“Compassion is sometimes the fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else’s skin.”-Buechner
One of the many hopes my wife and I have for our children is that they will grow up to be compassionate people; and people whose compassion leads to action. My older children have seen first hand, the hurting and oppressed in different cultures throughout the world, as well as here in the U.S. They have learned that there are real human beings behind mind-numbing statistics. Our hope is that somewhere along the way our kids learn to put themselves in the place of others. To feel. To understand. To engage.
So I was deeply moved when my oldest daughter just recently posted the following on her blog. It is written from the perspective of the “other.” Specifically, a girl known as 146 and the thousands just like her.
Where has the beauty gone?
The fantastic?
The magic?
Buried behind me
in the home I cannot find.
Have I been forgotten
In this hole
billowing with
driven stares
catering to evil?
Paying the price,
enslaved submission,
for their temporary satisfaction.
In an effort to survive
I try to believe
that maybe you
remember me.
“When you remember me, it means that you have carried something of who I am with you, that I have left some mark of who I am on who you are. For as long as you remember me, I am never entirely lost.” –Frederick Buechner
I am marked…and remembering.
Rob
President, Love146
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