My favorite childhood game was WAR.  I was born in 1949, and by the time I was ten, only fifteen years after the end of WW II, I think I played WAR every day.  Complete with stick guns and rocks for grenades, the children in our suburban working class neighborhood fought the Germans we called “Krauts” and fended off the Japanese we called “Japs” with ferocious tenacity.  Most of our parents were Veterans.  My best friend’s father earned the Distinguished Flying Cross piloting a B-29 bomber over the Pulaski Oil Fields in Europe.  My father served in the Pacific and my friend Eddie Golden – his father was wounded at Normandy. 

Hollywood bolstered images of glory with the Audie Murphy story and the Longest Day was my favorite childhood movie.  As a child playing war you would get shot, fall down, count to ten and then pop back up with stick gun blazing.   Such childhood games strengthened our courage and our capacity to distinguish between right and wrong.   The enemy was clearly identified, the goal fully understood and the outcome assured.  Then came Vietnam and much of our fighting force were draftees and the political goals ambiguous at best.  My friends and family were conscripted to fight an unpopular war that was now brought into our homes with the advent of television.  It didn’t take long for the national resolve on Vietnam to collapse before a skeptical world.  Our soldiers came home and there were no celebrations or flags thanking them for their service.  In fact their service was often ridiculed and many veterans felt some shame or rejection by their country.

Now we have a volunteer army engaged in two wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  The current volunteer army is made up of recruits that remember 9/11 and want to be part of the national effort to extract our pound of flesh.   Forget failed policy or ineptness in execution by our policy leaders; let’s focus for a few moments on the tip-of-the-spear.   The combat infantry soldier in the most remote and dangerous post in Afghanistan faces a war of insurgency that requires tactics and firepower that stagger the imagination.  After a year of being embedded with a battle hardened platoon in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan, Sebastian Junger published his account of the daily existence of the combat infantry soldier in his new book, War.  

When understood from the perspective of the daily foot soldier engaged in combat – war is an adrenaline rush unparalleled in our development as males.   I say males, because current US Policy prohibits women from serving in front line combat units.  Make no mistake about it – women are dying in these wars and paying a huge price as they support the combat unit.  Junger discovered that combat is not about the big picture or advancing some noble policy conceived in Washington, it is about taking care of your brother.  There is choreography in combat that enables you to address your fears, creates the capacity to kill and then to finally demonstrate a love that is comparable to our language of faith – he laid down his life for another. 

Junger describes relationships that were strained and men who simply did not like each other, but when the firefight started, they become a seamless unit and will exhibit all manner of behavior that to us is courageous but to them is only natural.  They would do anything to save the very person they were fighting or hated hours before.  When a member of this volunteer army serving at the tip-of-the-spear in combat describes the reasons for enlistment, it is often escape from abusive families, the law or failed relationships.  Also, for many it was about taking it to the people that destroyed the Twin Towers or threatened the security of our Country.   It isn’t policy – it is street justice – when punched we will punch back and punch back with a force unparalleled in the history of warfare. 
  
I have never been in combat.  I don’t want to assume I have any grasp of what a combat platoon in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan endures.  Three or four firefights a day and then weeks of boredom, eating one hot meal a day if you were lucky characterizes the routine of the combat infantry soldier.  They go months between showers and clean clothes.  I have had several near-death experiences that spiked or caused a physiological response that is similar.  Yet, I have never had to live with the day-in and day-out experience of a deployment in a combat zone.   Combat has got to be the single most persistently terrifying experience of any organized community.  

Afghanistan is a war that has not required much of us living at home.  I have had two former students and one former family friend killed in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Two were killed by an IED and the other was killed in an ambush and shot nine times.  I have tried to imagine their deaths and the intense environment that defined their lives before they were killed.  I can see them in the classroom where I once taught them and the living room where they once played.  I can’t quite get there emotionally to understand the pain, the isolation or the fear that defined their existence in a remote village or community in Iraq or Afghanistan.  Junger’s book took me as close as I can get sitting in an easy chair in Alexandria, Virginia. 

These soldiers fight because they are told to – they fight because the act of combat takes them psychologically to a place and a “rush” that is unequaled in their journey.   They volunteer or go willingly to a second or a sixth tour.  They find brotherhood and purpose in protecting inches of territory in remote parts of the world.  When they come home they will bring all that baggage with them.  I am not sure we are ready for their return.  However, the sooner we bring them home the stronger they will be, the better we will be as a nation and frankly, the more secure we will be as a nation.

As I read Junger’s book, I felt shame for not understanding, anger for failure to advocate for our veterans and a resolve to begin working to make our nation more secure by getting the hell out of Iraq and Afghanistan as soon as possible.  For us as a nation, the collateral damage of this war will be the men and women who fight it and return home to a nation that hardly noticed they went.
 
Today two more American men were killed in Afghanistan – fifty-nine killed in the month of June.  If we civilians could somehow get inside the bubble of combat – then perhaps there would be less need for combat.  Bad guys will continue to threaten us and we will continue to send our youth into the fire – but what a price we pay for our failure to build bridges instead of walls. 

To the combat veteran hunkered down this evening behind some sandbag in a remote part of Afghanistan eating one more MRE – thank you – and never has an expression of thanks seemed so inadequate.

U-Va. Student from Chevy Chase charged in fellow senior’s slaying.  That is the headline in the May 4, 2010, Washington Post story chronicling the death of Yeardley Love.  Charged in her death is a college lover, George Huguely.   Both are 22 and grew up in the privilege of suburban Baltimore and Washington, DC.  Students at the prestigious University of Virginia and Division I Lacrosse players both had so much to live for and now, one is dead and the other is charged with murder.

Underneath the headline and the reporting of their successes and victories on the Lacrosse field is the story of problem drinking and over consumption of alcohol.  It is still too early in the investigation to draw detailed conclusions, but it is clear to law enforcement and University officials that alcohol was a factor in so much of Huguely’s behavior.  According to media reports, Huguely had a temper and problems with alcohol.  He was arrested in 2009, for public intoxication and resisting arrest.  Also, it is interesting to note that Yeardley Love’s roommate called authorities because she thought alcohol poisoning was a factor in her death.

George Huguely was quoted in the Washington Post in 2006, defending the Duke University students charged with sexual assault in a highly publicized incident that called attention to the drinking habits of the rich, the athletic and the popular.  The Duke students were later exonerated but Duke University completely ignored the presence and role that alcohol played in the incident that led to the original charges. One wonders what the University of Virginia will say or do about problem drinking in their sports and campus activities.  Underage drinking is against the law but receives a wink and a nod from University Officials that want to simply call it a right-of-passage.

Problem drinking, a condition related to over consumption in any age group, continues to plague the University environment. Young people pushing the limits of their capacity to manage their alcohol consumption and then engage in risky behavior threaten not only themselves but their families and peers.  University policies and practices around underage drinking or problem drinking are inconsistent and seldom enforced. Sports programs often receive a pass and the celebrity status often given to athletes on University campuses creates an environment where alcohol consumption is the norm and stupid and often deadly behavior is the consequence.

I have written in my book, Fatal Attraction: America’s Youth and Their Affair with Alcohol, that “Community social norms are critical variables in determining when and how young people choose to drink.  Many of us remember situations, however awkward they may be, when all around us individuals were drinking, and we were not.  There is both indirect and direct pressure to drink or at least an implicit community expectation that drinking would occur (51-52).”  It is the expectation of drinking and drinking to get drunk that creates our greatest challenges on the University campus. It is the expectation among many sports teams that victory or team cohesiveness must also include risky drinking behavior.

University of Virginia President John Casteen in a prepared statement released on Monday concluded, “. . .that however little we may know about Yeardley Love’s death, we do know that she did not have or deserve to die – that she deserved the bright future she earned growing up, studying here, and developing her talents as a lacrosse player.  She deserves to be remembered for human goodness, her capacity for future greatness, and not for the terrible way in which her young live has ended.”  That is true and as an advocate for the safety and welfare of youth globally, I must ask:  what can we do to prevent these tragedies from reoccurring?  I would hope that President Casteen and the University of Virginia would factor in the issue of both underage and problem drinking as a contributor to violence and senseless death.  Because it would appear that the terrible way in which her young life ended was associated with problem drinking.

By
James E. Copple

I had the good fortune of working for and studying with the late Timothy L. Smith, Professor of Religious History at The Johns Hopkins University. I was his Associate Pastor when he was Pastor of the Wollaston Church of the Nazarene in Boston and I was his doctoral student in American Religious History at Hopkins. Smith was the author of Revivalism and Social Reform: American Protestantism on the Eve of the Civil War. This book is still the single most influential book on why the Church must and will always find itself at the heart of social transformation. An admonition (advice with warning) he often shared: “Never underestimate the capacity of religious organizations or religious leaders, despite their understanding of the obvious, to operate in a manner that will completely undermine their mission and purpose.” The admonition is a harsh truth but a truth that often defines the modern religious institution.
Recently I facilitated a Summit on youth empowerment and employment for government, business, education and community and faith-based organizations in Kenya. Africa Nazarene University, a faith-based institution in Nairobi, Kenya was the host. A religious leader pulled me aside and asked – could you please explain to me what this has to do with the mission of the Church. As I have worked in the areas of Compassion and Justice throughout my career – this was not the first time I have heard this question. It is a question, however, that clearly reflects the Smith admonition cited above.
Kenya has 14 million young people and only 25% of them will find work. Joblessness and the lack of hope to find meaningful employment leads to despair, anger and in many cases – violence. The Church has often taken the easy route of simply providing the proverbial cup of cold water or food bank for the homeless or unemployed. That is important work and vital to the survival of individuals who find themselves on the outside looking in on the house of economic security. Yet, historically, the Church has also found itself taking on the systemic and organized forces that contribute to poverty, homelessness, and hunger. Such action requires the use of power and influence that can result in turning over the tables of the money changers in the temple. It can be challenging and frustrating but it is no less a part of the mission of the Church.
I have often said that while the mission of the Church, in the Christian tradition, is to make Christ-like disciples of the nations – a mission I affirm, but a mission that needs to acknowledge that it is better to have your disciples alive than dying or begging for the crumbs from the table of the rich. We must rise from the alters of prayer where individuals may find salvation and then assure them that the community of faith will now work with them to secure employment, education and develop the capacity to provide for their families. We cannot do less! The etymological origins of the word salvation point to a meaning that emphasizes health – spiritual and physical.
The community of faith that organized the Kenya Youth Empowerment and Employment Initiative and the leadership of Africa Nazarene University understand that the mission of the Church must be holistic and must act when they see injustice, ignorance and lack of equal access. It is unfortunate that while they engage in this serious and critical mission they must also explain to some religious leaders why this is the Mission of the Kingdom. Smith was right – we just can’t help ourselves – there are those who will always find themselves undermining their own mission and purpose. Scandalous humanity we are – seeking Gods grace and the forgiveness of others. May that grace abound!

Haiti and the Underbelly of Poverty
By
James E. Copple

Disasters of all types expose the weak underbelly of poverty. Hurricanes, earthquakes, tornados and political turmoil make the poor vulnerable and create challenges for humanitarian responses. The earthquake in Haiti is a classic example. As nations respond to this crippling blow of Mother Nature in the poorest nation in the western hemisphere, responders struggle with a nation with little or no social or economic infrastructure. It is a reality that existed before the earthquake or before the four hurricanes of 2008 or before the political turmoil of the past decade. Haiti is poor, it has always been poor and we have always known it is poor. Nations have allowed the political unrest of the past half century to hinder or prevent them from assisting with economic and political development. Sentimental reflection from politicians across the globe on the greatness of the Haitian people is no substitute for tangible and real action.
This catastrophe has catapulted Haiti and its collapsed infrastructure into the headlines and should catapult it into our conscience. To be sure, we will and we must respond with humanitarian aid that seeks to address the immediate crisis of health and safety. The world is sending a record number of materials, supplies, medical teams and relief that will seek to stanch this critical wound. However, as we move forward over time, we must also seek to address the infrastructure of Haiti’s political and economic world. Governments, humanitarian organizations and people of faith have known of Haiti’s vulnerability and shoveled aid into this broken country hoping to save a life here or there. Partners in Health, World Vision, the United Nations all have strong presence in this country and have delivered critical AID. However, despite these heroic efforts, these same organizations are now suffering under the weight of a broken infrastructure and system that, if working properly, could have mitigated the depth and scope of the earthquake’s impact.
In countries like Haiti, it is not if a crisis will happen it is when. Today, I write this blog from Kenya a nation on the edge and precipice of political turmoil and perhaps collapse. This year 750,000 young people will graduate from secondary school and only 250,000 of them will find jobs. Only 10% of the remaining 500,000 have the necessary skills for employment. Inside the Kibera Housing Slum and other slums in and around Nairobi, there is anxiety and tension as the youth population continues to grow and the economy continues to shrink. The political structures are locked in the tribal conflicts that defined this nation long before the ravages of colonialism. Nobody likes to call it tribal, because the crisis is certainly more than tribal; it is about jobs, weakened infrastructure and the West’s failure to understand that our policies in the Sudan and Somalia have helped create the current crisis in Kenya.
NGOs, faith-based organizations and humanitarian organizations should prepare now for the earthquake that will hit Kenya within the next several years. It may not be an earthquake of the geological type, but an economic and political earthquake. In the post election violence of late 2007, over a 1,000 people were killed. The numbers could be much higher if humanitarian and educational organizations do not work with all governments to address the economic and political house of straw supporting this particular government.
It is a task and action that we should have been addressing in Haiti. All of our good words, huge humanitarian response and sympathy for Haiti does not absolve of us of our failure to address the underbelly of poverty that has defined this nation for so many decades. The earthquake and the hurricanes before it have given us a snapshot of the desperate poverty that defines this country. After the humanitarian response – what will we do to address the poverty? How we answer that question in Haiti and in other impoverished nations around the globe will determine our capacity to be humane.
To support a humanitarian response in Haiti, go to www.ncm.org and make a contribution to disaster relief. Then over the next several decades donate time, resources and intellectual, spiritual and moral capital to strengthen the social and economic infrastructure of this country.

Obama and Self-Righteous Exclusion

By

James E. Copple

I voted for Barack Obama for President and if the election were held again today, I would vote for Barack Obama.  While a life-long democrat, I have always found myself in the unique position of being a part of the loyal opposition.  Seldom has a President met my expectations and Obama is no different. Frankly, as part of the loyal position, I have found myself supporting policies of the party outside of power more than the policies of the party in power. 

Currently, I find myself asking – what is this administration doing?  After nearly a year in office we are finally going to get a strategy for Afghanistan, health care reform, despite the fact that we will actually have a debate is still very illusive, abolishing don’t ask – don’t tell remains a campaign promise and the outcomes of the stimulus package are lost in 10 percent unemployment.  Still, more than 60 percent of presidential appointments are not filled and only recently did he fill the most critical position of Administrator of USAID.    Not a very impressive record to date.

I am weary of this administration’s self-righteous rhetoric around governance.  On the Friday after Thanksgiving, the administration once again took a swipe at the role of lobbyists in government and they continue to frame the image of a lobbyist as all lobbyists are Jack Abramoff. 

The most recent assault on our constitutional right to petition government is the administration’s effort to prevent lobbyists from serving on government advisory panels.  They couch their argument in the need to bring fresh voices into the process and to fight the self interests of lobbyists that might guide these advisory committees to support their pet projects.  Lost in this process is the fact that anybody petitioning government is required by law to register (unless you are Tom Daschle) and that not all lobbyists are Jack Abramoff or his contemporaries.  Further, the refusal to include the content expertise of this group of activists is denying the American people years of experience and education in developing policy.  Obama is playing to the cheap seats with this strategy.  Appealing to the scandal weary voter, he lumps the whole population of lobbyists into the categories of self-serving and greedy.

Congress is dependent on those who lobby to help inform and develop legislation.  Members of Congress and the administration need the research capabilities, the policy expertise and the experience of this class of citizens to institutionalize legislation and develop effective policy.  This most recent attack, in the name of government reform, is forcing our leaders to develop policy in the dark.  We can regulate the activities of lobbyists and we can monitor with effective regulation issues of self-interest.  But eliminating this important resource in the development of policy and programs is short sighted, arrogant and denying the American people access to some of our nation’s most creative and informed minds.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German pastor and theologian and one of the last to die under a direct order from Adolph Hitler was known for a theology of realism that puts the incarnation of Jesus Christ in the midst of the world’s most horrific and painful events. In his toughest book, the Cost of Discipleship, Bonhoeffer asserted that “when God calls a man – he bids him come and die.” There is no cheap grace in Bonhoeffer and there is always a stark reminder that discipleship is costly and yet, brings the individual his/her greatest peace and joy.

The call to “come and die” is not an invitation accepted by the faint of heart. Rather, “come and die” is a challenge to actually begin living life with abandonment and with a focus that brings peace, reconciliation, justice and the confidence of redemption. Most of us live in a world that struggles to give life to our actions, dreams and relationships. We will do almost anything to resuscitate our dreams, our actions and the creations of our minds and hearts. We hold on to our ideas and the material things of this world in a way that suggests that we always live in fear of losing them. Come and die is the antithesis of holding on. It is letting loose and surrendering to a life of passion, compassion, love and grace.

When confronted with a human defeat, a broken relationship or my ego seems to crumble before the talents and skills of a brighter mind or more capable human being or I seek to hold on to the comfortable world I have created for myself – the call to come and die liberates me from the need to win at the cost of another or worse – at all costs. In the Cable News world of our generation, commentators and pundits will do anything to win. They advocate for policies and vilify their opponents. I am struck recently that people of faith seem to rally around these frightened demagogues thinking they can capacitate us in our efforts to hold on to ideas and things that have come to define our lives.

Come and die says let loose of these intellectual and material entanglements and embrace the abandonment of living outside of yourself and live fully inside the one who envelops, defines and restores all things to a life of peace, justice and forgiveness. This is the way of a Seeker.

The concept of family possesses so many different textures and has so many different sources.  Its texture can be rough, gentle, comforting and sometimes brittle.  Its source is like a river and we are tributaries springing from one Head River – not always seen or easily mapped.  Recently my siblings gathered in Seattle to finally go through a cedar chest kept by my mother for over 60 years.  My sister Claudia is in possession of the chest and she was anxious for everyone to go through the items, make their selections and then get the “junk” gone.

I couldn’t believe all the stuff my mother had kept in that chest, nor I could I believe the rich diversity of our family history I saw recorded.  It included my mother’s 4^th grade report card with signatures from Blanche Koch, my mother’s aunt.  What was intriguing about the report card from 1935 was that it was issued in the midst of the depression and my mother and four of her siblings were living with their aunt because the family of 10 children was too much for my grandparents.  They needed help.  And, like so many other families of the depression era — children in large families were split up and shipped off to relatives to ease the burden.

Also inside the chest was the dress blues — the navy uniform worn by my father in the Second World War (WWII).  Complete with his four year stripe and his rank of Chief Boatswain’s Mate, the uniform seemed so tiny that there was no way my father could have fit in that narrow bundle of wool.   He did and we have pictures of him in that uniform.  He was one good looking guy and my mother was one good looking woman.  They had a difficult life compared to most of their post-WWII generation peers.

My dad ran through more business adventures succeeding and failing in rapid order that it felt like we were moving every two years or were run out of a house because some loan collector was coming after us.  They did an amazing job shielding us from the pain of those experiences.  They bore it all in stride and they never gave up on any of us or on themselves.

The pictures in the cedar chest unleashed memories, laughter, some quiet and sad moments as we trampled through their memorabilia.  I was surprised to see that my mother had kept all the news articles where I was featured or editorials I had written.  The fact that they were in that chest reaffirmed a pride in her son that she didn’t often give a voice to.  I wanted to put my hand on her face and thank her for keeping all that “stuff.”  Items in a gigantic cedar memory box that that she wanted to keep and it was evidence that she cherished them.  A lot in the chest — none of us could figure out where or who it came from and why she would keep it.  It was hard throwing those things away for fear we were throwing away a mystery or the key to an unsolved riddle of her past.

Now the kids were rummaging through their past dividing up the spoils of memories in the vain hope that our children might be interested.  As the content of the chest was being divided among those with special interest in the specific contents, the texture of this family felt smooth and attached — strongly linked or bound to each other.  Childhood smiles and the tight pen curls on Amarie’s hair or Ron’s dashing navy pictures looking as if he could conquer the world or the ladies that inhabited his world or Claudia’s rakish hair images and her loyalty to her mom as she cared for her in the last days of her life and Bill’s Mr. Universe pose flexing his 5 year old muscles that made us all laugh — all captured by Kodak.  Some pictures in color most in black and white.

We have all taken different and divergent paths in our lives.  But the source of the various tributaries that constitute the lives of a family is found in a cedar chest — free of moths and mold — kept tight in boxes of no distinction and now being opened to remind us — we all came from family.  An amazing family with good hearts and a fierce determination to be the best we could be.  Those messages are in that chest — you have to decode them from all the “stuff” but they are there.

Oh, what messages do I leave for my children, nieces and nephews and grandchildren?   I think I am going to go buy a cedar chest and let them be surprised by the joy of discovering the source of their lives.  They will realize that the texture of their lives — while rough and sometimes out of sync all come together in the source of our identities — the family.  Ah, the smell of cedar!

The number 107 million launched off the pages of the Sunday New York Times Magazine like a missile exploding across my conscience. Is it possible that there are currently 107 million women who have gone missing because of rape, torture, infanticide, starvation and neglect? In the 21^st Century, modernity has permitted the enslavement and abuse of women at a rate that numbs the imagination. 130 million women around the world have been subjected to genital cutting. In Ghana, 21% of young women surveyed reported that their sexual initiation was by rape. ¹ In the midst of the genocides that have occurred since the holocaust — Cambodia, Rwanda, East Timor and most recently, Darfur the trafficking and slaughter of women overshadows the numbers found in these political nightmares. And even the genocides of the past 50 years — one wonders how many of the victims were women or victims because they were women?

Eleven trips to sub-Saharan Africa in the past two years have brought these numbers into sharp relief. Focusing on HIV/AIDS and the pandemic that his killing 3,000 children a day on the continent of Africa one sees the devastation this disease has had on the women of these cultures. When men acquire the “sickness” the women nurse them to health or stay at their side until the disease is abated or consumes the men. When women acquire “dirty blood” the men leave and abandon them in pursuit of other women less dirty. Women living with HIV/AIDS are found living by themselves or in small support communities of other women living with the disease. Their survival is dependent upon a network of care supporters that roam the country side of the countries of sub-Saharan Africa providing access to precious ARVs or nutrition.

In the midst of this reality stands the Church. The Church, quite often is the only thing that prevents these survivors from falling off the face of the earth. However, one is forced to ask, to what extent has faith, the Church, the Mosque, the Synagogue or the traditional faith healer in villages across Africa contributed to this neglect and to the marginalization of women in all cultures? I continue to be outraged by a superficial theology that justifies an inferior status for women. Every church, every faith that “proof texts” its way across its scriptures justifying the exclusion of women or relegating them to the back pew of leadership should be called to repentance. Like the prophet Amos we should stand outside the city gates of religion and cry Woe to You for the sin that is gender discrimination. We must no longer tolerate governments and leaders that abuse and neglect our mothers and our sisters. These behaviors in policy, in practice and in belief are an abomination to God. The gender silos that once separated us were shattered in the biblical admonition — there is neither male nor female.

We must approach the institutions of our faith(s) and confront them and condemn them if necessary when they say no to a woman simply because of her gender. Faiths that exclude women and tolerate their abuse or submit them to torturous rituals and deny them voice in schools or pulpits should fall to their knees in repentance. As harsh as it may sound, these very acts are in solidarity with those that practice infanticide of young female babies, rape and torture of teenage girls and deny young women access to education. These gender biases permit the powerful to justify exclusion and when you can justify exclusion you are complicit in the marginalization and victimization of women.

In recent months the Obama administration, through their Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton has catapulted this issue before the global community. Gender and women’s health issues are part of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and in a new book soon to be published by Nicholas D. Kristof and his colleague and spouse, Sheryl WuDunn; they argue that women’s rights should be the “cause of our time.” I am perplexed that these movements are initiated by government and media. Where is the voice of the faith community? These women are our mothers and our sisters, they are our wives and our friends — the Church cannot remain silent but must set the example by removing any and all barriers to women’s access to all roles and responsibilities in the institutions of faith.

Any religious leader who advocates for gender exclusion in the full work of their faith is by definition a false prophet. Any religious tradition who dares to proclaim the Kingdom of God and discriminates against the full participation of women is by its action and definition a bearer of a false truth. The voices of 107 women have been silenced — their screams for help are the screams of our own mothers and sisters — we must all share in their voice and that voice must rise to a shout that will tumble the walls of exclusion that deny them safety, security, health, education and the joys of full participation in our global community.

¹ Statistics for this Blog were taken from the Sunday New York Times Magazine, August 23, 2009 pp 28-43.