Today is Blog Action Day when bloggers from 100+ countries post something on the changing the world. You may remember my earlier posts on the themes of poverty (2008) and water (2010). This year's theme is "The Power of We".
No urination jokes, thank you very much you Australians, even though I am sure it probably WOULD, in fact, run a turbine and power a small village if enough men would stand around the alternative energy contraption. . .
But I am actually talking about community and togetherness and so I want to share a picture of a t-shirt I saw in Cairo last year.
One of the young guys we met was part of the Arab Spring protests along with his brother. When his brother went missing on the streets of Cairo, he searched everywhere and after three days, he found his brother's dead body. He continued protesting for peace and created a t-shirt that portrayed his hope that his people would join together against injustice. I can't show you his face but in this picture he is holding the t-shirt.
We happened to be in Egypt just a few weeks after a terrible massacre of Orthodox Christians. The Christians decided not to retaliate but to hold a prayer meeting and invite other streams of the church, including Catholic and evangelical.
It doesn't sound like a big deal but they had NEVER done this before.
So they hosted an all night prayer meeting. I went along with some friends but we were the only foreigners we saw. And then something crazy happened - 70,000 people showed up to pray, people from all walks of life, even Muslims. I had a video camera on me and took some shaky footage which might interest you. But what's important is that a tired, beaten, exhausted, humiliated people took a risk, stepped over some personal and religious boundaries and turned up together around a common cause. The result was incredible and the story is not finished yet.
That's the power of we.
We can accomplish more together than by ourselves, but we cannot do it without breaking some of our own taboos.
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Twitter: #BAD2012 and #powerofwe
