"Tenets" from Michael's past . . .

While working on my story today, I was going over a speech Michael gave at Oxford University in 2001.  I had just seen him the month before at Carnegie Hall in New York City for the unveiling of a charity called "Heal the Kids".  Increasingly concerned about his children, you can understand that after I learned about the recent news of a reality show, and most recently, Prince traveling alone to Germany to accept an award on behalf of his father, my heart ached even more as I read the speech over.  I can't tell you how much I wish the family would realize what they are doing, and who they are being guided by.  Unfortunately, theirs is a family in which no one can be trusted.


I didn't plan on posting to the blog today, but when I got to the part about the "tenets" of the Children's Universal Bill of Rights, I had to laugh.  There was that word again.  The same word he used when he described the Tenets of Love in my prior post.  So now that I know what it means (after ever so diligently looking it up on the internet! lol) I thought it would be nice to post Michael's prior tenets regarding children as they were given during his 2001 speech at Oxford University.  (Perhaps this may serve as further validation as to our connection for some and heartwarming validation for others.)

" ... what has never been in dispute is that children have certain inalienable rights, and the gradual erosion of those rights has led to scores of children worldwide being denied the joys and security of childhood.

I would therefore like to propose tonight that we install in every home a Children’s Universal Bill of Rights, the tenets of which are:

1. The right to be loved without having to earn it

2. The right to be protected, without having to deserve it

3. The right to feel valuable, even if you came into the world with nothing

4. The right to be listened to without having to be interesting

5. The right to be read a bedtime story, without having to compete with the evening news

6. The right to an education without having to dodge bullets at schools

         7. The right to be thought of as adorable - (even if you have a face that only a mother could love.

Friends, the foundation of all human knowledge, the beginning of human consciousness, must be that each and every one of us is an object of love. Before you know if you have red hair or brown, before you know if you are black or white, before you know of what religion you are a part, you have to know that you are loved."