"are we too blind to see..."

"People, don't you understand,
the child needs a helping hand;
or he'll grow to be
an angry young man some day?

Take a look at you and me
are we too blind to see?
Do we simply turn our heads,
and look the other way?"

I was up most of the night in self-examination and on-my-knees reflection. How?  Why?  What can I do to make a difference? Every solution to a collective issue has to start with an individual change of heart. I fell asleep -- with more questions than answers.

When I woke this morning, it was a verse from Elvis Presley's  "In the Ghetto" that just filled my heart. And I knew. I knew that there was something I could do.

This song was written just shy of 50 years ago. I remember how sad it made me feel at the time, but I also remember thinking that it had no relevance for me. That was, until two years later. My dad had passed on suddenly, everyone that I thought might help my mother and I raise my younger siblings disappeared as soon as the memorial service was over.  And I couldn't separate my grief from the anger I felt knowing that my life -- as I knew it -- was over. That grief and anger seemed so inextricably linked.

When I "heard" Elvis' song in my heart this morning, I was perplexed.  Why was this suddenly playing on an endless mental loop.  That was, until I read an article about Nicolas Cruz (the Florida school shooter) that broke me into a million little pieces. Nicolas, and his younger brother, were adopted as infants. In 2005 his dad died suddenly and his mother became a single mom who was devoted to her sons - hoping to compensate for the boys being raised by a single parent, according to the boys' aunt. Last winter, she passed away suddenly.

I can only imagine the devastation of losing both of your parents and having a younger brother to worry about. Who stepped in? Who provided the love, comfort, and support that may have made all the difference in the way this young man processed his grief -- grief that is often conflated with anger. What organizations stepped in to provide a sense of family, community, support? A church, or a hate-group looking for recruits.

Instead of finding the spiritual tools for dismantling his grief, he was given access to a weapons-based culture, and his anger was stoked into devouring flames. So, what does this have to do with me -- with us?

When my dad passed away, my sense of where feelings of grief ended and anger began -- were so confusing. One day I was deeply sad. An hour later I would be on the verge of suicide. The next moment, I was so angry I couldn't function. And in the middle of it all, I was still a child working three jobs in order to help raise my siblings. Emotions swirled and I didn't have the time, or the tools, to sort them out. Instead of taking it out on others, I took it out on myself. Anorexia, bulimia, self-harm, mis-directed social choices -- anything to distract me from the heartbreak of it all.

This post is not a justification for the actions of Nicolas Cruz. What he did is incomprehensible. But this is not about him, it is about us. What can we do -- going forward? How can we stem the tides of bitterness and inhumanity that we see in these domestic acts of terrorism -- not just in school shootings, but family disputes, work-place sexual harassments and assaults, online bullying. There is a wonderful song from Rogers and Hammerstein's South Pacific. It often corrects and alters my course of thought, words, and actions. The first time I heard  "You've Got to Be Taught"  - as a child - I knew it was true. I believe that loving others is the most natural state of being for a child.

Last week, our high school Sunday School class talked about The Golden Rule. We discussed how there is an version of its primal message in every major (and minor) world religion, practice, and philosophy.

We also talked about what the world would be like if we practiced this rule: "do unto others as you have them do unto you," moment-by-moment every day.  If it were the guiding principle of every parent, child, neighbor, community leader, political party, government, global initiative.  If it governed every choice and decision we made -- every action and interaction with others.

Then we talked about how we could begin to more effectively practice this Golden Rule in our own lives. We considered how - like "the butterfly effect" - every act of kindness and generosity could shift the mental molecules in the universe so that someone's heart is softened, encouraged, reformed --  and down the road, perhaps a poor choice is averted.

In her primary work on spiritual healing, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy states:

"If we would open their prison doors for the sick,
we must first learn to bind up the broken-hearted.
If we would heal by the Spirit, we must not hide
the talent of spiritual healing under the napkin
of its form, nor bury the morale of Christian Science
in the grave-clothes of its letter.

"The tender word and Christian encouragement of
an invalid, pitiful patience with his fears and
the removal of them, are better than hecatombs
of gushing theories, stereotyped borrowed speeches,
and the doling of arguments, which are but
so many parodies on legitimate Christian Science,
aflame with divine Love."

This passage has meant so much to me today. It has been a rebuke, an encouragement, and a comfort. It has brought hope that there is something I can do - right now - to shift the way someone sees themselves and their sense of belonging in the world.

I can be kind. I can be alert. I can be the person who notices. I can be the person who stopped in my tracks and put another's needs above my own desire to tick off another item from my to do list. I can listen when I feel like talking. I can hold space for someone without an agenda. I can hold someone in their moment of confused grief and anger -- without feeling like I need to fix them. I can comfort without becoming their Comforter. I can silently affirm that God is there, and that we are not alone in our moment of Love, reflecting love.

This has been a wake-up call for me -- again. When I was looking for the above-linked version of Elvis' song, I came across another video that I'd filed for periodic referral. Casting Crowns'  "Does Anybody Hear Her?"  walks with me wherever I go. I hope it reaches you where you are. Whether you are the lonely or the busy, angry or afraid, the heartbroken or the good Samaritan today -- please let it in.

What Nikolas Cruz did is tragic.  What we do with this moment is filled with opportunity.  There will be 18 families with broken hearts.  Nikolas' younger brother Zachary will be one of them.  Will we stop the heartbreak -- wherever it is found, or will we continue to "simply turn our heads and look the other way?"

offered with Love,

Kate

"Does anybody hear her..."

"She is running
A hundred miles an hour
in the wrong direction...
Under the shadow of our steeple,
with all the lost and lonely people,
searching for all the hope
that's tucked away in you and me..."
Casting Crowns

I know this song...intimately.

Casting Crowns' "Does Anybody Hear Her?" could have been the song narrative to a chapter in my life.  A chapter filled with hope..and with despair.

When I "go there," it is the early 1980s and I am walking down a street paved with platinum and prosperity.  The setting is one of just a few American towns where there were more Bentleys parked on the streets, than Toyotas, and the average price of a restaurant meal was $200...in the 80s.   I was leaving a couture boutique where I'd gone to exchange a one-of-a-kind gift from the designer himself, for something "more to my liking," and as I passed the plate glass window of a another nearby boutique, and caught a glimpse of my perfectly manicured self glancing back at me, I felt as flat and brittle as the glass itself.  I knew that self could be shattered as easily as the fragile shell of a robin's egg...and it terrified me so much that I looked away quickly. 

On the surface, I seemed to have it all...the job, the boyfriend, the clothes, the car, the right neighborhood, the friends...and, the ever-present ache for something deeper.  I have come to learn that this yawning ache is the one thing that no amount of money, drugs, wine (even the best vintages...), designer clothing, plastic surgery, or "stuff" can fill.  It is the ache that we try to deaden with social anethesias, but never dies...it has life everlasting.   This is the hope that persists.  This is the insistent child, the pressing desire, the urgent "gaunt want" that, for me, is "the hunger and thirst for righteousness," that is always, and only, filled by the Christ.

Skip to another day...same year, same city, cars, clothes, shop windows, neighborhoods...but this time I am walking past another plate glass window.  In this window, what catches my eye, are a set of books.  Each one opened to pages tinted by years of pale blue chalk, marking out citations of scripture and related passages from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures by Mary Baker Eddy.  I pause for just long enough to read each of the highlighted sections before walking on.

In that moment, I'm standing in front of a Christian Science Reading Room.  I can see the woman sitting at the desk in the room beyond.  She looks very nice.  I see her look up from her reading, smile, and return to her books. 

I wonder if they have a cassette deck and a tape recording of favorite folk hymns I loved as a teen.  I consider going in and asking, but I don't know how to cross the threshold of a doorway that seems a mile thick with guilt and regret.  Will she note the scent of wine I'd had with my power lunch?  Will she have some connection to the church-based school my mom works at?   Will she ask me if I realize that I "look just like" someone she knows at the school (my mom and I look quite alike)?  Will I bring embarrassment to my mom because of that glass, or two, of wine I'd had with my lobster salad. 

The woman doesn't look up from her books again.  The glass door with the beautifully etched words, "all are welcome" seems as heavy and impenetrable as the door of a bank vault, and I'm pretty sure that my account is no longer open.

So I walk on. 

It will take another few years, a different city, the love of a grandmother, the devotion of a mother, the kindness of a man I'd never met before, and a church community that stepped outside of itself, and boldly asked me (after only one visit to their Sunday service) if I wanted to help out in their Reading Room...to put me on the other side of that door.   The church member who approached me must have heard something I didn't think I'd even said.  And her response was to give me the opportunity to give of myself.  Somehow she knew it was what I needed most...to realize, that even in my brokenness, I had something to share...a desire to serve.

That next day, Monday, I arrived early for my "guest" shift (to plant flowers), shyly said "hello," then walked straight past my new friend (who was sitting at the attendant's desk), made a bee-line for the resource room, where I found the tape player, the cassette recording of the hymns I'd been missing for ten years, popped in the cassette, pressed play, heard the music,  and wept.  I was home.  And even though my family had indulged me earlier that weekend, singing some of those loved songs with me, it hadn't been the same as hearing the actual recording, and feeling like a deserved to be there,,,in a Reading Room...ready, willing, and eager to serve.

Another city, another plate glass window. 

I am the woman behind the desk in the Reading Room.  The door is wide open.  I see a young girl standing outside looking in the window...I smile, get up from the Scriptural study I am immersed in, walk out the door, and join her in front of the window.  It's a beautiful day in the neighborhood.  There are balloons tied to the parking meter in front of our building.  A couple of chairs have been pulled out onto the sidewalk.  The music is wafting from inside, and out to where we sit and talk about...well, just anything she wants to talk about.  No agenda.  We are two women who have stopped long enough to find God in a moment of fellowship.  It is enough.

I hope she felt heard.  I did.  We were there for eachother...no hierarchy of spiritual vision or inspiration.  Her questions were my questions, and God had all the answers for both of us.

so grateful,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Here is the story behind Mark's writing of "Does anybody Hear Her?"  The story is a compelling. The song is worth hearing again.

And if you would like to read an earlier telling of a different facet of this experience, here is the link to  "In Mercy, In Goodness" from October of 2008.