While grappling with his sudden loss of sight, he penned the last line of a sonnet that seems most relevant to a world in quarantine: "They also serve who only stand and wait" ("On His Blindness," Sonnet 19).

In crisis periods like ours today, there is a natural urge to go out and do something, anything, to help. Instead, we are asked to keep still and stay home. It is time to remind ourselves that we can still serve others as we stand and wait.

Confronted by a dangerous and stealthy virus that can be transmitted unknowingly among us, what we are tasked with today is to build community defences, to prevent the spread of the virus by creating physical distance between one another and avoiding the natural contact that we have been accustomed to all our lives. We somehow feel blind-sided.

But rather than curse the enforced helplessness we seem to have been subjected to, perhaps it is important to envision what a chastened and contrite world can become, which in the end, can be a better reflection of who we truly are.

Move toward a more mindful nation

As we retreat to our homes, contemplate our disrupted lives and behold cities and towns shrouded in silence, we can become more mindful, more aware of ourselves, our families and loved ones.

We can reflect on the way we have lived and the way we have dealt with others and with nature, the environment that even now seems to breathe better, bursting with blue skies if we care to look out our windows or if we are lucky enough to have access to open spaces.

Living more mindful lives in a world different from the past seems to be a worthwhile outcome of the crisis that now engulfs us.

Encourage a more caring people

As we find a little more time in our hands, many of us have opportunities to reach out to others, not only our close friends, family and colleagues but those people we have been meaning to call for weeks, maybe years, and never got around to.

We are able to renew interrupted conversations and recall moments when we may have cared more for each other. A more caring people in a less frenzied world seems to be another possible outcome of this unprecedented global lockdown. Continue reading

This involves both personal sacrifice and personal satisfaction.

There is a direct link between what we personally become and what we do to help others become.

Our own existence is a gift - wasn't owing to us.

And so we are most truly ourselves by being a gift, i.e. by self-giving.

This echoes the Gospel teaching that the grains of wheat that fall into the ground and die to themselves become a harvest; the grain that doesn't ‘die' to itself remains alone, (John 12:24).

We experience this truth especially when we are helping troubled or needy people: that's when we can discover depths of healing, joy and meaning we didn't even know we were missing!

Brother, sister, let me serve you,
Let me be as Christ to you.
Pray that I might have the grace
to let you be my servant too.

We are pilgrims on a journey,
we're together on the road;
we are here to help each other
walk the mile and bear the load.

Practical concern for others is not enough if it aims only at individuals. It needs to spill over into social life and economic planning.

Compassion, mercy and forbearance belong in public life, not just in private life.

This is hardly what happens when business practices pursue profits by making other people feel inferior and needy.

Business and advertising work relentlessly, even unscrupulously, to heighten people's sense of need so that they will keep turning to the markets to offset their needs and wants and anxieties and fears.

It is not in capitalism's interest for people to be content with sufficient.

Making people feel they have to compete with neighbours can even lead them to measure their own worth by how well they can keep up, or be useful, or not have to depend on others.

The market sells them that idea.

But that's not how the Gospel values people.

I will hold the Christ-light for you
in the night-time of your fear.
I will hold my hand out to you,
speak the peace you long to hear.

The economic system of our country and others is based on the premise that "the business of business is business"!

On that basis, business and industry give first priority to maximizing profits. The needs of others are addressed afterwards, e.g. through the various ways tax revenue is distributed.

Over many years, this system has resulted, and continues to result, in a still widening gap between rich and poor.

Greed and exploitation are at the root of the terrible suffering of many people, families and nations.

A root problem requires root surgery: without a vision we are only tinkering. Something other than just tweaking the present system is needed.

As Pope Benedict XVI has said: "Our world has grown weary of greed, exploitation and division, of the tedium of false idols and piecemeal responses, and the pain of false promises. Our hearts and minds are yearning for a vision of life where love endures, where gifts are shared, where unity is built, where freedom finds meaning in truth, and where identity is found in respectful communion. This is the work of the Holy Spirit". (To young people, Sydney, 2008).

A different economic system is needed.

A country's economy needs to be strong, and there is a proper place for self-interest. But the underlying premise must be that the business of business is people.

As the Maori proverb has it: he aha te mea nui o te ao? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata! (What is the most important thing in the world? People, people, people.)

On that premise the needs of weaker members of society would be factored into economic planning. That is different from giving market forces free reign and then trying to redress imbalances afterwards!

The needed alternative would have to be based on the meaning of human dignity.

Present policies simply take it for granted that the fruits of industry and commerce belong to those who provide the finance, and not to those who provide the human labour.

The problem with this is that workers and their jobs can be perceived mainly as cost items - and costs are to be minimized or eliminated for the sake of maximizing profits.

This leaves workers, their families and livelihoods very vulnerable.

I will weep when you are weeping,
when you laugh I'll laugh with you;
I will share your joy and sorrow
till we've seen this journey through.

An alternative system, based more on human dignity, holds that by providing their personal labour, workers contribute even more significantly to the enterprise than do those who provide finance, which is impersonal. And so the fruits of the enterprise/industry/business properly belong to the workers as well. And more equitable ways of sharing those fruits need to be worked out.

Similarly, trading relationships, industrial law and commercial practices would make room for what Pope Benedict called "gratuitousness".

In other words, compassion, giving, and forgiving are factored into these relationships and practices.

National policies and international law would include the needs of the world's poor, and migrants and refugees as a matter of right, not just of charity or goodwill.

There are many other examples of social inequity and social injustice.

These examples might suffice to show how they derive from disregard for human dignity and the common good - and perhaps alert you to ways your own becoming and society's well being can be linked.

After all, it is our Christian faith that gives us the greatest reasons of all for respecting human dignity.

Nakau te rourou nau te rourou ka ora ai te iwi - With your basket and my basket the people will live.

When we sing to God in heaven
we shall find such harmony
born of all we've known together
of Christ's love and agony. (The Servant Song - Richard Gillard.)

• +Peter Cullinane was the first bishop of the Diocese of Palmerston North. Now retired he continues to be a respected writer and leader of retreats and is still busy at local, national, and international levels. Here he shares his reflections on sciences and Christian faith. To conclude the introduction of this series he quotes Albert Einstein, "Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind."
• This is the seventh in a series of chapters from his letter to senior students
• Image: Manawatu Standard

"People look out for each other," she says. "If someone falls in the street, people run to help them."

Her opinion may be fashioned by her own compassionate nature.

I would hesitate to put us top of the class in an international love-your-neighbour test. But there is some evidence that where charity is concerned, we do a little better than some more affluent countries.

Why?

There may be a number of factors - small population, social conscience, the awareness that the work/income ratio favours some more than others. Kiwis are quite strong on justice: it's a national trait.

In this country, Catholics are particularly sensitive to the needs of struggling families.

It is part of our ethos to live with St Augustine's words: "He who possesses a surplus, possesses the goods of another."

The Gospels take this message further in the story of the rich young man who turned away from true wealth. Not that Jesus expects us to sell all we have and give it to the poor.

It's not what the story is about. Jesus was reminding the young man - and us - that selfishness keeps us in a prison of one, while sharing what we have, takes us to a larger place of spiritual freedom.

Giving, however, requires discernment.

How do we give wisely?

We feel safe with the planned giving in our parish; but if we want to go beyond that, how do we know that our money is going where it's needed? Some commercial collecting agencies pass on only 10% of donations.

Direct giving can also be unwise. Many years ago I gave a sizeable sum of money to a person in distress, not knowing she had an addiction. The money nearly killed her.

Another time, when I gave to a woman begging on the street, she flung her arms around me in gratitude.

I then realised her breath smelled of alcohol and she was heavily pregnant. I had just contributed to foetal alcohol syndrome.

So, while we do need to be wise in our giving, sharing what we have is an essential part of our faith, founded in the Gospels and their Judaic traditions.

In fact there is no word in Judaism for charity: the word used is Tzedekah meaning obligation to justice.

Middle-Eastern culture places much importance on hospitality to the stranger. It is called a spiritual practice because when doors are opened, hearts are opened.

I believe that hospitality in the form of giving within the church is also a spiritual practice: we give in God's name and not our own.

In our little household, two priorities are Caritas and Bishop Pat Dunn's Catholic Caring Foundation.

Caritas meets crises world-wide and authentically caters for need.

The Catholic Caring Foundation takes care of poverty and misfortune closer to home. Both are based on Jesus' calling to be compassionate as our Heavenly Father is compassionate.

This takes us all to a larger place. By giving we can be vessels through which Jesus heals.

• Joy Cowley is a wife, mother, grandmother, great-grandmother and retreat facilitator.

About a month ago I was invited to attend a screening of a documentary called The Lucky Country. A project of a single mother, the film was about the drastic cuts to the single parent payments made by the Labor Government earlier this year.

With little publicity other than a Facebook event page, it was shown to a group of around 50 people at a small cinema in St Kilda in Melbourne's inner south-east. It was produced with literally no budget, a triumph made possible through favours, hard work and the volunteered time of university film students.

After the screening, as I sat in the audience listening to the stories of those involved in the film's production, I felt immensely humbled. I was struck by how removed I am from this world of people who struggle to pay for things I don't give a second thought to. Continue reading.

Source: Eureka Street

Image: disibilitymessage.com

Megan Graham is a Melbourne based writer, journalist and occasional blogger.