Dying Under the Radar

Setting sensible priorities is not selfish. It is an absolute necessary aspect of helping people, whether triage in an emergency room or sorting through the choices of people in dire need of everything.

I had a very brief encounter ministering to the needs of mothers and young victims of burns in a hospital in Managua. In this hospital the patients bring their own bedding and, at times, share beds with strangers. At first, I was appalled. On further reflection I realized that this facility was surely in the top half of health care facilities around the world. Yes, we have problems to tend to at home. Until you get a chance to see some of the rest of the world first hand, though, it is impossible to put our problems in a world perspective.

More importantly, our imperial desire to solve problems with armies and agencies effectively isolates us from ever having to look into the eyes of these people. Once you do, you realize that they truly are us. I am no one worlder, by any stretch of the imagination. But we lose a little of our humanity when we segregate our humanity and needs at home from their humanity and needs somewhere else in the world.

I agree that we need to seek support from our communities to bring relief to these people, but not at the expense of personal involvement. I am an Episcopalian and the national church is flacking a program called ???One Episcopalian??? to encourage people to contact their elected representatives to move our country toward a goal of spending one percent of our wealth toward reaching the United Nations Millenium Development Goals. As for what it calls the faithful to do on their own, the call is for an additional seven tenths of a percent at the personal level. This is all well and good, but a little math shows that if the faith community in our country alone would simply do what it is called to do, which is to share one tenth, that the increase in funding would more than meet the call of the Millenium Development Goals. As long as we spend more effort exhorting others to do more and ignore the role that we can each play as individuals, our individual ignorance of the humanity of others in need will persist.

We have worked to ensure that we give our tenth in time and money to missions in Central America. The faces of the people, especially the children, make it impossible to forget how blessed we are and how much we can do to help others in need. No television documentary or self-serving documents from government or private organizations can replace the first hand experience that we each can share with others in need.

Sure, we should encourage our communities to get in and help. But nothing will ever surpass individual, hands on, commitment to go out and join the world.

midnighto5 -- Without disputing the evil that Reagan or Bush or anyone else may have done with regards to this or similar problems, what have you done, how much time have you offered, how many dollars have you spent to help these people or people like then find relief?

I agree with you amyelizabeth.As long as people like Damon go on breathing around the world,the problems of the world and the humanity won't be over at all.I HOPE people like Damon will understand what we say sooner