This weekend, give yourself the time to read this woman's report

Rachel Lucas » Blog Archive » “We have to go into the despair and go beyond it, by working and doing for somebody else, by using it for something else.”

This amazing account, with powerful photography, has been shared by a number of other bloggers but it is worth the widest possible read, so I'm posting the link as well.

Among other things, remember that the people behind what this woman describes discovered the X-ray, had one of the highest concentrations of seminaries/theological schools of any nation and produced giants of music, philosophy, natural sciences and other disciplines.

They also viewed themselves as "victims," and were in some measure right, given an unfair treaty imposed on them just a few decades before what the blogger describes.

They were suffering under terrible economic conditions and what you will read and see at the link was one means to reinvigorate their economy and standard of living.

The problem of evil remains with us, and if we are honest we should fall to our knees, confessing our collaborations with evil, giving thanks for every blessing, and crying out for transformation of our hearts and actions.

Think it's just "History Channel"? Think we're above it? I sit here comfy, not too far from "Reservations" on which my government, people and even church, extolling freedom and progress, consigned another race to cultural destruction under hellish conditions. And on those Reservations are young men, well versed in words protesting their victimization and oppression, who feel entitled to rape, abuse and murder among their own clans, and young women, well able to report the hardships of their lives, who neglect and abuse their children.

Lakota story tells of Iktomi, the trickster who lured the people out of abundant life in Wind Cave; my Christian tradition speaks of the devil, "the father of lies" who lured the people out of abundant life in the Garden of Eden. Ancient wisdom recognizes an evil genius loose in the universe, and our vulnerability to deception.

So Jesus' warning to some religious leaders really should convict us all:

...on the outside you appear to people as righteous [fill in your
own self deception here - intelligent, just, enlightened, tolerant, moral, oppressed, etc.] but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness. Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees [fill in your own demographic here],
you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the
righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would
not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of God's prophets.'

So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of
those who murdered the prophets. Fill up, then, the measure of the sin of your
ancestors! You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being
condemned to hell?" Matthew 23:28-33