First off, if the tone of my post yesterday was more bleak than hopeful, that wasn’t my intention. It is always better to do research first and lament later. I think I may have unintentionally written the “why isn’t anyone doing anything?” post without actually looking into the question of whether people are doing anything. Of course they are.
So I guess if caring is the first step, then research is the next one. I’ve already found a Catholic organization with a campaign called “Peace is Possible in Syria”. It seems promising – it’s promoting advocacy to government and awareness. They have information. Nothing about bombing. Of course there isn’t.
Now, my plan with this post is not to provide a list of resources on helping out with Syria from some research I just did five minutes ago. I’m sure you’re quite capable of doing that yourself if that’s something that interests you.
As always with my posts, it’s more about my own process – it’s about how I move from one place and try to get to a better place. I do strive to do that in a way that might be useful. I’m sure it isn’t for everyone, but that’s the beauty of the internet, there is endless space to find your niche. If you’d rather read the musings of someone who knows what to do and is doing it, then I get it. I wish I was there.
I think that the danger in beginning to care about these humanitarian disasters is that focussing on the ideal outcome can bring despair, because it seems impossible. In anything, the only thing we can do is to focus on the next step, whatever that might be and as long as it is pointing towards the ideal outcome we can make progress.
From a number of angles it may seem ridiculous for a person living in Canada to talk about becoming involved in working for peace in Syria, and I can see that, but at the same time, the world is a very complex place. There are relationships globally between Canada and many countries and any pressure that one person can put on those actors here in Canada can multiply as more and more people engage. How much influence does the Canadian government have in Syria and the Middle East? I don’t know, but all you can hope for is growth, and eventually movement.
So I think you begin in that place of seeing something and being moved by it, and I want to try to avoid the hopelessness and the easy option of just moving on and letting the immediacy of my own life in front of me bury those feelings. I’ve said before that if I’m looking for sweet solid ground, then in one way or another that’s what everybody is looking for, although they would all describe it differently I am sure. People in Syria are looking for that same thing.
I’m not sure if I would feel comfortable saying that about Bashar al-Assad. He must be looking for something. Maybe he’s found something – his power and his wealth, and he’s so intent on keeping it that’s lost sight of everything else around him. It would be easy to assume that he’s unhappy, or living in fear. But maybe the power and the struggle to maintain it acts like a drug. I don’t know. Was Stalin a happy man?
But certainly, the craving of the human heart is for something – something good, and it’s so clear that there are so many people over there who are hard-pressed to be able to think about that. They’re just struggling to survive, and somehow I feel like my own search for sweet solid ground needs to take that into account. I’m not sure exactly how that’s going to work, but I feel like caring is the first step and learning is the second, and as I learn I can begin to move and to act.
It’s a great comfort to know that there are already so many who are moving and acting. There are many amazing things that are already happening in various ways, and although it is the death and the struggle that seems to hit the headlines, the stories of what is growing on the ground are out there, and they can be found and they can be told.
There are millions and millions and millions of us out there and over there, and God who gives us life is the one who is over us all, and if the task seems daunting, we can take heart in the fact that if we were all to do our part, our part would not need to change the world on its own, just fall into place of the bigger picture. We’re so far from it at the moment – so, so far. It’s going to take so much more than a song, or a march, or a blog post, but it’s about movement. It’s about beginning to see and to go in the right direction…whatever that might be.
There’s going to be a lot of bad news in the coming months, but there is hope. There is always hope. If anyone asks me what I can always count on from God, it is hope. It may be dwarfed by the obstacles, but all we can do is make our way from where we are.
