"under His wings..."

"How can you run
when you know?"

Today on Facebook, a friend shared this video of Crosby, Stills, and Nash's  "Ohio."  It is still a chilling reminder of a day I will never forget.

It was Monday -- a beautiful, early spring day in rural New Jersey. I was in typing class when our Assistant Principal came to the door and called our teacher into the hallway. He returned ashen-faced and visibly shaken. He announced that when the bell rang we were to go to the school auditorium.

I remember looking down at the rows and rows of "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" that I'd just typed, as a warm up for that day's dictation. When I looked up, there were tears streaming down our teacher's sideburn-framed cheeks. I was terrified. We'd lived through the Kennedy, King, and Kennedy assassinations, what could possibly evoke a teacher's tears -- again?

I looked across the room and questioningly caught a friend's eye. She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. I returned to my typing, but all I could think about was, "what now?" The windows were open and the scent of peonies wafted in on a soft breeze. To this day, the scent of peonies is the scent of paradox.

After the bell sounded for a change of classes, we filed into the hallway and made our way like lemmings towards the auditorium. For some reason, I needed to find my sister. She was a year younger, but she was my rock. I thought if I could sit with her, whatever news we were being gathered for would be less frightening. But when I finally caught sight of her, she was on the other side of the auditorium surrounded by friends.

The room was eerily quiet. We didn't talk as we waited for the principal to take the stage. When he did, although his suit was its normal crisp perfection, he seemed disheveled. He ran his hand through his hair as he paused at the microphone. It made me feel frightened. Like when my mother cried, or my dad sat staring out the window after paying the bills.

Before he spoke, he cleared his throat, paused, and cleared his throat again. Then he explained that there had been a terrible tragedy at a university in Ohio. The National Guard had opened fire on protesting students and four of those students had died. Others had been injured. We were instructed to return to our next period classes.  I noticed that our principal's shoulders shook - I assumed he was quietly weeping - as he left the stage with his head down.

We were in shock. We'd never heard the story of Kent State - it hadn't happened yet.  It wasn't in our rolodex of possibilities.  We'd heard of recently graduated classmates being killed in Viet Nam, but this was in Ohio - only two states away.  We'd never been exposed to news of our own government killing college students.  We were so close to being college students ourselves. For me it was only two years away. For the youngest among us, four years. We didn't speak, we didn't move. I remember thinking, "this is what shock feels like."

This was 1970. There were no trauma counselors. We were dismissed from the auditorium and told to go to our next class. At the end of the day, we boarded school buses for home, changed into gym clothes for track practice or field hockey, or we made our way to the same auditorium for play rehearsals.

It felt like walking through water. We had no further information. We wouldn't have any more information unless our parents let us watch the nightly news, on one of three channels at 6 o'clock. The newspaper wouldn't arrive until morning. There was no cable news, no internet, no online resources, no Facebook posts, or breaking news updates. Just the 6 o'clock news and the morning paper.

Had there been a coup? Had war been declared in Ohio? Were children -- and yes, we still thought of our friends in college as children -- now the enemy of the state? Was the consequence for disagreeing with your government, death by firing squad?

It would be days before we saw photographs. It would be months before we'd get anything more than cursory information. It would be years before we'd know how that day in May, would change the landscape of our collective experience as students - and parents.

The massacre of student protesters on a grassy knoll at Kent State University would alter the course of history. Within a week millions of high school and college students went on strike, others marched in protest at the Capitol, and many of us wrote out our grief in poetry, songs, and essays.

As with the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, I turned to a resource I'd come to trust -- my Sunday School teacher. I had to wait six days, but I knew she would give me a spiritual way to process what I'd been living with for almost a week.

On Sunday, she too was still shaken by the event. I loved that she wasn't stoic and matter-of-fact about it. Her response was honest. She told me that she'd been praying all week about how to talk with us about what had happened in Ohio. And then she asked us how we had been feeling. She didn't tell us how we should feel.

I don't remember all of what we discussed that morning, but I do remember leaving church with a sense of courage about standing up for what is right and good. I also left with her encouragement to memorize the 91st Psalm. And I did. It has stood the test of time. It reads:

"He that dwelleth in the secret place of the most high shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.

I will say of the Lord, He is my refuge and fortressL my God; in Him will I trust.

Surely He shall deliver thee from the snare of the fowler, and from the noisome pestilence.

He shall cover thee with his feathers, and under his wings shalt thou trust: His truth shall be thy shield and buckler.

Thou shalt not be afraid for the terror by night; nor for the arrow that flight by day; nor for the pestilence that walketh in darkness; nor for the destruction that casteth at noonday.

A thousand shall fall at thy side, and ten thousand at thy right hand; but it shall not come nigh thee.

Only with thine eyes shalt thou behold and see the reward of the wicked.

"Because thou hast made the Lord, which is my refuge, even the most High, thy habitation; there shall no evil befall thee, neither shall any plague come nigh thy dwelling.

For He shall give His angels charge over thee to keep thee in all thy ways."

Over the next two years I would participate in a number of protests, and this Psalm would be my marching song. In the ensuing years it has been my companion whenever I have felt threatened or afraid. I do not run when I know that something needs facing. I stand with angels -- who have charge over me, and mine, and all.

offered with Love,

Kate

This video from Dan Rather's report on the event is helpful in understanding what happened that day  "Kent State." 

"the cost of freedom…"

"Find the cost
of freedom,
buried in the ground..."

I need to forewarn regular readers -- I don't know where this is going.  I only know that I have to write it while my heart is still broken wide open, and the words can find their way out on the crest of a tear.  That said...

I love to disappear most days, and have breakfast at a small cafe. I like to sit at a small table and read, journal, listen, and sometimes I am gifted with a conversation with a stranger -- or two. Today was one of those days. A lovely couple sat down at the table next to mine, and wished me a good morning. I noticed immediately that he was wearing a cap with a Vietnam Veteran's insignia on it.

While they waited for their breakfast, they asked if I was a local -- I never get tired of answering that question with a resounding "yes!" And then I learned that we'd all graduated from high school about the same time, and that they were both veterans.

We talked about "those times." The 60s and 70s, Vietnam, Nixon, the draft, sit-ins, Woodstock and such. I smiled at the serendipity of it all. Only the night before, I'd been on a magical musical journey that had started with new group, Darlingside's cover of Joni Mitchell's "Woodstock,"and meandered through the protest songs of Neil Young and Buffalo Springfield, before turning onto the shadowed path of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young's "The Cost of Freedom."

What had started out as a sunny trip down memory lane, quickly turned dark.  It has stirred up very fallow ground. I lay awake, praying through the night for my own freedom from an overwhelming sense of sadness about those days. They'd left their mark on my heart. 

I knew that gratitude for good was my only hope of salvaging those songs and the youthful memories they resurrected in me.   I searched my "soul" for moments of nobility, grace, dignity, and honor from that time, that I could  be grateful for. And I found many. When I finally rested -- just before dawn -- I was resting upon the good I'd seen and experienced, rather than from the tragedies I'd been haunted by only hours earlier.

So, I was prepared when, what had started out as a simple conversation between strangers, turned into a deeply meaningful discussion about healing, and veterans, and war. My new friends shared with me that they'd recently driven across country and had stayed at a hotel near Kent State University. She said, with tears in her eyes, that she'd had those ominous, repetitive words "four dead in Ohio," from Neil Young's "Ohio" in her head, from the minute she saw the Kent State sign.

My heart seemed to melt into hers at the thought of these two precious veterans -- who had given their service to our country, during one of the most difficult times in the history of our nation -- facing that kind of inner conflict. Here we were, the Vietnam war protestor and the veterans -- and I prayed that we might find healing in one another's company 45 years later. And, I think we did.

We talked about the power of Love to bring people together. We talked about how his re-entry into American culture following his discharge was devastating, until he took time to return to nature. We talked about the importance of working with animals, plants, and the land, in returning a sense of humanity to those who had witnessed -- or been made to participate in -- inhumane acts of war.

And we talked about family. About the inner call to redemption. About a time that was fraught with confusion, with the hunger for connection, and with humanity's insatiable need for forgiveness, understanding, and redemption.

Our checks came, we paid, rose, and reached for one another to shake hands -- and to embrace. I couldn't help but feel somehow that we'd been given that hour in one another's company, as a gift of grace. The war protestor and the veteran. I was saddened by what it must have been like for her to lie on a hotel bed and hear, over and over again, the words to a song I'd sung loudly during the summer of 1970:

"four dead in Ohio,
four dead in Ohio...." 

My heart weeps for them. And for all of us. We were just children facing questions we were ill-prepared for. We were raised by "the greatest generation," on a wonderful diet of patriotism, dignity, and service. But we were not equipped for watching our brothers, boyfriends, and classmates drafted right out of high school. We were not ready for the pain of attending memorial services for our peers. We couldn't process knowing 18 year old widows. 

How does one go from watching after school cartoons to war footage on the evening news? From singing songs about wearing flowers in our hair, to laying flowers on the graves of boys we'd had crushes on? How did they go from throwing footballs to throwing grenades?  We were confused. We were frightened. We were angry.  We took it out on one another. I am sorry -- deeply sorry.

I only pray that we can be the generation that is not afraid to redeem ourselves by learning from the lessons of the past. That we can be known for bringing unity, compassion, and dignity to our own returning sons and daughters -- while still honoring the sensibilities of those who oppose global oppression, but without military engagement.

I can't help but think of Mary Baker Eddy's beautiful promise in Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures:

"One infinite God, good,
unifies men and nations;
constitutes the brotherhood of man;
ends wars; fulfils the Scripture,
“Love thy neighbor as thyself;”
annihilates pagan and Christian idolatry, 
— whatever is wrong in social, civil,
criminal, political, and religious codes;
equalizes the sexes; annuls the curse on man,
and leaves nothing that can sin, suffer,
be punished or destroyed."
 

We must have compassion for one another. Love doesn't have sides. Love doesn't pull us apart, but draws us together where we can work together, deepen our humanity, and find solutions.

offered with Love,

Kate