"Howdy from Texas! We are currently working at a camp in Texas on the year-round retreat missionary team. Not surprisingly, we have been inspired by the documentary, The Human Experience, and one cold January day we were squeegeeing our dining hall floor, and started dreaming of a complimentary companion piece to this awe inspiring film.
One of us -- from Stockton, California, and has recently returned from a year living with 150 deaf and disabled children in Northeast India and the other -- from Fort Wayne, Indiana, a recent college graduate who prayerfully discerned out of studying for her Masters in Human Rights and Genocide Studies at Kingston University, met November 2, 2011...and became an instant adventuresome duo.
The Human Experience has inspired countless conversations between us about the meaning of suffering and the unmistakably necessary role it plays in our faith. That day in January, our conversation went one step further and we desired to understand the motivation to undergo suffering for another. We desire to explore the motivating power of love and ultimately, the meaning of love in action. Not our cultural understanding of gushy, spontaneous, feel good love, but "No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends." (John 15:13). Our curiosity took us to question the motivation behind such acts of selfless, self-giving love as witnessed in instances such as the women living in IDP camps in Darfur who repeatedly disregard their own personal safety and womanhood in jeopardy to provide for their families, people who voluntarily put themselves in harms way to protect and save members of their communities; i.e. volunteer fire fighters, and conversely those who have experienced the opposite of love. "The opposite of love is not hate, it is use (JPII)." such as escapees of human trafficking rings in Italy or Cambodia. Finally, the healing power of love in cases where the suffering was inflicted rather than chosen, for example Immaculee Ilibagiza's loving choice to forgive those who confined her to a bathroom for 9 months and killed her family and friends.
We appreciate the universality of The Human Experience and its ability to relate to all humans regardless of culture, faith, or social status while at the same time not ignoring, rejecting, or hiding its Catholic Identity. We would like to continue that universality in a continuation of The Human Experience through the eyes of two women exploring the Human Condition."
-- K & K
Texas
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