Antoine
de Saint-Exupery is best known for writing the classic book The Little Prince,
but he also was a renowned pilot who helped establish airmail routes over
Northwest Africa, the South Atlantic, and South America, which made him a
pioneer in postal aviation. Saint-Exupery said, “Transport of the mails,
transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures—in this century,
as in others, our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing
men together.”
Today,
we can add transport of our thoughts, images, and videos via the World Wide Web
to the list of accomplishments that bring people together. Perhaps what really
brings us together, however, is the enhanced empathy and compassion that these
shared thoughts and images are capable of engendering. Humans are much, much,
MUCH more alike than we are different. According to the Human Genome Project,
the DNA of any two humans is 99.9 percent identical. Furthermore, we are
hardwired to react to the emotions of people we encounter, whether in person or
through an image; neuroscience confirms that seeing someone in pain activates
the parts of your brain that activate pain.
Now
that videos can be taken and transmitted with phones, we are able to see the tears
on the faces of refugee children who have been separated from their families
and caged. We can witness the deaths of people like George Floyd who die while
gasping “I can’t breathe.” We can see how much like us they are—that they
breathe like we do and love their families like we do—and their suffering fosters empathy and moves us to act.
In
his quest to share God’s love with us, Jesus didn’t attempt to overcome his
oppressors with force. Instead he suffered, and through his suffering we discovered
that resurrection follows death and God’s love and life are available to all of
us. When we suffer with others as Christ does, we reveal the same thing. As Richard Rohr said,
“Our healing is bound up in each other’s.”
Our
modern ease in transporting thoughts and images has great potential to bring us
together through suffering to the joy that accompanies freedom and the end of
injustices. Camera phones in hand and with engaged hearts, may we walk the
freedom trail together.
No comments:
Post a Comment