A cause for those who have lost heart
American Cross Global, a 501(c)(4), is destroying darkness with a candle, by showing kindness to traumatized persons who lose "heart" (courage and confidence) from natural and man-made disasters. Recovering a sense of optimism is important. This can mean to trust that things will get better no matter how bad they seem, to look for the best aspects of any situation, and a belief that good will triumph over evil. Trauma becomes hard when an unanticipated danger which a person didn't prepare for occurs. This means someone in a wrong place at a wrong time: survivors of mass shootings, wildfires, hurricanes or terror bombings - and PTSD veterans. If a recovery of determination and resolve can't take place, it may degenerate into self-destructiveness or survivor guilt. Or, a person dealing with mental anguish who plans to go out in a "blaze of glory".
There is a webpage, https://www.americancross.org - 135 topics (175 pages), twenty-five links (325 pages) to deal with calamities using common sense/generic spirituality. Solutions are more complex than a political goodwill of sending out "thoughts and prayers". It's not just in the United States - there are those who have been adversely affected by the Coronavirus in China, a Ukrainian passenger jet struck by a missile in Iran, Australian bushfires, Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas, Amazon wildfires, Cyclone Fani in India, Sri Lanka hotel/church blasts, a Notre Dame cathedral fire, Venezuelan blackouts, a New Zealand mosque shooting, Boko Haram kidnappings in Africa, a Russian airline bombing in the Sinai desert, or refugees globally. The webpage may be translated into 103 languages. It can never be enough.
ACG has as a goal to create a monument: a big cross, an "iron angel", in southwestern Kansas. This might be useful to spiritual but not religious persons, as well as others. It can encourage faith - being sure of what we hope for, and certain of what we do not see. People's lives have been torn to shreds, and they should have something to help. Not a distraction from a hardship, but there are other monuments in the middle of nowhere, such as a) the Crazy Horse Memorial - a large statue to the Native American chief Crazy Horse in the Black Hills, western South Dakota; b) White Sands National Monument - a big gypsum dunefield (similar to deserts in Algeria and Australia) in the Chichuahuan Desert, southern New Mexico; c) Montezuma Castle National Monument - cliff dwellings built and used by the Sinagua people around 800 years ago, central Arizona. Tens of thousands of people come to visit, each year. 
A purpose of a cross is to inspire a person to recover some heart; this to be located near the geographical center of the lower forty-eight states, near Interstate 40. People may be inspired, as they interpret a cross in their own way, and want to see a physical object. It can mean a power against evil. Discovering the power of the cross against unseen evil is penetrating the darkness. The medal of St. Benedict has this written on the back: "May the cross be my light. Step back, Satan...drink your own poison." This may suggest different things to different persons. A person might not have the time, the money, or the energy to visit. 
But with a professional virtual tour, you can visit the site from your home and perhaps buy a cross, if a person wants, online. This is not to commercialize, but it may give certain ones hope. We need to raise the funds for design work/wind tunnel testing (creating a workable structure) through the Boundary Layer Wind Tunnel Laboratory in Ontario, Canada. The founder, Dr. Alan G. Davenport, established the application of wind engineering to provide important information to industry for the design of wind effects. The proposed wind engineering program will include a pressure study to take measurements at approximately 500 points. The Laboratory has carried out numerous studies on buildings and structures throughout the world. Results of the study will be put on the GoFundMe in an update. 
This is in the "ballpark" of what has been raised for a homeless opera singer, from two campaigns ($120,000); Teachers Deserve Respect, for a teacher assaulting a student in self-defense ($192,000); Aprons for Gloves, providing community outreach in Vancouver, Canada through boxing ($200,000); saving potcake dogs in the Bahamas ($215,000); A Doll Like Me, making dolls to help children "adjust to what felt like an out-of-control situation" ($220,000); Chauncy's Chance, for an African American 16-year-old, and his mom ($342,000); Native Americans fighting an oil pipeline in North Dakota ($3,000,000); Humboldt Broncos, a fatal bus crash in Saskatchewan, Canada ($15,100,000); or funds to build The Wall on the southern border ($25,000,000). If excess funds are raised for design work from the campaign, they will be donated to St. Jude Children's Hospital, which deals with childhood cancer. 
A goal is for people's well-being, so they can believe in themselves again. Please feel free to review and study the material on the webpage, by punching on a topic of interest. This is not corny - emotional and obvious from having been used too often - rhetoric. You can return to the table of contents through an icon of "back to top". What we are trying to do is help people in despair out of their "pit", and allow them to lead a normal, healthy life again. It's not just saving potcake dogs, building a wall or fighting a pipeline - these are people's lives in the fire. Four abused and neglected children, twenty veterans and 155 persons addicted to opioids die every day. When people lose heart, they may turn to drugs, crime or suicide. 
In March 2019, a 19-year-old graduate of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School (Parkland, Fl.) ended life, indirectly due to an AR-15. A few days later, a student at that school did the same. Parents and organizations came together to discuss "what we can do to help students at MSD cope with trauma and depression (Robert Runcie, superintendent of schools)". And one day after this, the father of one of the twenty first-grade students killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook School (Newtown, Conn.) shooting, caused his own death. All within one week, all from suicide. Society "moves on" after a shooting - they didn't. 
A woman, who lost part of her leg during the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, underwent surgery in 2019 after being run over while crossing a street. She posted on social media: "Struck by a car while on a crosswalk. Thrown into the air and landed, crushing the left side of my body. Yesterday. I'm completely broken. More surgery to come." A mother, whose 24-year-old daughter was shot with eleven others at a cinema in Aurora, Colo. in 2012 with an AR-15, said: "When you lose a child violently and publicly, there's an outpouring of support at first. Once the vigils are over and the media is gone, that's when things get really bad. The world moves on, and you don't." 
A U.S. military operation that led to the death of the Islamic State leader, was named after a deceased female aid worker who was captured and tortured by them. What about all the people who were victims of ISIS and al-Qaeda over the years? Or school shootings from the East to the West Coasts, and, for example, Botham Jean's family - the African American killed by off-duty Dallas police officer Amber Guyger, in his own apartment, in 2018. They could use some inspiration, after the attention fades. 
Or, a veteran to a VA therapist: "Your tools are broken." And: "Didn't serve, but my best friend was USAF. Came back depressed with a drinking problem under age 21, and killed himself a year later." "I didn't serve, but my brother did - shot himself in the head." "I've been diagnosed with anxiety, depression and PTSD. I'm almost obsessed with cleaning. I hate crowds - the 4th of July is a nightmare." A good example of it is We Die Young, a 2019 film about a veteran with issues. And not only them. After Hurricane Katrina, 50% of people surveyed reported symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Or, carfentanil, which is 10,000 stronger than morphine. Drug dealers mix it into such drugs as cocaine and heroin. Two milligrams is enough to sedate an elephant. People are dead, and families are broken - disillusioned by a "hand of fate" which can appear anytime from anyplace. In Chicago, thirty-one people were shot within twelve hours, while at virtually the same time period in Virginia Beach twelve were gunned down in a municipal building. In Los Angeles - homelessness. "It's a disgrace. We are not doing anything to alleviate a human tragedy...It is trash. It is rats. It is unchecked garbage, and people using buckets for bathrooms (Estela Lopez, executive director of the Central City East Association)."
And on the southern border - "cages". Alba Macario, 25, of Guatemala said her 2-year-old daughter, Suriana, nearly died while they were detained in a processing facility in Calixico, Calif., for more than a week in May 2019. "The immigration officials treat people as if they are animals," she said. "The overwhelming majority of [Central American] children are asylum seekers. They are already fleeing from the worst trauma we can imagine. To be detained in conditions like this compounds the trauma. Never before have I seen conditions as degrading and inhumane as I witnessed in Clint, Texas. The children were hungry, dirty, sick, scared (Elora Mukherjee, Columbia Law School)." 
On April 23, 2018, a vehicle-ramming attack occurred in Toronto, Canada. A rented van was driven on a sidewalk deliberately targeting pedestrians, killing 10 and injuring 16. In British Columbia, close to the Yukon border, three adult persons - an American, an Australian and a Canadian - were gunned down by teenagers. A father of one of them said: "A normal child doesn't travel across the country, killing people. A child in some very serious [emotional] pain does." And not only that, dismembered human feet keep washing up on beaches in western Canada, due in part to suicides. This is what happens when people lose heart. 
On July 28, 2019, Santino Legen, 19, shot and killed three persons - aged 6, 13 and 25 in Gilroy, California. Big Mike's Gun and Ammo in Fallon, Nevada, who sold the WASR-10 semi-automatic rifle (similar to an AK-47), posted on Facebook: "The shooter in CA, I hope you rot in hell. We pray for the victims." Six days later, twenty were killed and twenty-six wounded at a Walmart shopping center in El Paso, Texas. Less than 24 hours after that, nine were killed in Dayton, Ohio, by a man wearing body armor. Less than a month later, in and around Odessa, Texas, seven were killed - twenty-one injured, in a drive-by shooting spree. "Say a prayer. This is incomprehensible evil (The Blaze)." 
"The human, environmental and economic toll of Australia’s devastating wildfires is mounting each day, but the country has barely begun to grasp the total cost of the 'unprecedented' blazes and how it will change the way people live. Igniting two months earlier than the usual start of the Australian fire season, the flames have torn through an area about the size of West Virginia—killing at least 20 people, shrouding cities in choking haze and stretching firefighters to a breaking point (Wall Street Journal, January 6, 2020)." People can lose "heart", a sense of optimism, for many reasons. With an ability of the internet to go global, some of the topics online may be useful to Australians, as they deal with this. 
On November 15, 2019, five students were shot, two of them killed, at a high school in Santa Clarita, Calif. Three days later, ten people were shot, four of them fatally, at a football-viewing party in Fresno, Calif. The next day, three were shot and killed at a Walmart in Duncan, Okla. Even a church can be targeted. On November 5, 2017, Devin Patrick Kelley of New Braunfels, Texas, fatally shot 26 people and wounded 20 others during a mass shooting at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas. On December 29. 2019, in a livestreamed video from a service at West Freeway Church of Christ, Texas, a gunman wearing a black hood approached the communion server, before pulling out what appeared to be a shotgun. On February 1, 2020, at least two dead, two injured in funeral shooting at Original Tabernacle of Prayer, Florida. When does it stop? 
From a mother about her very young child who was wounded in the Odessa drive-by: "She is alive and that is a prayer bigger than any I've ever had to pray - when others today are not alive. I ask you to continue to pray for our hearts as we experience this." Collins Dictionary defines young adults as being "less resilient (a person's mental capacity to recover quickly from adversity) and more prone to taking offence (to become angry or upset by what another person has done) than previous generations". It may answer why things happen. "There are increasingly violent video games that feed the isolation, growing nihilism (a belief that all values are baseless and that life is meaningless) and misogyny (entrenched prejudice against females) in these sad, angry, mentally disturbed boys who nonetheless pass their background checks, buy their guns and make the news (Chicago Tribune, August 7, 2019)." 
After the shooting May 31, 2019 in Virginia Beach, the husband of one of the women killed said his life has been "a living hell". "My kids go to bed every night crying for their mom. Every night." A man who lost a friend in the Las Vegas shooting: "Appreciate life and cherish those you have around you. You never know what's going to happen." A 14-year-old boy, who lost five friends in Hurricane Dorian in the Bahamas: "You can't just sit down and cry about it." When the Iranian military shot down a Ukrainian jet on January 8, 2020, there were 63 Canadian citizens aboard. People who lost loved ones could recover some heart. 
To have a webpage for the common good and a cross as a symbol of goodness, may help a person whose life has been a nightmare, feel encouraged and optimistic again. Just having rhetoric on a webpage may not be enough for some people. They might want to see something, that symbolizes a message of a better life. There are thousands of persons in these, or similar, situations - whose spirit has been wounded by a natural or man-made albatross - a dead weight or burden that one must carry. The hope is, people will make small changes, and ultimately create a big change in their lives. The future depends on choices: forget how a person feels - remember that they deserve to have a decent life. 
How do you want to be remembered?
For your passion or your faith?
How do you want to be remembered?
For your actions or your words?
How do you want to be remembered?
For your silence or your voice?
B'Boss
