A child’s face in a sea of red. A sea of red cloth. She stares back at the camera, unsmiling. What dignity they have those who have nothing. Their colours: the colour of life, blood, power, energy, earth. The colour of Aborigines. The colour of belonging. The colour of something vital that we have forgotten. They cross the sea in search of food, of safety, of home, though they leave that behind. What will they find? Will we be kind? We who have so much and yet do not have what they have. Can never have it. What must we smell like to them? What sense can they make of us? The photographer takes his picture. Making something nice, something beautiful that is beyond the kind of beauty we know or seek. All that order, neatness, cleanness, a perfumed nothingness. They see more, have seen more, than we can ever see – war, hunger, disease – and they come to us for succour. Us. What can we offer them?
‘Jesus was beggar, he was rich in grace.’ Joni Mitchell.
If nothing more may I learn humility and the capacity to see and feel beyond my neat orderly world.
And please, let us, let the world be kind.
