"Heal..."

"Heal the world
make it a better place
for you, and for me
and the entire human race..."

Reports of the devastating effects of a widespread drought in East Africa and an unfathomable hunger crisis that has left millions facing starvation, knocks at the door of my heart hourly...and I am answering.

But there was a time when if I heard that knock, all I felt was helpless. Oh yes, I prayed for the world, but it was more a prayer of petition, than the exercise of divine law. Opening the door to suffering humanity was terrifying. I wasn't sure I would be able to respond...in any way but breaking down in tears...once I swung it wide and welcomed the world in. In fact, I remember watching this video of Michael Jackson's "Heal the World," and just sighing.  It was 1991, our daughter was not yet two, and the images of children living in poverty, civil urest, and homelessness contrasted so strikingly with our modest, but safe, warm, and peaceful life in a small university town in Colorado, that I couldn't wrap my arms around it.  

It had been two years since our return from South Africa, and yet I was still haunted by what I'd seen of the living conditions in Soweto, the Apartheid-era imposed racially segregated township housing over one million impovereished black Africans.  Raw sewarage, corrugated tin shacks, hungry children, and the angry faces of the oppressed were seared into my memory.  Seeing the images in the video only brought those earlier feelings of helplessness in the face of insurmountable social injustice and human indignity to the surface again.   And as Nelson Mandela learned during his tenure in prison:

"Freedom is indivisible;
the chains on any one of my people
were the chains on all of them,
the chains on all of my people
were the chains on me."

So, I reasoned, the suffering of any one person, was my suffering.  And I was feeling it.

But, I also knew that I didn't have to stay there.  If I wanted to witness healing and freedom in my own life...mind, body, spirit, my family, my community...I had to be willing to advocate for the impersonal, impartial, and universal well-being of everyone, everywhere.  And as a spiritual thinker, I knew  had an option other than despair and frustration...one that didn't compromise my heart's desire to see the end of oppression, or abdicate  my sense of social responsibility...but one, in fact, that gave me practical ways to make a difference.  I could take my human rights case to the Supreme Court...of Spirit.  

Just as a civil liberties attorney would hunker down with the Constitution to ground himself in the establishments of his clients rights, I knew that I had to ground my case in all that constituted the rights of man, based on divine law. 

As I began my research for the case of "global social injustice vs. God," it became instantly clear to me that throughout human history, as recorded in the Bible, our spiritual patriarchs had been faced with countless opportunities to litigate against oppression in the court of Spirit.  And time, and again, they had prevailed.  Moses, Ruth, Solomon, Jesus...especially Jesus...grounded themselves in the law of Love, and triumphed. 

As I poured over their case histories, two sentences..one from the gospel of Matthew, and one from Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, by Mary Baker Eddy, became the cornerstone of my case. 

"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself..."
- Jesus

and

"Love is impartial and universal
in its adaptation and bestowals."
- Mary Baker Eddy

On the constitutional foundation of these two statements I built my case.  There were so many inontrovertible accounts of "human justice patterning the divine" in the Bible -- to draw on for citing precendence -- that it made preparing for an "argument" unneccessary.  Any justification for treating an "other" as less deserving of good, would be inadmissable in the court of Spirit.  I knew that I had an absolutely airtight defense of humanity's right to peace, security, justice, dignity, health, and compassion.  I was ready. 

It had become crystal clear to me that Jesus' statement. "thou shalt love thy neighbors as thyself," was not a suggestion, but a spiritual imperative...a promise.  And that Eddy's declaration...her proclamation that Love's adaptiations and bestowals are impartial and universal ...without condition, leaving no one out, under any circumstance...were all I needed to rest my case.  

Over, and over, and over again, as one distortion of justice after another suggests itself for consideration and blind acceptance, I can, without finger pointing or judgment,  take a stand for the power of Love to enforce its own Law of divine providence. And through His Word, reverberating in each human heart, to:

"...enrich the affections of all mankind, and govern them"*

I've loved watching as God's Word,  advocating in defense of humanity's impartial and universal right to experience good, operates unspent and without hesitation in every corner of the universe...especially in my own heart.   I know the law of Love.  I am steeped in Scriptural precedence. Love always triumphs.  I trust it...unconditionally, unreservedly...with all my being.  

always,  
Kate

*From "The Daily Prayer," which can be found in the Section on "Discipline," of The Manual of The Mother Church, by Mary Baker Eddy.  It reads in its entirety:

"Thy kingdom come,
let the reign of divine Truth, Life, and Love
be sestablished in me,
and rule out of me all sin.

And may Thy Word,
enrich the affections of all mankind,
and govern them."

"This time for Africa..."

"...Listen to your God,
this is our motto
Your time to shine,
don't wait in line...
Y vamos por todo.
People are raising their expectations,
go on and feel it.
This is your moment,
no hesitation.

Tsamina mina zangalewa.
Cause this is Africa.
Tsamina mina eh eh,
Waka waka eh eh
Tsamina mina zangalewa,
This time for Africa
This time for Africa..."

Have you seen this music video yet? 

Shakira's performance of the 2010 FIFA World Cup theme song, "Waka, Waka...This time for Africa," is amazing.  There is something so "in your face" alive about its message of: we are all here, but not just to root for our favorite teams and countries.  We are here to root for something even more powerful.  We are here to celebrate the power of forgiveness and redemption."

Or at least this is the message that comes through loud and clear to my heart.

Readers of this blog know how deeply the South African sun has seared my soul.  Her winds have burnished my cheeks coloring them with the soft red of a dusty bushveld sunset.  And her Indian Ocean blues wrap themselves around my shoulders like a soft pashmina.

Watching this video today, over,and over again, was wonderful.

I couldn't help but think that 21 years ago, my husband and I walked across the tarmac at Jan Smuts airport with our infant daughter in our arms, and her travel documents...and miraculously (I use this term very thoughtfully) acquired immigration visa and South African passport...tucked carefully under my clothing for safe-keeping.

International sanctions had been imposed on the South African government (and hence, their people) for  Apartheid-era human rights violations.  The city of Johannesburg was under a "state of emergency" and we, an American couple from the heart of the anti-apartheid western alliance, were adopting a white infant, and taking her from their country.  The very fact that we were crossing the tarmac and boarding a plane headed for the United States was...after weeks of navigating red tape, diplomatic brick walls, and outright refusals for assistance from every office of the South African government...shocking.  I held my breath with every step closer to boarding the jet that would take us to Frankfurt...an airport that still allowed South African flights.

As our flight took off, I turned to my husband and whispered that if we made it out of South African airspace, they...the pre-reconcilation governement...would have broken all of their own laws, since under apartheid, there was no legal basis for granting us the travel documents we were carrying, and letting us the country leave with our daughter.   But they did.

A year later, as our daughter sat eating applesauce from her highchair in our Colorado home,  Mandela would walk out of Robbins Island prison a free man...free to lead a nation out of oppression, free to inspire a tortured people to lay down their right to  retribution, free to seek reconciliation rather than redress...and free to begin the long road towards healing and international recognition as a leader in finding a peaceful resolution to civil schisms so deep that they threatened to swallow up the hopes of a nation once steeped in darkness and hatred.

Watching the "Waka, Waka..." video tonight and realizing how far this country...and her people...have come, I was reminded of Mandela's statement:

"It always seems impossible until its done."

This weekend, as South Africa opens her doors, her heart, and her beauty to the world, she will be hosting the very nations that once refused to trade goods with her, allow the export of their media across her borders, or admit entry into their ports of call by her ships and planes.  She will have done the impossible in the 21 short years (and as a mother, I know how fast those years flew for me) from that day we walked across the Jan Smuts airport tarmac, while South African army gunmen stood watching us with AK47s.  And while rebel militants smuggled the same automatic weapons down back alleys in small towship villages, and government tanks were aimed at rural school children on dusty playgrounds...a silent threat hoping to check potential civil unrest.

And now, the township of Soweto, one of the most devastatingly horrific slums I'd ever seen, in 1989, now holds one of the most beautiful World Cup soccer stadiums ever built. 

Last night, as I was driving home from church, NPR's Tom Ashbrook commented, during an On Point segment discussing Iran's relationship with the rest of the international community (and any hope of improved diplomacy) that it seemed not only counter-factual, but counter intuitive, to hope for a warming of relations with its neighbors.

I couldn't help but remember where our beloved South Africa was a mere 21 years ago...and how one man's example could turn the tide of vengence into a river of reconciliation. Something deeper than anger carved a path of hope through the hardness of hatred and fear.

"With God, all things are possible..."

I am so grateful to have lived to see this extraordinary day, when South Africa is reconciled, not only within her own borders, but with her global neighbors.  I am not a sports fan, but I will be watching the World Cup.  I haved already learned the words to "Waka, Waka..."  I will try to learn the dance...much to my daughters' horror!  And I know that when they play "...the time for Africa" I will feel something break wide-open in my soul as we all join in singing along with her...as her neighbors...and friends, "We are Africa, we are Africa..."

God bless her...
Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

"Look inside you and be strong..."

"There's a hero if you look inside your heart
You don't have to be afraid of what you are.
There's an answer if you reach into your soul
and the sorrow that you know will melt away

And then a hero comes along
with the strength to carry on
and you cast your fears aside
and you know you can survive.

So, when you feel like hope is gone
look inside you and be strong
and you'll finally see the truth
that a hero lies in you..."
- Mariah Carey
"A Hero Lies in You"

His given name, Rolihlahla, meant "troublemaker", but who would have guessed that this boy whose father died when young Rolihlahla was nine years old, would go on to become a "Hero," not only to his tribesmen, but to  millions of fellow Africans, world leaders, the poor, oppressed and imprisoned...and to one young mother 10,000 miles away...among countless others.

Rolihlahla, re-named Nelson as a child by his teacher, would later quote, in his Inaugural address this passage from Marianne Williamson's "A Return to Love":

"Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God. Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We were born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It's not just in some of us; it's in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others."

This could be a long story about my journey to South Africa, finding my way through the labyrinth of apartheid-based sanctions, bureaucracy, and red-tape...while adopting our daughter...and finally emerging, having somehow fallen in love with a country gripped in sadness, civil war, and fear...but I will leave that for previous and future posts.

This is a tribute to a man who was once a boy called "troublemaker." A man whose dignity in the face of humiliation, courage in the midst of danger, and love in spite of hatred, changed the world we live in and gave us another hero to refer our children to when encouraging them to "play big".  I often wonder who inspired those have continued, through their humble persistent humanity, to inspire millions.

The following "backstory," by journalist Faye Bowers,  appeared in last week's Christian Science Monitor:

Running Into Mandela at the Monitor: On June 24, 1990, I emerged from the underground parking garage at the Christian Science Center in Boston to find three tall black men circling the reflecting pool. I stood completely still. As he saw me recognize him, Nelson Mandela broke into the most gracious smile and waved at me. He was on his first, historic trip to America. The day before, hundreds of thousands of people had turned out to see him on the Esplanade, along the Charles River, to celebrate his recent release from a South African prison. Now he said he wanted to see the place where that famous lady (Mary Baker Eddy) started her own religion as well as newspaper.

"Wait right here," I said, too loudly. "I'm going to get the editor of the Monitor. He needs to meet you." I sprinted to the newsroom and told Dick Cattani to come downstairs, come meet Mandela. He insisted on putting on a jacket. It was Sunday, and he was dressed casually. I pulled him by the arm as he slipped into his blue and white pinstriped seersucker jacket. He gave Mandela a tour of The Mother Church, as well as a copy of "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" (by Eddy), which Mandela insisted he sign. He mentioned during the visit that the Monitor was the only international paper he had been allowed to read in prison, although major parts were redacted. He marveled that a woman not only started this paper but this religion, noting it could only happen in the US.
-     Faye Bowers

  I remember hearing this story related by Dick Cattani,  just after it happened.  I rejoiced in the role Mary Baker Eddy's vision for international journalism that "injures no man, but blesses all mankind" would play in the life of my hero.  I was moved that he would seek out her "homeland".

In actuality, it was her paper that led me to South Africa 21 years ago...it is her paper that continues to remind me that we are not alone in lighting our one candle and cursing the darkness.

In referring to Mandela's extraordinary courage, my friend Susan Dane writes in her compelling, "When All Systems Fail":

"A man is imprisoned in South Africa for the color of his skin and for his attempts to bring racial equality to his country.  His is seen as a threat by one side of the political debate, and as a liberator by the other side.  While the two sides come to blows, burning and killing each other in mutual hatred, the man dedicates twenty-seven years of his life to not being what everything in him and outside him are encouraging him to be.  He chooses instead to undertake the journey of unreasonable freedom.  He dedicates all his time and energy to getting rid of (in his own words) 'the poison of hatred in my own bloodstream.'

This is a big task since he lives with and within the narrow concrete walls that hatred itself has constructed for him.  Everywhere he turns he is reminded of the power of oppression, and the power of evil to triumph over good.

Did he make the hatred?  Did he deserve it?  Did his bad Karma destine him to a life of suffering, to spend what could have been a full and happy life hopelessly condemned instead?

This man was smart.  He chose to focus on different concerns:

He worked to see that he was not his circumstances, and he worked to not react to them.

He fought to not become entangled by questions like "why" and "why me?"

He fought instead to make sure that no matter what happened around him, it could not happen to him.

And he refused to buy into the propaganda that he could change,if only something else or someone else would change first."

As we strive to live heroic lives in small ways, what can we learn from this man's decision about where he chose to align his focus.  How can we make choices that will inspire others to dream big and live lives of courage and grace.

Could being a hero in one's own life...and the lives of those we love...be as simple as the next choice?

Dane goes on to say:

"Here was a man who was not allowed to read a newspaper for sixteen years, who was not allowed to have a family member visit, and who did hard labor during that time. And yet in spite of this oppressive environment, he dedicated himself to being king in the one place where he could still be king, the one place no oppression could reach him...in the desires of his heart and the intention of his will.  And to do this he had to not be what everything in him and around him argued he must be - a victim...

The result was that this man could not be hurt.  Could not be bent.  Could not be pushed or broken.  Not in any real sense.  Because the Chooser in him was inviolable.  The Chooser in him, the king and kingdom of his self, was Truth [God or Spirit] having its way...His circumstances could not define him, because he had decided to define himself instead.  An entire oppressive government could not bend him to its will.  In fact, the oppressive government succumbed to him."

This is just one very powerful example of how our seemingly small, moment-by-moment choices can become the substance of heroism and nobility, and leadership.

"It's a long road when you face the world alone;
No one reaches out a hand for you to hold.
You can find love if you search within your self
and the emptiness you felt will disappear.

And then a hero comes along
with the strength to carry on
and you cast your fears aside
and you know you can survive.

So, when you feel like hope is gone
look inside you and be strong
and you'll finally see the truth
that a hero lies in you
that a hero lies in ... you
that a hero lies in.....you."

It all starts with small choices...or as Mother Teresa would one day say:

"We can do no great things, only small things with great love."

There is greatness in each small thing...each small choice...made with great love.  What choices will you make today...and in doing so, what will you discover about your own potential for greatness?   A hero lies in each of us...a hero lies in...you.

With Love,

Kate
Kate Robertson, CS

Motherhood Knows No Color

I am discovering that motherhood changes us...alters our way of looking at the world around us...of listening to the way the world sings and speaks...and may even change what we think it is, or was,  saying....sometimes the the message is so arrestingly different, when listened to through those mother-ears, that it stops us in our tracks and resonates within our hearts in a new way...a way that transforms what was once simply the soundtrack of a particular period in history into a moment's inspiration...into a prayer...a message from God...speaking to universal humanity....universal motherhood...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

- Stephen Stills, 1970

A recent Backstory article in the Christian Science Monitor titled "Home Sweet Fortress" details reporter Scott Baldauf's adventures through the labyrinth of personal and home security in the city of his latest assignment, Johannesburg, South Africa.

A timely article for me.  Our daughter, Hannah, just returned to Johannesburg for another month before traveling on to her destination in a small coastal village outside of Capetown where she will spend the next year finishing her secondary education.

Hannah's epic journey to South Africa last summer was the subject of an article on safety in both the Monitor and on this Blog (scroll down October 3, 2006 blog "Securing Children's Safety" ).

When Hannah's dad and I traveled to South Africa in 1989 to pick her up as our newly adopted child, the country was in turmoil.  It was during the height of Apartheid. Our visit there was rife with red tape, governmental intimidation and uneasiness.  Under the surface you could almost feel the red veld itself under your feet, seething with repressed anger and pent up violence.  Hatred surfaced on the faces of the white government soldiers who as a matter of routine carried automatic weapons on the streets of both large cities and small towns.  That hatred was mirrored in the young black men who stood in darkened doorways with older model AK-47 rifles at the ready.  High walls and large dogs that characterized white neighborhoods all gave off an angry heat that made even the African sun pale by comparison.

One afternoon as my husband and I drove from the farm where we were staying to Johannesburg, we passed the local farm school that served the children of black farm workers in that township.  At first glance this could have been the modest playground of any private rural school.  The girls were dressed in pleated red and blue plaid skirts and collared polo shirts, the boys in navy pants or shorts and the same white shirts or red sweaters.  My husband, charmed by the sweet laughter of the young schoolboys playing a version of kickball in the yard and the little girls giggling as their friends moved in and out of double dutch jump rope, pulled our borrowed car to the side of the road to snap a photo or two. 

Looking closer, things came more clearly into focus.   Suddenly  the disparity between the scene in front of us and a schoolyard "back home" was arrestingly obvious.  The children were all black, all bare-footed. and all so thin.  Until we looked at the frail limbs poking out from voluminous shirt sleeves and pant legs which camouflaged their thinness, we were convinced we had been looking at healthy children at play.  But as arresting as this discovery was, it was not the most sobering element of what filled the lens of our camera and our hearts that afternoon.  Just out of focus, about 100 yards away in a field of tall grasses, South African Army tanks pointed directly at the schoolyard.

I felt a cold chill down my spine as I realized the depth to which the sharp blade of threat had been plunged daily into the hearts and minds of these children's parents as they weighed their child's education with their safety.  Insurgency was held at bay by the barrels of enormous military tanks pointed at small children.  The message of this silent threat was clear: their children could face what had happened thirteen years earlier when hundreds of young school children in Soweto, South Africa were massacred by South African police as the children and their parents protested inferior educational opportunities and demanded the right to be taught in their own language.  I felt faint with horror.

No wonder more than a million strong, intelligent black Africans had chosen not to take to the streets in opposition to the repression of their basic human rights.  It was love that kept them waiting for over twenty years....waiting for a Moses to march them peaceably out of bondage and bloodshed.  Our daughter was nine months old and we were back in the States when Nelson Mandela walked out of Robin's Island prison.  Hannah is now 17 and is a tall, beautiful, intelligent, proud South African citizen with dual American citizenship.  She possesses flashing green eyes and a heart for defending human rights wherever she sees them being violated...wherever and whenever someone is being treated without dignity...from a middle school classroom where her best friend was made fun of for speaking with an accent, to a Sunday School discussion where she opposed the characterization of those who supported same sex marriage as immoral. 

This same daughter, when asked about the crime and violence in Johannesburg that we often hear is the highest in the world, shared with us that, yes, there is a lot of crime and violence, and you have to be very, very alert and wise when you leave your gated, walled, security-system protected and dog-guarded home.  But, she also offered that when she is afraid or feels unsettled or threatened, she just looks for help from an older black woman.  Hannah explained that they have the kindest faces and are always willing to help you and protect you.  She went on to say they are like mothers and grandmothers to everyone and it doesn't matter that she is white...she is a child who needs care.

I can only pray my thanks to these women who once faced the horrors of daily threat to their own children's safety.  These women have strong hearts, tempered by the harshness of their past.  These same hearts have been made flexible and open, stretched from having cared for, loved, fed, clothed and in many ways educated the young white children of their employers while serving as housekeepers, nannies, maids and governesses.

When Hannah was born she was very ill and frail.  My first stop after leaving the hospital with her was our host's farm on the Botswana border where our host and her husband were entertaining friends, business colleagues, and their wives, for a holiday of safari.  When we arrived, Hannah was rather weak and I couldn't get her to take food.  I was surrounded by kindly, well-educated, white South Africans but it was the young black housekeeper, who already had a handful of children herself, who courageously stepped forward to take Hannah out of my arms that day.  The housekeeper later came to my bedroom on the farm and continued to breastfeed Hannah until she was strong enough to take milk more vigorously on her own.   This same housekeeper saw her own very young children off during a ten-mile walk each week to the local farm school.  She would leave them there and make the trek back to our host¢s "camp",  not seeing them again until she or her husband walked back to pick them up at the end of the week.

I think of this young woman today as I ponder my daughter's safety in the arms of the many Dorothy or Maria  "grandmothers" who respond to names  that an employer or sponsor gave them, not names in their native tongue that they were blessed with at birth.  I pray my thanks to them.  I send it over continents and oceans and hope it reaches them where they can be found embracing my daughter on a public bus, in an office building, or on a street corner...or most recently in the airplane lavatory on her trip here for her dad's wedding last month.  During her 15-hour flight Hannah became ill and turned to yet another kind South African black "grandmother" to help her.  This woman held her hair and cooed comfort in her ear through the long night above the Atlantic Ocean.

Nelson Mandela came out of Robin's Island and led his country out of hatred because he held the hearts of mothers who knew what it meant to love and to oppose violence wherever it raises its ugly head.

Motherhood knows no color....I feel secure in knowing that wherever there are mothers of any color, my daughter and her friends are safe and cared for.  I hope and pray that I have the opportunity be a "grandmother" for someone else's child today.  Join me....please...

"...Well, there's a rose in a fisted glove
And the eagle flies with the dove
And if you can't be with the one you love
Love the one you're with
Love the one you're with..."

K

photo credit: photo of the children in the schoolyard was taken by
Dwight Oyer - May, 1989 - Randfontein, South Africa