Another teenager joins the list of Real Life Heroes™

[thatcrazycajun]

Sometimes I worry about the future of humanity on Earth. Sometimes I wonder, given our propensity for not only doing incredibly stupid, contra-survival shit to the planet, ourselves and other species, if we even have a future...or deserve one. And then I read about a kid like Atlanta's very own Emily Blake, whom you should be seeing at left, and I stop worrying...for the time being, at least.

She and her family tried to get their Alpharetta church to help do something about the 25,000 children among the poorest of the world's poor who die each day—yes, you read right: 25,000 every single damned day!—from causes that are entirely preventable. But in these parlous times, the church fathers felt the commitments they had already made for their parishioners' tithes and collection-plate donations were enough of a burden and could not ask them to take on one more cause.

So Emily and her family decided to do it all themselves. And though on their own, they only managed to raise $12,000 of the $25,000 cost for one year's operation of an early childhood and new-mother wellness and education program, Emily's spirit moved an anonymous deep-pocketed angel to step in and close the gap—and then some. To date they have raised a stunning $40,000 for Compassion International to apply toward this effort, in the very land where my Songbird has for two years now been at similar work. You can read all about it here.

There are days (most often after whoever is currently Pope has issued some asinine decree or other) when I wish I could wave a magic wand and eliminate organized religion altogether, to free humanity from the shackles of primitive superstition and sanctimonious sex-phobia it all too often imposes...even in the face of deaths and suffering caused by its unbending insistence on traditional doctrine. And then I learn of people like Emily and remember my Songbird's own work, and SB telling me long ago that the true church is not its buildings, its leaders or its dogma, but its people...that it is through them that the hand of God lifts those who suffer into hope and freedom. If religious faith can produce amazing people like them and move them to do things like this, maybe it isn't all bad. And maybe, just maybe, the next generation will indeed save us from ourselves.

Comments

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I won't help organizations which use any of their money to preach to the poor they help in addition to aiding them materially, but I have a great deal of respect for organizations founded and run because of the religious faith of the donors, which simply give aid to those who need it most. At least one of the latter is on my regular list of "when I have money to give, this is where it goes" organizations, and that's a short list.

[hitchhiker.livejournal.com]

yes, that

[technoshaman.livejournal.com]

I have serious problems with Josef and his upper heirarchy, and much of the other organizations. But when the rank and file get behind something and *shove*, some pretty amazing stuff happens.

Would we could separate the two...

[scruffycritter.livejournal.com]

The way I describe it:

When a religion demands unquestioning faith, it tends to attract people who are very willing to leave their senses at the door. The ones who aren't so willing are by definition a tougher sell on the subject.

This doesn't make religion *bad*. It just means it tends to attract a particular type of idiot and quite often they get all the press.

This is NOT a reason to judge religion. In fact, that particular type of idiot is likely to fall into any number of pitfalls. A good religion may be exactly what he desperately needs.

I mean, don't you wish Pat Robertson was Amish?