JPCenter Web Reflections- 2010-’11
About the Federal Budget: Adapted from a letter Sr. Christina Meyer wrote to our Kansas Legislators in D.C. [Letter by Sr. Christina Meyer]
“Regarding the efforts to cut the Federal budget: I ask that you NOT support the budget being presented by Rep. Ryan. It is an affront on all that America stands for and that is to care for and support the most needy and vulnerable in our society.
We cannot achieve a balanced budget on cuts along. Revenue must be increased and a great portion of that should come from huge Corporations that benefit from “welfare” tax-breaks and pay very little or no taxes. This has to stop and they need to be taxed based on their profits, whether they contribute to a legislator’s campaign or not. It is not right that they get by without supporting the government by way of contributing taxes. (See the Alerts page on “the Wall of Shame”.
Another place to increase revenue is to restore the taxes on the rich, those earning over $250,000 per year, let the Bush tax cuts expire. The rich individuals do not hire nor do they contribute to ending employment. The millionaires in the U.S. are growing while the middle class is shrinking. Again, I say restore the taxes on the rich.
Another place to cut spending is in the Defense Budget. Secretary Gates says that there are items in the budget that are not needed but Congress keeps funding them. Cut the defense budget but make sure the personnel who have suffered multiple deployments in two wars and who have serious medical conditions get all the care they need for healing. Protect low-income programs such as Head Start, food stamps school lunches; protect Medicaid, medicare and Social Security. Cutting the low-income programs will not produce savings, it will only add more to the programs needed to provide these services.”
Never Again Hiroshima! Never Again Nagasaki! by Marcia Allen, csj
Never again… I visited Japan for several weeks in the year 2000. While there I experienced many opportunities to come to an understanding of how the Japanese felt about the horror visited on them in August of 1945. To tell the truth, however, I shied away from this understanding. I protected myself from it and left Japan not a bit wiser about their experience of the destruction of their two cities by the United States with the unspeakable atomic bomb.
I stopped in Hawaii on the way home to give a retreat to Sisters of St. Joseph living there. While in Hawaii I had the opportunity to visit Pearl Harbor. I expected that to be just another tourist stop and went unsuspecting onto the Arizona Memorial which is the U.S. attempt to preserve the memory of December 8, 1941.
I was stunned to realize that the tourists on board the ship that day were hundreds of Japanese tourists. Were they really tourists? They stood there in several rows around the ship just looking into the harbor where ship wreckage still lies in the water just as it was after the bombing. They were standing in complete silence with tears streaming down their cheeks, not moving, just looking. Taking the long look into the mystery of a great war that senselessly took the lives of too many and wreaked havoc on too much of the world.
Over the years I have pondered this wonder many times. That these people were not at Hiroshima or Nagasaki weeping, but were standing at Pearl Harbor weeping. Who, I wondered then as I ponder it now, was victim and who perpetrator? Can these two be separated? Maybe rationally, but in the heart, never. Victim and perpetrator are one and the same – whether United States or Japan. Both in the seeming coincidence of opposites they become one and the same. Both suffering the crucifixion of promise and dreams in the hopelessly violent death-dealing bombing of one another.
This year, 65 years later, the memory of those times still lingers. It is still capable of setting up bitterness in the human heart. It still calls forth the terror and horror of those moments of suffering and tragedy. It still melts our hearts with the reality of what humankind can do to itself. It is still a lesson of how we as humans can subscribe to the awful and rationalize it as good. It is still a lesson in the compassion of which the human heart is capable – the capacity to suffer and to go beyond the suffering to the life-giving generosity of shedding tears of sorrow over the sins of our past.
We can still learn from that experience. We can admit the senselessness of imposing suffering on one another. We can still weep for our sins and make restitution. We can still open our hearts and arms to those whom we regard as enemy. We can still become more human still – that is, we can become more aware of how we are sometimes victim and sometimes perpetrator – all in the same breath. And, we can weep with true regret and mend our ways. We can offer the gift of peace to one another.
the Arizona Memorial- Hawaii
