This is a difficult time for everyone in Sudan as well as for Sudanese abroad and people who know and love the Sudanese – northerners as well as southerners, easterners and westerners. Understanding and compassion is needed for all Sudanese as the referendum voting continues and as they face a new and uncertain future in its aftermath.
There are many concerns but among them is the plight of thousands of southerners who have congregated on the outskirts of Khartoum in the belief that their journey south would be facilitated by government, international or church efforts. This is not apparently happening sufficiently and major health and security issues could develop.
Together for Sudan has lost two of our five key colleagues in the Khartoum office. One hopes to return after the referendum but may not be able to do so. Nonetheless, we are determined to carry on as a charity dedicated to helping, in particular, women and children who are marginalized and in need of education. But major adjustments seem to lie ahead.
TfS remains dedicated to Sudan and to its multi-cultured and worthy people. At this difficult time of enormous change we hold hope for the Sudanese people and ask God to guide and protect them.
May peace and justice prevail,
Lillian Craig Harris
Director, Together for Sudan
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Showing posts with label suffering. Show all posts
Wednesday, January 12, 2011
A Response to Hunger and Courage
Without giving away any names or information I would just like to say that the educational needs of David and Tony have been met and I am enormously grateful that this has happened. Together for Sudan is
grateful for every donation that we receive, whether for a specific project or for our general funds that allow us the flexibility to help people such as David and Tony in this way. These two now have a chance at a future that they did not have before.
grateful for every donation that we receive, whether for a specific project or for our general funds that allow us the flexibility to help people such as David and Tony in this way. These two now have a chance at a future that they did not have before.
Monday, July 05, 2010
Looking on Suffering and grace and believing in the future of Sudan
From the time I was a small child my mother believed in my integrity and my worthiness. By this I mean she let her children know that it is necessary to grow into a person who is sensitive to the needs of other and ready to help those who are suffering. She lived that way herself, reaching out in kindness as a regular practice. On the day after Christmas when I was four years old, she took her three small children to visit an impoverished family whose children had received no gifts. Our instruction before visiting was that each of us would select one of our own Christmas gifts for the children with no gifts. The whole idea displeased me enormously. But grace broke through when my handing over of a toy telephone to another child set in motion a source of joy which has not ceased to grow with me. From that time I began to suspect that it really might be better to give than to receive.
My mother’s early trust that I would do what is right – if not now then at least later – has guided me towards a life of service although I admit to having wandered around for a few decades before getting serious about it. Not until my 40s did I understand more fully that service to the poor and attention to what people need is the best possible way to accommodate divine grace which strengthens and informs both giver and recipient. Living in London, Cairo and then Khartoum during this time of intense learning, I also came to understand that Muslims as well as Christians believe and practise the path to grace through service.
Among the most wonderful gifts of grace with can grow out of service are patience, humility and love for others. Although I cannot pretend to have advanced far along this path, I can now at least see the possibility that such gifts may eventually be given to me. At present my gifts are simpler, more mundane: an ability to listen to people in distress, anger against injustice and a desire to do something about it and, last but not least, “the gift of helps”, which, to put it simply, means facilitation. I have as well a particularly painful gift which involves openness to the suffering of others, animal as well as human.
This openness to suffering was first remarked on in my childhood in Taiwan when I was twice removed from the streets to the police station on a charge of attacking people who were abusing dogs. I suppose that the inability NOT to see the suffering of others is a common gift to people who have themselves suffered intensely – as I did when I was badly burned as an infant, later when I was sent to boarding school in Mississippi and refused permission to speak to my younger siblings and then as a teenager when I spent several months as the only child in a tuberculosis sanatorium. But the grace of seeing the suffering of others did not come on all at once. Visiting Istanbul early in my adult life, I was surprised when a friend with me suddenly cried out “O God! No! No!” Only then did I see the old man staggering by carrying on his back a refrigerator anchored by a strap across his forehead.
Several years later another friend suddenly turned to me in surprise and said, “You seem to see every wounded dog, overloaded donkey, exhausted woman and sick child on the road from the pyramids back to central Cairo.” Looking at me suspiciously she added, “Why is it that I don’t see all this but you do?” This statement came to me as a revelation because I had always assumed that everyone is able to see the pain and anguish all around us but most of us choose not to do anything about it. So I tucked my friend’s statement away quietly in my heart and began asking God to open my eyes wider.
All this is simply to say that divine grace works within us, particularly, I suspect, when we are willing to join forces with people of other religious beliefs and none, people of different races, tribes and cultures and people who need to feel that those who are more affluent care about them. Arriving in the southern Sudanese city of Wau with a group of fact finding diplomats during the eye of the great famine of 1998, I was surprised to find a Sudanese friend at work feeding the starving multitudes.
“Ahmed,” I cried stupidly, “Why are you here?” To which Ahmed gracefully replied, “Where else would you have me be?”
And I remember the reply of Sudanese ophthalmologist Dr. Nabila Radi when I told her of Together for Sudan’s decision to begin an Eye Care Outreach into the squatter settlements around Khartoum.
“If you are going to help the poor, you are going to suffer,” Dr. Nabila said joyfully. “I can start tomorrow.”
Lillian Craig Harris, June 2010
My mother’s early trust that I would do what is right – if not now then at least later – has guided me towards a life of service although I admit to having wandered around for a few decades before getting serious about it. Not until my 40s did I understand more fully that service to the poor and attention to what people need is the best possible way to accommodate divine grace which strengthens and informs both giver and recipient. Living in London, Cairo and then Khartoum during this time of intense learning, I also came to understand that Muslims as well as Christians believe and practise the path to grace through service.
Among the most wonderful gifts of grace with can grow out of service are patience, humility and love for others. Although I cannot pretend to have advanced far along this path, I can now at least see the possibility that such gifts may eventually be given to me. At present my gifts are simpler, more mundane: an ability to listen to people in distress, anger against injustice and a desire to do something about it and, last but not least, “the gift of helps”, which, to put it simply, means facilitation. I have as well a particularly painful gift which involves openness to the suffering of others, animal as well as human.
This openness to suffering was first remarked on in my childhood in Taiwan when I was twice removed from the streets to the police station on a charge of attacking people who were abusing dogs. I suppose that the inability NOT to see the suffering of others is a common gift to people who have themselves suffered intensely – as I did when I was badly burned as an infant, later when I was sent to boarding school in Mississippi and refused permission to speak to my younger siblings and then as a teenager when I spent several months as the only child in a tuberculosis sanatorium. But the grace of seeing the suffering of others did not come on all at once. Visiting Istanbul early in my adult life, I was surprised when a friend with me suddenly cried out “O God! No! No!” Only then did I see the old man staggering by carrying on his back a refrigerator anchored by a strap across his forehead.
Several years later another friend suddenly turned to me in surprise and said, “You seem to see every wounded dog, overloaded donkey, exhausted woman and sick child on the road from the pyramids back to central Cairo.” Looking at me suspiciously she added, “Why is it that I don’t see all this but you do?” This statement came to me as a revelation because I had always assumed that everyone is able to see the pain and anguish all around us but most of us choose not to do anything about it. So I tucked my friend’s statement away quietly in my heart and began asking God to open my eyes wider.
All this is simply to say that divine grace works within us, particularly, I suspect, when we are willing to join forces with people of other religious beliefs and none, people of different races, tribes and cultures and people who need to feel that those who are more affluent care about them. Arriving in the southern Sudanese city of Wau with a group of fact finding diplomats during the eye of the great famine of 1998, I was surprised to find a Sudanese friend at work feeding the starving multitudes.
“Ahmed,” I cried stupidly, “Why are you here?” To which Ahmed gracefully replied, “Where else would you have me be?”
And I remember the reply of Sudanese ophthalmologist Dr. Nabila Radi when I told her of Together for Sudan’s decision to begin an Eye Care Outreach into the squatter settlements around Khartoum.
“If you are going to help the poor, you are going to suffer,” Dr. Nabila said joyfully. “I can start tomorrow.”
Lillian Craig Harris, June 2010
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