Finding beauty in a broken world

This entry is part of my journal from Semester in the West. For all SITW journal entries, click here. For all SITW posts, including blog posts I wrote while on the program, click here. To learn more about the program, click here.

camp: with Bill deBuys, Northern New Mexico

Reading Finding Beauty in a Broken World. My thoughts are far from the West, though there are plenty of parallels to be drawn. How can people do this to other people? How do we lose our connections and common ground? How do we fail to see people as people? It’s Rwanda, Darfur, the Congo, apartheid, the Guatemalan civil war, Pinochet, the death houses in Juarez, the conquering of a continent. Where does it end? How do we see these things occurring and fall silent? How can I possibly focus my energy and commitment as an activist, a writer, a person? Trying to do anything but fix the planet and solve climate change is criminal, because all of our futures are at stake. Seeing the human suffering occurring in Congo or the girls sex-trafficked in India and choosing to care about polar bears instead is equally criminal. But I can’t be everywhere. I cry, wring my hands, call out in the night, beg a God I don’t believe in for forgiveness. I don’t want to be complicit. I don’t want to stand silent while people are tortured, animals are skinned while alive, habitats are bulldozed, ecosystems are paved over.

I find hope in the communities where people are starting to heal, to rebuild themselves with dignity. I trust in people’s ability to nourish their own communities, to find inner strength and courage even in the midst of unspeakable acts of cruelty. I pray, knowing it won’t change a thing, and I write, still hoping someday I’ll stumble across an answer, another small nugget of truth.