By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Bless the beasts and the children;
Give them shelter from a storm;
Keep them safe;
Keep them warm.
Bless The Beasts And The Children
— lyrics by Richard Carpenter
I’ve run across a number of articles on sharing lately. Talk about elemental education for personhood, best learned early on! If we utterly refuse to grasp the concepts of Sharing 101 in Kindergarten, we’ll grow up to be either a hermit hoarder or a bloodthirsty and wildly successful CEO.
Those are extremes, of course. Should we make a reluctant peace with not owning and controlling all of the world we see around us — as in, “All right, you can use all those others but the red crayon is MINE!” — we apparently end up in the middle of that spectrum, confused about what can/should be shared and what/who issues the final word in that regard: Mom, Dad, teacher, pastor/priest? And when we’re older, is the authority religion, government or business? Some would say all three, in the guise of the Corporate States of America.
Those of us familiar with these prototypes would agree that sharing belongs in the Libra cabinet, where most things experienced as “ours” are stored. Its opposite, Aries, is all about “mine,” so — given our current mix of astrological signals — it’s no surprise that the fight to retain the red crayon (and primary access to all the colors) continues to light the sky with Uranian fireworks.
This week the news reflected that essential push/pull with wars, all too often centered around the world’s children. In war, the innocent bystander is always the big loser, but lately even the protection of these, our most precious resource, seems expendable in the struggle for power and control.
There are wars that kill the body and wars that attempt to kill the soul. Neither reflect the concept of sharing nor the mutual respect necessary to sustain life on this planet. We too often see others as disposable, a frightful disconnect from the truth of our commonality, our entwined humanity. With the war against women’s sexuality highlighted just days ago, shifting to view the victimization of children can be considered the flip side of the coin. Much of female vulnerability has traditionally centered around protection and nurture of offspring, and self-sacrifice on its behalf.