I think I got it, or at least I thought I had. After spending too short 7 days walking around with a little 8-pound package attached to me, I could give a hoot as to what was going on outside that little circle of me and my new little one, allowing for family intrusion but that was it. The world could go hang for all I cared and for all I knew. I do not remember the last time I went on such a news starvation diet. And it was bliss. For so many reasons.
So now I understand the temptations to ignore everything outside one's own small, restricted world. However, it really cannot be a long-term idea or plan. Simply read again what I have done the past week, disappeared from the world to enter a glorious other one replete with love and kisses and silly talk and hopes and dreams. Now put that all into context and know deep in your bones that one must know the facts, know the world outside if one is to truly be able to protect that little world and the little ones within. The Scouts have a motto to "always be prepared" and that is the truth. Like it or not. Unknowing, uncaring - cannot last.
Today, once again, after admiring his picture, I had to return to reality. I had to see, to read, to know what this world had done this past news cycle, know how to plan, to think, to write, to speak, to prepare. For what? Who the hell knows in this topsy turvy world where obvious crooks are allowed to roam free, spouting garbage, dangerous trash at that. Where openly, clearly demented individuals are given the reins of power and worse, cheered on. Where awful, ugly memes of the supposed to be past are growing in volume and intensity. Where hate is a new tenet of too many, where Christianity is being challenged to either put up or shut up as to antisemitism, as to adherence to new discriminatory rulings. As we all are. To know what to do is to know what is happening, before it rudely intrudes into your hitherto unknowing, uncaring, oblivious world, a world of love but a world that also needs a touch of reality if one is to keep it spinning on a proper and strong axis.
So, into the ugly world we dived. There, glowing in the dark bottom was the ugliness of people who could not share in the joy of Brittney's release. They could not feel the 'rightness' of it, the necessity of it. They claimed she was everything from a fake to a Communist to a dupe to a liar who spent the past 10 months in a hotel to one who was of lesser worth than any other possibility. How sad for these people. How sad that they could not or would not share in the joy of her release, in the fairness of it even as they were sad for the continued imprisonment of other political hostages, for whose freedom we must always strive.
For those of you who continue to remain in this narrow stricture of understanding and empathy, I give you the words of those who know her, who were there at her rescue and redemption. Read them and know the truth. Let us not have a world where victory means consuming our own world, destroying it so that others might not have illegal possession of it. Where bloodshed is the only way to go. Where hate is rife and love in ever smaller amounts. An ugly place indeed, if we are forced to live in such a world.
So - here is Brittney.
"Griner had to cut her now-famous dreadlocks to make life easier during the Russian winter," (awful memories and visions of bald women in concentration camps.)
" ... too tall to sit at a work table and her hands were too big to manage the sewing, so she carried fabric all day, "
" I’m here to take you home,” Carstens said.
"He described Griner as an intelligent, compassionate, humble, and patriotic person,"
"...she said, ‘Oh no. I’ve been in prison for 10 months now listening to Russian, I want to talk. But first of all, who are these guys?’ And she moved right past me and went to every member on that crew, looked them in the eyes, shook their hands and asked about them and got their names, making a personal connection with them. It was really amazing,"
Rejoice. share, and always strive for more.
And always to remember Paul Whelan and the others, locked away, tortured and tormented - until we bring them home.
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