Thoughts of the week

I am back to normal. My taxes has been completed and sent to Revenue Canada by my book keeper. My book keeper also tells me I am not charging enough. I know that. So, I have to think more about that. Most of my Identification has been replaced and everyone alerted about the distracted theft. Though the two are identified on camera it should be only a matter of time. They will continue to prey on people, rather than to get a job and they will eventually get caught. So, I am almost back to normal and want to get back to providing you with my notes. This weekend when I watched the news of Iran attacking Israel, my heart sank. I don't want a war. Do we really want World War 111? I know that the Israeli people are highly intelligent and so I can only hope that they can demonstrate restraint. They do have the support of the Western World. I am not going to get into the leadership of Iran. They are poking the bear. I remember as I was touring the concentration camps in Germany when I was on tour there, at one point, I leaned against a wall as tears flowed down my cheeks. I wasn't crying but the tears just flowed. I could not believe what humanity could do by trying to exterminate a people and through such torture and degradation. Now they have to suffer the continued hatred, they have suffered for so long. There has been a rise of hate towards the Jews and Muslims in Toronto. Let's remember that there should never be any tolerence for hatred of any kind. The Ukraines have and are continuing to suffer. Canada is a place where people come to flee hatred, communism, dictatorship etc......This should be a haven where people can be decent to each other. All people suffer. You know it was from my professor and later a good friend who taught me to appreciate the Muslim religion. I studied World Religions from him and another from a lay person. Dr Ovie Mohammed was a Catholic Jesuit who had converted from being a Muslim. He was raised by a single mother. He would chuckle when the Muslim community would reach out to him, to remind him of his duty as a Muslim, to donate 10% of his earnings to charity. It was obvious to me that he loved the Muslim people. We would go out to eat and spend about four hours easy talking over a meal and for me copeous amount of coffee. He told me a story about a priest in the Phillipines being beat up by Catholics and it was a Muslim man who carried the Priest to his home for him to heal. They remained friends. It was this brilliant man who was a wonderful friend and mentor, whose death due to COVID, was such a loss to me. We must always be careful about hatred, biases - prejudices. Prejudice is pre-judging. There have been studies where people who were prejudice (I have mentioned this before)were placed to work etc...with people who they believed they hated based on skin colour, race, etc....This rectified the problem. They began to see them as people, individuals and not so unlike themselves. One of the things that Ovie told me was how surprised that visitors to Toronto were when they saw people of different races, etc...walking down the street together, socializing together etc....I miss you Ovie. You were such a gift to me. Next week I shall continue with info from the conference. Have a good weekend. How about saying a prayer for world peace, so we can get on with working to save our planet, feeding the world, and stopping destruction of any kind.