Joel McKerrow

The dust billowed out of the small grave, stinging my eyes, as we scooped the dirt back onto the coffin we had just placed in the shallow hole. My legs buckled underneath me and I almost fell down as the reality of the situation struck me. It was our second day in Thailand and we had just arrived at a small orphanage (The Bamboo School) on the border of Thailand and Burma.

I’ve learnt in my time that everyone has a story to tell, their story of life, their story of spirit. Should you choose to listen. The stories all hold the experience of life, they all mean something, something deep and personal. Stories that make the tears fall down, make the heart cry in grief. Stories that bring a smile from ear to ear making laughter bubble over.

Searing heat beats down relentlessly upon the frailness of this broken body. My brow, empty of sweat, it smoulders instead. This lifeless place seeking to swallow me in its despair, it’s death, it’s stench. Desert in its most ferocious.

Looking through all the stores at what I could buy I was suddenly struck with the thought of how much money is being wasted in these shops when there could be someone out on the street who desperately needs it.

One of my favourite movies is a mid-90’s film called, ‘Pleasantville’. It is the story of a brother and sister who get sucked into their TV screens into the black and white world of a show called, ‘Pleasantville’. Pleasantville is a town that matches its name, everything within the town is… pleasant.

One of my favourite Australian movies that I would recommend to everyone reading this book is one released last year called, ‘One Perfect Day.’ The story is set in Australia around a young man that discovers musical beats wherever he goes. He listens to what we would just hear as noise and hears a beautiful, harmonic symphony. He hears, “Life’s secret symphony.” And it transports him to a world beyond the ‘normal.’

There I was drinking a nice hot chocolate with a friend at Gloria Jeans when I feel the urge to turn around. I look over my shoulder and suddenly I feel the whisper of God in my heart, “Pray for him.”

The girl stares at the ground. To afraid to raise her eyes. To broken. To violated To ashamed to even try.

For too long we in the west have stood aloof from each other in our middle class, sterile, holier-than-thou, unconcerned, unsympathetic, ignorant bliss. Ignorant both to our own gaping wounds (complete with band-aids) and the gaping wounds of others.