Thought for the Day

The headline simply says: ‘All I have left is a burnt bag.’ These are the words of a parent in a recent Sky News investigation. The report has identified the faces of most of the children and teachers who were killed in Iran when a US missile struck a primary school in Minab at the start of the US-Israel war in Iran. At the time, the world reacted with shock, leaders made statements, but then the cameras moved on, and another tragedy replaced the last. That these children never returned home was a reality lost in the politics of war.
As we hopefully reach an agreement to end the conflict this week, the photos of these school children are a poignant reminder that while deaths are reported as numbers in the news headlines, behind every face is a name, behind every name is a family and behind every family is a world that changed forever when that child was killed.
Whether it’s news of a school shooting in America, children killed in war and conflict or the thousands dying from the slow tragedy of famine, I sometimes wonder whether too often children’s deaths have become headlines we just ignore or scroll past – they are over there, far away, someone else’s problem. Because we live in a time where tragedy can appear on our screens, compete for attention, and disappear within hours.
But I think that if religious faith means anything it demands that we ask ourselves what happens to our own humanity when another person’s suffering no longer moves us. Faith shouldn’t make us complacent; it should make us care. If as Islamic thought tells us children are an amanah, a trust from God, the moral weight of this trust is that it can be broken not only by violence but also by silence. As adults, we don’t own their future but we are responsible for protecting it. Seeing children as evidence of hope, the Indian poet and writer Rabindranath Tagore once said: ‘Every child comes with the message that God is not yet discouraged of humanity.’
Perhaps that’s the hope we can all hold onto, that however terrible war is, we don’t reduce or dismiss the deaths of children to collateral damage. Good journalism can’t explain everything but it can refuse to let everything be forgotten. And yes, at a time when so much of the news media is contested, this story shows us that the world depends on journalists to turn distance into attention and hopefully attention, at its best, into conscience.

16 JUNE 26

15 JUNE 26

13 JUNE 26

A friend relates the stresses of getting up in the morning. Her child has stubbed a toe but is it broken, poor kid? Simultaneously, the radio on, there is news of bombs again in the Middle East. And then, another worry: the erratic weather and what that might mean for a shifting climate. On top of that again, a background of disturbed domestic politics. Where is that leading? A hotch-potch of anxieties mount up.
My friend and I talked about how to handle these confused concerns, some smaller, some massive; some nearer, some afar. They crash in on us. Little wonder that some people become politically frazzled or mentally fatigued – or over-stimulated or drop out altogether.
The wisdom traditions offer advice on how to deal with such turbulence. A label often given to this advice is non-attachment. The idea is not to not care. But rather to learn a skilfulness in how you care.
Jesus was one figure who taught as much, captured in sayings such as: “Give no thought for the morrow.” To be preoccupied with what might happen, or how things might go, is paralysing. And freezing in the present moment, or conversely over-reacting, is a disaster because the present moment is the only one to which you can respond well.
The advice continues with caring for the soul, or how we are in the world, which effects how we act in the world. Or to put it another way: tend to the jostling facets of ourselves, what might be called our temperamental inner community. That internal unrest shapes our interactions with the wider community that exists around and about us. How we are inside will much effect how we are in the outside world.
Cultivating a non-attached attention also opens up awareness of something spiritual. Staying with what is present is an admission that there are many things that we cannot control and, crucially, that we will let them be. This is not a failure but the gaining of a wider perspective. And then, it is possible to see that the modest good we can do is part of a wider good, which can be called God.
There is a mental cost to feeling trapped in myriad troubles, but there is a spiritual liberty to find. Care with our attention brings that freedom – which is what I found with my friend.
Her child with the stubbed toe was OK. The wider world certainly knows suffering, but there is also a goodness in the world that we can find and amplify.