A Tangled Web We Weave

After my run this morning I passed by one of those amazing spider webs. It's always good to observe one of those intricate creations rather than to run through one. To run into one not only results in the inevitable quick wiping away of the evidence but also the panicky search for the creator of such a web.

As I listen to the shouts and screams and talking yet polarizing heads on TV "debate" the recent Health Care reform legislation it reminds me of the reaction of someone running into a spider web. There is panic and confusion and fear. Of course sometimes all of those reactions are justified and sometimes they are not.

The evidence points to a reality that we need to do something about health care in our nation. Every time someone "picks up" this issue it is like trying to pick up a spider web so we have thus far avoided it.

I appeal to reason and not panic. The angry faces seem to be saying "there's a spider in here somewhere." I will offer this from my perspective. Some of those who are tossing around the "thousand page" bill and shouting that no one has read it need to remember another thousand or so page document that one can find in motel beside tables or at certain bookstores. This document often has a black cover with gold letters. It too seems not to have been read very carefully by some who are screaming and accusing.

This document "clearly" states that to those whom much is given much will be expected. It also states that a nation shall be judged by the way it treats those who are the "least" and those who have no voice. It warns against always defending what is "mine" and offers the radical concept that all is God's and that creation is meant to be shared and suffering is meant to be addressed.

So it is a tangled web we have woven with all our health care systems, but we need to work at some untangling not in an atmosphere of anger and panic but in the midst of a civil debate where we disagree with honor and we remember all kinds of thousand page documents including one that I think is primary.

Bless you
jody jseymour@davidsonumc.org