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8
Nov
2021
Thursday December 4, 2021
The bus ahead of me stopped at the roadside. A stream of young children gushed out the door onto the grass. After the last child, the shepherding adults got off.
By then the kids were celebrating their freedom from confinement. They flung their backpacks on the ground. They romped around in wild disarray.
The driver no longer had any responsibility for them.
But the driver didn’t leave. The bus waited. Long enough to form a protective barrier between the kids and any passing cars. Just long enough to make sure the adults had their flock under control.
Then, and only then, with a squish of air, the doors closed, the brakes released, the bus resumed its route.
Categories: Soft Edges
Tags: Buber, bus driver, I-thou
24
Mar
2019
Hate strikes again! In New Zealand/Aotearoa of all places. The whole country has less than ten gun-related murders a year; only 35 murders in the whole of 2018.
Then in a single afternoon, 50 people dead. Another 40 or so injured, some requiring amputations to save their lives. And hundreds who will suffer post-traumatic stress for months.
Just because they were Muslims, worshipping at two mosques in the city of Christchurch.
As I write these sentences, one suspect has been arrested – 26-year-old Brenton Tarrant.
In a 74-page manifesto, Tarrant declared himself to be a right-wing white supremacist. I’m almost grateful to him for being honest. I’ve long argued that the primary threat to peace does not come from left-wing radicals, but from the far right. Even the FBI, long obsessed with Joe McCarthy’s anti-communist paranoia, now admits that fact.
Categories: Sharp Edges
Tags: Muslims, New Zealand, Christchurch, hate, Buber