream job . . . or just got a job . . .

It’s another day on planet earth and there are those among us who count and measure the passing time by what’s happening.  I wonder why so many of our professional counters measure to the doom, without also including the many bits of good news.

I’m no Pollyanna, but it seems to me that we’d be far better off as a species if we remembered not only the bad news, but also the good; and there is actually quite a lot of good to remember.

And that’s a blessing.

2012: A Very Bad Year

Hurricane Sandy . . . Newtown . . . Aurora . . . Israel bombs Gaza . . . car bombs kill and kill and kill in Iraq . . . Syria . . . Gaza bombs Israel . . . no Pullitzer awarded for fiction . . . Mexican drug wars result in horrific killings . . . Benghazi . . . Israel bombs Gaza . . . bus and train crashes, floods and earthquakes, kill thousands . . . cholera and yellow fever and ebola strike the poor . . . drought spreads . . . one gang rape in India and one Pakistani girl shot stand as exemplars for the horror of our violence . . . History Orb

Turning the page on a calendar will not change anything . . . will not lead to a new chapter of existence . . .

But it does give pause . . . a time, a space, for reflection.

Is this who we are?

In the microcosm, how easily I can name the violence done me; 2012 is no exception.  But can I chronicle nearly so well the violence I do others?  Or does that violence disappear into the fog of self-justification?

We search for reasons as if that changes the thing.  But perspective is just another name for forgetting.  If we can ‘understand’, then we can differentiate – that could not happen to me, to mine.

But it could.  It does.

So to 2012, I bid good-bye.  To all the reasons proffered, I say never mind.  To all the justifications, I say no go.

You did it.  I did it.  We did it.  Now we live with it.

For you see, when it comes to the whys, well, that’s easy: because we could.

The real question is how to avoid the doing. . . the hurting . . . the wounding . . . the tearing of the fabric of all that is good and holy and just and right and true and worthy . . .

We didn’t call names because we were wounded; we called names because we could.

We didn’t kill because it was necessary; we killed because we could.

We didn’t fail to protect because of anything other than because we didn’t want to.

What good is a will if it is only bent to the self?

What good is a will that leans only towards destruction?

So here goes for my own personal 2013 resolution:

This year, I resolve to do no harm.  Period.

Likely I will fail.  But in the resolving there is good to be found, progress to be made.  And fewer bloody carcasses left behind.