Seems to me that with a question like this you need to define what you mean by life. For the sake of the discussion, I'll say that I see life as being that which enlivens, creates energy, engenders more life. So that goes way past human life, animal life and even plant life. There's a wonderful architect named Christopher Alexander who has written books and books looking at how buildings and towns engender life.

But anyway, assuming that life is a matter of what we recognize to be living and life giving, then the question is what we are conscious of having life, and is there life beyond that which we recognize as living?

I feel like it is our prime directive to discover the shared being with all that is, that as we move from a sense of otherness to unity with the stranger or strange being in doing this we are really living and engendering life. It's a little obscure, but essentially it's the thesis/antithesis dialectic at work, where the wall between subject/self and object/other breaks down and the two become one. United this way, then all life becomes unified, and sacred.

I have the sense that if we could re-member ourselves completely, all being would be unified past the point of separation and we would simply be. In such a state, there would be no otherness, and past and future would cease to appear real. All would simply be in a completed state of now...

But there seems to be a fascinating wobble in the cosmos which makes us continue to move, change, discover ourselves and become... and this movement around the wobbling lilting center of it all is the thing we call life. It's a sacred dance I believe, and all its parts reflect the whole of the divine.

is that the war will go on.With or without a draft, with or without the bodies of our young people, the war will go on. What I hear is the military doesn't need personnel any more. They've moved on to robotic killing, drones sending bombs from remote locations. The killers sit in little rooms and play at war like it's a computer game.

How can we dismantle that?

I think it's probably part of the cause, but not the ultimate answer. What really strikes me is that the days of feed sack dresses and barefoot kids picking cotton and baling hay all summer is within the living memory of many people in the red states. Those memories are of making a living under incredibly hard conditions, and doing it as a family, doing it almost alone.

People in the blue states endured equally challenging issues, but the population was often concentrated more in small towns or urban areas. In those places it was industry that held sway. To make dangerous and lethal situations better, people joined unions-- and the help and protection of the unions is within the living memory of many people living in the blue states. We get emotional about the dangers of the coal mines and the help of the unions here, the same way people in red states get emotional about the memory of their grand parents being put off the family farm because they couldn't come up with money to pay the note on the tractor, or some such thing.

Anyway, the group approach became more popular and accepted in blue states. People in blue states experienced the benefit of organizing, and embraced a social (even socialist) orientation that is anathema to the farmer and rancher.

While many of causes of the red/blue divide are historic, you need to remember that they have been exploited for political gain. Remember Nixon's Southern Strategy. He looked at the racist buttons he could push among southern voters and he pushed them, and it worked. As I understand Obama is the first president to move beyond that approach and to win.

Above all, it seems to me that the only way we can move beyond the divide is through compassion for past pain and feelings of betrayal.

I'm so glad you posted this excerpt! I love that poem. Sandburg really understood how it is to work with little hope of changing one's circumstance. We the people have little say, and yet when things go astray, we feel the blame of not knowing enough. Blaming people helps bo one and make people feel terrible.

If I were to add another poem to Sandburg's, it might be Ginsberg's Howl which, though more personal, gets at the way people become lost in this land. The start of the second section seems to describe how the great system of social control (Moloch) destroys imagination and free thought...

What sphinx of cement and aluminium bashed open their skulls and ate up their brains and imagination?

Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks!

Moloch! Moloch! Nightmare of Moloch! Moloch the loveless! Mental Moloch! Moloch the heavy judger of men!

Moloch the incomprehensible prison! Moloch the crossbone soulless jailhouse and Congress of sorrows! Moloch whose buildings are judgement! Moloch the vast stone of war! Moloch the stunned governments!

Moloch whose mind is pure machinery! Moloch whose blood is running money! Moloch whose fingers are ten armies! Moloch whose breast is a cannibal dynamo! Moloch whose ear is a smoking tomb!

Moloch whose eyes are a thousand blind windows! Moloch whose skyscrapers stand in the long streets like endless Jehovas! Moloch whose factories dream and choke in the fog! Moloch whose smokestacks and antennae crown the cities!

Moloch whose love is endless oil and stone! Moloch whose soul is electricity and banks!

She started life as Nora, one of only three hens amongst about 9 roosters (we bought them, unsexed, straight run from a local Agway -- bad way to get laying hens!) So Nora grew up, never crowed, but like all the hens, she was subject to the cocks constant demands.

She didn't lay any eggs, but she never crowed either.

Finally we had had enough of the dominance of the guys. We took them for the big chop chop to save the poor girls from complete and abject misery. About two weeks later, darn if Nora didn't start to crow! Next thing you know she was strutting round like she owned the place, ruled the roost. And she got territorial about her hens. S/he wouldn't let us in the door without attacking. We renamed her Adolf, s/he was so nasty. Finally after about three months of this, we decided Adolf had to go. Tried to eat him. I didn't even try to stew him. He was too nasty to eat!

That's the tale of the cock-hen from Skippack PA!

In response to a strong significant question -- when did relief agencies start putting paperwork above people's needs, Christopher Promis from CRS wrote this email. I think it gives some insight to what's going on in Port au Prince and beyond:

Although we can’t speak for all the international NGO’s, we are aware that in the best of times, it was not easy to get things done. So it has been especially difficult to not only get organized but to address such massive needs of food, water, shelter, sanitation and security for hundreds of thousands of people. There is also a need to attend to the spiritual and psychological wellbeing of the people. It takes time to bring order to the chaos of a destroyed city and a traumatized people. For people on the ground, like Ryan McCrory, this time frame can be frustrating and it is frustrating to us at CRS as well. So all I can say is what we have done to the present moment.

DISTRIBUTIONS
Port au Prince has been divided into 16 zones. CRS/Caritas Haiti is in charge of distributing rice in three zones. Starting Monday, February 1st, CRS will be distributing rice for more than 30,000 Haitians a day. The distributions are 55lbs of rice.

Up to Monday, February 1, CRS/Caritas Haiti has provided food to 113,978 people, and nonfood items to more than 20,000 people. These distributions are for family units, not individuals.

The large downtown rice distribution began on Jan. 31 in one of the CRS-designated camps (Palace/Champ de Mars) out of three of our designated sites. It is the most problematic site in terms of security but everything went well. The distribution, though longer than expected, was relatively orderly.

SHELTER
The last of the materials for shelter kits for 180,000 people are due to arrive today, February 1. The distribution of shelter kits at Pétionville Club and in other camps is set to start this week.

WASH
The water and sanitation materials for thousands of people arrived over the weekend, and include large water bladders, water treatment packs, building materials, tools, and other sanitation and construction supplies.

Major water and sanitation efforts are underway at the St. Francois de la Sale Hospital, where CRS/Caritas Haiti is carrying out a full sanitation plan. The CRS/Caritas Haiti team delivered cleaning supplies and buckets on Jan. 31 and started putting up screens around the operating room to protect patients from the flies. The full package of water and sanitation activities will take place at the hospital, including the construction of more latrines and showers, hand washing stations, clearing of drainage, management of waste, etc.

The CRS/Caritas Haiti team also selected camps downtown where today the team will start installing latrines. CRS/Caritas Haiti is identifying a local NGO with which to partner on participatory camp planning for water and sanitation in camps. The local NGO will help CRS/Caritas Haiti work with the camp committees to identify the locations for latrines, hand washing stations, showers, etc. In areas where digging is possible, latrines can be built within two days. For many of the urban camps set on concrete where digging is not possible, CRS/Caritas Haiti is contracting companies that rent portable latrines, and then will de-sludge the port-a-potties on a regular basis to maintain sanitation.

And just to quote some media on CRS:

From the Washington Post Jan 29: Perhaps the most successful food operation in the capital took place this week on a once exclusive golf course in the hills east of the crippled downtown. Catholic Relief Services teamed with soldiers from the U.S. Army's 82nd Airborne Division to distribute more than 200 tons of food, principally lentils and bulgar, to about 6,500 families.

NPR to Sam Worthington, President and CEO, InterAction: “Reporters see chaos and lack of coordination, explain the discrepancy.”

Sam W.: From the beginning, there was significant dialogue in the UN system to set up clusters, rapid outreach to the NGO community and mobilization on the ground, reality of individuals and hospitals supported by NGOs. Significant challenge of ramping up. CRS great example of how it’s done.

So, yes, it can seem on the ground that nothing is happening or what is happening is chaotic, but there are developments and this is brief report is just about CRS. There are other agencies that are delivering resources as well.

Thank you and all the people of PiP. You have done great work and now more will be asked of you. My thoughts and prayers are with you all and with the people of Haiti !

Peace,
Chris


Rev. Christopher P. Promis, C.S.Sp.

Institutional Relations Officer

Catholic Relief Services

228 W. Lexington Street

Baltimore , MD 21201