Caring about something beyond yourself

Ann Voskamp writes:

If we go through the world with our ear to the ground, with our ear pressed up against people’s words, listening for heartbeats, listening for the heartbeat of stories, it could happen — Stories are keys that release you out of yourself and into the wide freedom of caring about something beyond yourself.

Ann is in Rwanda. She tells us about Agnes.

I touch her arm. She is warm. She was 18. When the genocide began it’s bloody howl, she heard they were coming for her, for all of them, coming with machetes glistening brazen in broad daylight.

“So we ran to the wilderness. We escaped to the wilderness. We could not make fires to cook food or they will find us and kill us.” Agnes’ eyes hold mine. It is a thing to be in a room and look into eyes looking back at you and feel the tremor of such words reverberate your bones.

“We hid in the grass. At night we scratch at the earth, to try to find roots to eat. Roots to fill our mouths. We cup swamp water to our mouths. There are 12 of us, 12 in our family. We dig at night for anything in the dirt to eat raw. But there isn’t enough food in the wilderness.”

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