BY NANCY KIDD

I am not a person who likes to debate controversial issues. I tend to stick to the rule of polite conversation that recommends avoiding religion and politics. On top of that, I started this blog to highlight the good in our midst, particularly the unexpected goodness I experienced in my years of teaching at a juvenile detention center.

Despite my intentions, I now find myself unable to ignore issues repeatedly finding their way to the forefront of my thoughts. It has taken the glaring evidence of immorality — our own country’s “inhumanity to man” — to shove me from my comfort zone to say the things my mind can’t fathom.

Two weeks ago I first heard stories of children being separated from their parents at the Mexican border. Those stories told of babies being pulled from their mothers’ arms, quite literally at times, and then being placed in detention facilities. I saw images of children locked in cages. I was stopped, dead in my tracks, as I listened to such tales on the news. And then, in the moments that followed, I felt just as stunned to realize those stories were getting very little coverage.

I found myself wondering if this could have been some obscure, isolated case. If so, it was still awful, but at least it wasn’t a systematic approach to handling immigration issues.

We are, after all, Americans, and we do not commit such cruel acts! We are a moral people, a country that sets the standard for humanitarian treatment for the rest of the world. Right?

I just couldn’t wrap my mind around the possibility that we would ever stoop so low.

In the following days, such stories became more prevalent — finally appearing front and center in the papers, on television and in social media.

I expected such public acknowledgment would lead to an immediate halting of such atrocities, but that did not happen. Instead, the perpetrators stood firmly, attempting to somehow justify their deeds through a biblical reference.

Although faith leaders have joined to denounce that justification, the horrific acts continue. The United Nations has condemned the U.S. for these egregious policies, but we basically told them to mind their own business. Many prominent leaders, including former First Lady Laura Bush, have raised their voices to condemn the cruelty, yet nothing has changed.

Don’t the people in charge of our government realize the damage they are doing to those young lives — and to the parents, as well? There is no way to deny that these actions are abominable and that they are inflicting great trauma on these thousands of people, children as well as adults — emotional trauma, psychological damage — all potentially IRREPARABLE.

How can that be acceptable?

Do those in charge know these things but still don’t care? And what about the rest of us — do we know? Do we care?

I think of a roadside sign I saw the other day as my husband and I were driving. It was a Pro-Life sign entreating us to “Respect Life.” Exactly what does that mean? Are we to respect life only in the womb? When it is the life of a child, perhaps a child from another culture, does that sign still carry the same sense of urgency?

My years of working with troubled adolescents through the court system made me aware of the effects childhood trauma can have on young lives.

If these immigrant children survive, at some point they may, because of their own brokenness, cause harm to themselves or to someone else. And when that day comes, will we acknowledge the part we played in it?

I want to envision a different American culture — one not polarized by political differences. I hope for a country where we truly care about one another, where we embrace those less fortunate, where we look to improve all people’s lives, where we join hands and hearts with one another in love instead of distancing ourselves with barriers of hate, judgment and condemnation.

When I think of my own religious upbringing and spiritual inclinations, I know it doesn’t feel good to know my actions hurt another person. I feel no peace when I realize my actions, or even my insensitive inaction, can harm another.

I feel God’s presence most closely when I act from love and selflessness. But the thing is, I have to act — I cannot turn a blind eye. I must choose compassion over callousness, thinking more of the needs of others than my own selfish desires. It’s not something I need to do just once, but rather something I need to focus on every day.

Today I am contacting my elected officials to voice my opposition to these unconscionable events, and I hope you will do the same. (Find phone numbers and email addresses at usa.gov.) Beyond that, I plan to live more mindfully, striving to keep my own self-absorbed thoughts on a back burner in order to create more space for aiding those in desperate need.

May we all search our hearts deeply and then step out to act with empathy and love until the time we can rightfully claim our place in the world as defenders of all humanity.