Midnight in the Blog of Good and Evil

Fewer people will read this entry than other entries on this blog.

In a way, that’s a good thing.

Because the purpose of this site, and by extension this blog, is to highlight the good in a world that sometimes seems to be full of evil, sadness and despair.

I think on balance there’s more good news in this blog than there is bad – at least I hope there is. If not, I’d better get back to the drawing board!

However, while I end this piece on a positive note, the scales in what follows definitely tip more toward hell than heaven.

If it Bleeds, it Leads

They say that bad news sells. Most journalists would agree that the old cliché “If it bleeds, it leads,” still holds true.  But my experience with this blog is that fewer people read the negative entries than the positive (I see the numbers in my site statistics).

Maybe it just seems like bad news sells because the traditional media (newspapers, TV, radio) are full of it. With the proliferation of the electronic media, that might change. People have more choice, maybe they’ll choose to engage more with good news than bad.

Which leads me to ponder: Is there more good in the world than there is bad? Are people DOING more good than they are bad?

When I raise my head to take a breath from my own small efforts to DO good, mostly through my work as a coach and trainer, and as founder of this website, I sometimes get overwhelmed and discouraged by the evil that seems to pervade our world:

• a homeless women in Vancouver burns to death in the street trying to keep herself warm with a candle
• a California man kills nine members of his ex-wife’s family on Christmas Eve, then kills himself
• a man in Philadelphia shoots another in a cinema for making noise during a movie

These individual sagas of despair and violence are the microcosm of a world in turmoil. Among today’s headlines are:

• Zimbabwe Cholera Death Toll Tops 1,500
• Bomb Strikes Pakistan Polling Station
• 8 Killed in Sri Lanka Suicide Bombing
• Detonator Blasts Claims 32 Lives in China
• 14 School Children Killed by a Suicide Bomber in Afghanistan

And the sickening black icing on this cake of international death and destruction:  

• Death Toll Climbs in Gaza (more than 300 people killed in the bloodiest days in the Israeli Palestinian conflict since 1948)

What are we doing?

Many Are Doing Good

Some people, maybe even a lot of people, are doing good in the hope of turning the tide of darkness into light. Here are some examples:

• AWR community member Nadia Wehbe volunteers for the Palestinian Children’s Relief Fund (PCRF). During September and October, AWR community members raised USD 1,000 by writing tributes to the amazing women in their lives. If you want to do something to help Palestinian children, perhaps you would like to make a direct donation to PCRF.

• Margaret Gladski, friend of AWR member Jennie B, is going to volunteer for Amazon Promise in February. She’s raising funds to buy medical supplies. Read more here.

• Catherine Pastille, Pastor, educator, and consultant is spreading a message through Hope Matters, LLC, the mission of which is to evoke life-giving change through raising global awareness of the practice of hope in order to create a renewable and sustainable future. Read Catherine’s story here, visit her website here.

• Shop the World fair-trade products are made primarily by women in developing countries such as Rwanda, Ghana and Bulgaria; you can read some of their stories here, and buy their handicrafts here.

If you have good stories to tell, stories about women doing good in the world, I’d like to hear them. Let’s try to tip the scales in the direction of good and light.

At the very least, let's try to keep good and evil in some kind of balance.

Notes to this blog entry title:

• The title for this entry was inspired by Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, a book written by John Berendt, which was subsequently made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood, and starring Kevin Spacey, Jude Law and Alison Clintwood.

• The photograph of the Bird Girl statue as taken by John Leigh (who is buried in Bonaventure Cemetery, in which the statue once stood). The now world-famous photo appeared on the cover of the book.

• The Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil book title alludes to the hoodoo notion of "midnight," the period between the time for good magic and the time for evil magic; hoodoo is a form of predominantly African-American traditional folk magic; "the garden of good and evil," refers principally to Bonaventure Cemetery, a large cemetery in the city of Savannah, Georgia, USA.