It Takes a Universe

Despite the fact that the children who live across the street from me keep hitting my car with their football, I still think they're entitled to a decent life. One that provides a good education, a healthy community, health care, and an automatic restraining order against Michael Jackson (and many a Catholic priest, for that matter!). The other day, a coworker of mine passed on an article from Earth Light, an environmental/spiritual publication, that featured an article on "Children and The Earth Charter."

For those who don't know, The Earth Charter is one of those things that neoconservatives barf at, cynics shake their head at, and realists roll their eyes at. Idealists like myself, however, have orgasms over these sorts of things. The Earth Charter, more or less, is a list of principles signed by countless non-governmental organizations around the world, "To establish a sound ethical foundation for the emerging global society and to help build a sustainable world based on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice and a culture of peace."

Anyway, the article talked about raising children under the pretense that in a globalized world, it really does take a universe to raise a child. It featured an excerpt from April Ambrose, a recent college graduate and teacher, talking about how education has failed young people, that really spoke to the Whitney Houston, "Greatest Love of All" principles inside me:

"School did not teach them how to enter into the rat race and yet still maintain a sense of what is right. Most of all, school did not teach them how to make things better. Most of these youth have become disillusioned. They have accepted pain and suffering and lies as what they must be. Some of these people, however, are trying to drop out of the race. Some of these people are working to make their corner of the universe better...But it is hard, for society allows them few resources. By the time most of them gain these resources, they have forgotten their dreams or deemed them impossible. They become realistic like society instead of idealistic...

Society is only as healthy as its young people. Our society is very unhealthy and our youth are crying for help. They don't want to shoot each other. They don't want to feel pain. They are not ready for war. We need to help them by listening to their cries. We cannot ignore them anymore. They are our future - literally. They will choose what from their lives and our present age to take into the future with them and what they will create."

That last part makes my bowels a twitter, thinking about what children of today are going to take with them into adulthood - shady business practices, anything goes politics, a lack of commitment to the common good, reality television starring Britney Spears...

That's depressing enough for me to want to reach for the bottle of Lambrusco!

But it is something to think back on that innocence of childhood, that endless world of possibilities. I can't help but be reminded of a biblical quote here, "You cannot enter the kin-dom of God unless you become like a little child." I don't know what book that's in - Luke, Clementine, Farrah...I'm not good with biblical details! But I like to think that maybe there is some grain of truth to that...not in the fire and brimstone sense (i.e. s/he who doesn't become like a child must burn in hell forever! Bwahaha...), but in the sense that in order for us to be truly self-actualized, we really do have to revisit the idealism of childhood, and somehow encompass that into our every day lives.

Shit, I talk more than John Kerry. Bye for now, folks.