By Soraya Keiser

Maps have captivated me ever since I first opened my father’s gigantic hardcover, leather-bound atlas at age seven. I longed to step outside of my little corner of the Midwest to visit the places that appeared so brilliantly before me. I was quickly drawn in by the bright colors dictating borders and the curious shapes of countries, islands and continents. 

Tracing my fingers across the pages, I would amuse myself with the idea that a single fingernail could encompass an entire city⁠—sometimes even an entire country. 

I thought to myself: If my whole world of Milwaukee was all but a singular dot on the page, how big must the entire earth be? 

The answer to that question is pretty huge.

And on this planet amid the 7.7 billion people and 195 countries, there are so many things shared on the news and across social media that it’s hard to keep them straight. It’s also easy to keep our distance from them through a screen. 

These large-scale events can sometimes seem far from 3900 Bethel Drive, but they’re not. 

The pandemic continues to wreak havoc in countries across the world, and immunocompromised students still navigate changing COVID-19 protocols on campus. 

As war rages halfway across the world, Russian and Ukrainian students at Bethel worry about family members stuck in the crossfire. 

To apologize for its participation in African American slavery and systemic oppression, St. Paul city council members passed the St. Paul Recovery act as a way to pay reparations to the descendants of slaves, some of whom attend Bethel. 

These massive issues—pandemic, war, reparations— are all found in our little corner of the Midwest. And we should be paying attention to them. The large is made small.