Lord, have mercy

The news can often be grim, and with the rise of ISIS and growing economic disparity, the past year has been full of particularly bleak coverage. At times I think we all have, as a coping mechanism, and because we are so often paralyzed by the complexities of these issues, had to look away.

However, the story, the picture, of the Syrian boys lost at sea yesterday left me sitting tearfully, angrily, helplessly silent in bed last night.

We've been hearing stories for years about ships capsizing in the Mediterranean and have been guilty of looking the other way. These aren't our shores. This is a European crisis.

But, is it really? In the era of globalization, when we are all so interconnected, there is a cost for looking away. One of my favorite quotes is

It's not acceptable for those of us fortunate enough to have ties to universities and other "resource-rich" institutions to throw up our hands and bemoan the place-to-place complexity.

And so I am reminding myself that I have to be involved. Maybe all I can do is give to UNHCR or IRC. Or maybe I can work with my church to sponsor a refugee family. (Random aside: *Did you know that the US takes in 90,000 refugees annually. Germany is commiting to accept 500,000 asylum seekers annually. And there are 4 million displaced Syrians, not to mention the countless Iraqi, Eritrean, Sudanese, Congolese and many others who are currently fleeing persecution.) 

It feels a bit contradictory that this old blog is called "something silly in" as lately I've been writing about mostly heavyboots things. But, I guess I am reminded that we need to fully experience the hard things in order to have a true appreciation of silliness.

Today I'm thinking back to a crisp, autumn evening in Baltimore. Our narrow, Baltimore row house was full as we gathered round the table with an Iraqi family we had befriended through my role as a casework intern at IRC. Charlie was showing the children how to make origami swans, and at one point, sweet, four-year-old Daniah exclaimed "Charlie is magic!" to her parents in Arabic. They translated for us through spurts of laughter.

Caring for refugees has always been something I've connected with, and so I want to get involved with refugee families again. I hope I can write soon about this kind of silliness and friendship in our current season of life here in Kentucky.