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The flood was several weeks ago and I stopped by to see how things were going and went into Sykes' grocery store (Ellen Gilchrist writes, just after Katrina). The proprietor told me about filling the sandbags, who all was there and who came to help and we discussed how resilient men and women are. Then she turned around. "Oh, look at this," she said. A great mountain of a man was coming in the door. A beautiful tanned man with white hair leading or being led by two small children. The proprietor told me that the smallest one had been abused so badly he had to be in a full body cast for six months.
"That's their foster father," she said. "He's got them now and they're okay."
They were beautiful children. They came in to the store and got some candy and went to the back to find life preservers as they were going out on a boat for a Sunday outing.
"Hold me," the small child said, as soon as he saw me looking at him. I picked him up in my arms and held him there.
"We're getting to adopt them in February," the big fisherman said. "It's all set."
"Oh, that's great," the proprietor said, and for a moment I had a sense of sharing the community of Pass Manchac, a fishing village where people know each other and are involved in each other's lives and stories.
I am haunted by these events. For many miles down the road, I was filled with a sense of elation. The story of mankind is not written in the occasional crazy parent who will harm his own child. The story of mankind is the big fisherman who comes along and sets things right... the physicians and surgeons and nurses in some emergency room who are working the night shift and are there when the broken child arrives and put him back together and the fisherman who gathers the child into his life and goes to work to love him and the proprietor who cleans up the store after the flood and sells a slightly mildewed tablet at half price to write this on.
"He's got them now, and they're okay." I wish that were always so. But we know that it is not the case. Life can be difficult and unkind and cruel. And it is easy to only see, and pay attention, to the stories that don't "work out."
I like the story of the big fisherman because it is an invitation to a paradigm shift. It is an invitation to heal my scotoma. Scotoma means that we see want we want to see. It is a form of selective blindness. And it is no respecter of persons. It means that I am stuck in my categories.
When I read the news (or hear a story), I have a choice. No, I do not close my eyes to the pain or the suffering. But I do have a choice about seeing a deeper or more profound reality underneath the pain and the suffering. A story about brokenness, yes. But more importantly, a story about compassion and hope and redemption.
Asked about what sometimes looks like a distinct lack of compassion in human society, the Dalai Lama has said: "Perhaps we just pay less attention to compassion and caring; we reinforce it less. Whereas in some sense, we fully embrace hostility and anger as an emotional state, fueling and reinforcing it. If we were to give the same amount of energy, attention, and reinforcement to compassion and caring, they would definitely be stronger." In other words, my blinders preclude me from seeing everything that is there.
Ready for a simple test? Check out any FedEx truck (or company logo). Got it? What do you see? I see FedEx in purple and orange. Okay. Look again. This time, pretend you cannot read. This time, you will see an arrow. Clearly, between the E and X. This is interesting, because studies done with illiterate persons show that they see the arrow first, every time.
So. How do my blinders come off?
For some reason, some of us want to make it about willpower or effort, forcing us to see what is not really there. You know, like squinting hard to see the Mother of Jesus imprinted in a cheese sandwich (no, I did not make that up)(and yes, the woman auctioned this cheese sandwich on Ebay).
It has something to do with letting go.
When we do let go--of the need to be right, or the need to be in control, or the need to be a victim or the need to carry resentment--we learn that we can be grateful for whatever we receive.
And when we are grateful, we are willing to share what we have and to let what we have spill to those around us.
In his book Finding God in Unexpected Places, Philip Yancey talks about a South African woman named Joanna, who began a prison ministry that radically transformed one of her country's most violent prisons. When Yancey asked her how she did it, she said: "Well, of course, Philip, God was already present in the prison. I just had to make Him visible."
When holy water was rare at best
It barely wet my fingertips
But now I have to hold my breath
Like I'm swimming in a sea of it
It used to be a world half there
Heaven's second rate hand-me-down
But I walk it with a reverent air
'Cause everything is holy now
Everything, everything
Everything is holy now
Read a questioning child's face
And say it's not a testament
That'd be very hard to say
See another new morning come
And say it's not a sacrament
I tell you that it can't be done
Everything is Holy Now, Peter Mayer
If that is true, there is a paradigm shift indeed.
If God is present, if there are no unsacred moments... then all of it, including you and me, flooded stores, mildewed paper, broken children, big generous fishermen... all of it is the material that can explode with God's light.
Here's the deal: The story continues to be written. I know that there are times in the story when we are the wounded child. And there are times in the story when we are invited to let that light shine, and create a safe haven for someone who needs compassion, love, hope and healing.
The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little. Franklin Delano Roosevelt
(1) Ellen Gilchrist story from Falling Through Space
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