Katrina and Charlie Chaplin
While Katrina makes us spectators roll our eyes in dismay and those that have lost so much hug one another in speechless hurt we hear of generosity that beggars belief. We hear of families taking whole families of strangers into their homes. We hear of thousands who make their way to the places where refugees huddle, carrying with them blankets, sheets, clothes, food, toys and offers of money, vehicles and jobs. They whisper assurances, offer up prayers, hug and hold weeping people and weep with them, sharing their pain. Churches throw their buildings wide open, already busy people turn up to cook and clean and feed the needy. It’s all done without patronising or insensitivity—there’s no arrogance or superiority, just hearts full of compassion. Black and white are serving black and white, the educated and ignorant are serving the educated and ignorant, the upper-crust people and the lower-working class are ministering to the upper-crust and lower-working class. Differences are obliterated; race, education, status, age and gender matter nothing! There are people in need and people dived in over their heads to do something about it!
Samwise Gamgee was absolutely right. "There’s some good left in this world Mr. Frodo…and it’s worth fighting for." (click here)
Charlie Chaplin wrote a beautiful song extolling human love. He called it, This is my Song. One of the lines in it says, "The world cannot be wrong if in this world there’s you." Chaplin—like so many others—knew what the pain of the world was but he also had an abiding sense that along with wrong and loss there was love and that gave meaning to a world that we would have utterly despised if it had been loveless.
So looking at the cross reminds us of the world’s great wrong but looking at the One on the cross reminds us of something else. The cross itself, as an instrument of torture, should shake us till our teeth rattle—how can such a thing be in a world under God? But the One on the cross should seize us till we can hardly breathe—how can there be such a One as this on a cross in a world without a Holy Father? Katrina should cure us of our over-the-top pursuit of and dependence on mere possessions and momentary happiness; but the profoundly lovely response to Katrina should cure us of ceaseless gloom and a slanderous view of humanity that dismisses it as self-serving vermin.
But the people that responded so splendidly to the needy and devastated of Katrina didn’t grow like mushrooms in the night—they were shaped over the years by something that it has become fashionable to despise. Thank God the cynical rhetoric can be overwhelmed by the heart response of thousands.
