From time to time we feature other blogs. This is done to draw attention to particular blogs that impact us, challenge our thinking and force us to open our eyes. On this day, in this Season, I find it important that we focus on issues which draw us outside our own secure realms and into issues in parts of the world that have jagged edges. These jagged edges have produced shards of souls lost due to our lack of collective consciousness.

A Passion to Understand is written by Emm. She is a blogger who lives in the UK, but whose heart exposes us to issues of Genocide, AIDS and Human Rights in countries which include Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur/Sudan, Cambodia and Zimbabwe. Emm writes, “In this blog I’ll update about the various conflicts in the world but I’ll also post snippets from the news that I find interesting or disturbing. It is called “A Passion to Understand” because I have a passionate desire to understand how things like genocide can happen in our modern world and I need to know about these things.”

In response to a comment she received from a blogger regarding objectivity, Emm stated, “It is really interesting what you say about objectivity and passion. I don’t know if I want to be objective any longer. Our study of the world was so clinical in university. I think it is time to be more passionate.”

I admire her courage, her commitment and her depth of feeling as she pursues wrenching stories of inhumanity. She brings verbal images to her accounts of these plights, which make me feel at once horrified and guilty. Guilty because I have shown too little regard for the havoc heaped upon helpless individuals. In this Season of redemption and celebration, I would ask that you visit Emm’s blog for the awareness it brings and for the voice she gives to those who cannot speak for themselves.

This quote from Emm’s blog is indicative of her passion:
“First they came for the Jews
…and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the Communists
…and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists
…and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist.
Then they came for me
…and there was no one left to speak out for me”

- Martin Niemöller

Please visit Emm’s blog, then count your blessings.

—cher