Where is Samaria Anyway?

Like a passing motorist who can't drag her eyes away from a bad accident, I continue to watch with astonishment the more feverish reactions to health care reform playing out across America. What I find most puzzling are people who call themselves Christian but nonetheless seem to have forgotten the Parable of the Good Samaritan and similar mandates to care for the oppressed and the stranger.   If faced with a gravely ill child in their workplace, neighborhood or church, even the most vehement health care opponents would probably throw a bake sale or pass the hat to pay for treatment.  Is the problem an inability or unwillingness to make the empathetic leap from a child in their own tribe to a child in another tribe? Or do they just love their tribe more than they love their God?  I'm mystified.

I don't have a parable to share, but I do have a poem from the most excellent Wendell Berry.  I offer especially the last stanza.

              Questionnaire


1. How much poison are you willing
    to eat for the success of the free
    market and global trade? Please
    name your preferred poisons.

2. For the sake of goodness, how much
    evil are you willing to do?
    Fill in the following blanks
    with the names of your favorite
    evils and acts of hatred.

3. What sacrifices are you prepared
    to make for culture and civilization?
    Please list the monuments, shrines,
    and works of art you would
    most willingly destroy.

4. In the name of patriotism and
    the flag, how much of our beloved
    land are you willing to desecrate?
    List in the following spaces
    the mountains, rivers, towns, farms
    you could most readily do without.

5. State briefly the ideas, ideals, or hopes,
    the energy sources, the kinds of security,
    for which you would kill a child.
    Name, please, the children whom
    you would be willing to kill.


Today's front yard critter count:
Raccoons: 6
Deer: 1
Llamas: 0