Angels living in evil

The angelic faces of Syria’s children stare back from the television, the computer, the newspaper.  They stare with deep sadness in their eyes. These beautiful, innocent children living in refugee camps throughout Lebanon.

And like all children, they dream.

The Beyond Association, a UNICEF partner, provides schooling as well as art and music therapy at Fayda Camp, some 25 miles east of Beirut, Lebanon. These moments beyond loss and grief find a way into the children’s imaginations where they can dream of a future, one with all their family members, with peace and with the normal routine children deserve – school, soccer, chores, friends and laughter.

War disturbs so much of our intended life: the landscape, pieces of our cultural and communal past. But somehow, war – any war – seems to claim children more than anything else; if not their lives, then their very souls.

(S-R archive photo: Syrian children stand near their tent at a refugee camp in the eastern Lebanese border town of Arsal, Lebanon)