 In one diabolical final attempt, Hitler reached back from his grave to get them. They were aging Holocaust survivors in their eighth and ninth decades of life. Some were patients in nursing homes, frail and in need of both personal and medical care, each traumatized anew by being made so vulnerable to someone else’s hands. Some were experiencing dementia with new memories vanishing as soon as they appeared and terrible old experiences becoming their lived reality once again. A noisy truck outside on the street would send them cowering beneath tables or hiding in closets. They hid food and refused showers. Others who were still of sound mind began experiencing the normal life-review process of old age. Some found they could not sleep at night. In the haze just before sleep the memories became vivid and real again. The heartache choked their breath. The events played over and over again in their minds like an old LP on repeat. They couldn’t seem to move the needle. Shame and regrets overwhelmed any hope of sleep. One man told me how he feared facing his departed family members should there be an afterlife. He feared living this way but he feared dying too. For him, there would be no relief in this life or in the next. Despite the fact that he had been just a school boy himself and went on to live through terrible torment, this beautiful man was guilt-ridden for having survived when his mother and sister were the first of his family to go to the gas chambers. “What will I tell them about why I survived and they didn’t,” he asked me. He relived the morning line-ups in the camps and those too-frequent moments when open wagons drove past, wagons overflowing with the lifeless bodies of loved ones fresh from the gas chambers, limp arms and legs flapping against the wagon’s wooden sides. “We were an emotional people, but we were so traumatized, so empty, we could not even cry.” He wept in grief and in shame and relived the memories of the suicides after the war was over, the additional losses of extended family members who could not live with what they had seen, could not live with the grief, the fear, the anguish, could not live with their survivor’s guilt. Over the months that I helped to care for these remarkable and suffering people I asked one man, “Why wasn’t their more resistance when there were still six million more of you?” “We thought that if we were good, kept our heads down, did what we were told, didn’t make any trouble, it would be okay.” Until it wasn’t. Until it was too late. The entire world is on edge right now. Authoritarianism is on the ballot all over the free world. Coups are taking place in countries where democracy is fragile or non-existent. There is a growing lawlessness and sense of chaos bordering on anarchy even in our own country. Just this week, a political candidate, a convicted felon, called for a military tribunal to publicly try a former Congressional colleague. One of his chief henchmen was ushered off to prison promising the reporters that he would see them all in The Gulag upon his release from prison. For the past week, I have felt like I’ve been beaten, on edge, ready to weep. I have asked myself over and over: How? How can this be happening when I know so many good people? During his 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews, John Stuart Mill said: “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.” It is time to take off our sunglasses and stop looking on the bright side. It is time to hold up a flame in the darkness and tell ourselves the truth. This will not get better on its own if good people do nothing. We are the six million still standing. We must do something. We live in a time and in a country where degrading and humiliating our fellow citizens and institutions, our neighbors and allies, other suffering citizens around the world is all that is on the mind of many in power. That is not leadership. That is psychopathy. And too many of us are becoming willing accomplices sacrificing own humanity for the personal gain of cultish leaders, authoritarians, and fanatics. In my mind I can hear Patrick Henry convincing the Second Virginia Convention to deliver troops to Virginia in the American Revolution. “Give me liberty or give me death,” he said. Maybe our new cry should be “Give me dignity or give me death.” Supply the dignity, and liberty will be assured for all people. I beg you today to re-commit to dignity for all people whether or not you like them or agree with them. I beg you today to re-commit to law and order even if it is as small an act as obeying the speed limit. I beg you to take care of what you have. Do not be careless or mindless with your resources, the resource of others, or the resources of the earth. Set about each day with the intention of doing right even if it costs you something. Lawsuits and insurance don’t resolve anything. They make companies and institutions more careless when insurance companies can settle claims for large sums. In this system of no accountability and no consequence, doing wrong becomes lucrative. Let the media know we don’t need or want our eyes filled with horrible sensational stories that do not need to be shared, stories that make human beings look like feral animals and turn us into voyeurs. Ask your local officials to take action against landlords and property owners who allow buildings to fall to ruin and leave people homeless and defeated with their possessions destroyed. Pick up the litter when you see it. It doesn’t matter if you were not the one to drop it. We all have to live here. Be an example to others of what can be, what should be. It all matters. Freedom of speech, freedom of living is not saying or doing whatever I want. It is about living in community and supporting the common good so that the system works for all of us. If you think freedom is tearing through a STOP sign because you want to, just wait until you are laying in an ICU permanently disabled. Technology will easily strip us of the higher powers of our minds: insight, empathy, and self-control. Don’t be so willing to give it away. PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE. Hold an actual conversation that takes time, patience, listening skills, and empathy. Right makes might. Do what is right. Ask that others do it too. It has become a comedic joke that nothing works. Well, why doesn’t it work? From politics to health care, we expect broken and expensive systems. We no longer expect things to work. We shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh, well." EXPECT MORE. If you want to make America Great Again, stop demeaning it, stop humiliating your fellow citizens. Do things with care and grace. Make America good again and the greatness will come. Presently, it feels like we are in a shit-show with no intermission. The bad guys are taking encore after encore expecting our applause. Why are we still watching? TURN IT OFF. The answers lay in the space between helplessness and outrage. One of our presidential candidates is hocking Bibles. Perhaps he should open the cover. I have learned that the Old Testament of the Bible is about the law. The New Testament is about grace. Law and grace. We need them both. Let us encourage one another and build up one another through law and grace. Write to me and share your efforts and the efforts of others to make America good again. Let us fill our eyes and ears with hope that invigorates. Don’t let us be another aging generation that lives to cower under tables and inside closets filled with shame, and pain, and regret.
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 After a year of living like Big Foot, I am preparing for re-entry into the post-pandemic world by once again showering daily, applying make-up, and wearing clothes with waistbands. This morning I decided to go all out and put on a pair of earrings. When I opened my jewelry box the first thing to catch my eye was a black card containing a pair of “fashion earrings,” at least that’s what the card said. The earrings are shaped like sand dollars each nearly as large as the real thing. I have had these earrings for about 20 years, and they still sparkle like gold. These “jewels” remain on the card, unworn, because they are clip-ons and because they were a gift from my sweet children when they were small. The children purchased the earrings from the souvenir shop at the Virginia Marine Science Museum during a vacation with their father. I treasure the earrings and the memory. They will go with me if I am ever on the run. When my son, Sam, was a preschooler, he would browse the aisles of a store looking at all of the items that interested him. If he spotted something he wanted to purchase, Sam would call out, “Mom, do I have enough cents?” The spoken version of those words usually drew chuckles from the adults in the store. Little children know nothing of the origins of money or the value each coin or bill represents and yet they are masters of the art of giving. Children are eager to give long before they become wage earners and spenders, long before gift-giving becomes an obligation on their calendars, long before they come to expect anything in return. They give because it is natural and pure joy to do so. On February 20, 2020, Virginia Douglas published an essay, The Voice Said God Bless You, on the online magazine, The Braided Way. Douglas described her many interactions with the homeless, particularly, a man in her community named Danny. Douglas pondered why it is the homeless who always say, “God bless you,” in return for an act of kindness when others of greater means might not say thank or even acknowledge a special courtesy. Douglas’s question stayed with me all year like the newsfeed silently scrolling beneath the chatter of the evening news, drawing my attention away from the noise of the day and into a sacred space inside me. This morning, opening my jewelry box brought the question back as the top story. In her essay, Douglas offered up her own thoughts in answer to the question of why the homeless are the ones to say, “God bless you.” She speculated that when goodness comes out of nowhere, there must be a God to be thanked, or perhaps, the first encounter with Danny coming at Christmas, Danny “might be Jesus.” Once Douglas established a pattern of giving to Danny, the thought of seeing him again caused Douglas some anxiety. Had she established an expectation in Danny by giving him money? A friend advised Douglas to keep a bag of goodies in her car “so that you have something to give.” Having something to give relieved Douglas of her worry, and she continued to give to Danny whenever she saw him. The story got me thinking about the many ways we “give.” Giving can be pure instinct and joy. It can become the basis of connection and relationship. But giving can also establish expectations that then become hard to meet. Sometimes giving becomes nothing more than an obligation even leading to hurt or resentment. Sometimes people give not to honor the beneficiary, but to show off. It matters not just what we give, but also why. Whenever I see a homeless person holding a sign at the highway entrance or sleeping on a park bench, I feel a sense of shame and self-consciousness about having come unprepared with nothing to give. Having nothing to share violates that instinct to give that is present in us as children. I instantly re-evaluate my life and am filled with an awareness of all that I have however humble it seems in comparison to others. God has blessed me. Thinking about how hurtful it is to be ignored, rendered invisible, I give the gift of acknowledgement. I do not look away. Historically, people who are struggling financially receive many negative messages about what kind of people they are. Somehow their needs must be their own fault. More recently, the pandemic has made it clear that disaster can strike anyone at any time. It takes courage to ask. And when we give generously, we get something back, something intangible. We express generosity as givers but gratitude is also a gift and a grace offered by the receivers of our generosity. Why are the homeless the ones to say, “God bless you?” Maybe because it feels good to give back, even if only a prayer. Giving something back equalizes the relationship. It adds some beauty to the world. When people connect out of kindness, perhaps God does bless that union. Maybe the homeless men and women are priests. And maybe God blesses the person who sees his neighbors. In the story of Jesus, he was on a mission. His people were the poor and brokenhearted. Maybe Danny was Jesus; if not, he was certainly one of the beloved. In this high tech, tumultuous world, we are encouraged to say hateful things about our neighbors, to behave outrageously. Without vigilance we will be robbed, not of our money, but of our instinct to be kind, to give generously, and to experience the joy and the grace that come naturally with giving. It costs nothing to see a person, to acknowledge their presence with our eyes, our ears, our words, our attention. Throughout history, so much conquest, so many of the world’s troubles were brought upon mankind in the name of someone’s God. If we are to use God’s name, let it be in the service of triumphing over poverty, greed, and unkindness toward our neighbors. We need each other. There is magic in giving. May God bless you.  The sun is radiant in the sky, and a strong cool breeze parts the curtains. The fresh air encircles me as I snuggle under a warm blanket with a cup of hot, aromatic spiced tea in my hand. Why me? Brilliant sunshine in a dark time. A cool breeze in hellish circumstances. Sweetness in a sour spell. I would like to take credit for the wonderful things in my own life, but I know that my good fortune has often been the result of luck, timing, kindness, and the unmerited favor of heaven--the divine assistance plan also known as Amazing Grace. I was blind but now I see. With so much that can go wrong, maybe the miracle is that so much goes right. I ponder the events of just this past week. Waiting out the coronavirus storm, a stimulus check appeared in my bank account on Wednesday. My fears relieved. How precious did that Grace appear? I watched a segment on the national news last evening as New York Governor Cuomo shared a letter from a 74 year old retired farmer. Living far away in Kansas with a wife who is missing one lung and has illness in the other, the retired farmer sent a single, clean N95 mask to the Governor. The farmer asked that it be shared with a New York hospital worker. A humble offering from someone who gave all that he could. A person with a disposition to kindness. How many other examples have we seen during this pandemic? Tears filled my eyes. Amazing Grace! My phone seemed to ring and ping continuously yesterday as friends and family checked in. How sweet those sounds that saved a lonely wretch like me! They honor me with years of friendship that have given dignity and meaning to my life. Amazing Grace! At the daily news briefing, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine shared his excitement about the coming availability of coronavirus testing in Ohio. He celebrated the ingenuity and investment of the people who have made not only testing possible, but the reopening of the Ohio economy as well. This is a noble man on a mission. He is determined! His actions and character fill me with hope. He has brought us through many dangers, toils and snares. And now Grace will lead us home. |
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September 2024
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