Good morning.
When major events transpire in other parts of the world, we take it for granted these days that it’ll only be a matter of hours before pictures become available on our television sets. Information is power – the Burmese government was pretty well forced to ease their restrictions on foreign aid as information about their inaction got the attention of the world media. I suppose that would qualify as necessary and very useful information.
Some of the coverage from China has been excessive. We don’t actually need to be admitted to within two feet of a woman identifying a dead school child as her own son. That 'gutted feeling' which we are left with when we have frankly been too privy to the private loss of other people can as easily lead to avoidance rather than sympathy.
What did we learn about Burma and China this last week?
That people like us were going about their business when they were acted upon by a force greater than themselves. They were helpless in the face of it. Ultimately we use such information and assess our own lives and relationships with it. It provokes to pick up the phone and find out who’s collecting money for relief work in Burma because those people are like us. Those deaths in a far country have stared us in the face.
It’s like the priest said to us on Ash Wednesday back in February when he stuck his thumb in a small tub of ashes and made the sign of the cross on our forehead. ‘You are dust’ he said ‘To dust you shall return’. We are not that different from them. We will all be swallowed by the earth in our own time and be wept for by others. Tragedies are the rule in human history and not the exception. We tend to forget that we are dust.
