Cristos Eneste

Christos Eneste!!!
In the week before Easter my thoughts rationally tend to drift to the good
friends that we have lost along the way. I think a great deal about the
sanctity of human life. After a bloody week for Americans in Iraq, this
sanctity is even more of a reality. I have been thinking a great deal about
9/11 in the last week but my thoughts don't stop there. I think about the
first World Trade Center bombing and the ten people killed in that attack. I
think about the passenger of the Akili Larow (I know I spelled that one
wrong) that was murdered for being an American Jew, Terry Anderson, and how
he spent eight years in captivity with Terry Wait and the other hostages
held in Lebanon. They will never be the same again and neither will the
families of those who lost loved ones when the sky fell on September 11,
2001.

Then I think about my friend Dena who died at twenty years old of brain
cancer and wonder if that is any less tragic. Thousands died in a chemical
attack that Saddam waged on a group of people whose crime was that they were
Kurdish. It is hard to look at the numbers: 20 soldiers killed this week in
Iraq, 3000 dead on 9/11, 100,000 massacred in Rwanda. They were all ones.
One person's life cut short because they did not belong to the right tribe,
and I was cured of Cancer-where is the sense in that?

We need to stop looking at the numbers and look more closely at the
individual. There are people dying because they were meant to by illness,
but there is so much death that centers around this fear of those who are
different. We didn't belong to the right tribe. That is why we were attacked
in Yemen, Kenya, Saudi Arabia, New York, Washington DC. Innocent people were
targeted because they were American or Jewish. When will this stop? When
will we as human beings stand up and say "enough is enough?" Life throws us
so much to deal with that is mere biology, but why does this sense of hate
need to complicate what is already a mess? When will people learn that we
have more in common than our differences?

One of the most beautiful things that I ever heard said about another person
was what Mother Teresa's biographer said about her. She was holding a dying
man in her arms and her biographer said, "She was holding him as if he were
Jesus Christ." And that, my friends, is the point of Christianity. Treat
everyone as if they were the most important person on the Earth, as if they
were God. You don't have to subscribe the Christian way of thinking to see
something of value here. Life is precious and needs to be defended. There
are millions of people out there that are murdered, unarmed, without the
ability to defend themselves, and we need to defend them, even at the risk
of our own lives. If we don't do it, who will?

Since we all can't join the Army or run off to aid the needy we can simply
be better people. Treat people as if they are the most important people on
the Earth; be better friends despite our differences. Some people might
disagree with this, but I feel strongly that human life means more to this
nation than it does in any other part of the world or time. For that I am
thankful and proud to be an American.