How the Cavs Confirm the Goodness of Mankind

I was going to write another post about how damaging fear is.

How, if we feed into it, it can permeate every single aspect of our lives and turn rational caring people into hate-filled fools.  How, if we give it credence, it will invariably control our thoughts and our actions and dance us around on its strings like a puppet master, bending us to its will.

I was going to write about how overcoming fear requires courage that we sometimes just can't muster. But that the freedom and openness and peace that come from defeating our fears is unparalleled.  Life affirming.  Merciful.  And worth the battle scars.

That's what I was going to write about.

Then the Cavs won last night and I'm all amped up about it!

And that turns my mind from pondering the inner recesses of man's propensity toward darkness and destruction to, instead, reflecting on the goodness of man.  

It's easy to fall in line with the naysayers who preach that people are innately bad and the world is a den of insanity and depravity.  (Depending on what day you ask me, I might agree with that assessment.)

But it's then, in the midst of the darkest of times, that the brightest light can shine.  As Fred Roger's mother told him as a child when watching scary things on the news,

"Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

Visit this link to read about some of the helpers in the Orlando tragedy: 10 Stories that reaffirm faith in goodness. Doing this, looking for the good in scary situations, reaffirms a couple things to me.

First, I have no earthly idea why, when I am certain that a loving God exists, such unimaginably heinous things happen.  And if anyone tells you that they know the why, they are either fools or liars.  I have an idea that the why is a mixture of free will and fear, but who am I to say?  Sometimes the wisest thing we can say is that we don't have a freaking clue.

Secondly, I know in my soul that God is as present in those unimaginable heinous situations as he is in the joyous ones.

Look.  We're all his kids - from the most wicked to the most pious among us.  I for one find that comforting since I have a little of both in me.  His heart breaks when his kids are blinded by fear and commit hateful acts.  His heart swells when his kids come together and help each other, love each other.  He is an omnipresent parent who experiences every emotion that we experience with our own kids, including wanting to shake the shit out them sometimes.

This may be a simplistic take on a very complex and divine being, but he made us in his image, so I have to believe that he experiences emotions like we do.  I mean Bible stories run the gamut of very emotional processing and subsequent reactions on his part...that's all I'm saying. :)

So be well, my friends.  Rejoice in the Cavs' glory.  Dance and shout and celebrate!  Albeit on a smaller scale than, say, the end of slavery or the overthrow of the nazis, this is truly an example of the heights man can reach when we work together and help each other and believe in things the naysayers tell us not to.  

Basic Principles of Humanity

No Hate Crime Convictions

Reading the article linked above, looking at the picture of this mother walking down the courthouse steps with her son, I'm thinking what a generally terrifying prospect it is to send our kids out into the world.  

Accidents, bad decisions, stupid mistakes, wrong place/wrong time situations...these worries plague every decent parent. But how those worries must compound exponentially for parents of kids who face racism or homophobia or xenophobia on top of every other curve ball that life can throw.

Cruelty and ignorance and hate in varying degrees have always been passed off as acceptable in our world.  Collateral damage. From bullies in the schoolyards to genocide. I don't understand one bit of it, but I know that it's true.  

There is a certain level of hate that we tolerate as simply the price of doing the business of living, I guess. And while I don't think we should teach our kids to be thin-skinned whiners who can't handle rejection or adversity or consequences, much the opposite in fact, I do believe that there is a monumental difference between toughing up our kids and teaching them that hate and ignorance are tolerable.

In the case of Donald Williams from the story above, I cannot believe that there was not one person in that entire dorm who stood up to these idiots. When they saw the nazi symbols and the confederate flag and the hate speech written on walls and heard the awful name calling and taunting and saw the freaking bike lock around this kid's neck...there was not one level headed, compassionate person brave enough to do the right thing, even at the risk of becoming a target themselves? Not one?

We are all ignorant as kids. Although I don't remember a specific instance, I'm sure I saw bullies on my playground and did nothing about it. I'm sure I called names and was awful to someone in elementary school. But as adults, even in our late teens and twenties, we can no longer claim ignorance. By then most of us have experienced bullies in some form and have felt the deep wounds they leave in their wake.  

By then we know better and should do better.  Yet many of us still look away.


When Donald and his family spoke up and took the men to court, the jury decided that misdemeanor slaps on the wrist were sufficient. In hate cases like this, my mind always wanders to Matthew Shepard. How many stood by and allowed that barbarity to happen? Or on a macro level, slavery, civil abuses, the Holocaust. Those things can't happen unless people look the other way.

Silence and inaction are just as bad as doing the damn thing yourself and, any way you look at it, that's cowardice.  

It comes down to this. Bullies are aplenty and we all, our kids included, will face them at different points in our lives. We thicken our kids' skins, build them up, teach them that our worth is not hinged on how others see us but on how we see ourselves through God's eyes. But when someone attacks a person's skin color or culture or sexuality, elemental aspects of who a person is, it wounds deeply. When that hate and fear manifest physically, when the bullies graduate from spewing words to using violence, those wounds turns into fissures.  

Those fissures erode the most basic principals of humanity - the moral fibers that connect us all.  

And that is intolerable.

We are drilling this into our kids even now so that, someday, when they are inevitably bullied, see someone else being bullied, or feel the urge to bully someone themselves, they will stop and think and feel their way around the situation to make the right decision.  

That's how the fissures are healed. That's how the fabric of humanity is sewn back together. Stitch by stitch, minute by minute, one man taking a stand, one kid making a good decision, compassionate souls living every day with their eyes wide open, doing the brave work of the right thing.

What is Wisdom?

"The more I live, the more I learn.
The more I learn, the more I realize
The less I know."

I assumed that as I aged, I would gain more understanding.  That somehow my experiences and education would gradually amass to provide me with a certain amount of enlightenment.  Not that I would become brilliant or something.  But I was holding out for wiser. 

However, it seems a world that I assumed would become more black and white as I accumulated years is just getting grayer. 

For instance, the more I learn, the less I understand people and their actions, including my own sometimes.  But at the same time I seem to give them more room for error now.  I don't judge them as often or as harshly as I used to, which I think is good.  Where I seem to be losing insight as to why people do the things they do, I'm gaining appreciation for the fact that I don't know what that person's world is like, where they come from, what they have endured or survived or witnessed. Not that that excuses certain behaviors.  But it does help me assimilate information, which gives me some sense of comfort in these very uncomfortable times. 

There are a few things I feel more certain of now than in my younger days.  My faith is one of them.  But just as with everything else, while my conviction of God's love solidifies in my soul, my mind is less able to explain why.  Maybe it's because the vastness of God and the infinity of his love and his peace are unexplainable, especially to those who haven't felt it.  Now that I'm older, I accept the fact that I will never be able to comprehend it all.  I've done my doubting and studying and questioning and learning and searching, and have arrived at a place where the answers I have found are steadfast enough for my mind to justify accepting the truths I cannot grasp. 

Business, hardships, religion, disappointments, love, war, technology, politics, death, life...I don't intellectually understand much more than I did ten years ago.  But I do feel like I've grown.  Matured.  Where I've accepted my mind's limitations, I've made up for by expanding my...what...spirituality?  humanity?  maybe both. 

Maybe that's what wisdom is.  Maybe it's not merely the edification of one's intellect, but also the illumination of one's soul.

Ordinary Heroes

Do you ever notice how some of our days have themes?

Sometimes it's an I'm dropping everything today theme (one I have a lot). Or an everything is going my way today theme. Or you notice a certain number a hundred times one day or hear the same song everywhere you go another day.

Do you ever have days like that? I do.

And today's theme is heroes.

It started off this morning with a story on the news about Antonio Diaz Chacon who, upon seeing a six year old neighbor girl get thrown into a strange van, hopped into his truck and chased the van while his wife called 911. The van ended up crashing, the child abductor fled, Antonio rescued the little girl and the cops caught the bad guy.

Hero number one.

Then on my way to work there was an accident on the freeway and traffic was creeping by. When my car reached the crash, I saw a few firemen around a car trying to get the driver out. Their hats were all lined up on the trunk, one fireman held the driver's hand while another was cutting the man out. Seeing that firefighter holding that man's hand brought tears to my eyes.

Hero number two.


Just a few yards up the road alongside the freeway I found more lights, this time from a police car. When my car reached that scene, I saw a police officer helping a man change his front tire, mere inches away from cars zooming past them both.

Hero number three.

I so often hear scary stories and witness ugly things. There is so much tragedy and corruption and so many terrible awful people doing terrible awful things in this world. It's easy for me to forget that God is good and that he uses ordinary people to do extraordinary things every moment of every day.

Today was a nice reminder of that - of our everyday heroes.

Worried Blessings

I'm a worrier. And an overthinker. And emotional.

Where it concerns my kids, it counts double.

The reason I bring this up is that today, I’m worried and over thinking and emotional. I heard three stories on Good Morning America about people who are abusing or killing or neglecting the children God blessed them with.

My stomach is tied up in knots about this world that I brought my kids into.

Of course this is not the first time I’ve been upset or disgusted by humanity and how children suffer at the hands of their parents or other people they love. I mean, it’s appalling if a kid is abused by a stranger or an acquaintance. But to be abused by someone they love and adore like a child loves their parents? It’s unfathomable to me that this kind of evil exists in a world that can also produce so much joy and light and goodness.

I hear these stories and picture what kind of hell these kids are living through and those thoughts stick in my brain for days or weeks or months. And then I worry about my kids, if someone would do something to them, if they would even just see something terrible, or worse. My imagination can be a wonderful place, but it can also draw up dark, vivid, scaring images that I cannot shake without a “God, please take these worries from my head” prayer.

I know I cannot control what others do; only what I do, how I react to others, and how I teach my kids to do the same. And that drives me crazy. I want to shelter my children and protect them from every evil I can envision, which would make me a smothering mother. And I know that’s not healthy, either.

I’m rambling.

What are the answers? Why do things unimaginable things happen to children? Why can’t we as a society protect them better? Why does God let idiots and crack heads and evil people even have kids? Why must these kids suffer so? It enrages me. It saddens me. It worries me.

In the shower this morning, I was asking God these questions…more like shouting him these questions. As a Christian, I know that God is with me and with those kids and even with those crazy-ass people who do these awful things. And I also know that God is strong enough for me to be mad at him sometimes, too, in my frustrated ignorance, expecting him to intercede.

It’s enough to shake my faith.

But then God nudged me as I listened to my Jonny Lang CD on the way to work and reminded me that he’s there with us all inside our heads, hearing us scream out; if we hand him our burdens, he’ll give us peace; if we give him our chains, he’ll set us free; and he’ll never leave us or forsake us or abuse us...

Anyway, it’s a beautiful song – listen for yourself (if the link below works).

It made me think that he’s probably more saddened when one of his children is hurt or killed than we are. He’s probably more disappointed and angry when one of his children commits these awful atrocities than we are.

And also reminded me of the responsibility I have to protect my kids, to love my kids, to be thankful everyday for my kids, to guide my kids…but not to control my kids. My job is to “train them in the way that they should go and, even when they are old, they will not depart from it”. The rest I have to surrender to God.