When Babies Wash up on Western Shores

I will not link to stories about Aylan Kurdi or to the picture where this toddler lay, face down, on the Turkish coast. The story of the refugee family that was torn apart by the indecent difficulty of their struggle to escape a hell that was once called "home", is more than I can actually do. I think one would have to be made of stone not to be moved by the image of a baby washed up on the sand like so much flotsam, and one would have to be made of something far more foul to wonder what about that child or that family "made" that baby's lying there acceptable, or at least, inevitable.

There had to be a better life for this child. There had to be. There had to be, or else we are doing it wrong as a species. There had to be, or what can any of us expect? There should have been a home, stability, peace, and a future. And yet there was war, and want, and escape, and this west where no one wanted this baby.

This child.

Are we here to welcome them? Because for all we could not do to end the war in Syria, and all we may have inadvertently done, we can not help but see these legions as ours, when actions or inactions of ours have borne them across sea and sand. Do we fear those downturned faces, on our shores?