There is a woman I know who fretted so much as a child, spewing out all the possible disasters that might befall her, that her friends called her "What if?" What if this happens? What if that happens?
Dread is the shadow side of hope. Each is a face of anticipation. I anticipate that if I go to church this morning, I'll run into so and so. I dread having to talk with her after you know what. Or, I anticipate that if I go to church this morning, I'll see so and so. I'd really like to talk with him about whatever. I hope he's there. We anticipate. We act out of our anticipation. We remember out of our expectation. Sometimes we reflect. Occasionally we imagine
What if Lucy Channing Russel hadn't had the presence of mind to gather together that critical mass of friends and neighbors at her Manhattan home to hear her brother, William Ellery Channing, then on his way to Baltimore to deliver an ordination sermon that would ring through the history of our shared faith? What if she hadn't been sufficiently convincing in her invitation to her friends or her brother? But Lucy was convincing. She did assemble that cluster of New Yorkers, who, inspired by the words of her brother, would form the first congregation of All Souls, New York City, and here we are, 180 years later, on this May morning, gathered together to worship and sing of "Life that maketh all things new, the blooming earth, our thoughts within."
What if Lucy were here with us--in the way that we are here with one another? What would we want to share with her....understanding that we would, of course, walk up to this quaintly clad woman at coffee hour, graciously introduce ourselves, and welcome her to All Souls....all the while not knowing that nine score years ago, Lucy essentially welcomed us?
Memorial Day....We remember those in our lives whom we miss--husbands and wives and lovers and friends, sons and daughters, and sisters and brothers who walk the corridors of our hearts. Think of one person whom you have loved and who is no longer here. What if they appeared and greeted you? What would you say to them that would make them glad? What would you confess to them, hoping that they might understand? How do we honor the legacy of those we have loved? How do we live with the legacy of those who have set stumbling blocks before us? How do we live knowing that we too shall join whatever mystery is theirs, leaving our own legacy?
How might we take our life's next steps so this fantasy of conversation and remembrance would shine full and bright, stretching our penchant for the possible to embrace "the wide horizon's grander view....the Life that maketh all things new?"
What about our local supermarket...you know, the place where we toss into a basket all those things that fuel our life's next steps? How many times have we encountered in such a space the scene of parent and screaming child or screaming parent and screaming child? The scene escalates. The child has whined one too many times for the limits of her parent's patience. The parent loses it and strikes the child. "If you carry on like that one more time, that's just a hint of what you'll get when we get home!" We shudder. Then what?
Well, if I say something to the parent, maybe the child will get the brunt of the parent's embarrassment. Then if I don't say anything, am I not doing what I could to let the parent know this is really not okay or to let the child know there are folks out there who know it's not okay. If I knew their names, I could report this to the authorities--oh yeah, the authorities who don't have the time or tenacity to follow up, the authorities who will wring their hands too late over the plight of the battered child. And so our musings go, and the moment has passed. The screaming parent and screaming child have turned down another aisle.
What if....now I haven't yet tried this....what if I had taken a deep breath, looked the mom or dad in the eye and said something like, "You must be having a rough day. At least you have a beautiful child." Now maybe the mom or dad would haul off and smack me. But then again, maybe that parent would be stunned by words that connect first with them, and then by the commentary that every parent wants to hear: "You have a beautiful child."
Loving our children is not always the easiest thing in the world. It's a falsehood that it comes naturally. Loving our parents is not always the easiest thing in the world. If we're parents--as all of us really are in this extended family of All Souls--we know that we have to earn the trust of a child. If we count ourselves as parent figures for all our children, we need to work even harder to earn it. Sometimes that begins with a plain and simple epiphany.
A few months ago, I happened to be a guest at a social event in the home of a family of exceptional material affluence. In a neighborhood where vacant land goes for upwards of $1,700 a square foot, I beheld the equivalent of a small private park--the backyard of this palatial townhouse--pristinely landscaped for the amusement of one child. Less than a dozen blocks to the north parents go in search of safe outdoor play spaces for their children. Of course there's Central Park, but the intimate parks that dot the cityscape of affluent neighborhoods, let alone a one-child playground....? I bit my tongue, lest I say something so far beyond the bounds of social etiquette that even a muted expression of astonishment would suffer a crash landing. But the image haunts me.
How much is enough and for whom? What about our children who live in the world described by Geoffrey Canada, "a world where danger lurks all around them and their playgrounds are filled with broken glass, crack vials, and sudden death?" What if even half of the estimated $3.5 million vested in that highly secured park of privilege were invested in play spaces for children of poverty, kids whose parents would be more than glad to share their children's playspace with this solitary child of privilege? And what if those redirected dollars came not from a philanthropic grant but from a public trust? What are the ramifications of such economic inequities for how safe some of us feel crossing into the terrain of certain neighborhoods in our city?
What if we had listened to Canada's chillingly prophetic words in his 1995 book, Fist Stick Knife Gun::
"....the impact and fear of violence has overrun the boundaries of our ghettos and has both its hands firmly around the neck of our whole country....while you may not yet have been visited by the specter of death,....just give it time. Sooner or later, unless we act, you will. We all will."
Gun violence has been heavy on our minds these past weeks. It has moved far beyond the bounds of our so-called ghettos. It's had its hands "firmly around the neck of our whole country." What does it take for us to act? What does it take for us to hear while there is still time to act? What if we mobilized our outrage to bring the industry of assault weapons to its knees, pulled the profit motive out from under it, and marshaled our outrage even further to bring to all our neglected children--children of poverty and children of privilege--a host of better offers and a more equitable system of public priorities to dilute the ominous gap between poverty and privilege?
What if, every time a man or woman were convicted of what is now a crime punishable by the death penalty, we did something else.....we ensured that the space and time now allocated in the media to detail the violence of selected acts were allocated to just enough of the life story of the alleged perpetrator so that we might see clearly how early intervention would have made a difference.... so that that adult--or that child--might not have slipped through the cracks and vented their rage on another human being? What if we further quantified in the media the cost of their years in prison over the span of their expected lifetime and captioned it as our cost of neglect....criminal neglect we might call it?
Does this mean a rotten childhood justifies a violent act? Absolutely not! But I do believe that we are accountable--each and all of us--for the histories of neglect and abuse that foment the rage that finds release in such acts. We're accountable in the supermarket, and we're accountable in the voting booth. We're empowered to intervene. We're empowered to undermine gun violence by undermining the market forces and the political bravado that drive it. We're empowered to eradicate the death penalty. We're empowered to call brutality--in street clothes or in uniform--by its name.
What if it were Littleton, Colorado--early April, 1998? Let's move ourselves into the homes and schools and churches of that community. Most of our kids go to Columbine High School. There are issues bubbling up before the Colorado legislature--with strong lobbying by the NRA. Colorado is known for supporting the rights of the individual. We're proud of our state. What would our stance be--if anything--on this prospective legislation? We live in a safe community. Our kids go to safe schools.
Our youngsters come home from school. They casually mention some other kids who have started dressing strangely and copping an attitude. "These weirdos think they're so cool," they remark. Now we know our kids never dress to be cool or pave the dining room table with an "in your face" attitude. What do we tell them about how to deal with kids who are "different"--you know, dressing in stuff as New York normal as black trenchcoats, aloof towards all these preppy success stories walking the halls? How were we to know what was on the agenda at Columbine High School a year hence--fermenting even now in the hearts and minds of Eric and Dylan? How were we to know even though there was still time in the spring of 1998?
Let's up the ante of our what if's. Let's raise it way up--to an altitude, say, of 18,000 feet in an area of our planet known as the Sichian [See·ä·chen] Glacier. Oxygen is so spare that a man's heart races. Splitting headaches are common. Temperatures plunge to 50 below. Yet, soldiers from India and Pakistan--our two newest nuclear weapons contenders, peers we might call them--have been waging for the last 15 years what the New York Times [5/23/99] calls "refrigerated combat," one front of a 50-year old territorial dispute over the wording in an agreement that ambiguously identified a cease-fire line continuing "north to the glaciers."
The battle with nature mocks the battle over nature. India's Major General V.S. Budhwar admits: "Nobody can win, no matter how long we fight, but this is our land. It is a portion of our nation-state, and we will not cede it." Pakistan's General Khalid Mehmood Arif admits, "Siachen is an awful place where you can step on a thin layer of snow and, poof, down you go 200 feet, but no nation ever wants to lose a single inch of territory, so Siachen has psychological and political importance. Its value is in ego and prestige." [repeat]
What if there were no claims to property, I wonder. What if any parcel of earth habitable by humankind were deemed borrowed space, to be shared in kind among those with whom we share borrowed time--our six billion global neighbors? I ponder what I read on a bronze marker surrounding a four-inch diameter of earth in Sproul Plaza at the University of California at Berkeley:
"This soil and this air space extending above it shall not be a part of any nation and shall not be subject to any entity's jurisdiction."
What if we considered war as the most inane shameful option imaginable and unleashed the full powers of our imagining in negotiated settlements over our own or other nation's territorial, ethnic, racial, and religious disputes? Would we continue the bombing of Yugoslavia, convinced that this was the only way to rein in the internationally denounced evils of a man for whom property and ethnic monopoly is most definitively a core value? Would we give more than passing consideration to some back burner principles of political conflict resolution voiced by Jimmy Carter through his op ed piece for Thursday's New York Times? Might we commit to negotiation for the long haul, understanding its dynamic as cyclical, pregnant with hope and second chances, just as every spring is another chance for nature--ourselves included--to take a deep breath of life? Are we not all born, shaped and reborn from nature's cyclic womb?
While our tradition of liberal religion generally bolts at the concept of sin, I relish the way George Ella Lyon speaks to what we can do about it, given the miracle of our existence.
God is fed up. All the oceans she gave us - All the fields....
God sees us now gorging ourselves & starving our neighbors starving ourselves & storing our grain & She says
I've had it - you cast your trash upon the waters-- it's rolling in
You stuck your fine fine finger into the mystery of life to find death & you did - you learned how to end the world in nothing flat
Now you come crying to your mommy. Send us a miracle Prove that you exist....
I set you down a miracle among miracles. You want more. It's your turn. You show me.
In the mid-19th century, settlers recently arrived in this country from Germany heard of the illness that had befallen a ship full of other German immigrants approaching these shores. So what did they do? They went down to the harbor, rowed out into the waters, and threw oranges onto the deck? [NY Times, 5/25/99] I envision these same settlers throwing oranges onto the deck of a shipful of voyagers who didn't necessarily share their ethnic background or their racial or religious identities. I relish the image of throwing oranges onto the decks of desperate voyagers whom we consider, for whatever reasons, hostile. If this could happen--and it can--then maybe, just maybe, we'll begin to behave like "a miracle among miracles," showing God and those with whom we share Creation what we are capable of
So if Lucy Channing Russel strolled in or if our departed loved one sat down beside us, what would we have to say for ourselves? How large is our imagination for justice? How deep is our well of compassion? How willing are we to touch the earth, reach the sky, and embrace one another?
I'm a cinemaphile with a long string of favorite films. Perhaps my favorite of favorites is Marcel Camus's 1958 film, Black Orpheus, a vibrant rendition of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth set in Rio de Janeiro at Carnival time. In the closing scene, two little boys, having emptied themselves of their sorrow over Eurydice's death and their sadness at the grief of Orpheus, sit expectantly on the edge of a cliff, facing east. They know that the only way the sun will rise is if the two of them play their guitars and sing their hearts out. And sure enough, they play their guitars, sing their hearts out, and the sun rises. What if has become what is. A myth has unfolded, and they have unfolded their own myth.
"Unfold your own myth," bids Rumi. "We have opened you. Start walking....Your legs will get heavy and tired. Then comes a moment of feeling the wings you've grown, lifting." All that the Lord of Life requires of us is to do justice, to love compassion, and to trust our wings, carrying us ever toward the sunrise. What if becomes what is. Carpe diem. Amen. Copyright AllSouls 1999.