Apparently the story of Mitt Romney’s highschool “hijinks” has now moved on from the news cycle, and that’s a relief.  But I’m still mulling it over.  I find it on my mind and heart as I pray, garden, or wash the dishes.

I suspect that this didn’t change any votes:  Those who were for Mitt now add this to their list of misgivings, or they don’t care.  Those who were for Obama now feel some added justification.  I’m not mulling it over as a voter.  I’m still processing it as a mother, as a minister, and as a human being.

I don’t know about other ministers, but I have received a couple of calls from congregants who have found that this stirred up memories for them that they would just as soon forget.  Issues of the lack of fairness—if this were a movie, the bully character would be shunned and left behind, not running for president.  The hero would have been the guy with the hair, going on to vindicate himself.  He is now dead with no story to tell.
The unhappy memories stirred for congregants are not just times when they were bullied, when they felt unsafe because of someone else.  I have also heard from people who  either participated in bullying or didn’t stop others who turned on a vulnerable person.  “Like Lord of the Flies,” one of Mitt’s classmates apparently said.  These folks are sometimes suffering more than the bullies.  Suddenly, years later, they are ashamed of who they were and what they did, and don’t know what to do about it.

Those of us who minister to, or parent, or care about teenagers know that in our communities we are speaking to potential or real bullies side by side with their intended or actual victims.  We know bullying is going on now, every day, in blatant or subtle ways.  We know that as much as all the kids nod and tell us the party line we want to hear, they are often protecting each other and us from the whole story.  Mitt’s victim apparently never brought this up at home.  We hear over and over after bully-induced suicides, “He/ she never mentioned it,” or “It didn’t sound so serious.”

Those of us who love at risk kids know how quickly “hijinks” can turn serious, taking lives as quickly as car accidents or heart attacks.
I guess all of that is why I am still mulling over Mitt’s “pranks.”  I wish to see a huge, united, adult community saying with one voice that some things are bigger than political ideology or party affiliation:  that respect for others is the center to a good shared life.  It would start with Mitt himself, dropping the act of “If I hurt someone…” and acknowledging that he did, badly—both the victim and the ‘friends’ who joined his behavior.   It would move out to the rest of the adult community, talking honestly about people we have hurt, making amends to them when we could and making commitments to ourselves not to let it happen on our watch again.

Then maybe our kids could be safe to talk to us honestly about their own situations.

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Three things about transformation:

1) I can still see her face. She looks up at me, head bent over, hair partially covering her face. “I don’t know if Jesus turned water into wine,” she says, tentatively, as if I might not be interested. “But I do know that he turned crack cocaine into a couch and chairs, because that furniture is in my living room now.”

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For years, Biblical scholars have suggested that the real sin condemned in the story of Sodom and Gomorrah was not homosexuality, but inhospitality. Read more →

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According to Joshua Friedman, an astrophysicist at the University of Chicago, “All the visible world that we see around us is just the tip of the iceberg.”

An article in Science News Magazine says that 70% of the universe is “a mysterious entity known as dark energy that pervades all of space, pushing it apart at an ever-faster rate.” Read more →

“Healing does not mean going back to the way things were before, but rather allowing what is now to move us closer to God.”

—Ram Dass

Just as much as marriage, divorce or separation can be a holy choice. When divorce is grounded in deep reflection and care, it can be an expression of love and commitment to life. The covenant of committed partnership is an important one, to be honored and respected. However, ’till death do us part,’ is not a vow to cling to, if the relationship itself is causing death.

A belief in continuing revelation in our search for truth and meaning says that, when new information becomes clear to us, honoring that information is a spiritual path to be followed.

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