03/19/2022
Lynn Murphy Mark
It is very early on a Saturday morning. Yesterday, all day, I kept hoping for an inspiration to strike so I could put together a blog post. I looked inside myself for a bit of something to write about. Nothing, nada, zilch, zero, bupkus – all through the day. I thought maybe my writing career had dried up – that’s me, catastrophizing as I often do.
This morning I start my ritual. Make coffee, feed Mollie and take her outside, turn on my Happy Lamp, and log in to the computer. Usually I start out by reading Richard Rohr’s daily meditation, but on Saturdays, it’s a summary of this last week’s posts. (By the way, the subject was on feminine spirituality all week. It was awesome. There might be a blog in there.) Not much mail so far. Off to FaceBook I go.
A post comes up to greet me. It’s a little video of elementary school children in Italy welcoming some Ukrainian refugee children. The kids are waving Ukraine’s colors and holding up hand made welcome signs. They cheer as the children walk in the front door. I wonder what the refugee children were feeling as they walked into a new, unfamiliar space so far away from home. My hope is they felt a little of their confusion and bewilderment melt away as they were greeted warmly.
I remember another FaceBook gem: a video of two five year old boys so excited because they got the exact same haircut. They were hugging and laughing that their teacher would not be able to tell them apart. That’s the wisdom of children, and I will always smile because one kid was Black and the other kid white.
For five years I was a Middle School nurse in Santa Fe, New Mexico. One day I was strolling the 7th grade hall on my way to teach a sex ed class. I was a little early, so I stopped to look at a big bulletin board featuring written essays and hand drawn pictures on the subject of Utopia. I stopped to look at the children’s efforts to describe a blissful place and time. I thought I would read about a place with big shopping malls and fast food joints and carnivals and only a few or no school days at all.
I was so wrong. Every essay talked about a world in which there was no bullying; a world in which all people were equal, where kindness prevailed, where there was plenty for everyone, where war was a foreign concept. The pictures depicted children of all colors standing together. I was moved to tears at the innocence and hopefulness displayed. Later I talked to the teacher who had given this assignment. She said she initially wondered if the kids would think this assignment was dumb. Quite the contrary. Once they understood the concept of Utopia they went to work talking in small groups and were genuinely excited about the task that lay before them.
I think about my own grandsons, both of them under 5 years old. One day, the younger boy grabbed a toy away from his older brother. As their mom started to intervene, the older boy explained the rules to her: “See, Mommy? Sometimes I take from him and sometimes he takes from me.” He is not always that wise when toys are taken away but for the most part, they have worked out a system. I’m going to nominate them to go to the United Nations and teach the grownups a thing or two about getting along and about how to share. God knows we need their wisdom.
1 thought on “Praise for the innocents”
When we listen to children…really listen to them…rather than telling them NO about everything they are doing, we can learn some profound lessons.
When I taught 1st graders, in another teacher’s class these same students were asked to get a friend or sibling (older) to write down for them the end of this partial sentence for MLK Day: “I have a Dream….” I was astonished at the significant number of 1st graders who said: “I have a Dream…that my Mom won’t hit me again…that my Dad will stop drinking…that my Brother will treat me better…etc.”
Yet the most profound lesson I learned was when I was teaching 8th graders. This young student was clearly one of my students who had a terrible home life. Since I was never one to stand by when someone was being picked on or bullied, as I walked into the gym for class one day, I heard several students giving this young man a hard time, of all things…about his “rich parents.”
I caught the tail end of a comment by one of his peers saying, “I wish I HAD all your money!!! so I could be RICH!!!” This young man turned around, quiet as always, and with a voice that could barely be heard, he asked the bully: “Does your Mom love you?” at which point the bully sputtered out: “Of course she does!!!” This truly tortured soul of a student said: “If I could, I would give you ever dollar that my parents have to spend just 1 hour with your Mother.”
You could have heard a pin drop in this huge gymnasium. Not a single person in that class said anything, including the bully. I could see and feel The Message sinking into all of their psyches. This quiet young man, courageous beyond his years, had spoken Truth. And we all heard it. From that day forward, none of this group hassled this young man again.
Over the years, I have thought about this powerful lesson on Love. The strength of healing love is much more powerful than all the dollars in the world. And, even 1 hour of love can begin the healing process from a lifetime devoid of love.
I always felt that this ultra-quiet student spoke these words straight from His Spirit to each of the students’ Spirits present in that gym, AND to the Spirit of all those who would hear this story in the future…for several of my former students have referenced this “experience” later in their lives and how it made them consider how they treated others (with Love or without) and how The Power of Love can lift us up, if only for an hour!
Blessings!!
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