*Credit for this image from mic.com and this article

I tried to sleep – safely in my bed in my quiet neighborhood – yet the image of flames, darkness, and rubble remain in the forefront of my mind. Homes, neighborhoods, and families – destroyed. Sons, daughters, husbands, wives – dead. Their suffering causes restlessness in me. I cannot sleep.

Rather, I wonder what I can do. One lone voice, a single life swimming in a world of several billion people. I don’t lead a nation. I don’t have a platform. Anything I might do seems ineffectual.

As I wrestle with this I conclude, for the time, that whatever I do must bring me closer to suffering rather than further from it. Just because I live halfway across the world in some small, quiet suburb does not exempt me from joining those who suffer. I am called to solidarity.

My culture plots to feed my consumptive tendancies. This consumption leads me to a state of being desensitized to what’s going on in the world. I can turn the channel or entertain myself with the current series I’m streaming on Netflix, as I feed myself with processed foods, numbing my mind and desensitizing my soul. This is what I’m told is luxury. This is what I’m told is freedom. The choices are endless – and I agonize over what choice to make to feed the black hole of my desires. All this does is make me numb and ignorant of what’s going on in the world.

I have a choice. It will not change the world – but it might just change the way I experience the world – the way I experience others. It might move me closer to suffering rather than further away from it.

What if I removed the extras? What if I stopped the entertainment? What if I refused the excess? Rather than entertaining and consuming myself to death, just because I can, why not refuse the extras that those suffering do not have? Can I allow myself to be disturbed, disquieted, and dissatisfied with the cycles of violence I’m seeing? Rather than avoiding them, why not engage them? Why not be disturbed? Why not shed tears? Why not move closer where I can hear, see, feel, and understand (even in the smallest of ways) the suffering countless innocents experience each day?

I must move closer to the suffering of the world. My brothers and sisters around the world don’t have the luxury of ignoring it like I can. The bombs and sirens they hear are too loud – their fear too penetrating.

No, I will lay down the excess that demands my time and the entertainment that distracts my heart. I will attempt to quiet the noise that prevents me from hearing the cries of the widow and the orphan.