I apologize on this beautiful Sunday morning for sharing some hard and sad news from the outside world, and putting it into the minds and lives of the good people who read this blog and my books. There are certainly enough cable channels and media and political blogs that can do that better than me.

I just read a report from the United Nations reporting that last year, the United States took in 20,000 refugees, the lowest recorded number in the modern history of the country, at a time when the number of desperate people has never been higher.

The year before, the country accepted 120,000 refugees, a number many considered low then.

There are tens of millions of people seeking refuge in the world today – some estimates say the number are as high as 65 million. Last year, Canada accepted 300,000 immigrants, 40,000 of them refugees. Germany has accepted one million, and the idea of Germany as a country that is morally superior to my country is a strange turn for me, but I am taking it.

For me, this question of the refugees is not about the left or the right, or about whether President Trump is a good President or not. For me, it is about the kind of people we are, the kind of suffering we ignore, the kind of human I want to be, the kind of country I wish to live in. There is no consensus about truth at the moment, but an essential truth to me is empathy, the hallmark of the moral human being.

To me, it is true that we, alone among all the species of the earth, can take responsibility for caring for one another. If we are each so precious we can give nothing of ourselves to anyone else, we are small indeed.

We either have empathy or we don’t. Without it, I do not believe our world cannot survive, literally. Pope Francis has empathy, that is why he touches our hearts so deeply, when so many hearts have turned to stone.

Working with the refugees in Albany, I frequently hear their stories – the death and brutality in their countries, the slaughter and cruelty,  the disease and starvation and deprivation in the refugee camps, the fathers, mothers and parents they left behind, the children they have lost, the brothers and sisters bombed and killed, the long flight, the hatred they have encountered in America, where so many people fear even speaking to them, let alone helping them.

Their voices and stories call out to us ask if we wish to be so greedy and selfish a society, I shudder to think how history will judge us, or, for that matter, our children and grandchildren.

The good news is that we are called by them and their plight to be better, to think about what it means to be a moral person, to ask ourselves what it means to be a human being,  that we care for one another as best as we can for as long as we can. There is some risk to that, there is always some risk to stepping outside of our lives and fears.

I have no issues with people who differ from me politically, I have many good and respected friends who disagree with me, often and deeply. We care for one another.

I am not so arrogant that I assume I am superior to them. I thrive on different ideas.

But there are some things that simply define what is unique about being a human being, and one of them is a conscience, a sense of right and wrong, which no other living thing on the earth possesses.  A shared humanity, when all is said and done, that transcends political party or argument.

When we look away from such suffering out of greed and selfishness, we have lost our souls, and our dreams of a better, freer, safer, kinder world have died.

When I look in the mirror in the morning, I know I could not bear the sight of me if I did not raise my voice on behalf of the many millions of people living in fear, horror, starvation and disease while the richest country in the world gathers more money in a day than millions of people could spend in a lifetime.

Somewhere, over the horizon, there is a person or an idea that may transcend the awful moral and literal paralysis that the idea of a “left” and a “right” has brought to a country so fast becoming a Corporate Nation, not a people’s nation. Our leaders talk incessantly about our economy, but what about our morality? Is the point of our lives really to make more money and abandon the vulnerable and the needy?

That is on my mind this morning as I read the United Nations report, and I did need to write it as I go out to mow the lawn and then prepare to return to my usual and essential agenda – my farm, my life, my wife, my friends, my dogs, the new puppy coming Sunday.

For the many, not the few.