Little People

As it is for many people, "Casablanca" is one of my favorite movies. Nearly every scene has become iconic, but I'm thinking today of the closing sequence at the fog-shrouded Casablanca airport. Rick Blaine (Bogart) has found nobility and is off to work in the WW II resistance movement. The story has told us that he found his way to this decision out of his unrequited love for the ineffably beautiful Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman). As we hear the scored "As Time Goes By" for the last time, Rick tells Ilsa that where he is going she can't follow and what he has to do she can't be any part of. But they'll always have Paris. Then he says that he has learned that the lives of two little people don't amount to a hill-of-beans in this crazy, mixed-up world.

This has become an ethos for us, hasn't it? That beside The Greater Good and God and Country, we don't amount to a hill of beans. And we have believed this. We have become steeped in the honor of this, in the superiority of national interest. We talk about the necessary "sacrifice" of war to make it something to be lifted up to God. We have been taught well.

One of the blessings of living in a place like this, where headlines are lived out every day, is that you can get to know what it all means to very particular individual people. You might not really understand everything that's going on, but you can see plainly what it boils down to in the lives of all the little people. And I am learning that the problems of little people DO amount to a hill of beans in this crazy mixed up world. In fact, they are what matters most. They may be all that matters.

I think of the stories of Jesus' ministry. He lived under the occupation of the Empire, but notice he doesn't talk much about national interest. He talks about people who are sick or marginalized or poor or widowed. The stories are almost all about his encounters with particular little people. People with names, people with problems. They are what is important to him. Not alot of Secretaries of State or Prime Ministers in the Gospels. In fact, it's always seemed to me that when he comes before the Empire in the form of Pilate, he hardly has time for him. I notice, though, that he has time for the two thieves beside him on their crosses. Little people. Even criminal little people. He has time for them.

I spent the past two days in a village in the north of the West Bank where I go sometimes to work in a clinic. I stay with a family there and although their abiding hospitality will always demand that I be treated as a guest, the more I'm there the more they don't notice me. Being with them, I see what their lives are like every day. What they eat for dinner and breakfast, what they say about the current events of the day, how the Occupation affects them or doesn't, what makes them laugh and what makes them angry, what they do in the evening, what they spend their money on, who they keep company with.

The hill-of-beans ethos would say we mustn't focus on them, though. We must keep our eyes on the Big Picture, The Future, What's At Stake, Global Concerns. "Sacrifice" will be necessary. The more I am here, the more I think this is dead wrong. Some days I think it's even evil. Am I naive, do I not understand harsh reality and the way the world must work? I think I understand it very well. And I think it's a Great Big Problem.

On the road back to Jerusalem yesterday, we saw a military vehicle come to a stop and 3 soldiers jump out. Their rifles were up and pointed ahead as they began to run up the hill by the road. Just as we passed by, they began shooting at someone up the hill. We couldn't see who it was. Probably someone whose life got in the way of some national interest. And we won't find out who it was. His shooting or escape will pass by unnoticed by the world. Because his problems don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy, mixed-up world.

If these national interests and global concerns playing out here and in other parts of the world are so all-fired glorious and noble, why are so many people hurting in their wake? I think maybe all these national interests all rolled up together aren't worth even one eyelash from Hamza, or Rana, or Sabila, or Samir, or Fadi, or Ruba, or any of the other millions of little people who are being hurt here.