I’ve had a lot of cause to be thankful to FB over the last couple months. I wasn’t really seeing anyone, so, my friends around the corner were reaching out on FB the same way my friends in Sweden were. And it was great. I am so thankful. Because I still haven’t been able to turn my hand (okay, my heart) to my thank you notes or to casual phone calls or tea encounters.

But in the same time period, and perhaps always, but I’m just a bit more sensitive at the moment, there has been a whole lot of whining going on.

Now, i am a champeen whiner. The tireder I get; the more vigilant I have to be. wah… Life is too hard. My (fill-in-the-blank) doesn’t understand me, was mean to me, doesn’t know i’m alive. We all need to do some whining it lets off pressure, but then, I believe, we need to stop whining and get back into it. Because i don’t feel better when I sing that song, I feel justified. And that? Gets us nowhere!

Right now the political whining is at a frenzy. It’s their fault, she(he)’s a horrible person so I can complain and do nothing to help the rest of society. As a favorite shrink used to say, “where is it written?”

Here’s the deal folks. People are hungry. In our country we collect money in plastic canisters in stores to pay for life-saving operations for children. People are living without heat, without shelter. None of these things, none, is acceptable.

We don’t get to Peace; we don’t get to Justice; we don’t get to full-bellied children by doing nothing. We don’t get to any of those places by going backward. We only get to those places by moving forward. By forging coalitions. Much of what we have to give up in forging those coalitions are entitlement and whining. We have to want what’s best for someone else as well as ourselves.

In the next two days, I’m going to go fix the page at Love Flows, in case you’re local and you want to donate money to help the UUCSV feed people in the Susquehanna Valley, I’ll give you the link.

• But you may not live right here. We’d be happy to have your money, but so would your hometown. How can you get involved?
• Build something constructive rather than tearing something down that someone else has done.
• Add to life, don’t take away from it.
• Get informed — not about how stupid others are — but about what’s needed.
• Work locally to make a difference.
• Join with others to make life better.
• And stop whining. Because it doesn’t make you look smart. It just makes you look mean.

Then let’s just get busy building Peace. And Hope. And Justice. Because we’re just the folks to do it.