Uncomfortable with my own Comfort

Since the terrible news broke about the devastation in Haiti I have been trying to picture what their situation would be like -- trying to imagine my basement becoming my main floor; trying to feel the hunger pains while smelling the rotten food...and flesh; visualizing wreckage everywhere I turn and body parts protruding lifelessly helter-skelter from the rubble. I've been trying, but of course I can't. I see the images on television and the photographs in the newspaper; I read first-hand descriptions from those who are actually seeing it all. But while I see their devastation, my imagination has not been up to the task of putting me there.

My streets are too clean. My friends and family members are as close as the phone. My house, even in its routine clutter, is too ordered. My refrigerator -- and three freezers -- are too stocked. I am too aware of my need to lose weight because of my overeating to manage any visceral empathy for those desperate for a bite of anything that will keep alive. I have no reference point for the ache, grief, shock and desperation that are now epidemic in this entire and already destitute country.

Maybe this kind of impairment is what has led so many in the media to intellectualize the tragedy, politicize the pain -- even theologize it in what I have found to be generally nauseating attempts to derive some deeper meaning. Perhaps we ascend to these heights -- or is it descend to these depths? -- because we find it so difficult or undesirable to simply feel.

And so I sit here comfortably by the fire, an ocean or a universe away, newspaper in my lap, reading of the death toll updates and accounts of relief workers battling the difficulties of merely delivering emergency supplies to the needy -- saddened, but with a disconcerting detachment. Uncomfortable, I suppose, with my own comfort.

This isn't a news story, I keep reminding myself, these are people. People just like me -- and their homes and their neighborhoods and their pets and spouses and children. These are their very lives trapped and crushed beneath these broken walls and fallen roofs.

Perhaps we will eventually discern some deeper meaning in all this, even if we haven't thus far. For now, it is enough I think to simply hurt...

...and do what we can to help.

Near or, as in my case, far.