Unable to Mourn the Other

    Two thousand refugees drowned in the Mediterranean last week; briefly noted, easily forgotten. Their deaths are hardly mentioned if at all by candidates and the silence of faith leaders speaks volumes. Apparently these are “the others.”

        David Miliband, CEO of the International Rescue Committee, provides context: two different desperate refugee streams are fleeing violence: one stream from Syria, Lebanon and Iraq trying to cross to Greece. Another fleeing from countries like Egypt, Somalia, Libya and Ethiopia on a longer journey trying to reach Sicily. Refugees who survive the sea passage say they did not understand in advance the terrible danger of turbulent seas, their flimsy inflated raft, and possible death.  But they say “If we don’t go we will die here.”  An interfaith fellowship of dieing?

There’s a profound analogy here to rich nation failures to see the mortal danger of letting growing domestic and global inequality go unaddressed. The dots can be connected from inequality to desperate acts and more warfare. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) reports income inequality now is at its highest level in half a century

“The average income of the richest 10% of the population is about nine times that of the poorest 10% across the OECD, up from seven times 25 years ago.”

        Perhaps the end of the long Primary Elections season will make it possible for people to see what is really at stake in their political decisions including, the refugees experts tell us, those  who may die in coming weeks.

        It is a colossal disaster and there is such silence in the faith communities, to say nothing of the candidates. It suggests that the inability to stop and mourn is the real death knell of civilization because it is the end of a moral common thread.  Consumed by self-absorption, the policy debates fail if “the others” can be so easily dis-remembered.    Not even a Bach chorale can express the sorrow of boatloads of hundreds of drowning children, men and women because they are “the others.” The Christian tradition Bach expressed easily lapses into a liturgy that helps people mourn for Jesus and themselves, but not for “the others.” The dangerous quicksand of Jewish tribalism likewise subjects “others” to subsidiarity to a chosen people. 

       Of course we will not mourn unless the others become our brothers and sisters, our children.  The ancient texts require a new song, a new chorale, that defines an inclusive and whole global family in moral terms, that compels action and elects governments that will enact it.