ethical dilemmas

everyday we are faced with ethical choices that we do not even recognize as such. we make value choices all day every day that honor life around us or do not... and often are not even aware that a choice was made. what we eat, what we wear, how we talk to each other, how we drive, how we entertain ourselves... all are either laden with dignity or not.

in that way, it is true that ignorance is bliss. when we don't know, we cannot feel guilty. we will not feel bad, we will not want to fight. and often the fight is hard.

today i went to the bodies exhibition. i went unsure of what to think or how to handle it. i had friends who had seen it and had mixed reviews. throughout the galleries, i moved quickly often reading more than looking at the specimens. but, each painful disease, each part, i wondered about the pain it caused to the life that it ended. i honestly wondered if the sum total of this exhibit would increase or decrease respect for life. i really didn't know.

then online, my intrepid husband reads up on it. what did we do before the internet. turns out there are serious concerns about the origin of the bodies and whether the people who died really gave permission for the display of their body. some may have been prisoners or other unidentified bodies. and an american corporation is making money on showcasing the remains of people who had no one to claim them, no one who loved them--or know one to claim or love them that knew they had died.

so in this season of advent, when i am looking for the word made flesh, i think i encountered it today, in the form of people who had died on displayed. if jesus is the least of these, jesus was there.

what do i do to correct it? what to do i do to right this wrong? how to i cultivate my own ethics, my respect for life, over and over again, so that i see the significance of those invisible moral choices everyday?