i need a glass of wine....i have a headache....my mind is racing...my heart huts...and i feel sick.
today this article was sent out in the office (it is about a 15 year old girl who was gang raped for 2 hours outside her school dance while nearly 20 bystanders stood by and did nothing). i read it at my computer and i immediately felt overwhelmed, teary, mad. with each sentence my heart broke and questions arose. granted, working for a human rights group i hear horror stories all the time, but there are moments that i am just flat overwhelmed. today is one of them. as i read the article swear words came under my breath and i just wanted to hit something (great for my non-violence stance :)). questions just fly in one after another....
HOW CAN THIS ACTUALLY HAPPEN? how often do things like this in our world happen? would i be a bystander and not intervene in injustice if i were to stumble upon it on the street? do i stumble on injustices now that i am just a bystander? HOW CAN WE BE SO FAR OFF????? how did we get here? am i making a difference? what do we do? is it possible to end this? God, where are you? HOW DO WE END THIS????
the hows and whys become unbearable.
in the middle of all of this i am haunted by this simple reality... i am attached to this humanity! it is the same spectrum that mother theresa, mlk, my son, my friends, my family sit. it is all the same humanity! the potential for both horror and splendor in my neighbor and in me. i am in the mess. i am a part of the mess.
there is a quote by cs lewis that i have always loved. its meaning has morphed and changed over the years. it is shifting into a deeper meaning. i think of it today. in light of all this. the weight of glory, the angst for His kingdom, the yearning for redemption is strong in my heart tonight...so i remember what lewis once said:
"There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations--these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit--immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of the kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously--no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinners--no mere tolerance, or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment. Next to the Blessed Sacrament itself, your neighbor is the holiest object presented to your senses."
cs lewis, weight of glory
i am left undone today. the stakes feel high and the task even more impossible. and all i know how to do is continue to pray, maybe today with more desperation...jesus, come....i pray. in me, in this city, in the broken, in the abused, in the oppressed and the oppressor..in this world. your kingdom come your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.
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