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Actions for Honduras

Dear Editor:  Friends want to know what to do about violence in Central America. I have lived in Honduras long enough to make some recommendations. Friends can ask the President and Congress to close the School of the Americas, to support House bill HR2989, to stop foreign “aid” that contributes to violence, and to support foreign aid that is positive. Here are some parts of a letter that I just sent to President Obama:

On Family (September 2014)

Overcoming Need

Six months after Sister Alegría (née Beth Blodgett) and I moved to Honduras in 2006 and began to live our Methodist-Quaker monastic life, cell phone service came to this remote region of the country. Almost overnight it seemed, everyone had cell phones, and it wasn’t long before people were declaring them “necessary.” When someone asked why we didn’t have one, we explained that phone calls would interrupt our contemplative lifestyle. “But what if one of you gets hurt? How will you get help?” “Then the other will walk to the road and will notify the next car that goes by” – just as anyone would have done a year ago before there was cell phone service! Cell phones can be useful, and Sister Alegría and I make phone calls most weeks by borrowing phones or renting them, but they are not necessities. We don’t need them.

On Needs (May 2015)