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The War in Iraq: A Challenge to SJA

Karen Armstrong writes: “The word compassion does not mean to feel sorry for someone. It means to feel with others, to enter their point of view and realize that they have the same fears and sorrows as yourself.” As a people of faith, we are called to compassion – to feel with those who are suffering, including those who are suffering the wounds of a war from which so many of us have been effectively insulated.

We do have families at St. Joan of Arc and in our communities whose loved ones are in the military, and these families are experiencing great loss and anxiety and sacrifice. We also have many parishioners who have been involved tirelessly in their efforts to bring this immoral, illegal and unjust action to an end. This Sunday we had the opportunity to hear from Sami Rasouli, an Iraqi-American who has devoted his life to working for peace and reconciliation in Iraq and for whom the war has been all too real and all too personal.

For many of us, however, the war in Iraq – and the toll it is taking - slips below the radar of our consciousness and our compassion, and rarely impacts the way we live our lives.

Fr. Jim DeBruycker recently asked what we could do as a parish, collectively and regularly, to make us mindful of this war and the sacrifices endured both by Iraqi civilians and by those our government has asked to serve in Iraq. We gave it some thought and staff member Steve Friedrichs suggested that once a week we could all go without power or running water in our homes for one hour (or longer) as Iraqis are regularly forced to do. So we issue this challenge to all of us at SJA:

Every Sunday until this war is ended, we are asking all SJA households to shut off the lights, the TV, the computer, the phone, the video games, the air conditioning and anything else that uses electricity and to abstain from running water for at least one hour. Can you make this commitment? If your household can participate, please e-mail Julie Madden at jmadden@stjoan.com to let us know that you are making this commitment.

As we continue with this effort, we will want to hear from you and how this impacts your household: Is one hour not enough? Does this hour give you a window into the experience of our Iraqi brothers and sisters? What do you do with the time you are “unplugged”? Does this hour of mindfulness of the war spread to the rest of the week, and how does that impact your life?

The United Nations reports that 85% of all Iraqi households lack a stable source of electricity, 33% are deprived of regular access to drinking water and 70% struggle to dispose of garbage. Going without these services for one hour is truly such a small sacrifice, but hopefully a reminder of our call to compassion and mindfulness of the toll of war and the lives of those living constantly with war’s reality.