Yesterday I considered writing on Christmas anxiety, but news from Aleppo plagued my thoughts as headlines declared “a complete meltdown of humanity” leaving at least 80 civilians dead.
On an exploratory trip to migrant camps in Greece, Irish Minister for Children Katherine Zappone declared, “I wanted to just sweep them up and bring them home with me.” This sentiment is echoed again and again by humanitarian activists and friends from my own Kansas childhood. “I want to go scoop up so many and bring them to safety,” says one.
Oh, that we could.
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To tell you the truth, Aleppo has riled me and I feel complicit in my inaction, my overall ignorance, my inability to do much of anything... except give... and write. So yesterday, I gave to Preemptive Love, and today I'm writing at VOX about simple acts of resistance, of hospitality, how we cannot, must not, turn away.
In the words of Christena Cleveland, "the more I think about hopelessness and privilege, the more I'm convinced that hopelessness can be a marker of privilege [and] privilege is an enemy of hope."
PS - the above picture is not of Syria, but of beautiful Greece, where I spent some time last month. Eventually I'll write a post allllll about that.