For So the Children Come
For each child that’s born
A morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are
On November 12th of this year, three congregations co-ordained me, giving me a new name – Reverend Deanna Vandiver. On the morning of December 21st, Katherine Grace was born and I received another name – Aunt De!
Beloveds, that every child born could arrive so loved, so cared for as my beautiful niece, baby Kate… For so the children come into this world, into our lives, and we – we are called to love them enough to begin what Howard Thurman called the work of Christmas: “finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, releasing prisoners, rebuilding nations, making peace among brothers [and sisters], making music in the heart.”
There is no such thing as “somebody else’s baby.” They are all our children, our beloved miracles of life to care for, to care about, and to commit to healing a broken world so that they may not suffer unnecessarily. As our nation grieves the death of the slain children in Newtown, CT, we are deeply aware of our accountability for their lives and the lives of all children who are harmed by violence and the devaluation of life.
Unitarian Universalist theology tells us that we are a part of an interconnected web of creation, related to and in relationship with each thread of creation. Our society tells us that we are isolated individuals, worth only what we can produce or inherit, and that violence is a credible response to violence. We tenders of the web of life know that violence increases alienation & fear, hides the connections we have to each other, allows us to become numb to the miracle of life, to the wonders of this universe.
My mother has a calendar of days in her bathroom. On the day my niece was born, the wisdom of the calendar instructed “Give people a piece of your heart, instead of a piece of your mind.” Navigating the dynamics of multiple families, hospital policies, and fear for my baby sister’s health with very little sleep, that nugget of wisdom was salvific for me. Life lived from a place of gratitude and wonder is very different from a life lived from a place of ingratitude, anger, and fear.
We who grieve the beloveds of Sandy Hook Elementary are also called to grieve the 800 “civilian casualties” of our country’s drone strikes in Pakistan in the last four years, for the children who are caught in cross-fire in our urban centers, for every child who has lost a parent in the endless US military actions. We understand that we are not called to stand on the side of love for some children. We are called to stand on the side of love for all children. No matter what we think about their choices, their policies, or their cultures, our hearts are called to honor the inherent worth and dignity of all creation.
Beloveds, each child that’s born is a holy child. You are a miracle. So is your neighbor. As we swim through the ocean of the universe, may we remember this wisdom born of a child called Jesus. Love your neighbor as yourself – and beloveds, love yourself – because if you cannot have compassion for the spark of creation that is your being, you will be able to deny compassion to other sparks of creation.
Give yourself and your neighbor a piece of your heart instead of a piece of your mind. See how quickly this begins the work of Christmas…
For so the children come, and so they have been coming for thousands of years…may each child born find peace and love in our hearts and good will toward all of creation as we commit to doing the work of Christmas.
For each child that’s born
A morning star rises
and sings to the universe
who we are
What Makes Us Safe
It is only natural that in the wake of the horrific shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary, the world of social media is awash with solutions, things that we should have done to prevent this tragedy, things that we urgently need to do to prevent more such tragedies, things that will make us safe. Some of these suggestions strike me as downright bizarre, such as the idea that we need to arm teachers so that they can protect their classrooms. Hmm…guns in the classroom—what could possibly go wrong? Some of these suggestions are, to my mind, flat-out offensive, such as the claim that this tragedy happened because we have taken God out of the schools, and that “God will ‘bless the USA’ when we put him back in it.” Really? God allowed innocent children to die out of a fit of pique over the lack of prayer in school? Who would believe in such a God?
Other suggestions make more sense to me: that we should limit the sale of assault weapons, or require gun owners to carry liability insurance, or that we control the sale of ammunition. Still other people are arguing for better mental health care, to which I can only say “about time.”
Unfortunately, the more I think about it (and like much of the country I’ve been thinking about it obsessively for days), the less I think that any of these solutions—including the ones I like—are going to really make us safe. By all means, let’s have sensible laws limiting weapons. But no, we’re not going to get all the dangerous weapons out of the hands of dangerous people. Or people who were never dangerous until the moment that they snapped. Absolutely, let’s give people better access to mental health care. But even if we could assure compliance with medication and therapy not every illness responds will to treatment. And we will never be able to know for sure the difference between someone who is dangerous and someone who is merely volatile.
And really, if you get down to it, even if we were able to prevent every shooting spree, that’s hardly a guarantee of safety. No amount of control over people’s behavior could prevent the devastation of Hurricane Sandy, or Katrina before that. As someone who lives pretty much on top of a fault line in California I know that a devastating earthquake in the area where I live is basically inevitable – a matter of when, not if. While I in no way agree with people like Adam Lanza’s mother who prepare for cataclysm by stockpiling weapons, given the ever-increasing effects of climate change, I would say that expecting disaster is not unrealistic.
The question is what we plan to do about it. We could prepare our children for the possibility of school shootings by sending them to school with a gun (as one parent is bizarrely said to have done). Or we could teach them to be kind to loners and misfits, to report or stand up to bullies, to tell an adult when another child seems depressed or distraught. We could deal with crime in our neighborhoods by arming ourselves. Or we could get to know our neighbors, and keep an eye on one other’s houses so that we are prepared to call the police if something seems amiss. We could stockpile food and weapons so that in a local or national emergency we are prepared to defend ourselves against all comers, prepared to go it alone. Or we could support increased money for the government emergency services that we are sure to increasingly need. And we can get together to fill sandbags when it seems like the floodwaters are coming, or find ways to share electricity with those who are without power after the storm comes, or offer shelter to those who have lost their homes.
This is what people did for Hurricanes Sandy and Katrina. In the aftermath of 9/11 people poured into New York to search the rubble or support the first responders. When a section of freeway collapsed during the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake folks in that “dangerous” neighborhood converged to help the injured and look for people who might be trapped. This is what we do. This is who we are.
The conservative entertainment complex and the NRA make a lot of money selling fear, and solutions to fear that involve scapegoating, isolation and the capacity to inflict damage before someone gets to you. And yes, that gut-level defensive reaction is who we are, too.
But we get to choose what we act on. We get to choose what we practice, so that when the time of crisis comes our habitual ways of being come to the fore. What makes us safe is the ongoing work of caring for the vulnerable; loving our neighbors; living, like the lilies of the field, in the beauty of the moment rather than in the fear of what might come. We will never be safe. Safety just isn’t part of this package we call life. But we can harbor one another, creating all the safety we can muster in this dangerous world.
The Day After Newtown: Finding Our Way
And so we wake up the morning after, and it wasn’t a dream. The children are still dead, the teachers beside them. It is another day, a gray one, where people and animals must be fed and life will go on no matter how we feel.
Many of us took the occasion, yesterday, to find one another and weep. The people of Newtown wept. The President wept. Many of us watched them online and wept along with them. Many of us gathered, with our families, or friends, or in churches, or online, to weep together.
And today the weeping will continue. But along with weeping, those of us who are not in the center of the tragedy will begin, together, to grope our way along in the darkness and imagine what we might do besides weep. Some will begin researching gun control organizations and join them. Some will call for a March on Washington. Some will argue endlessly on facebook about whether gun control would have helped. Some will call for us, instead or as well, to address the issues of mental illness more aggressively. Some will simply be with their own families, grief sharpening their gratitude for all they have.
Of everything that I heard yesterday, and of everything that was cited by others last night in the three hour online time of mourning that my congregation held on our Livestream channel, the #1 cited words of comfort came not from Scripture or Shakespeare, but from Mr. Rogers. These four words, people lifted up over and over: Look for the helpers. Look for the helpers.
The full context of Fred Rogers quote is this: When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”
And so, yesterday, many of us were awed by the thousands of people who surrounded the scene of the tragedy to help. We spoke with reverence of the courageous teachers who never stopped helping through the whole event. We spoke of first responders and politicians and counselors who helped and will help.
Today, as we wrestle with complex emotions and struggle to imagine what we might do ourselves, how we might go on, I suggest that we use Fred Rogers’ words as our compass. As we are about to take an action, as we are choosing what to do or not do, say or not say, we can ask ourselves, “Does this help? Am I a helper? If someone is looking for the helpers, will they see this? Will my action give hope to children who are looking for it?”
We may have different ideas about what exactly will help. But we have some pretty good hunches. Some things we’ll all agree on. Listening to each other as we process the event will help. Giving a child the most precious gift of all: our full attention, floor or lap time, will help. Engaging in activities which strengthen our connection to our neighbors and our local community will help.
And I believe that strategic and focused action to limit the carrying and use of weapons will help. Better options and care for people with mental illness will help. Some of us, me included, will put some of our helping energy in this direction.
However we are called to help, may we be bold about it. May we allow our commitments, our action, to be visible. May we claim our power to act, to care, to change the world. As we move out into our day, our week, and 2013, may we be part of the healing.
