Human Suffering

     In yesterday's paper... stories about children caught in a nation at war. The horrors of human nature enslaved by evil. They call out for America to help. There is always a cry for help, and it is to our Nation that the cry goes out.
     I work in special education and I meet many children who are changed in extraordinary ways. They don't choose the lives they are given, and they need help to manage their challenges and build success. It is essential for their teachers to believe without doubt that they can succeed, but we must also accept that success can look very different from what we imagine for ourselves. It's no wonder, then, that I meet many teachers who beleive in God. In order to imagine success in the world we must have bigger options.
     Among our population of school children in Arizona there are many refugees. Not everyone wants them here. They make life more difficult and right now when money is short, there are people who would cut expenses by cutting services to human need. This is a mistake. From its beginning, America has always been the Nation to which refugees flee the evils of war, oppression, slavery, hunger, poverty. We aren't a perfect people, but we are a patchwork people. The fabric of our society is the plain cloth of refuge. Many people are forgetting this. We are the ONE PLACE in the world where people who suffer SHOULD find refuge.
     It won't come immediately from government sources, though our government has powerful ability to organize, mobilize, and intervene. The real source of solace comes from the hearts of people who are willing to do what they can, to meet the refugees on the road, to embrace them, lift them up, dress their wounds, clothe their bodies, satisfy their hungers and give them time to recover their inward sense of dignity and worth. It's not magic and it doesn't happen quickly. It is, however, the greatest power in the universe--more powerful than guns and bombs and armies and wars. It is the power that every one of us has and no one can take away from us once we choose it. It is the power of love.

     Find a way today to love someone. Cast yourself onto the tide of love.