My friend recommended a site today that was called Gives Me Hope. It was the happy version of FML, which is popular for stories about job loss and moments you wish you could literally eat your words.

I read through ten pages of Gives Me Hope stories with tears cascading down my face. I'm not even embarrassed by that. The stories were so hopeful and amazing that you can't help but shed a tear.

 So what gives you hope?

Golden Gate Iron Workers Maybe?

 Someone telling you you're beautiful when you don't even know them?

 A father as Darth Vader?

 

Shepard Fairey, the man who created the HOPE posters for Obama, has now created a new work of art, in support of Aung San Suu Kyi.

“This Human Rights cause is something I believe in strongly,” said Fairey. “I created this portrait of Aung San Suu Kyi to raise awareness of her on-going house arrest and the oppressive nature of the military regime ruling Burma.”

Who is Aung San Suu Kyi?

1) She is THE ONLY Nobel Peace Prize Recipient currently IMPRISONED, and has been under house arrest for 13 years

2) She is a leader for the rights of the people of Burma, a country with a regime that has destroyed over 3,300 ethnic minority villages, forced at least 1.5 million people to flee their homes, becoming refugees and internally displaced persons, recruited tens of thousands of child soldiers, and employ modern-day slave labor.

3) Her political party, the National League for Democracy, won 82% of the seats in parliament in Burma's last election, however, none of those people were allowed to take their seats.  2,100 political prisoners, including some of those members of parliament, still remain locked up today.

Please look at this new website has been created to heighten awareness of the cruel situation of Burma, and the role of Aung San Suu Kyi, found at http://freedomtolead.causecast.org/

Read, learn, and pass it on! Link the website as your status on facebook or myspace, send out an email, blog it!  The more people who know about the situation, the more who can act!

 

 

Raise Hope For Congo is a group that is dedicated to protecting and empowering women and girls in Congo. They're doing this because the militias running rampant through the country are using rape as a military tactic and women and girls are getting the worst of it.

 The campaign wants to raise awareness and get activists interested that can speak out so the policy in Congo will change for the better.

http://www.raisehopeforcongo.org

 

in my few years i have been hurt by many people. i have been abused by unwated parents, been in 10 horrible foster homes and had been raped, as a result of the rape i have a 5 moth old daughter. i do not feel bad about what has happened because i know now that that will make me a better person. i truly love the people who hate me and try to break me. they are the people who need the most prayer.

   i have tought about killing myself, but then i think about my daughter who would be left with no one. i wish to help those who think of killing themselfs, and pray for them.

please if you have any thoughts of killing yur self, leave me a message and i will talk to you.

 

"Hope"

June 3 Tb. 3:1-111, 16-17; Mk. 12:18-27

The Gospel offers the hope the resurrection. Tomorrow my world ended as I knew it with the death of my father.  All I had known ended many years ago as a very young guy.  It was the hope in the resurrection that sustained me then; it has been that hope that has sustained me through the death of my mom, through the craziness of my coming out years; and it is that hope that sustains me now as I watch people suffer, and die from drug use, as I watch people suffer from lack of health services, funding, mental illness. It is that hope that brings meaning to my life, that holds my life, that guides my life. I was told the other day that I mention "Jesus" a little much, well, what is there in a name: let's see "Jesus" offers hope in eternal life, Jesus calls us to fight oppression even unto death with that hope, he calls us to live our lives in a way that others might have a better quality of life in the hope of the resurrection.  He is the Resurrection and the Life, the Beginning, and the End. amen.

Drove to Los Altos for spiritual direction, food bank, came home unloaded car. Outreach.  As I walked the street and saw their faces, gave them needles and food, I felt the presence of Jesus and the hope of the resurrection sustaineded me. Deo Gratis! Thanks be to God!