"They spent their lives in misery, they died in misery."  So remarked an observer of what he called the "forgotten dead of Haiti."  By the "forgotten dead," this person was thinking about the vast numbers of Haitians who, whether it be succumbing to AIDS or other diseases; enduring aching poverty; or trying desperately and without success to put their lives back together after a series of natural disasters in the country:  people who die without a trace.  No one attends to them, no one helps them, no one remembers them.  They came into this world in obscurity, lived without notice, and died absent of any remembrance.  It is as if they had never really lived.
     Some years ago, my son spent a summer volunteering at Mother Teresa's House for the Poor in Kolkata, India.  Each day, he accompanied staff as they traveled through the streets of the teeming city, looking for people near death, people abandoned, people whose passing would not cause anyone to blink an eye.  With the staff, he brought these people to the House.  There, they tended to their wounds, bathed them, gave them clean clothes, and laid them in a bed with fresh sheets.  Then they kept vigil with them, waiting with them, holding their hand as their lives slipped away into their eternal destiny.
     These people then died, so the staff hoped, feeling loved.  I cannot explain why some of us are born into pleasant circumstances and others not.  I cannot explain why some people die being loved deeply and others not.  And I cannot explain why the world is full of such aching disparity and God seems to be doing nothing about it.
     What I can explain, however, is that because we are beings created in the image of God, we can love.  We can love ourselves, we can love each other.  And we can love the planet.
     God seems frightfully distant at times, yes, but we can make our love, his love in us, his love that is rooted in his creation of us, constantly present.