Southern Sudan

Friday night I went to a talk given by Dr. Jack Hickle on his work in Old Fangak, Southern Sudan. This area of Sudan is extremely impoverished and disease ridden after 20 years of civil war.  A civil war  between the African Nuer people of the South and the Muslims of the North, over the oil riches in the area.  (Imagine that?!).  Dr. Hickle is a friend of Dr. Jill Seaman who has gone to Old Fandak for 19 years providing the only medical care for an estimated 5,000 people in the area.  Measles, Polio, malnutrition and a myriad of tropical diseases are rampant in the area.   The hospital consists of a small building with turn of the century iron beds and no latrines. Because the building is so small many of the patients lie outside under mosquito nets.  And, there are no outhouses outside either.  Unimaginable conditions to those of us who live our comfortable soft life here.  At any rate, Dr. Hickle is raising money for a clinic with indoor plumbing for Old Fangak.  To learn more about his project you can go to www.alaskasudan.org. I warn you though, the videos are heart-wrenching!  

As I left the talk, a friend of mine, who was deeply moved by what she had heard said:  "I don't understand a God that would let such horrors occur!"  I thought about that today, because I've pondered the very same.  You know, I've come to think of this differently, I can't believe the human race, people,  would commit and let such horrors occur!    I think Eckhart Tolle said it best in his book A New Earth.  He talks about the violent deaths man has suffered at the hand of their fellow human.  Just since the beginning of the 20th century  over 100 million people have been murdered by other humans.  He said:  "The collective manifestations of the insanity that lies at the heart of the human condition constitute the greater part of human history.  It is to a large extent a history of madness.  If the history of humanity were the clinical case history of a single human being, the diagnoses would have to be: chronic paranoid delusions, a pathological propensity to commit murder and acts of extreme violence and cruelty against his perceived "enemies"---his own unconsciousness projected outward.  Criminally insane, with a few brief lucid intervals."  Eckhart goes on to say that the collective human consciousness has to change from the "criminally insane" consciousness or the human race will not survive.  Pretty dark huh?!

Of course I don't have answers to all of this, only questions.  But I believe I am connected to the people in Southern Sudan through the spirit of God, and it is my responsibility to do what I can, however small my contribution may be.  And I believe it was no accident that I heard about these people, I must do something.

Each of us is on the earth with a holy mission: to give and to receive the love of God. With every encounter, it is our function to give to others the love we wish to receive. As we do so, we minister to their heart and to our own.  (I don't know the author of this, but I liked  it).