"A girl cries as she carries a sibling on a search for their parents in Kiwanja, Congo. Nearby U.N. peacekeepers were unable to protect the villagers, a rights group said."
Jerome Delay, Associated Press
This photograph shot into me yesterday. I couldn't stop looking at it. I cried. That tiny child, the pain, the fear. And the brave sister, such a young child herself, pain, fear, forced out of childhood.
I felt it. It just kept jabbing my insides and I just cried.
I'm still having a hard time looking at it without tearing up - and judging the pain I've been through. Judging that it hasn't been nearly as tough, nearly as painful, nearly as full of suffering.
I can't do it anymore. I walk away from the paper and sit down in another room. I flip through the Tao Te Ching...here's the verse I turn to:
Verse 29
Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it.
If you treat it like an object, you'll lose it.
There is a time for being ahead,
a time for being behind;
a time for being in motion,
a time for being at rest;
a time for being vigorous,
a time for being exhausted;
a time for being safe,
a time for being in danger.
The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the centre of the circle.
