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At our Meeting (Quaker) we typically set aside a time before the close of worship to request prayers for persons or issues that weigh on our minds, be they joys or sorrows, so that our concerns may be prayed for collectively within our corporate worship. This past Sunday I requested prayers for the community of Ferguson, MO. and for all other communities world-wide that experience the weight of disparity.

In recent weeks, witnessing the horrors of the marginalization of the Yazidi people in Iraq; the angry response to Central American children seeking a safe haven in the United States; and the ongoing divisiveness in Gaza and Israel … I have, at times, needed to turn off the news and remove myself from witness to all of the hatred.

Technology has certainly provided us access to more information about critical events that effect people all over the world. I wonder, though, if we don’t fully engage in the issues that concern us personally, that we are somehow complicit in the inequitable treatment of others.

My hope is that the upside of these concerns, and others not mentioned above, is that we all begin to seek more active engagement in humanitarian issues and continued growth in our ability to share our values by demonstrating our positions more readily in our every day lives.