Ethics...

Like you, I have been reading (and seeing on TV) the news of the great violence that engulfs Syria. I have been watching as the social media campaign to "out" and hopefully stop Joseph Kony of the L.R.A. in Uganda, gains traction. I know that there is great violence being visited on people in Iraq and Afghanistan...although I don't see much about it on my evening news(that bothers me, that its not being shown to us, because we are part of the violence...not all of it, but part of it).
And these are just some of the instances of violence, and terrible unethical behaviors in play around the world...and in my own country, and my own state, and my own town.
Nothing new about this, sad to say.

And so, some thoughts about this business of ethics...in light of widespread and continual unethical behavior:
~"Ethics is knowing the difference between what you have a right to do and what is right to do." -Justice Potter Stewart, Assoc. Justice of the US Supreme Court, 1958 - '81.
~“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.” -G.K. Chesterton
~“To be human you must bear witness to justice. Justice is what love looks like in public -- to be human is to love and be loved." - Dr. Cornel West
~"I really do inhabit a system in which words are capable of shaking the entire structure of government, where words can prove mightier than ten military divisions." -Vaclav Havel
~“Hello, babies. Welcome to Earth. It’s hot in the summer and cold in the winter. It’s round and wet and crowded. At the outside, babies, you’ve got about a hundred years here. There’s only one rule that I know of, babies—(gosh-darn) it, you’ve got to be kind.” –Kurt Vonnegut, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater

So, those thoughts won't change the world, probably. But maybe someday.
BTW, if you match Vaclav Havel's quote with the Dorothy Day quote, you could begin a quite ethical journey.
Oh, and be kind!

Curb Your God...

I saw a bumper sticker on a pickup truck today that really caught my attention. The sticker was bright orange...and the truck was a dark green. That got my attention right there. But the bold black letters on the orange sticker really drew me in. "Curb Your God!" was the message on the sticker.

Seeing that bumper sticker today...coming on the heels of reading some news articles and FaceBook posts about two clergy types (self-identifying as Christian) who pronounced that the incredible destruction caused by tornadoes in my part of the country recently were the work of their God...I thought, almost outloud, "Yeah, Curb THAT God!"
~Curb your god if your god visits violence on human beings.
~Curb your god if your god is out to condemn what your god created.
~Curb your god if your god favors one people over all others; one nation over all others; one religious formula over all others.
~Curb your god if your god is too small to be graceful, too violent to be forgiving, and too narrow to be redeeming to us one and all.

Yeah, Curb THAT!