After watching, in the Netherlands, the Tucson Memorial, my friend Jon Turner has sent me this morning some words he wants to add to the paper which I posted yesterday. I am now sharing these below:
**Dedication: On USA Anger Rhetoric & The Victims Memorialized in Tucson, Arizona
"But what we can't do is use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on one another. As we discuss these issues, let each of us do so with a good dose of humility. Rather than pointing fingers or assigning blame, let us use this occasion to expand our moral imaginations, to listen to each other more carefully, to sharpen our instincts for empathy, and remind ourselves of all the ways our hopes and dreams are bound together."
--President Barack Obama Tucson Killings Memorial Speech 12 January 2011
For our Postscript about belonging and individuation, we turn again to final thoughts from Dr. Wayne Guthrie:
"The emotional cloud of distrust and disturbance that surrounds the planet, brought forth and created by the emotions and the misuse of those emotions by man, is that which divides the world at this time. It takes then, men and women with great vision to move beyond that which holds them bound to the emotional world, to begin to bring about a release to this cloud that surely holds man in bondage. It is important that one be free, not of emotions, because that is an integral part of their growth process of the human being upon the earth, but to maintain a balance within the emotional structure. It is that which you have come to master and what you have come to teach."
Having begun with President Barak Obama’s words, we offer his closing words about the 9 year old little beam of light killed that day:
"That's what I believe, in part because that's what a child like Christina Taylor Green believed. Imagine: here was a young girl who was just becoming aware of our democracy; just beginning to understand the obligations of citizenship; just starting to glimpse the fact that someday she too might play a part in shaping her nation's future. She had been elected to her student council; she saw public service as something exciting, something hopeful. She was off to meet her congresswoman, someone she was sure was good and important and might be a role model. She saw all this through the eyes of a child, undimmed by the cynicism or vitriol that we adults all too often just take for granted.
"I want us to live up to her expectations. I want our democracy to be as good as she imagined it. All of us - we should do everything we can to make sure this country lives up to our children's expectations.
"Christina was given to us on September 11th, 2001, one of 50 babies born that day to be pictured in a book called "Faces of Hope." On either side of her photo in that book were simple wishes for a child's life. "I hope you help those in need," read one. "I hope you know all of the words to the National Anthem and sing it with your hand over your heart. I hope you jump in rain puddles."
"If there are rain puddles in heaven, Christina is jumping in them today. And here on Earth, we place our hands over our hearts, and commit ourselves as Americans to forging a country that is forever worthy of her gentle, happy spirit."
--President Barack Obama, Tucson Memorial January 12, 2011.
Information on the Whole-Self model is available on www.Whole-Self.info and www.Whole-Self.co.uk , in Greece - www.cosmoanelixis.gr
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