In My Old Age I'm Hearing Voices

This kind of urgent appeal is coming from all over the world.

No, I'm not having delusions, or suffering from dementia or Alzheimers. At least not yet.
     Nor do I claim to be hearing any kind of audible messages from the Almighty.
     But some of the urgent voices I'm hearing in my old age are clearer than audible.
• I'm hearing the desperate cries of more and more dying children in far off places like famine-stricken Sudan, Somalia and Sierra Leone.
• I'm hearing anguished laments of a record 65.5 million refugees and displaced persons, many languishing in tent cities in desert heat and with little hope for return to their homes.
• I'm hearing the unimaginable sounds of suffering coming from victims of torture and other forms of religious and political persecution around the world.
• I'm hearing the despair of millions of underpaid and overworked men, women and children who are forced to put in long exhausting hours without respite and often in unsafe and inhumane conditions--poultry workers and meat packers, farm hands and field harvesters, garment workers and toy makers, miners and mineral extractors, sex slaves and exploited domestic workers--all to produce cheap goods and services to satisfy our consumer appetites.
• I'm hearing the voices of millions of men and women suffering from heat and lack of decent care in our nation's overcrowded prisons and jails, along with their fellow prisoners in steel and concrete cages and dungeons around the world.

• And above all else I'm hearing the words of Jesus and the prophets, louder and clearer than ever, "Whatever you do for the most forgotten of these, my own brothers and sisters, you have done for me."

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"If your religion does not transform your consciousness into compassion, it is more a part of the problem than a solution.”  - Richard Rohr