This evening, I had the good fortune
to see the film "The Girl In The Cafe",
and it was excellent for two reasons:
Initially, because the improbable love story
in the film reminded me so much of my last affair,
a bittersweet tragedy beyond telling.
Secondly, and more importantly,
for the extraordinary message of global importance,
which, if you will share with me
a moment of sober reflection, and read on,
deals with the fact that 100 million people
die each year of extreme poverty,
a tragedy of epic proportions which
we can eliminate with the stroke of a pen.
Actually, the stroke of 8 pens, held in the hands
of the 8 men now meeting in Scotland.
I am reminded of a story which
I happened across a couple of years ago,
and was struck with its simplicity,
logic, and great power.
Here it is:
"Tell me the weight of a snowflake," an eagle asked a wild dove. "Nothing more than nothing," was the answer. "In that case, I must tell you a marvelous story," the eagle said. "I was standing on a branch of a fir tree, close to its trunk,when it began to snow - not heavily, not a raging blizzard - no, just like a dream, without any wind and without any violence. I counted the snowflakes settling on the twigs and needles of my branch. Their number was exactly 3,741,123. When the very next snowflake dropped on the branch - nothing more than nothing, as you say - the branch broke off." Having said that, the eagle flew away. The dove, since Noah's time an authority on the matter, thought about the story for awhile and finally said to himself, "Perhaps there is only one person's voice lacking for peace to come to the world." Author Unknown |
to solve these seemingly impossible challenges
of peace, poverty, disease... But we will know this,
and achieve these great goals, only if that one
final voice is heard.
But the final voice is nothing in itself,
without the voice of all of the others.
I couldn't go to sleep tonight without
adding my voice to all those others.
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