Forgotten?

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The other day I was thinking about all the people in prisons and insane asylums, in hospitals, on city streets and homeless shelters who die forgotten by family and friends, forgotten by society, and it would seem, forgotten by God.  People who have lost everything they once had.  Or perhaps they have lived their entire lives in anonymity.  Imagine that if you will?  Once, many years ago, I was in a group and we were talking about some of our greatest fears, (it was a group of women), and we all worried that we would end up as bag ladies, wandering some city street.  We all fear becoming invisible, unseen and unloved.

There is poverty everywhere.  The forgotten are even here in the United States, a "developed" country, where those in emotional distress are tossed away and forgotten like so much baggage. A country who imprisons those who struggle with backgrounds of abuse and poverty, who throws people away to be raped and abused and terrorized and sometimes killed, in a system  where "cruel and unusual punishment" seems to be the norm. 

These are hard things to think about, but people in pain are pushed further and further away from the inner circles of society where others believe themselves to be "safe."  We use ideologies and theologies like "karma" and "the law of attraction", to separate ourselves from those who suffer so deeply.  To walk among the suffering means that we risk losing ourselves there.  And it is true.  But fear is the real law of attraction.  When we separate ourselves from the things we fear, those very things seem to become larger in our lives.  When we cling to success and material things, we lose so much of what is real in this world, and so much of what is a real connection to God and to Love. 

There is much beauty and wonder and joy in this world.  But I wonder if we can ever truly know it and see it until we have learned to love the unloveable, to find beauty in that which is ugly, to find peace in the midst of chaos, to see the unseen, and to give voice to the powerless.