What does Climate Change Look Like?
“Our goal is not to amass information or satisfy curiosity, but rather to become painfully aware, to dare turn what is happening to the world into our own personal suffering and thus to discover what each of us can do about it”
–Pope Francis
Several weeks ago, I forced myself to spend some time looking at pictures of Syrian refugees. These images have haunted me ever since. The pictures showed refugees landing on the shores of the Greek Island of Lesbos or Kos, huddled in rubber dinghies, or falling on the beach in exhaustion and relief. Others had drowned, their bodies washing up on the beaches of Turkey, Libya, and other Mediterranean nations. In many places, no one was there to meet them. The beaches were abandoned but for the stranded refugees. After a time, volunteers began to show up and assist the disheveled travelers, but many reports suggest an inadequate response by local authorities, as well as complaints by tourists, put- off by the interruption to their holiday enjoyment.
I have been haunted these images in part because of the basic compassion that most of us have for others in need, at least when we, ourselves, are safe and comfortable. The picture of drowned Ayland Kurdi, pictured at the top, stabs at the heart of the parent in me. He was the same age as my boys; but even short of the unthinkable and unbearable, I can’t help but try to imagine the difficulty in caring for young lives amidst fear, chaos, and violence. During our worst temper-tantrums and middle-of-the-night wake ups, for consolation and as a matter of counting my blessings, I try to imagine what it would be like to raise toddlers in a war-zone or in a refugee camp, and try to visualize the utter exhaustion, punctuated by fear, uncertainty, and perpetual discomfort.
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