I have been Andrea Gibson obsessed lately. Everything she does makes me feel so much, sometimes its almost too much to take, but I keep listening, because it seems important to.

“A mother can never find the right place to store an empty cradle” To the little boy with an injured eye, I actually said out loud through tears, “I am so sorry.” Andrea is powerful and has my admiration and gratitude for speaking the truth.

We shouldn’t think only of war as damaging to the lives of others. It is perhaps the most ‘obvious’ example but our ‘pursuit of happiness’, as privileged citizens of developed nations, in the form of consumer goods also leads to empty cradles and the bodies of dead children wrapped in shrouds.

Here is a link to an article about tobacco farming in Africa and adverse effect on FIVE YEAR OLDS who work in the fields that AND EARN $5.00 A MONTH caused me, a non-smoker,to pause and remember that the disparities of the world are evident in even the smallest of things.

One just has to be aware enough to look for them. Most of us, me included, often prefer not to look.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/children-poisoned-picking-tobacco-study-finds/article1261955/