Mariana Vishegirskaya stands outside a maternity hospital that was damaged by shelling in Mariupol, Ukraine, March 9, 2022. Vishegirskaya survived the shelling and later gave birth to a girl in another hospital in Mariupol, which was documented in FRONTLINE'S 20 Days in Mariupol.

There is only Us
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God Doesn't Favor "You" over "Them"

It is a heartbreaking scene: Doctors are frantically working over the limp body of a four-year-old girl lying on a metal trolley in one of Mariupol's last-remaining hospitals.

The girl - her body pale and lifeless - was in her home when it was struck by a missile in the first week of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.

Despite the medical teams' best efforts to save her, four-year-old Yevanhelina died.
Ukrainian A&E nurse Olena Olkhovska is filmed as she cries over her body.

The tragic scene is featured in the eyewitness documentary 20 Days in Mariupol filmed by Associated Press journalist Mtsyslav Chernov during the siege of the Ukrainian city by the Russian army.

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Imagine being four years old in the critical care unit of a hospital. You could be in Gaza, Ukraine, on a kibbutz in Israel, or in Sudan, battling injuries from shrapnel or suffering from the devastating effects of starvation. Or being her mother, or the nurse who tries to save you. Or all of them. Now, shift your perspective to the present, where you find yourself comfortably reading these words, possibly having just enjoyed a satisfying meal, free from physical pain.

At this moment, resist the urge to say, "There but for God's grace go I." Instead, acknowledge the role of fortune, luck, happenstance, or the sheer contingency of the universe in your circumstances. The child's plight - four-year-old Yevanhelina - is not a matter of fault; she did not choose the circumstances of her birth. Similarly, your being born into more favorable conditions is not a testament to any inherent virtue of your own.

Now, imagine someone suggesting that God meticulously planned the circumstances of both your birth and that of the child's. They might argue that everything is part of a divine plan, implying that each person is exactly where they were meant to be, thereby absolving you of any sense of guilt or responsibility. On this view, there is nothing to feel bad about. You are not the child; you are you, and this is God's will. You are where you are ‘meant to be.’ And the child is where the child is ‘meant to be.’

It is at here that process relational philosophy offers a challenge. It posits that even from God’s perspective, the circumstances of one's birth are not ‘meant to be.’ There is, within the very depths of things, a creative indeterminacy, on the basis of which things happen as they do for no good reason, other than the particular contingencies of local circumstances: the union of sperm and egg, the luck of genetic configurations, the family and nation into which someone is born. God, understood as the living whole of the universe, with a life of its own and aiming always toward the well-being of each and all, can only work with these contingencies. Even God does not have a plan. Love, yes. But not a plan.

All that God can do is to work inside each person, including you, as an inwardly felt lure to respond to the unfolding circumstances of life (your life and the lives of others) with compassion, knowing the response depends on you. For the children, the call of God is to survive. For you, the call of God is to help them survive: to be a healer in a broken world. You are not a recipient of this particular call because you deserve it; nor is the child a recipient because they deserve it. Divine love is not a matter of desert. It is for the sake of the beauty of life itself: each life and all lives. Nothing is meant to be. All that we have, and all that God has, are the contingencies.

If you have been taught that God has a plan, please get over it, for God's sake and for the world's sake. For the child's sake and the mother's sake. And get over the idea that "you" were meant to be just as you are, from the beginningless past. Embrace instead the idea that everything is contingent; everything could have been otherwise; the circumstances of birth and, for that matter, the circumstances of life, are not meant to be. Then recognize that "you" include the others within your own existence and identity. They are family. All are children of God. There is no them. There is only us. We are family.

Do you remember the child in the hospital? You are that child, and the nurse and the mother, too.

- Jay McDaniel

20 Days in Mariupol (full documentary)
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Twenty Days in Mariupol

Film Review by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

reposted from Spirituality and Practice
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​Two-minute film clips and sound bites don't tell the story. Reports on the television news or internet services can only cover a few of the developments in a war. Whether we want to learn what is going on in Ukraine or in Gaza we need to see what is happening on the ground. We need to hear from the people suffering in unimaginable ways.
20 Days in Mariupol recounts the first three weeks of the Russian attack on the Ukrainian port city of Mariupol in 2022. Ukrainian journalist Mstyslav Chernov directs, writes, and narratives footage taken by himself and a small team of AP journalists. Through this documentary, they bear witness to the horror of the war and its impact upon Mariupol, including some Ukrainian soldiers but mostly civilian victims.

The journalists move through the city which is under constant aerial bombardment; there is no moment without an airplane in the air. They hide in half-destroyed buildings, trying to avoid falling debris, and in the later days, Russian troops and snipers. With the city’s electronic infrastructure nearly destroyed, they search for a strong enough Internet signal to transfer their reports and footage to the outside world. Without it, they fear that no one will really understand what is happening. They also know that they face death or imprisonment if caught and that their reporting may be discredited by the Russians.
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This film is a tough watch, but a necessary watch. These kinds of things are still happening in Ukraine and elsewhere in the world. A particularly distressing sequence covers the evacuation of a maternity hospital. Pregnant women on stretchers, some with newborns, don’t know where they can be safe. On the outskirts of the city, crews of men dig mass grave trenches, sliding black body bags taken from the hospitals to make room for more patients. Crying children are everywhere. A doctor stands at the bedside of a dead child and demands that his death be told to the world. “Who will return our children to us?” asks another witness. We found no words to answer him.