Rev. Dr. Cari Jackson is the founding director of Center of Spiritual Light.
Posts By This Author
Children Are a Heritage From God
Image via Stuart Monk / Shutterstock.com
In every moment, we are every age we have ever been, according to psychologist Carl Rogers. For me, this means our bodies are like a bus riding down the highway of life, and the passengers are who we have been at every age. As we travel through life, some things we see, hear, and experience evoke feelings of great joy, love, and calm — or trigger tremendous anxiety, pain, and fear — from different past experiences.
When children are treated like they are not important, told they not smart enough or good enough, valued more for their accomplishments than for the unique individuals they are, treated like they only have value if they have money, or abused emotionally, physically, or sexually, the impact of those feelings never goes away. Those feelings continue to ride on the bus.
Because the child within us never goes away, the impacts of childhood abuse and neglect are long-term unless there is meaningful intervention.
Syrian Refugee Crisis: Our Chance To See God
Image via Annette Shaff/Shutterstock
Since 2011, more than 200,000 Syrians have died in the civil war. Close to 12 million — one-half of the Syrian population of 23 million — have been forced from their homes. More than four million have fled.
What began as an act of civil protest has continued to expand to civil war, genocide, and mass exodus. It began as protest in response to the arrest and torture of teenagers who wrote revolutionary slogans on a school wall.
Globally, accordinng to UNHCR, one in every 122 humans is now either a refugee, internally displaced, or seeking asylum. Across the world, there are an estimated 60 million people displaced from their homes because of war and persecution — the highest displacement on record. And those who leave violence in their homelands too often become targets for robbery, boat smuggling, human trafficking, and mistreatment from border guards.
Sacrificing Our Sons and Daughters
A military family. Image courtesy Odyssey Networks.
There are two prevalent ways that we contribute to or allow the sacrifices of our daughters and sons in contemporary U.S. society. One, the numbers of individuals, especially children and youth, who are killed through gun violence each year. Two, veterans and their families who are not receiving the adequate and timely care and support they deserve. Both these forms of sacrifice have become so normalized as part of U.S. culture that it has become easy to overlook them or to call something else.