“Our real enemies are not those living in a distant land whose names or policies we don’t understand; The real enemy is a system that wages war when it’s profitable, the CEOs who lay us off our jobs when it’s profitable, the Insurance Companies who deny us Health care when it’s profitable, the Banks who take away our homes when it’s profitable. Our enemies are not several hundred thousands away. They are right here in front of us.”
- Mike Prysner

Debra Oakland @ Living in Courage Online

This article posted by Steve Schippert caught my attention. Talk about Living In Courage!  We sometimes take for granted the freedoms we have in America.  This Afghan girl Shamsia at 17 carries so much determination, along with a powerful courage of conviction.  Read on.

A teenage Afghan girl who had acid thrown in her face for attending school vows to go back to school, “even if they kill me.”

An Afghan teenager whose face was burned in an acid attack by suspected extremists vowed from her hospital bed on Saturday to continue going to school even if it put her life in danger.

Men on motorbikes used a water pistol to spray acid into the faces of Shamsia and around dozen other girls as they arrived at school, wearing burqas in the southern city of Kandahar on Wednesday.

Shamsia, 17, was the most badly injured and had some acid enter her eyes.

She was transferred to a military hospital in Kabul where she was visited on Saturday by other schoolgirls, accompanied by media.

“I will go to my school even if they kill me,” she told reporters. “My message for the enemies is that if they do this 100 times, I am still going to continue my studies.”It is not clear who carried out the attack which President Hamid Karzai and other officials blamed on the “enemies of Afghanistan” — a broad term that most often refers to Taliban insurgents.

Now, I want you to pause for a second and think about the raw courage on display here, and consider the challenges faced by others elsewhere as we commiserate our own in extreme relative comfort.

And also pause to reflect on the nature of the enemy we face, and come to grips with the concept that it will take an entire generation to win the wider war of ideas against this enemy.

This Afghan girl, by simply going to school, joins these people who are not afraid.

Yes, it will take at least a generation to win (defined as reducing the risk of radical Islamic terrorism to a nuisance rather than a mass murdering national security threat). But there is a foothold in Afghanistan, and an entire leg up in Iraq. We dare not shrink now and squander it.

Think about this Afghan girl this week when you are tempted to complain about the situation at home, whether politically, economically, or otherwise.

Faces of Courage
Posted by Steve Schippert
Published: November 16, 2008 – 10:08 PM

My friend Teri Hewitt-Ceplo from Hawaii sent this to me this morning.  Her friend Marianne Williamson wrote this wonderful tribute to Barack Obama.  I want to share it with you.  Here at Living in Courage we feel uplifted, hope, love and joy for this election outcome along with the future of the world.  People around the world are responding with hope and enthusiasm.  I have never seen an election such as this, that has given rise to the people in full participation.  What a moment in history. Miracles do happen.  Just say yes.  Yes we can.

Debra Oakland @ Living in Courage Online
A Mighty Wind

(Originally posted on February 27, 2008)

Every once in a while, a mighty wind blows.

The political sentiments now storming America in the form of support for Barack Obama are a mighty wind indeed. For those trying to say this is all just hot air, it’s time to point out that so is a windstorm. And storms have a function, in nature and in us. They blow away everything not built on a firm foundation, and make room for a lot of new growth.

I’m a boomer, so I know this feeling. We have been here before. We knew what Bob Dylan meant when he sang, “Something’s going on here, but you don’t know what it is….Do you, Mr. Jones?” And something is going on again. What we’re experiencing here is a new conversation– something qualitatively different than the promises of effective problem-solving that pass for an excitement factor in his opponent’s campaign.

Try to dismiss it though she might, someone who has the capacity to change a society’s conversation has the capacity to change the society. From Bob Dylan to Gloria Steinem to John Lennon to Martin Luther King, Jr., people who use words to foster new thinking are the ones we see in retrospect to have opened doors to a better world. Hillary was right when she said Dr. King couldn’t have passed Civil Rights legislation without Lyndon Johnson, but Johnson couldn’t have done it without King, either. Johnson had the Presidency, but King had the vision. Today we have the historic opportunity – one that comes around only rarely – to have President and visionary be the same person.

A great national leader does not speak just to circumstances; he arouses a nation’s soul. The idea that Obama could not only arouse our soul but also handle our circumstances (has he not handled a pretty formidable circumstance already, giving her such a run for her money?) seems far more probable to me than that Hillary could not only handle our circumstances but also arouse our soul.

Jefferson. Lincoln. Roosevelt. Kennedy. Damn right, their words mattered. Try googling “great speeches” and see what comes up. Great words and great speeches have changed the world because they have changed the way we see the world.

Washington-think is so old-fashioned, so treat-the-symptom-and-pretend-you-healed-the-disease, protect-the-status-quo type of stuff that millions gave up on it a long time ago as an agent of true social improvement. But while few of us are looking to the American government to save the world, we’d prefer that it not destroy it either. Obama was right when he said that we have to do more than just end the war in Iraq; we need to end the mindset that produced it.

At the end of World War II, in the last speech he ever wrote yet died before having a chance to deliver, President Franklin Roosevelt said, “We must do more than end war. We must end the beginnings of all war.” The source of the debacle in Iraq was not an event; it was a mindset. The source of our environmental problems was not an event; it was a mindset. The source of every problem is the mindset that preceded it. And only someone who can speak to the source of a problem can eradicate its roots.

The ability to inspire new thinking is a more important ability in a leader today, than simply being a “problem-solver.” We’re always trying to solve something…. solve health care…solve the economy… solve social security, and so forth. Yet according to Carl Jung, our most important problems cannot be solved; they must be outgrown. Just figuring out who has a better plan with which to treat the symptoms of a problem is not the one who ultimately solves it. What we need is someone with a better state of mind, who will lead us to a better state of ours.

Being swept up in Obama’s inspirational ability is not naïve; thinking inspirational ability doesn’t count for much, is in fact naïve. For in the ability to inspire lies the ability to command the most powerful forces of all. No plan, no piece of legislation, no Washington strategy or political maneuvering would alone be enough to change the probability vector of America’s future. For that, we would need a mighty wind. And a mighty wind now blows.

~~~ Marianne Williamson