The Squirming Buddha
The world hemorrhages. Refugees flow from its wounds.
Is there a way to be innocent of this?
People are washed ashore. They die of suffocation in humanity-stuffed
trucks. They flee war and politics; they flee starvation. And finally,
we don’t even have sufficient air for them to breathe.
For words to matter about all this, they have to express more than
“concern” or even outrage – that is to say, they have to cut internally
as well as externally. They have to cut into our own lives and personal
comfort. They have to cut as deep as prayer.
“Wonderful column, Bob. It brings up the post-Katrina images of armed
citizens blocking a bridge so that our own refugees could not infest
their neighborhoods.”
These are the words of my sister, Sue Melcher, who emailed me last
week in response to my column about the refugee crisis and the global
shock over the picture of 3-year-old Alan Kurdi’s body, which washed
ashore in Turkey after his family’s boat capsized during the short
crossing to the Greek island of Kos in their attempt to flee to Germany.
As she let her personal feelings wash ashore as well, I thought about
where I had not gone with that column: into the realm of personal
responsibility for the larger welfare of the human race.
“I thought,” she went on, “of offering to open my home, and then the
multiple worries, inconveniences, fears, etc., etc. sounded in, trumpets
shooting fire as ‘practical arguments’ shot down compassion.
What are we keeping from one another? What are we unable to admit to ourselves? (Image: Marco Abis/flickr/cc)
