DailyJim: World Central Kitchen and pulling us towards love

Hello everyone welcome to another daily gym this is the episode for wednesday april 3rd 2024 just a few minutes after midnight, today i don't know what the topic is going to be i'll title it afterwards but i want to talk about world central kitchen and what happened um so So, seven people who worked for World Central Kitchen or volunteered, I don't know if they worked for them, were killed in Gaza by the Israeli military.

And I know many people have been killed in Gaza and in Israel and in Ukraine and in Russia and in Sudan and in Ethiopia and in many parts of the world. Um, but this one struck me particularly hard. I, uh, if you're not familiar with World Central Kitchen, basically it's an organization that goes around and feeds people and they feed people, feed populations that urgently need food, whether it's a war zone, whether it's a natural disaster, they seem to just show up everywhere and bring food to people, feeding human beings.

It's particularly close to my heart in a way because I met one of the guys who was I think originally one of the founding board members of it Robert Egger and this is a man that has inspired me tremendously and so actually what I want to do today is I want to read a letter by by Thich Nhat Hanh, I think I pronounced it correctly, a Vietnamese Buddhist monk. And this is a letter that he wrote to his friend, Ray Gould, the day after he found out that Martin Luther King Jr. had been assassinated.

And so, just hold on one second, as I unlock my phone.

So, the letter goes as such. Dear Ray, I did not sleep last night. I tried to contact you through Lee at the Fellowship of Reconciliation, but the line was not available. They killed Martin Luther King. They killed us. I am afraid the root of violence is so deep in the heart and mind of manner of this society. They killed him. They killed my hope. I do not know what to say. This country is able to produce king, but cannot preserve king. You have him, and yet you do not have him. I am so sorry for you, for me, for all of us.

I prayed for him after I learned about his assassination. And then I said to myself, you do not have to pray for him. He does not need it. You have to pray for yourself. We have to pray for ourselves.

Ray, the last time I saw him is in Geneva at the Pacham and Terrace 2 conference. I was up in his room in the morning having breakfast and discussing about the situation. We had scrambled eggs and toasts and teas. I told him, Martin, do you know something? The peasants in Vietnam know about what you have been doing to help the poor people here and to stop the war in Vietnam. They consider you a bodhisattva.

An enlightened being trying to work for the emancipation of other human beings. He did not say anything, but I knew he was so moved by what I said. This morning I feel a little bit comforted because I remember that I did tell him so. so. Ray, send me the picture in which you and I and he were together. I want to see again the expression of his face when he told me in summer 1966 when we met in Chicago, I feel compelled to do anything to help stop this war. He made so great an impression in me. This morning, I have the impression that I cannot bear the loss. Please call me anytime you find possible and let me know what and how the FOR will react against this unbearable loss. Fraternally, Nitin Han. Not Han.

I think...

Sometimes in society, we are pulling people towards hope. There are a few people who fight very hard to pull us towards hope and to pull us towards love. That are willing to go to great lengths to show that we as human beings belong to each other, whether we want to or not. We need each other to move forward, to stay alive, to thrive.

And there are those who because of their circumstances and because of the situations I think they currently find themselves in pull us in the opposite direction they pull us towards hopelessness they pull us towards hatred they pull us towards indifference towards each other they pull us towards violence, and death and destruction towards each other.

Benjamin Netanyahu the Prime Minister basically when confronted about these aid workers being killed said, you know what happens in war?

Which decisions are we making in this moment?

Which way are we leading people? Which way are we taking people? Which way are we pulling people? Are we pulling them towards love? Are we pulling them away from it? Are we leading them towards hope? or are we leading them towards hopelessness? Are we inspiring people to live and to be together?

Are we just giving up on each other, giving up on ourselves?

It hurts so much to think that these people who are pushing so hard for love lost their lives.

But like I said, it's not just them. There are people every single day in small ways, unknown people, who are standing up and saying, I don't care if you hate me I'm going to love you, I'm going to love life despite you thinking that life is horrible, because how else are we supposed to inspire people to love life except by leading by example.

It fucking hurts.

But like I said, how many people have died? How many people have died? How many people have closed off? How many people have given up hope? Because a handful of people have pulled us in that direction.

Because they think the world is out to get them. They think the world doesn't care about them. and they want to prove everyone else that they don't care about the world. I am absolutely tired of this behavior winning in society.

I don't want these people to think this way.

We went through COVID. Millions of people died around the world.

People lost jobs. People died. People lost loved ones. People lost jobs. People lost hope. People closed off. We became more depressed, more lonely, more disconnected, more hopeless.

But is that the way we want to go? or do we want to go the other way? We have a choice. Do we want to go that way or do we want to go the other way? It's not so much about what other people do. It's about what we do. What am I doing? What are you doing? How are we...

Which way are we deciding to go and bring people with us? Which way are we taking people?

Because despite believing that nobody cares about us and that we don't have an impact on people, but we have a huge impact on the people around us.

And I am grateful for what those World Central Kitchen Aid workers did. I'm grateful for the organization. I'm grateful for the people, again, in Israel and Palestine and Ukraine and Russia and Sudan and Ethiopia and Ecuador Ecuador, and all these places around the world who are bringing people towards love, who are deciding to respond in a way that they can feel proud of.

If people feel proud of killing somebody, then maybe we have bigger problems.

All right, I think this is long enough. It's probably over ten minutes, but I'll talk with you all tomorrow. Bye.