While groping for a light in the darkness.

I gaze at my little ones asleep and safe in their warm beds. They are so innocent, tender and new to this earth. This achingly beautiful, fragile home we humans share.
Before I close my eyes for sleep I whisper a prayer for all those who have died as a result of war and violence over the last year.

Paris
Lebanon
Nigeria
Palestine
Afghanistan
Syria
Iraq

 "Hail, holy Queen, Mother of mercy, our life, our sweetness and our hope. To thee do we cry, poor banished children of Eve. To thee to we send up our sighs, mourning and weeping in this valley of tears. Turn, then, most gracious advocate, thine eyes of mercy toward us, and after this, our exile, show unto us the blessed fruit of thy womb, Jesus. O clement, O loving, O sweet Virgin Mary."
 Salve Regina 



I hear voices of fear and confusion from all sides. My Facebook feed is lit up with the political.
Those who support military action and those who don't. Those who welcome refugees and those who don't.

 There is a part  of me that looks at the suffering of homeless families and veterans, the failing healthcare systems, the crumbling public services and the rampant poverty at home and wonders how we can possibly open our arms to ever more desperate humans.
Yet I want to be a part of a humanity that thinks globally not nationally. I want my children to be a part of a world that calls every child its own, no matter what their skin tone, creed, belief system, language or country of birth. I want love to cast out fear. I want love to win.
 After all the problem is less one of adequate resources than the distribution of them.

I think of the old man carrying his only surviving grandchild across a hostile border, or a boy helping a pregnant woman off a petrol sodden boat and think of the children who fall asleep to the sound of bombs and guns, their parents not knowing if they will wake to see another day.

There is a part of me that just wants the evil that causes such pain to evaporate from the earth whatever the means. I want the answer to be simple and the delivery swift. Yet there is another part of me that understands the complexity. That knows how violence can only reap violence. There is a part of me that knows that whenever a civilization or sovereign nation depends upon the death of even one little child in an act of war or oppression it undermines it's own civility and integrity.

Due to corporate, military and economic intervention by elite groups over many years, many countries across the world have been destabilized, in terms of their agricultural systems, their environment, their culture, traditions and infrastructure. Coups have been initiated puppet leaders installed and then non corrupt autonomy has expected to follow.

The kind of unfathomable horror that  is isis has been perpetuated throughout history in different forms. From nazi concentration camps, to the slave ships of Africa and the ethnic cleansing of Native Tribes around the world. From the barbarianism of genghis khan to the gladiator spectacles of ancient rome. All these things were generated and initiated by elites but carried out by ordinary people, just following orders.
 
I pray for the oppressed no matter what their religion, race or color.
I don't know what the answers are and it seems like there is so little we can do but if ordinary people stand together and refuse to hate or be suspicious of one another then the pattern might slowly begin to change and peace might be possible again.