Taking the Time to Make a Difference

"Has them pictures come yet?" she said. I know it is bad grammar, but the question was clear. A caller contacted me at the television news department (some years ago where I used to work). She was concerned about a plane crash several hundreds of miles away from our metropolitan area, and she was calling me for help. The caller was worried that someone she knew was involved in that plane crash. As I recall, it was a small private plane that was involved, and everyone on board had died in the crash. It was hard to answer her question, but I tried to do my best, to tell her that we had no news, no further information, no pictures. I was of no comfort to her. It was hard to answer the question without making a judgment about her grammar. I was tempted to pay less attention to her concerns because she spoke so poorly. It was hard to answer the question because the caller somehow had come to believe that pictures on television just appear somehow. They just come without human intervention or transmitting devices, she seemed to say. But after all, I had to admit, her experience of television news was just that way: something happened in this city or that one, somewhere in the world or in the neighborhood, and we have pictures of the event. We have video, hard to distinguish from pre-recorded or live. What really struck me, in reflecting on this call from years ago, is the fact that there are many people - and I am one of them - who do not know how things are made, how things come to be.

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Here's the point of this reflection. At Mass, we offer to God "the fruit of the vine" and "the work of human hands." But more and more, the people who gather for worship are separated from the vineyards and gardens of the world, and have little or no idea of the work involved in the production of the food that somehow comes to the shelves at the grocery store. At times when I think with criticism about the telephone caller who wondered "Has them pictures come yet?" I want to tell her that somebody has to take those pictures, somebody has to record or encode or handle those pictures, somebody has to transmit those pictures and somebody has to receive them or download them or somehow prepare them for display. Then I go to the grocery store and I wonder if some more hamburger has come yet to the meat cooler, or if some freshly baked sourdough bread has come to the shelves. And, I wonder, do they have any oranges? When I get the morning newspaper, I know that the stories there do not just appear; when I watch television news or listen to the news on radio, I know that people are responsible for what is printed or broadcast - because such concerns are in fact part of my daily life. But I seldom think about the people who pick the fruit available at the market, or who butcher the animals whose meat is in the cooler, or the drivers who take what others have produced and transport it to a central location where I can buy it.

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Much of daily life involves taking the work of human hands for granted. Thank goodness, most of our concerns are not matters of life and death - I think - but then I start to wonder about the people in other countries who sewed my shirt together, and the ones who glued the soles of my shoes (all natural) to the uppers (manmade). How many lives around the world depend on the work of human hands?

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Take the time to reflect on the things you own and the services you receive in everyday ordinary life. How many people have worked to make you comfortable, or to provide the food you eat? How many people risked danger to gather the pictures and the news reports from Iraq and Afghanistan? Take the time to express to God and to each other your appreciation for the work of human hands.

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