I was on Facebook this morning and I read a post a friend from highschool had put up. In it she said, "So I bought a skirt on Sunday and couldn't find it all week. Totally tore up my house daily. So during my morning seach I did a quick prayer, and BAM it appeared! God is good!!'

I was immediately dumbfounded.

Really?

God is good because he helped you find your skirt this morning?

Well, I was praying for World Peace this morning and I'm still waiting but I'm glad God took the time out of His day to help one woman find her skirt she had misplaced.

I laughed at this and couldn't help but think of all the starving, suffering people on this planet. I'm sure it's a great feeling to find something you've been looking for, but I really don't think finally finding something you had misplaced or had forgotten where you last put it has anything to do with God's intervention. Unless that skirt grew legs and walked off on it's own it was bound to show up eventually.

Still laughing at this, I went back to my sister's office and found her looking at a Pulizter Prize winning photo by Kevin Carter. Carter had snapped this photo in March 1993 of a starving toddler in Sudan who was trying to reach a feeding center. Note the vulture in the background waiting to prey on the child:

Wait. Look again. Really, really look at it. Take it in for a few moments.

This really happened. It is  happening. Right now, as you sit at your keyboard or scroll on your smartphone. This is still happening somewhere, right now. In many different forms.

God is great, huh?

I guess we will never understand the ways of God, as I've been told countless times. We'll never know why God helped Carter find her skirt this morning but didn't help the people of Sudan. And if you didn't catch that, that was sarcasm.

Carter came under criticism for snapping this photo, and it was said of him, "The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering, might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene." Carter later committed suicide. In a note he left, Carter had written, "I am depressed...without phone...money for rent...money for child support...money for debts...money!!!...I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain...of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken [recently deceased colleague Ken Oosterbroek] if I am that lucky."

I can't imagine the images Carter had seen first-hand. How can anyone blame Carter for taking this photo? He didn't cause this little girl to be in the condition she was - and after he snapped this photo he is said to have shooed the vulture away. His photograph spread awareness of the horrible suffering that was taking place in Sudan - and he did more good in spreading that awareness by exposing it than had he not taken this photo.

I don't...understand blame.

What I understand is solution - and action: someone does "x" and "y" happens.

Ready for some irony? My friend's name on Facebook is Carter, and as you've read the photographer's last name is Carter. That just seemed important to me for some reason - like I need to pay attention and learn from this.

I don't feel that God made Carter's skirt appear by prayer, and I don't believe that had Ken Carter prayed to God then people would have become aware of this Sudan toddler's suffering, or that the little girl would have been saved. I'm sure the people of Sudan prayed every single day for help. 

It is by action that Carter found her skirt, and it is by action that Ken Carter opened the world's eyes with his photo; but perhaps our eyes have closed too quickly.

This reminds me of something I heard a long time ago. Someone once asked, "Do you know why the Indian Rain Dance worked? Because they didn't stop dancing until it rained."

I don't...want to get into whether people believe in God. We have our beliefs and we are entitled to them. And I know that by writing about this I open myself up to all different kinds of backlash. But really...I write this because the more that I think about all this, the more I try to answer any of these thoughts in my head, but the more questions I have.

It's endless.

I just...don't think that many people have a grasp on reality. Or we have ADD. I know I sure as hell struggle with it on a day to day basis and some days are better than others.

Today, I was reminded.

In both of these cases with the skirt and the toddler, I believe that neither God, nor prayer or religion had anything to do with...anything. It's not about fairness, or what's right in the Laws of the Universe. It's about what we do in order to achieve something. Something was done to find that skirt, but not enough was done to prevent that child from starving the way she was. And in case you were wondering, it is unknown what happened to her.

This makes me realize how much more I could be doing in this world - how much more of a difference I could be making, and I question if I'm making any difference at all. I realize how much more I could be stepping outside of this box I created for myself and actually do something to help - to change the well-being of humanity.

People talk shit on Angelina Jolie but I fucking admire her. I respect her. She uses her celebrity to spread awareness and she's actually out there doing something about it. Here is just a few words about her:

"Since 2001, Jolie has been on field missions around the world and met with refugees and internally displaced persons in more than 20 countries, including Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Cambodia, Pakistan, Thailand, Ecuador, Kosovo, Kenya, Namibia, Sri Lanka, North Caucasus, Jordan, Egypt, New Delhi, Costa Rica, Chad, Syria, and Iraq, to name a few, and most recently visited earthquake victims in Haiti on her latest trip to help survivors of conflict and natural disaster.

The Jolie-Pitt Foundation, dedicated to eradicating extreme rural poverty, protecting natural resources and conserving wildlife, donated $1 million to Doctors Without Borders, an international medical humanitarian organization created by doctors and journalists in France in 1971. The organization provides aid in nearly 60 countries to people whose survival is threatened by violence, neglect, or catastrophe, primarily due to armed conflict, epidemics, malnutrition, exclusion from health care, or natural disasters, for emergency medical assistance to help victims of the Haiti earthquake.

Asked what she hoped to accomplish meeting with refugees and internally displaced persons in more than 20 countries, she stated, “Awareness of the plight of these people. I think they should be commended for what they have survived, not looked down upon.”

 

And let's not forget about Michael Jackson. No, I'm not talking about the bullshit the media and accusers have spun on him. I'm talking about what he actually did:

 

"He was also one of the world's most prominent humanitarians and philanthropists; personally, and through his Heal the World Foundation, he donated more than 300 million dollars in charity, and held the Guinness World Record for having supported the most charities out of any pop star." - Wikipedia

 

 

So the next time you hear someone joke about what new foreign baby Angelina Jolie's adopting, or make some stupid remark about child molestation charges that Michael Jackson was never convicted of, ask them what they have done lately to help any cause?

 

When I look around me, or I read the news, or I pass homeless people on the streets or hear about another family loosing their home in this economy, I'm not counting on saying a little prayer and leaving it in God's hands. That's just...passive in my eyes. Lazziness.

 

Instead, I'm going to own up to the truth: I have a choice. I can either do something to create a change, or I can do nothing. And whatever choice I make, I have to live with that.

 

And I won't place blame in someone else's hands. "If I'm not part of the solution, I'm part of the problem."

 

So, yeah...that's scary as hell.

 

And a lot of people choose to look the other way, or put "fate" in God's hands.

 

But we are the ones who have to take a look in the mirror and ask ourselves, "Do I like what I see? Do I like what I'm doing?"