A few months ago, an elderly human being who wanted to try and make a difference to a chaotic and apocalyptic world, ventured with huge courage into the most lawless part of Iraq, armed with little else than his Christian beliefs. The result was several months spent in utter terror and misery with other hostages, one of whom was murdered. Norman Kember must have lived through a form of hell that most of us could not begin to imagine, a hell where every living moment might just be the last before some unspeakable form of death. Quite rightly, everything possible was done to secure his, and the others' releases and today, thank God, he is safely back in the embrace of his family. I am sure they did not need to ask, as a Sunday paper did, if he was a fool or a hero. The media reaction to Norman Kember made me seriously question what is happening to our ancient values of love, compassion and selflessness; this poor man is only just back in daylight a few days and is now facing so many negative comments. For a start I am quite sure that his first words to his rescuers would have been of thanks and immense gratitude; isn't that obvious? Let's not forget that Norman Kember is not a glamorous celebrity whose entire life is spent playing the media game! What can we expect him to say and do in such bewildering circumstances? And why is this so important? The only thing that counts is that lives were saved. We seem to have been more worried about the survival of the whale! I didn't hear any adverse comments about the expense of the "save the whale" operation; people seem unperturbed by the sight of vets and other rescue workers wading waste deep in London's muddy river. So my question is: why the outpouring of so much concern over a whale and such animosity towards a human being trying to follow his Christian path? Maybe it’s because it is so much less demanding of self to release emotions over a threatened whale which after all does not trigger, or risk triggering, a bad conscience. The whale scenario smacks of mass hysteria; we get caught up, we release pent up emotions and then we forget the whole thing, and life can go on as normal, in its blinkered rut. The whale was just an unlucky mammal which took a wrong turn, and it doesn't leave us asking questions of ourselves. Norman Kember does! What uncomfortable questions too! How does someone find such courage? Is it faith? Could I even do that? Oh dear ..... I am far too entrenched in my comfortable Christianity to take such a risk for human beings I have never even met. What gives a person the courage to take that selfless step? Whatever it is, it makes me feel admiration and yet I feel annoyed because it shows me up in a bad light. The whale didn't do that to me! Is the media influencing how we feel about Norman Kember, or is it reflecting a sad decline in our sense of values as a Society? Do we underrate this old man's ideals because we have become self-centred and shallow? Or worse, have our values become so shallow that we actually believe that anyone who puts others before self is to be denigrated, put down? Can we stop this rot? How? How can we stop understanding the value of peoples' struggles. Mother Theresa said that none of us does great things, we can only do small things with a lot of love. Maybe the answer lies here. We can not all be capable of taking huge strides into the unknown, as Norman Kember did, but we do have it in us to do small things with a lot of love, and many people doing that adds up to huge things and large amounts of love. Caring about the life or death of a whale is all part of the picture; it's the beginning of a much larger picture if we allow it to be. |
