Listening to the quiet voices

It is easy for me to be overwhelmed and distracted by the loud voices filling our airwaves. You too hear them. Last week they included things like the air traffic controller problems in our nation’s airports, the struggles of the U.S. House of Representatives as it finalizes the next budget for our country, and the gift of a presidential plane from Qatar.

But it has been the quiet voices that have truly caught my ear, grabbed my attention, and filled my heart.

From his performance stage in Manchester, England, Bruce Springsteen quietly yet assertively said the world’s richest man is abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death.

Similarly, and more poignantly, Bill Gates, in an interview with Stephen Colbert, in a soft-spoken yet direct, clear manner described the escalation of his giving away all the money in his foundation over the next twenty years. “In twenty years, I’ll be ninety. By then I will have given it all away, and I can retire.”

In response to Colbert’s questioning, he explained that in the first twenty-five years of the foundation, he has given away $100 billion, and in the next twenty years he will give away $200 billion, all for the saving of the lives of children. 

Said Gates, “The picture of the world’s richest man causing the death of the world’s poorest children isn’t pretty. With the dissolving of USAID money and staff by the current president, over one million additional children will die.”

While the political cacophony is important and needs to be heard, I almost allowed it to sing solo and drown out the quiet voices. And yet these soft tones of Springsteen and Gates seem to be the most important words spoken all week— at least to millions of children and those of us who carry these children in our hearts.

(The photographs in this post are those I made of children I met some years ago in Liberia. My encounter with them helped shape the trajectory of my passion.)