Most of us long for a kind of connectedness we rarely find. Probably it is available everywhere, even in our living rooms at home, with our silent or estranged families, or on the streets of our hometowns. But we don't quite have the courage to risk the kind of relationship we long for. So we search in exotic lands and in extraordinary circumstances for the story or event, the one face that will break through to us, engage us, make us feel. But when faced with the opportunity, we are as frightened and alone as we are in our living rooms, and we shrink from the very engagement we desire and have come so far to find. We hide in busy schedules because we don't know how to feel, and we don't know what to do about the suffering, and we don't know what it means.
- From "Singing to the Dead: A Missioner's Life among Refugees from Burma" by Victoria Armour-Hileman
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