An Old Young Friend

I saw this Naomi lass, the one who used to have a fringe…
Oh??
Do tell
She was wearing a neon coat and crouching in the rain ‘rescuing’ earthworms from the pavement. Most passers by looked at her like she was really weird, and she laughed to herself.
Did you talk to her?
Well I was going to but it seemed like a better idea to just crouch down alongside her and join in.
And did she save these worms?
Yeah, actually, she couldn’t save them all but she thought that wasn’t a good enough excuse not to save any at all.
Will she be out on the pavements again next time it rains?
Well, I hope so… it depends, sometimes the way the world works can kind of suppress her and she just sortof can’t be found among all the busy people who think that their business and their own selfish needs are more important, she can be tempted to blend in… I hate it when she gets lost in the midst of that ideology.
Ahh i see.
But the world is just so big, she can’t get round to saving all of it; even picking up this earthworm rather than that one is a choice
Yeah it’s a tough world….
Do you think it’s worth it… should she just put on her suit and forget the neon and the earthworms?

Depends… on lots of things… There are lots of valuable ways to spend time… which she obviously has a finite amount of in a day…

How come this wondering about worms, anyway?

Haha…. well the event caused me to ponder, it could be a picture that represents a broader understanding of the world…
 You see it got me wondering… if there were some things about catie that had been more genuinely pure and good; humbling things that make it convenient to lose her. It was nice to see her, but I was wondering if I see her less these days… if I’d replaced her with some townie kid who didn’t care about earthworms, who had ideas above her station..
Ahhhh i see
It would be unfortunate to just replace her,
trample on her worms and leave her out in the rain
Yeah… I mean don’t get me wrong she could always be selfish and bad, but I think she was brave and willing to stand up and be different and do what’s uncomfortable if she though it was the right thing to do… I’d hate it if she became unecognisable in that sense…
But she hasn’t
Not yet 🙂
Like you said – she was chilling with the worms today
And she might just prompt a few others around her to think too
Like me. And yourself.
 Yeah, I’m glad I recognised her, it would have been easy to ignore her and keep walking, not to think about it at all, I’m sure I’ve done that before, I hope I don’t from now on, but I probably will…
I’m glad,
that you’ve told me about her 🙂

Half Marathon!!! :] xx

Hey there Wonderfolk! :] Thanks for getting on board, it’d be awesome if you’d head over to my JustGiving page, every bit of support means so much. :]

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This September I am embarking on a challenge I’ve only ever joked about previously… I am going to do the Great North Run. It is a half Marathon that starts pretty close to my house in Newcastle. At the moment the concept of pushing myself to run so much is both exciting and terrifying. I’m not a massively sporty person and my flat feet make training a bit painful, but it’ll be totally worth it to get out of my comfort zone and raise money for people who really need it.

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I am raising money for three charities, so bear with me as I tell you just a little about each of them.

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10% of the money raised through this page will go to STOP AIDS CAMPAIGN. So the name pretty much explains what that’s about; preventing aids and treating aids. It’s possible, all that’s needed are funds to supply the medicine needed, for more info click here.

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40% of the money raised will go to TEARFUND. Terarfund is a Christian charity that, among many other issues, aims to combat the unnecessary tragedy caused by aids. For more information visit here.

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50% of the money raised will go to JUBILEE DEBT CAMPAIGN. Their aim is to release people from inescapable and crippling poverty by campaigning to get richer nations to Drop the Debt. The World’s poorest countries pay almost 23 Million Dollars every day to the rich world. Many debts have been cancelled but there are still many more that hold people captive in poverty. [Check out their website here]

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So please help make this effort worth while and give whatever you feel able to, any amount is fantastic. Thank you SO MUCH! I’ll let you know how it goes! I’m determined to manage it! :]
Donating through JustGiving is simple, fast and totally secure. Your details are safe with JustGiving – they’ll never sell them on or send unwanted emails. Once you donate, they’ll send your money directly to the charity and make sure Gift Aid is reclaimed on every eligible donation by a UK taxpayer. So it’s the most efficient way to donate – I raise more, whilst saving time and cutting costs for the charities.

♦ http://www.justgiving.com/CatieEliza ♦

As long as there’s HOPE

So I’ve got this necklace that I made last summer. I wear it every day.  It is made out of a strip of black leather (not very vegetarian of me I know, but that’s a whole other matter) and eight little wooden cube beads. It looks a little bit like this:

—–J–U–S–T–I–C–E–?—–

But it’s a bit tatty now. The thing that strikes most people when they see it is that it has a question mark at the end of it. Actually most people think that it’s funny, which it is. But there’s a serious side to it.  Some people are offended by it. Seems odd right? I’ll tell you why though, because acknowledging justice means acknowledging right and wrong, and for a lot of us, that means admitting that we’re wrong, selfish. I made the necklace because of God… God really cares about people, and when some people are treated horribly by other people He gets flipping cross. I had a realisation. I am one of those oppressors. I frequently act in a way that implies that I am superior to other people, and their desperate needs are inferior to my wanton desires.

But it doesn’t have to be like that.

THAT is why there is a question mark. The necklace challenges me daily, and others, should they choose to accept, to live in a way that comes in line with the ideals that many of us profess. Bear with me, that sounds very vague and unattainable, but wait. We have a legal system in our country (as do most countries) that is in place to ensure that justice is done. Those who commit a crime are made to pay for it in some way, also in court ideally no individual has higher or lower rank than another. We generally have a sense of FAIRNESS that says that people should have EQUAL rights. In sports teams or individuals have to abide by the same rules as other teams or individuals to make the game FAIR. Most educated people would agree that all human beings are intrinsically of equal value. Somewhere in our core there’s something that tells us that human life is sacred.

The problem is the disconnect. If we truly believe that people are valuable and should be treated ‘fairly’ then we will not be willing to accept that vast numbers of individual feeling human beings are treated horrifically every day. If we truly believe that each person is as valuable as another then we would not think it was okay for us to buy luxury items made by the hands of cruelly treated slaves who do not have the essential requirements for healthy life.

So it might be that we are daunted by the huge abyss of human suffering that we perceive, I totally empathise with that. But the good news is we are not responsible for the whole world’s actions, we’re only responsible for our own. That means we are responsible for what we do, and we’re also responsible for what we choose not to do… and for me, that is the scary part.

But there’s more good news: We ABSOLUTELY CAN make a POSITIVE difference in our HURTING world. 

Now I’m getting to the crux of my ramble… If every time we make a choice we bear in mind the consequence of our choice for EVERYONE, and we choose to do what is compassionate we WILL be living justly, we will SEE JUSTICE OCCUR!! 

So even though I know that many people are hurting I also know that when I choose to buy Fairtrade food, when I get clothes from charity shops and when I have lunch with someone who’s lonely, I change someone’s life for the better. (And if you know me then by now you’ll realise that you don’t have to be extraordinary to make such a difference)

I genuinely believe that as long as there are Humans there will be a sense of Justice,

And as long as there’s a sense of Justice there will be people HOPING FOR that Justice to come about,

And as long as there is HOPE then good things will happen.

So I have a question for you…. (and me)

JUSTICE?

xx