1 Trillion Dollars

Linea writes: "We received a summary of a speach given by Joan Chittister from a friend of ours. Wow, it contains a powerful message!"

 

She ain't kidding. The part that caught my eye is what you can do with 1 Trillion Dollars.

I quote: 

Churches minister every day to hurting families on the verge of financial collapse, she said, but no one speaks about the loss of industries to Third World countries whose people are reduced to industrial slavery.

Seldom mentioned are seniors losing Medicare benefits; the one in six Americans who can't afford insurance; the fact that more money is put into weapons of mass destruction than in human development.

"Let's put it this way," Chittister said. "If you were to count one trillion $1 bills, one per second, 24 hours a day, it would take you 32 years to finish counting. But with that trillion dollars, you could buy a $100,000 house for every family in Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Iowa and you could put a $10,000 car in the garage of every one of those homes. Then there would be enough money left to build 250
$10 million libraries and 250 $10 million hospitals for every city in those states. And after that, there would still be enough money left over to put in the bank and, from the interest alone, pay 10,000 nurses and 10,000 teachers and still give a $5,000 bonus to ever family in those five states. That's what one trillion dollars will buy in this country today.

"But Star Wars, the 'death star' weapon being sold as a defense system but which most credible scientists say can't possibly work, now - this morning, while we sit here - has already cost more than that. And, the Brookings Institution tells us, nuclear weaponry alone already carries a price tag of over $5 trillion."

Such demons, Chittister told her listeners, are not driven out by insight, vision, contemplation and compassion, nor by organizational niceties, canon law or clericalism.

"This kind is driven out only by prayer," she said, "by 'putting on the mind of Christ,' not by putting on more titles, or roles, or uniforms, or offices, or money. This kind is driven out by soul-sightedness, only by risk, only by courage, only by a care that supersedes cost, only by a heart devoted to causes rather than to symptoms.

Wow.