From The Shooting Star, December 30, 2007. Copyright 2007, Ellen Rowse Spero. All rights reserved.
A couple of years ago, Josh and I decided to sponsor a child through Plan USA. We were assigned a young girl, Salamatou, from Niger. Our sponsorship does not just help fund things for her, but for her whole village: education, clean water, medications, farming materials, etc. Even so, what we give is a small drop in the bucket.
Part of sponsorship is being in communication with Salamatou. In addition to our donation, we write to her and occasionally send gifts. She writes us back. We also have received photographs of her and her family, and pictures she has drawn.
This week, we received a letter from her, telling us the sad news that her baby sister died of a sickness. High infant mortality rates are a reality in Niger and other developing countries. What I find with our correspondence with Salamatou is how closer to home such a death is. It goes from being an unfortunate statistic to a reality in the life of someone I know. Our relationship is tenuous - a few of letters a year. My correspondence is more erratic than I would like it to be, as I get caught up in ebb and flow of my own life here. I do not know her or her family beyond the simple letters we pass back and forth. But it is a relationship and what happens to her matters to me. Because I have a relationship with this child worlds away in so many ways, the loss of her little sister touches my heart in a way that statistics and news reports cannot.
Am I changing the world by sponsoring a child in a far away land? No. I am stopping the poverty that brings such tragic consequences to Salamatou's world? No. But Salamatou's story and mine are entwined, marginally perhaps but they are entwined. And so I mourn the death of a child's sister, as a real and single event, with a name and a date and story. And in bearing witness to this part of Salamatou's story, I am moved to learn more, to stay engaged and involved, to risk loving a child I will probably never meet face to face. I feel humbled to know her and to be welcomed into her world.
I believe that justice begins by making and nurturing our human connections, to see beyond rhetoric and statistics to risk being touched and engaged in the lives of real people. This is why I believe in the transforming Spirit of Love. This is why I believe that right relationship is much more important than right belief. This is why I believe service to the world is such an important part of our Unitarian Universalist faith and tradition. It is not just for the sake of others, but our own as well. Seeing the humanity in others makes us more human and more humble, more forgiving and more grateful. It reminds us that we are not alone, in either our struggles or our wealth, and that we have a responsibility to keep one another company, whether they are next door or worlds away.
In faith,
Ellen