Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, October 28, 1995 TAG: 9510300056
SECTION: RELIGION PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID BRIGGS ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
The book, from Beacon Press, had not started out that way, but Edelman said it gradually took that shape because she has found herself praying more and more as she struggles on behalf of children in a nation where, she says, there is a disintegration of moral and common sense, and of family and community values.
``I know that only with God's help and only with prayer, which Gandhi called `the key of the morning and the bolt of the evening,' can some mountains be moved,'' she writes.
Nowhere in the book does she say that parenting in the '90s is easy.
``I wanted people to know this is a struggle all of us go through. There's no cheap grace, as (theologian Dietrich) Bonhoeffer warned us,'' she said in an interview.
She is outraged at political efforts to cut back social spending for the health and education of children while giving tax breaks to the wealthy.
``The prophet Isaiah and Jesus Christ would never sign the welfare reform bill going through this Congress,'' she said. ``We need to wake up and do what is right. What is happening here is so unjust.''
But she also criticizes liberals for ignoring the moral lives of children at a time when kids have never been exposed so early and relentlessly to cultural messages glamorizing violence, sex, possessions and alcohol.
``We're trying to give children a healthy start. We're also trying to give children a moral start,'' she said.
Houses of worship have to be the place children can turn to, both as a moral witness to protest cutbacks in federal programs and as a refuge kids can count on in their daily lives, Edelman says.
``Crack dealers are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week. How long is your church, mosque or synagogue open?'' she said.
If her book has a central theme, it is that people should not give up hope.
``Help me not to waste time worrying about the bad world we have, but to use the time I have working for the better world our children need,'' she writes in one prayer.
Her advice to people who are responsible for children - and in one way or another that is all Americans, she says - is never to give in to cynicism or apathy.
``Every day light your small candle. Tutor or mentor or speak to or smile at one child - your own or one you teach or serve in some way.''
All the darkness in the world cannot snuff out the light of one little candle, Edelman says in one prayer.
``Help us to keep lighting our little candles until a mighty torch of justice sweeps our nation and the world.''
by CNB