Ebola and our responsibility
When I was a student at Gonzaga, I was privileged to spend a year in Florence. We traveled to exotic places – the Holy Land, Greece, Jordan, the USSR, and to romantic destinations, like Venice.
And while we rode those click-clack trains, our brains - still not fully formed – did form opinions. The best lesson learned? We are the same. Human beings around the world weep and laugh and love and seek similar destinies – within different cultures. Years after I returned to the US, a bomb exploded in the Uffizi, a Florence museum. I wept as I watched the news.
A man I know served in the Peace Corps, in Liberia. How his heart must break these days as he observes the Ebola epidemic from afar, ravaging a country he loves.
No matter if we have ridden the click-clack trains of Liberia or not, we are all citizens of the world. We should bear witness to our fellow human beings’ suffering - and weep.
(S-R photo: Emmanuel Junior Cooper sits at his St. Paul Bridge home in Monrovia, Liberia. The Cooper children are now orphans.)