Startled by Storytime

Sophie and I are reading I Am Malala ,by Malala Yousafzai—The Girl who Stood Up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban.  While I trip over the unfamiliar names of people and places in Swat, Pakistan, the irony that at the time of the events, she is my daughter’s age shakes me. It brings it home.

2008...We had just bought our dream home in Western Washington.  I was homeschooling my sweet kids and wrestling with kidney stones, ADHD, managing my home and trying to figure out how to heal my family while enjoying the beautiful abundance available to us.  2008...Malala and her family were fighting for the right to just be.  To attend school, wear dresses, sing and learn.  Daily dealing with gunfire and bombs and facing the decision whether to risk their lives to attend school, to educate others, or to acquiesce and stay home like “good” Muslims.  The disparity makes my mind reel.  My 2008 and theirs.  Owing only to the privilege I have to have been born to white middle-class Americans. I remember vaguely that year, seeing the news talk about President Musharraf and Benazir Bhutto, and of far away placed like Kandahar.  But they were just snippets of stories in the hunt for Bin Laden that had been going on for years.  Not girls like my little one who was learning ballet.  

Through her story I hear so many echoes of other wars on women, religious wars, slavery, cultural wars, righteousness gone bad.  Malala’s story is not an isolated one.  Her people’s Taliban tragedy is not unique.  It’s not even just a Muslim story.  It has played out on the pages of history and on many stages, including the one my father was born into in Germany, 1946.  There it was the Jews and others deemed undesirable.  Or slavery in the South where blacks were property without rights to life, liberty or the pursuit of happiness.

As I read to Sophie in Malala’s voice, I am astonished at the bravery.  The clarity of how important it is to speak up.  I try to put myself in her place, and I realize that I am not that brave.  She was shot for attending school as a female.  Lives in exile now in Britain. Longs to return home to Swat and her native people and land.  Could I take a stand that could cost me so much?  Malala mentioned Anne Frank and her diary...and I was reminded of those who hid the Jews, who risked themselves for those who were targeted.  And, like Corrie Ten Boom paid a very, very high price for that stand.

I think of the Black Lives in our country, experiencing situations in many ways similar to Malala’s.  Fearful of armed, angry men.  Unsafe bird watching or jogging or a doing a myriad of other things I take for granted daily to be free to do--even during a pandemic. My mind whirls.  I feel so insulated and removed even from these DAILY news reports.  Painting my house, helping my son register for college, baking brownies with my daughter and walking the dog through the beautiful neighborhood blooming with early summer flowers.

It occurs to me that we are not all in the same boat.  That LIFE looks very different depending on where you are born, the color of your skin, your gender or your faith.  Sitting with the reality of this rends my heart in two.  I feel perplexed.  Befuddled.  Genuinely stymied and long after my daughter is in bed, I try to untangle my threads. 

Part of me feels that my life IS a gift and it’s meant to be enjoyed.  For many years, unprocessed feelings of guilt and fear and shame darkened my world and I could not allow myself to enjoy.  Now as I do so, I recognize the value in celebrating the good. In holding dear my awareness of all I have to be grateful for. Yet, I do so with awareness that others do not have that same gift through no fault of their own, and it feels so very unfair.  My puzzlement comes in what to do with this information.  As Francis Schaeffer once wrote, How Then Shall We Live? 

There is a saying, “You cannot hurt badly enough to make someone else feel better.”  I do believe this to be true.  Me feeling bad about my own life and gifts because of what is happening to girls in Swat or Black lives here does NOT make it better for them.  

So what does?  How can I become braver?  How can we shift the vibration of this world from fear and powerlessness, domination and hatred to kindness and grace, freedom--true freedom from fear of abuse from authority?  To where ALL lives really DO matter and ARE safe and have access to education, health care, and the opportunity to all that I take for granted. Can we?  

I think there is a reason why everyone knows the name of Mother Theresa.  Of Mr. Rogers.  Of Martin Luther King, Jr.  Of Ghandi.  In our bones we know.  

Standing up and speaking out is important.  Vital in fact to draw attention to things we’d prefer to not see or be aware of.  Speaking out alone though, doesn’t solve things. Just looking at the divisiveness in our world, in our social media feeds, in the news and in our leaders. All the words, all the posts and posters and tweets and we are no closer to the grace-filled world I long for.

I have a quote sitting on my desk by Mother Theresa. “We can do no great things. Only small things with great love.” Her decision to bring dignity by caring for the dying in India—something so invisible, so seemingly unimportant, when done a thousand times, becomes a way of living that bleeds into other arenas. The recognition of dignity, of humanity in EACH person. Including those who look different. Speak a different tongue. Believe differently than you or I. Seeing one another and honoring that.

Just today, a friend shared her experience with Rio Grande Borderland…providing presence, dignity, shelter and care for those in limbo at our doors on our Southern border. I’m grateful for those who take action that I can align with, share and support. And given that my in-laws live in New Mexico, I may even be able to bring my daughter to add our presence to this good work. https://riograndeborderland.org/

Ultimately, perhaps, my heart says, it is in lovingkindness.  It is in humility.  It is the peaceful, gentle warriors who move our hearts and soften the clay.  Judgement and hatred and shaming only shatters the clay making shards that cut and destroy.  Being seen and heard, given that dignity and awareness….can that change things? What if we tried? What if instead of arguing our points, we tried to see the other? We step into their shoes?

I don’t know. I doubt my words or thoughts could change things in Swat. But then again, whatever else has changed things before? One candle lights another which lights the next, until a football stadium is all aglow. Then, where there was darkness, we can see again. Just one light. Like Malala.