A Chopper not a Hacker Be!

Thanks to the many of you who commented in some way to my last entry; 'What if they're right?'

We live in a society of downstreamers. Downstreamers are those in our community who are content in staying at the waters edge of humanity. Without regard to where the flow originates, half of these folks are pulling one dead body out of the water at a time and the other half are commenting on how well [or not] the other half is doing.

The 'fun' begins when the workers and the commentators begin to argue about who is right, or who is better. Or worse yet which of them is more important in their chosen tasks [fields of expertise].

When will we learn; Downstream problems cannot be solved with downstream solutions. It absolutely amazes me that our civic leaders and sadly in too many cases, religious leaders, continue to behave in such a way that reveals their obvious belief, namely; fixing what has happened is more important than solving the cause of what has happened.

Let me give you a few downstream realities we keep trying to fix rather than solve:

• homelessness
• addictions of every kind
• teen pregnancies
• incarcerations
• divorce

And on the list goes - you get the picture.

Here's the problem - as a community we have demonstrated complete competency in fixing things. This is a problem, because fixing things rather than solving them is like a placebo. A wonderful little sugar pill that is as good as we imagine it to be.

Here are today's questions:
'When is enough - enough'?
'How much longer can we afford to exhaust our resources fixing things rather than solving them for a life time'?

'For every one thousand hacking at the branches of evil there is one chopping at the root'.

Thoreau

For those of you who read this today and are filled with a similar hope, I encourage you to pick up the 'ax' of your conscience and join me and others in being among the one who chops rather than hacks at the systemic, the rooted, the ugly and the dirty.

Let the dirt of our work be the badge of our honor as we embrace the virtue of indifference towards the mess and possess the virtue of attentiveness towards God's leanings.

With an Ax,
Dan