A role to play

[markdohle]

A role to play

Life is a process, from the time of conception, until natural death. To interfere at any stage and to end that process is murder; potential cut off before its time. Life is not a commodity, but has a deep meaning. Each person has an important role to play in life and to end a life is to end that participation. Murder can be legal, as it was in Germany in the 1930’s and 40’s, yet wrong none-the-less.

Once a road is taken it will lead us to the end, no matter what the outcome may be. Family is the center of any culture. When it goes, the glue that holds it together will loosen and over time it will collapse. Today the media and entertainment industry are the baby sitters for many of our young. Parents have two jobs and many don’t have the time to be with or teach their children. So children will get their values from sources that are shallow at best, and manipulative at worst…..it is all about profit, with no regard with how the present will bring about an unpleasant future.

We each become the product of our time and what was considered horrible in the past becomes acceptable in the present. On the flip side, when we look at the past, we can be shocked at what was considered ordinary; slavery for example. For good or ill we are absorbed into our milieu. As it was easy to accept slavery in the past, so today it is easy to accept that the termination of life in the womb, as a right. Without regard for the rights of the unborn, is accepted and even encouraged. In the future, perhaps those who live then will hopefully look back with shock and horror at what we considered normal and ordinary. Or worse, they will not, but the seed planted today will come to full fruition in the future and we will, when old, will gather it.

Just as there was pain and anguish in the time of slavery, so it goes with abortion. Many suffer from this problem, those who are pro-life and those who are pro-choice, suffering cannot be avoided.

There are human situations that only a strong moral base can fix. Even then things can be open-ended, impossible. Unless we have a place to stand from, some roots from some tradition, then all we have is the latest fad, or cultural down turn, that soon becomes normal and acceptable.

I have no answers, but the center of our cultures, not only in the United States, but world wide, seem to be unraveling. Those in the middle of it, again, may see it a normal. Things in the United States are better in some way from the past, but much worse, in ways that are important today and will have a profound affect on our future.

I think this issue will have to work it way out through time, hopefuly growth and an deeper understanding and compassion for all life will come about I believe we are a long way from that, but on the way.

No law can stop this, but only a transformation of our inner lives, which will probably never happen to the extent where all life is looked upon as sacred, but perhaps enough to make our cultures more humane and our men ( I being one of them) more understanding of what it means to bring a child into the world and the pain and destruction that comes about when this is not understood.