“Spools of Suffering”

Once upon a time, it took a little time to capture an image with the camera. Such “time” allowed for a little separation between what was captured and what our eye would now behold. Today, war photography spares no time, no separation, no breath between capturing another’s last breath and our own next breath! The immediacy of the horror of evil and war confronts us with no filter of time or separation and we become exhausted and overwhelmed by the horrors of humanity. Today, together, even from a distance, we witness war. In the following poem, by the Scottish poet Carol Ann Duffy, we stand alongside the “war photographer” as the photographer stands in the dark room where the horrors take shape and name. Duffy writes Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh and today we would add Ukraine, Israel, Gaza. Pause and ponder, and remember those who stand behind the lens in the midst of such indescribable events, and let us pay due attention to their “spools of suffering” Yesterday a Gaza photo journalist, Mahmoud Bassam, a husband and father of an 11 month child, was quoted by the BBC “As hard as it is to see what I see, and as much as I’m trying to deliver this message, sometimes from behind the camera I just stand and cry. And the only thing I can do is be silent.” Surely there has to be another way. Might world leaders urged by their populace, seek it and find it.

War Photographer
In his dark room he is finally alone
with spools of suffering set out in ordered rows.
The only light is red and softly glows,
as though this were a church and he
a priest preparing to intone a Mass.
Belfast. Beirut. Phnom Penh. All flesh is grass.

He has a job to do. Solutions slop in trays
beneath his hands, which did not tremble then
though seem to now. Rural England. Home again
to ordinary pain which simple weather can dispel,
to fields which don’t explode beneath the feet
of running children in a nightmare heat.

Something is happening. A stranger’s features
faintly start to twist before his eyes,
a half-formed ghost. He remembers the cries
of this man’s wife, how he sought approval
without words to do what someone must
and how the blood stained into foreign dust.

A hundred agonies in black and white
from which his editor will pick out five or six
for Sunday’s supplement. The reader’s eyeballs prick
with tears between the bath and pre-lunch beers.
From the aeroplane he stares impassively at where
he earns his living and they do not care. Carol Ann Duffy

Prayer:
Holy God, Lord of Peace,
we know so little peace.
Holy God you call us to
be peacemakers, but sadly
it is the peacebreakers that seem to prevail.
Holy God, Lord of Peace,
transform us with hope and humility.
God of Light, grant us new light to see the
errors of our ways that even in the darkness
we might be guided by your vision to offer help and shelter
to our needy neighbor.
Holy God, Lord of Peace,
we know so little peace and so turn to you to show us the way,
we turn to you to inspire us with courage, and to equip us with kindness.
Might words and friendship triumph over war and fear.
This is our prayer O Lord, help us bring about this miracle. Amen.