My brother-in-law, my deceased sister’s husband who lives in Houston, told me tonight that he nearly died from a heart attack recently. Last night I found out that my brother-in-law, my wife’s sister’s husband who lives out East, has a serious form of cancer. They are both fortunate to have health insurance or otherwise, like many Americans, health cost would be destroying their way of life. These days I often feel our country is sick and infested with some type of insects, just like at times my Growing Power Box seems to have insects in it. However, with my Growing Power box in the sunroom I can just spray on an organic soap and the insects go away. I cannot do that with our infected health care system. Like in China now with tainted milk for babies, greed seems to have taken over our health care system and many other systems of government.

As a child and adult I’ve always been taught by the Catholic church that the main purpose of government was to serve the ‘common good’. Whatever happened to that idea? The success and failure of the garden seems to be somewhat in our hands, but the success and failure of the government seems to be out of our hands. Now I understand why there is a deep sense of Christian Anarchism in the Catholic Worker Movement in this country. Catholic Workers believe in the one-person revolution, taking personal responsibility for the common good and not relying on government. Like taking care of a garden, we can take some control of our responsibilities for common good by feeding the hungry or giving shelter to the homeless. Yet part of me says that while doing the works of mercy I must work for justice, changing the systems, like the health care system. If we do not, there will not be many brothers-in-law anymore.

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