Joy Farrington considers the need for love in dealing with injustice

Joy Attmore

Picture a room full of beautifully dressed men and women, some of whom you know intimately, others of whom their faces hold no familiarity. Wine is flowing freely and the old grandeur of the ballroom causes images of the past to enter into table conversation. Men adoringly behold the women on their arms, the smiles of the adored confirms their enjoyment of the evening.

The 400 guests take their seats around tables full of wine and candlelight, expectant for the coming food and musical entertainment. A hush falls over the room as the stories behind this gathering begin to be played out from the platform of a projector screen. A beautiful young woman sheds broken tears as she recounts the horrendous experience of being gang-raped by a group of soldiers on her way home in the DR Congo.

Two worlds collide as the Liverpool residents mentally begin to match up their own lives with that of this woman sat alone on the screen.

'The pain in my heart is too great,' she said before breaking down in tears.

The injustice of war and pillaging causes eyes to close in a moment of acknowledging grief; the grief brought about in a moment of seeing another human's pain.

News reports fail to inform us of the fullness of war's terrors; only looking into the eyes of someone who has had the very zest of life stolen from them can really communicate the horror that the desire for power can inflict.

The foreign faces that appear on our tv screens, accompanied by the white man's voice petitioning for money as the cure for war, often seems to box off this injustice as a faraway problem, creating resistance in our hearts as all we hear is manipulation. What often seems to be left out of the conversation is the word 'family' and the connecting thread of love.

It is real fathers and brothers that can help a young woman's heart to learn how to trust a man again; how to be able to remove the sight and sounds of her attackers from the face of every male she encounters. It is love that restores and reaffirms her worthiness, placing value on her body, her femininity, her womanhood once again. It is not a big cheque that solves the world's pains and brokenness, but it is love. Poetic words may stir emotions and cause us to stand up, but it is only love that really enables us to move.

The temptation to forget is overwhelming and the desire to pretend it isn't happening or doesn't effect us is ingrained in our society. I don't want to be someone who forgets, looks away or pretends it doesn't affect me. I want my heart to be consumed with love and compassion that takes me out of my ballroom chair and causes me to move; to dance upon injustice and bind up the broken-hearted.

The news only informs us of what they want us to hear, picking out a handful of stories and discarding the rest as not worthy of airtime. Love takes the time to hear every journey, placing value on every story no matter their race or creed. Love seeks to exchange beauty for ashes and never forgets a child's name.

We all choose a standard in life, a set of rules or morals that we decide to live by and allow to inform our day to day choices. If the world was to set their standard to love and ensure that the desire for power and pleasure bows down to this force, then maybe, just maybe, we could see the pain in this woman's heart from the Congo become nothing more than a memory of the past.