Courage as Grace

News broke today that the court in Burma (Myanmar) has postponed its verdict of Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Aung san Suu Kyi until August. What seems clear is that the military leaders of that country want her out of the way during elections next year, so she will inevitably end up in prison. The crime? A foreign journalist arrived at her house uninvited (a lesson here for those of us whose thoughtless actions hurt rather than help others--the opposite of courage). In Chechnya, Natalia Estemirova, a human rights activist who for years reported on the injustices and human rights abuses by both Russians and Chechnyans was kidnapped and murdered on July 15th. As she was being dragged into a car, she cried out, "I'm being kidnapped," but those on the street either were too afraid to do anything or they simply ignored her cries. Five months earlier, Stanislav Markelov, a human rights lawyer, was gunned down in Moscow and, three years ago, Anna Politkovskaya, a Russian journalist, was murdered also in Russia. In Iran, countless people have either been killed or are imprisoned for protesting a flawed election this year. The list goes on of brave men and women who put their lives on the line in order to speak out against injustice, cruelty, and evil.

Each time I read the immense acts of courage that each of these and countless others have shown in their lives on behalf of others I am filled with awe. Their acts of standing up to powerful regimes in defense of the innocent leave me questioning my own life choices made in the safety and comfort of my home. When the lives of these brave men and women are crushed by the very forces of evil that they have risked their lives to expose, I am left with a sense of helplessness. Every death or imprisonment leaves us poorer and more vulnerable. In Russia, one by one, the intelligentsia that has had a long history of standing up to Stalin and the dehumanizing evils of totalitarian regimes, is being killed off. In Iran, the strong hand of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is squelching all opposition. Yesterday, thousands of mourners who gathered with opposition leader Mir Hossein Moussavi at the cemetery to honor those who died protesting the election were forcibly pushed back and Moussavi was prevented from finishing the memorial. Like a captured bird in a cage, Aung San Suu Kyi -- a brave fighter on behalf of democracy in her country-- continues to bear the clumsy, brutal, and fearful actions of those holding onto power begotten illegally with grace, dignity and even humor.

C. S. Lewis once wrote that courage "is not simply one of the virtues but the form of every virtue at the testing point." And isn't it the case that for Natalia Estemirova it was her compassion for the young and vulnerable caught in the middle of the violence wrought by both Russians and Chechnyans that led her to confront it? Courage manifests itself at the point where outrage at injustice, compassion for the vulnerable, horror at the senseless loss of life, and love for people around you to live with dignity and freedom converge.

In a recent op-ed piece in the NYT, Sam Harris seeks to cast doubt on Francis Collins, President Obama's nominee for next director of the NIH on the grounds that he, Francis Collins, believes that one can be both a Christian and a scientist. In a line towards the end of his piece, Sam Harris, in attempting to dispute Dr. Collin's statement that "science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence," remarks that it is through science, and science alone, that we will be able to answer questions "like, Why do we suffer? Or, indeed, is it possible to love one's neighbor as oneself? " To Mr. Harris's question, "is it possible to love one's neighbor as oneself?" the answer lies in every life extinguished because it chose to put human decency and freedom above its own.