Greetings my gentle readers to this week’s installment of
the “Be Yourself, Often” blog. That wonderful point in the week when we can sit
back with the weeds in the wheat and look to the shafts reaching up the sky that
we are becoming. A time to reflect on the moments that were and was and never
will be again. The time of laughter, tears, miracles in the moments and
challenges and successes intertwined in the tapestry of a life.
The next few weeks I will be writing and then presenting
installments on my weekly Tuesday 9pm EST radio show, Prescribing Spiritual
H.O.P.E. on the topic of “The Stone Suitcase”. The show may be found on
Spreaker through WULC at http://www.spreaker.com/show/tuesday_prescribing_spiritual_hope
This week we will address the topic of Remembrance, being
still Veterans Day/ Remembrance Day in North America. History is doomed to repeat itself if we do
not learn from it and the stone suitcases we carry with us are the memories of
the atrocities carried out on humanity and the lives lost to protect our
Charter of Rights and Freedoms. These
include the right to be able to engage in free speech, lawful assembly and
advance scientific knowledge in a way that optimizes care and delivery,
respecting the rights and autonomy of the person, without risk of attack
secondary to race, creed, sexual persuasion or health status. This is my first
year working with Forces and also my first year advancing medical ethics in
education as the Canadian Section Chief with UNESCO.
These are the miracles in the moment to have and carry that
right and behooves us to uphold these values. Do we advance humanity or have a
tale to tell of our own living Hell? That is choice. BUT-that we can actually
make a stand and state when someone is being attacked bullied or made to feel
less than they are. We are all a product
of our past and present and feel moments of grief and loss with the happiness
and positivity. I have had several discussions of recent, interspersed with
death that reminds me of the validity of this statement. That we are able to love and feel loved,
laugh and cry reminds us that we are human. To suppress that is something I do
not believe (and have taken great ribbing over the years that I don’t have
Kleenex in my office). That is because we are to feel that humanity.
Ways and methods to deaden that humanity that thrives within
us is through intensive imbibing in commercialism, being the victim of bullying
and spending too much time living someone else’s dream. This is a time for self-expression
and the way to start and capture that objective is to appreciate the small
miracles in life. The colour of the grass, clouds in the sky and only then can
we be shafts of wheat that rise above the choking weeds of the drudgery of life
and allow us to fly. And to have flight means that we are more likely through
actions to carry that forward and help someone else fly by sharing the
miracles.
For to give those miracles away through education is to
allow the person to appreciate their own Freedoms and know what hold them back.
We must never forget our stone suitcases, but rather learn from them. Lest we
forget, for if you forget, you will not be yourself, often.
~~~
Rev. Dr. Joel Lamoure Remembrance Day
2012
