In my son’s children’s prayer book, there is a sentence that has always baffled me: “…bestow Thou freedom while in a state of childhood…”

I thought he was already pretty “free”: free to get naked and play in the dirt; free to eat rice with his hands and then throw half of it on the floor; free to roll around in the grass without a worry…

So this friend of a friend’s arrives from Iran. It’s his first time out of the country and from the moment he arrives he’s blown away by everything that is different to what he had imagined. First of all, he mentions the beauty and cleanliness of what is an incredible infrastructure.

It’s amazing to see the world responding to what is going on in Haiti. Even if you’re a cynic, you have to admit that this kind of reaction is unprecedented in the history of humankind. Never before have we been this exposed to the most personal and immediate stories from people on the other side of the world.