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11.15.01
I'm having trouble waking up this morning. I'm on cup of coffee number three, but it hasn't kicked in yet. Can news make you tired? It has been a stressful autumn for the entire world. I am relieved to hear that the eight Shelter Now International workers were released from prison. Their families must be ecstatic. I'm still worried about the 16 missing Afghans who also worked for SNI. I worship a God who values individuals, and therefore am called to care on an individual level. It's hard not to feel overwhelmed by statistics lately, and depersonalize everything. I was reading a book review of For the Time Being by Annie Dillard, and the following hit home:
"And while we�re at this business of facing the unfaceable, what about plagues and tyrants and natural catastrophes that kill one, 10, 100 million people? Something -- the denial of death, 'reality fatigue' -- kicks in at a certain point, Dillard points out; something stops us from taking in and making sense of the random suffering and death, the countless afflictions and cruelties."
"Numbers is a subject Dillard returns to again and again. Today, 100 million children live on the streets. Twelve million people fish from small boats for a living. Pol Pot killed two million Cambodians. A typhoon in Bangladesh drowned 138,000 people. Stalin starved seven million Ukrainians in one year. Dillard quotes him: 'One death is a tragedy; a million deaths are a statistic,' and she quotes the Hartford Courant: 'HEAD-SPINNING NUMBERS CAUSE MIND TO GO SLACK.'"
"But our minds should not go slack, says Dillard. 'What,' she asks rhetorically, 'will move you to pity?'"
Personally, I find myself easily moved to pity. Moved to action is something else. The feeling does nothing, accomplishes nothing, on its own. I might as well be having an emotional reaction to a fictional movie.
I've been paying attention, when I read the Bible lately, to how very much Jesus worked. He never looked up from a video game to find that 4 hours of his life had mysteriously been sucked into a vortex of nothingness. His news was all first-hand, not via t.v. He saw people, he felt empathy for them, and then he did something about it.
I think it's Madeleine L'Engle whom I've heard describe the incarnation of Christ as "God on the ground." Simple, but wow. God among us, feeling, touching, doing. God the Firefighter. God the Helpful Neighbor. God with a burden for the entire universe, but working hands-on within his immediate sphere of influence.
I read on CNN.com that following their release, the Shelter Now people are "tired and want to wash." Imagine a God who was tired and wanted to wash. That's the God for me.
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