Sunday Collection: What’s Important?

It used to be poor etiquette to discuss any of these things in polite society:

• Money
• Religion
• Politics

Well the world of blogdom wouldn’t exist if it lived by those rules, and this week in my occasional Sunday Collection series I’m focusing on the last of the forbidden three, politics, in both the broad and the narrow sense.

Over at Hudson’s Notebook, there’s been a great discussion on the planetary effect of our political and personal addiction to oil in HM’s post Like a Needle in a Vein. His post and the discussion thread that follows raise vital issues for us.

It’s essential for us to reduce drastically our dependence on oil, and that has hugely far-reaching effects on our entire lifestyle. We can each play a small part, but we have to change, that’s for sure. We cannot expect developing countries not to look at us and say “Hey, we want what they’ve got”. We have to voluntarily live in a much simpler way if we have any expectation of them doing the same. It’s a real challenge.

A narrower definition of ‘political’ is to be found at Towanda’s Window, where she links to this article detailing a proposal for 35 Articles of Impeachment against Bush. It makes chilling reading to see them all in one place. There are many of us on this side of the pond who are ashamed of the behaviour of our former Prime Minister, Tony Blair, for his part in Bush’s Iraqi disaster. (By the way, Bush is visiting the UK today. Lucky us!)

I know a lot of you who read this also read Jen Lemen, and have been following her recent trip to Rwanda. Political corruption in the West pales into insignificance compared to many African countries. Although the Rwandan government seems to be making a concerted effort to rebuild the country following the genocide of the 1990s, there are concerns that voices of dissent risk being silenced.

There is still terrible poverty, and Jen, whose heart is as big as Africa, had the opportunity to visit herself to do what she could. While she was trying to decide whether to go, she had this conversation with her Rwandan friend in the US, Odette:

And then Odette–the one whose stories made me fall in love with Rwanda all year long–looked at me with those amazing eyes and said, “Jen. I have not seen my girls for two years, and I do not know when they are coming here. Can you leave yours for nine days? I promise I will be taking care of your kids while you look after mine. Please go.”

Jen wrote about her dream, loads of us contributed financially and in other ways, and she went. And then she came back, with a waterfall of stories. I’ve been trying to pick some out for you, but they are all moving and wonderful. Please go read them. Perhaps if there’s one story that stands out for me it is this one: The Things Goreth Holds. At the bottom of it there’s a small Paypal button, asking for contributions of just $5. That’s £2.50. Why not make this a real Sunday Collection and click the button for Rwanda.

There are so many things that are important in the world, and politics are as often a hindrance as a help. Sometimes it seems we can’t make a difference. But as we used to say in the Women’s Movement, the personal is political. It works the other way round as well.

Image by dbking