Prodigal Prophet

     I’ve been re-reading two favorite books of mine in recent weeks: Eckhart Tolle’s A New Earth and Parker J. Palmer’s The Active Life.

     As is so often the case with me, I have long understood intellectually the concepts they present, but have struggled to apply them in any practical sense in everyday life. That’s a problem, I think, too, with respect to our understanding and practice of what Jesus tried to teach us. The paradox is that the very concept I’m talking about is also the culprit for why it is difficult to connect the dots.

     The concept I’m referring to is what I believe Jesus meant when he said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves…For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life? (Matthew 16:24-26, NRSV)

     Deny my “self.” Hmmm…There’s a lot of confusion about what that passage possibly means, some of which is the fault of psychologists and educators and pastors who come from different “operational definitions” of the word “self.” Too often we compare apples to oranges. When I talk about my “self esteem,” for example, I’m referring to “soul esteem,” i.e., holding in reverence the “authentic” me, that chip-off-the-old-block child of God “me.”

     I don’t believe that’s the “self” Christ tells me to deny. The self He referred to is what I call the “hologram” of me, the “ego” (another word subject to the confusion of different definitions), the often “inauthentic” me who is defined exclusively by the world. That “me” is the sum total of the projections of parents, friends, teachers, employers, employees, opponents, enemies, governments, you name it. Its identity and sense of self-value varies wildly based on what happens to it and whether what happens to it hurts or feels good (which also feeds its ideas about what is “good” and what is “evil”).

     If I remember that it’s the hologram who is talking when I’m upset or even ecstatic and that those feelings have nothing to do with the “real” me, it’s amazing how much better I feel about myself. Keeping those two separate in my mind is the key. But one lives exclusively in the kingdom of heaven, and the other exclusively in the world, and I can’t, for the life of me, figure out how to exist in both at the same time. “My kingdom is not of this world,” said Jesus. Boy, was He ever right about that.

     Of course, the ideal situation would be if the world was the kingdom of heaven, because then, the ego, that “hologram” of me, wouldn’t even exist. I would always be who I truly am, you would always be who you truly are, and nothing that ever “happened” would have the slightest impact on how much of a treasure each of us is to God or each other. But that’s the ideal situation, as I said, and not the reality. Knowing that, I need to make it my responsibility not only to be who I am, no matter what, but to remind my friends and loved ones, when they really need it, of who they are.

     A couple of years ago, a good friend’s nine-year-old granddaughter had a freak accident that snapped a major tendon in her ankle, and she faced a surgery to try and repair it. No one knew for sure what would happen—there was a chance that it would, but there was also a chance that she would never again walk without a pronounced limp. It was the night before the surgery and Grace, an aspiring ballerina, was restless. She turned to her grandmother, who was sitting with her while her parents grabbed a bite to eat.

     “Grandma,” she asked, “what if, in the morning when I wake up, I can’t walk?”

     My friend thought for a moment and, rather than trying to reassure her that it wouldn’t happen, answered the real question her precious granddaughter was asking by asking her a question in return.

     “Who are you?”

     The child, confused for a second, shrugged her shoulders. “Grace,” she said.

     “And in the morning,” said her grandmother, “when you wake up, whether you can walk or not, who will you be?”

     The child smiled and within minutes, drifted to sleep. She was Grace then, and she would be Grace the next day and the day after that, no matter what happened.

     God, I wish we could all remember that.

Philippians 2:6-8

Though in the form of God,
Christ Jesus did not cling to equality with God,
But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant,
and was born in human likeness.
Being found in human form, he humbled himself
and became obedient to death, even death on a cross.

I grew up in my grandparents’ home, as many of you know. As a little girl, I adored my grandfather, and I think it is safe to say that he adored me, too. In the absence of my biological father, my grandfather became mine, and in the absence of his own biological child, I became his. Though he died over 40 years ago now, I still carry deeply intimate memories of how I felt when I was with him—before he died, when I wasn’t in school or off reading a book, I was always by his side.

I remember, even before I was old enough for school, being in his garden with him—he behind a hand-driven plow, furrowing rows, me behind him dropping seeds and covering them up with a little hoe. By that time in his life, there were no tractors—the plow was pulled by a mule owned by his brother, a mule we walked three miles round-trip to borrow on plowing day. Well, that’s not exactly true—my grandfather walked three miles. I rode on the mule’s back with my grandfather leading him by the reins for half the journey.

Other times, he rescued me from harm’s way—the time the billy-goat tried to impale me in a stall, the afternoon when, while we were in the midst of those rows in the garden, a well-camouflaged rattlesnake came slithering between my legs. The latter might have been disastrous, except for the fact that despite my inclination to break and run, I trusted my grandfather so that I obeyed his barked command to freeze where I stood.

I followed my grandfather everywhere, emulating him in virtually everything. Sometimes the result wasn’t pleasurable—I watched him stomp on a bee once and followed suit, neglecting to notice that he was wearing hobnail boots and I was…barefoot. I flattened my thumb a few times with a ball-peen hammer, too.

I think we forget what “following” Jesus means sometimes, that it’s too easy for us to think of Jesus the human as uniquely “gifted” with the ability “not to sin” because he was also “divine,” and ignore the call to follow in his steps, to live according to his example. Not because we’re belligerent, rebellious children, but because we believe ourselves not gifted in the same way. And yet, because we are “made in His image,” I think we are also, each of us, divine—born in the “form of God.”

There are some who would call that statement “sacrilegious,” a blasphemy, a lack of reverence for my Creator, and step away from the thought, fearful that I will be struck dead where I stand, turned into a pillar of salt. The key for me is the first full line in the passage above—“Though in the form of God, Christ Jesus did not cling to equality with God.” I believe that the spirit of God is infused into us at the very beginning of all our lives, just as it was Jesus. But to acknowledge that one is a “chip off the old block” is not the same as to claim “equality” with the block itself. There is no question that we are, in no way, equal with the great I Am—just as it would be folly to say that a single drop of water is equal to the ocean. To claim that would be idolatry.

But, even so, every once in a while, if we can empty ourselves and allow that breath—that piece of the spirit of God that is already there—to fill us up completely, we see ourselves and each other through God’s eyes, just as I did long, long ago in my grandfather’s eyes.

And if we do,  we will follow him anywhere.

I visited a friend out of town recently and as I got ready for bed, I noticed a book on the bedside table. Its title was one word: Boundaries. I picked it up to discover that it had been written by a pastoral counselor sometime in the past few years, and flipped through the pages to see if the pointedly Christian “take” on the subject varied from my own psychotherapist’s view of the concept. I was pleased to find that, for the most part, it didn’t.

It was “coincidental” that the book was there at that particular time, but God has always had to be “sneaky” with me. As I said in an earlier blog, I’m editing a book about the effects of “spiritual abuse,” the term some have come to use to describe sexual abuse perpetrated by a person in spiritual authority, someone to whom we have been taught to believe, by virtue of their position, that we can lower our boundaries to, becoming vulnerable in a way that we cannot dare to be in general. It’s particularly egregious to me because I believe that the crux of God’s message to us about how we are to treat each other is about boundaries—loving our neighbors as ourselves to me, as long as I can remember, has meant that we are to respect the boundaries of others as we expect our brothers and sisters in Christ to respect ours.

I would argue that a great deal of human suffering comes from the trouncing of emotional boundaries by someone or something outside of ourselves, just as  it does when our physical bodies are intruded upon by accident or plan. It affects how we feel emotionally about ourselves, our value in the grand scheme of things, because we are prone to see everything that happens to us as a function of reward or punishment. Healing of those boundaries, repairing the “fences” around ourselves if you will, comes about only in environments where we are guarded by those we love and by whom we are loved, those whom we can trust implicitly not to further the damage by stepping on already bleeding wounds.

Our first job as Christians is to guard our brothers and sisters in Christ, our vulnerable neighbors. It doesn’t matter whether we believe that they brought whatever it is on themselves. There will be time enough, later, when their ability to defend their own boundaries has been restored, to confront them if we believe ourselves to have earned the honor to do so.

That’s what Jesus did for the woman about to be stoned. He knew she was an adulteress, but he sent the rock-throwers scurrying, drew the line in the sand for her when she couldn’t do it herself…first. God knows (pardon the pun) he would not have earned her trust if he’d picked up a rock himself. Nothing he said after that would have mattered.

Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.

I don’t know who actually wrote this, but whoever you are…I think I love you!

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up, what with walking five miles to school every morning…Snow…Uphill.. Barefoot..BOTH ways…yada, yada, yada. And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on my kids about how hard I had it and how easy they’ve got it!  But now that I’m over the ripe old age of forty, I can’t help but look around and notice the youth of today.  You’ve got it so easy!  I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a damn Utopia!

I hate to say it, but you kids today, you don’t know how good you’ve got it! I mean…

1) When I was a kid we didn’t have the Internet.  If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the damn library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!!  

2) There was no email!!  We had to actually write somebody a letter—with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox, and it would take like a week to get there!

3) Child Protective Services didn’t care if our parents beat us.  As a matter of fact, the parents of all my friends also had permission to kick our asses! Nowhere was safe! 

4) There were no MP3s or Napsters or iTunes!  If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike to the record store and shoplift it yourself! 

5) Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio, and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and @#*% it all up! There were no CD players! We had tape decks in our cars. We’d play our favorite tape and “eject” it when finished, and then the tape would come undone rendering it useless. Cause, hey, that’s how we rolled, Baby!  Dig?

6) We didn’t have fancy crap like Call Waiting!  If you were on the phone and somebody else called, they got a busy signal. That’s it! End of story!

7) There weren’t any freakin’ cell phones either. If you left the house, you just didn’t make a damn call or receive one. You actually had to be out of touch with your “friends”. OMG!!!  Think of the horror… not being in touch with someone 24/7!!!  And then there’s TEXTING.  Yeah, right.  Please!  You kids have no idea how annoying you are.

8) And we didn’t have fancy Caller ID either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was!  It could be your school, your parents, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, the collection agent… you just didn’t know!!!  You had to pick it up and take your chances, mister! 

9) We didn’t have any fancy PlayStation or Xbox video games with high-resolution 3-D graphics!  We had the Atari 2600!  With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids.” Your screen guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination!!!  And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen. Forever!  And you could never win.  The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died!  Just like LIFE! 

10) You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on! You were screwed when it came to channel surfing!  You had to get off your ass and walk over to the TV to change the channel!!!  NO REMOTES!!!  Oh, no, what’s the world coming to?!?!

11) There was no Cartoon Network either! You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning.  Do you hear what I’m saying? We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons, you spoiled little rat-bastards!

12) And we didn’t have microwaves.  If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove!  Imagine that!   
      
13) And our parents told us to stay outside and play… ALL DAY LONG.  Oh, no, no electronics to soothe and comfort.  And if you came back inside…you were doing chores! 

14) And car seats—oh, please! Mom threw you in the back seat and you hung on.  If you were lucky, you got the “safety arm” across the chest at the last moment if she had to stop suddenly, and if your head hit the dashboard, well, that was your fault for calling “shot gun” in the first place!  
 
You guys wouldn’t have lasted five minutes before 1970!

Regards,

The Over 40 Crowd

In 1995, as many of you will remember, a suit was filed in the state of South Carolina against The Citadel with respect to discrimination against women. As it happens, I was then, and am still, of the belief that there is a definite place for schools and colleges segregated by gender. My best friend’s mother, who graduated in 1939 from an all-girls’ school, agreed. “If I’d gone to a co-ed college, I would not have had a chance to develop leadership skills,” she said. “I would never have run for office.” My older sister, who went to Tift College, the then Baptist version of the Methodist Wesleyan and Presbyterian Agnes Scott Colleges in Georgia, also agreed. Somewhat shy when she entered as a freshman, she would serve as the Junior Class President and President of the Baptist Student Union in her senior year. But she wouldn’t likely have even run for similar offices at Georgia.

I agreed completely with those who maintained that there was nothing wrong with the Citadel’s being an all-male military college and though, since Shannon Faulkner’s lawsuit and subsequent admission and resignation a few weeks later, over 200 young women have graduated from the Citadel, I still feel some sorrow about that.

Even so, I applauded the lawsuit and the result. The reason? Because The Citadel is a state-supported school. As a working and taxpaying woman, I found it highly disturbing that the taxes paid by my counterparts in South Carolina were used to support a college they could not attend. The solution was simple—make The Citadel a private school. Of course, money fears might have erupted, but I suspect had the state withdrawn aid to The Citadel, the alumni would have more than made up for the shortfall, much as the alumni of Mercer reportedly responded when the Southern Baptist Convention pulled its support.

I feel the same way about abortion. Though I am pro-choice with respect to the intrusion of government into what I consider to be personal decisions, and mystified at the irony that politically speaking, the party that advocates against restrictions on gun purchases is the same one that advocates restricting a woman’s right to make a decision about her own body (and vice versa), I supported the Hyde Amendment. I believe it unconstitutional to require any person who believes abortion is wrong for any reason to financially support the costs of that personal decision, just as I believe it wrong to pay taxes for a benefit to which I am not entitled.

I know there are those who will suggest that my pro-choice stance condones what choices a free person will make, but that’s a debate for a different day. Suffice it to say that the very same reasoning renders Sarah Palin guilty of condoning Jared Lee Loughner’s “choice” because she’s against gun control.

But apparently the Hyde Amendment, a rider which continues to be renewed, isn’t restrictive enough. So, a representative of the “limited government” party, during a financial catastrophe unlike that any of us except those over 80 can remember, has presented a bill that presumes to punish businesses—those same businesses who already can’t afford to provide insurance for their employees and continue to drop like flies in the current recession—for buying policies that do not explicitly exclude coverage for abortion, and in attempting to tighten the grip of that “limited government,” has included in that bill redundant language that ventures into the realm of defining not the meaning of rape, but consent.

For those who have not read the actual verbiage of the bill and the most offending section:

H.R.3  – NO TAXPAYER FUNDING FOR ABORTION ACT

SEC. 309. TREATMENT OF ABORTIONS RELATED TO RAPE, INCEST, OR PRESERVING THE LIFE OF THE MOTHER.

The limitations established in sections 301, 302, 303, and 304 shall not apply to an abortion—

(1) if the pregnancy occurred because the pregnant female was the subject of an act of forcible rape or, if a minor, an act of incest; or

(2) in the case where the pregnant female suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the pregnant female in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself.

This is an unnecessary bill and a frivolous one, and I consider it a flagrant misuse of time and taxpayer money. So, at the risk of being misunderstood in that gray area, let me be perfectly clear, Mr. Smith and members of the House Ways and Means Committee. You are not my keeper spiritually, religiously or physically, and you do not have my consent to continue with this any further.

I was going to talk about the tense situation in Egypt today, but when my friend Barbara Crafton hit the internet waves with her Almost Daily eMo, I reposted her words on Facebook, and decided to go in a different direction. Her words today are too well-spoken to be responded to, added to, or otherwise messed with.

Speaking of Facebook…

I am, as I said in an earlier post, generally not one to re-post, unless I come across a wonderful YouTube video or news item or something like that. I’m a “liker” and an occasional commenter on other people’s posts.

But a week or so ago, I came across a post by one of my friends that questioned how many of our FB friends were actually people who knew us, and invited us to comment by saying where we met her and then to repost the same request, inviting others to comment on ours. A lifelong student of social psychology and marketing—which in business, is social psychology with a purpose—I did.

I expected to see a variety of responses on my and other’s posts, reminding me of the variety of places I’ve been in my life and things I’ve done that I might have forgotten. I wondered, because I have a host of high-school friends, college friends, and more recently developed friends, all neatly segregating into groups with few overlaps, who would see the post and who would take the time to respond. A market researcher to the core, I already knew some of my friends’ patterns with respect to FB—I know pretty much who gets up, pops on and then goes to work, I know who works at home and could pop up at any moment, I know who is currently unemployed and can be found on FB virtually all the time. I even know who has gotten disgusted with FB and abandoned the whole thing.

But what happened stunned me, and I was a little embarrassed—certainly humbled. Whereas I’d followed  what I’d understood “the rules” to be and posted brief comments on others’ pages like “Wesley Foundation, GSC” or “Christ Church” or some other geographic description of when and where, the timber of what I saw others write actually gave me pause.

The comments not only said when and where, but their first impressions or what they remembered of me in general—funny things, good things, things they would never have said at the time or couldn’t have. We humans are funny that way.

As I read, I remember thinking that I wished I’d known then how some of my college friends felt. (They, by the way, ended up the biggest group of responders…) Back in those days, I did far too good a job of putting up a confident facade, protecting a scared kid who never thought she was anything particularly special, a kid scared that if they only knew…they’d run the other way—a scared kid who is still alive and well in all of us.

I started that day feeling down, but by the end, I was bolstered by the warmth, the teasing, the memories. I thought about all the people I’ve short-changed—through the years and yesterday—people who could’ve used a kind word, people who don’t know how much I love them because I’m too busy or preoccupied to stop and tell them or I assume they know or I’ve decided that the fact that I love them doesn’t matter a whit. The old “you know who you are” isn’t necessarily true.

It’s the memories of time spent with friends—funny things done and said, comfort offered in times of grief, the ones who show up unexpectedly because they just “know” how something will affect you and they want to make sure you know that they know how you feel—that sustain us through hard times. Not the friends you necessarily see on FB, but you just might—the ones you somehow know you’ll see in your mind’s eye when you’re sitting in that rocking chair at 90.

You know. They’re the ones that make life worth living at all.

The link below is to a friend’s blog, a meaty offering for how to intervene (and more specifically, how not to) in that “simple” cycle of economic development I spoke of in my last blog.

Here’s that cycle again:

1.       If people have jobs, they’re making money.

2.       If people are making money and feel confident about the future, they are not draining safety-net resources—they spend it, they save it, they put it in banks, they borrow it and pay it back with interest, they give to it charitable organizations, they pay taxes on it to “provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.”

3.       If people spend money, well-managed honest businesses selling sought-after goods and services thrive and grow.

4.       If well-managed honest businesses thrive and grow, people have jobs.

It’s an ideal cycle, of course, which assumes two things: 1) that those who manage in business know what “well-managed” looks like in terms of the utilization of human and financial resources and the raw materials they employ and 2) that outside influences, like well-intended but tragic governmental interventions, don’t cripple those who do. Unfortunately, they are assumptions. And we know what assuming does, all too well.

The link:

http://lmma.posterous.com/stop-campaigning-and-start-governing#

Thanks, Pat. Here’s hoping they are able and that business managers today have a clue.

Theoretically, principles of a sound economy are quite simple. Simple but not easy.

1. If people have jobs, they’re making money.
2. If people are making money and feel confident about the future, they are not draining safety-net resources—they spend it, they save it, they put it in banks, they borrow it and pay it back with interest, they give to it charitable organizations, they pay taxes on it to “provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.”
3. If people spend money, well-managed honest businesses selling sought-after goods and services thrive and grow.
4. If well-managed honest businesses thrive and grow, people have jobs.

The only reasonable debate, in my opinion, is where in that cycle, when things have gone awry, intervention or correction should best begin. I used to think that the differences between our major political parties could be traced to that. Not anymore.

The problem is that people are involved. Terrified, scared, depressed, angry, greedy, apathetic, smug, self-righteous, arrogant, gluttonous, kind, caring, sensible, competitive, giving, God-loving, black, white, Asian, African, European, American, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindi, atheist, emotionally mature, childish, jealous, pompous, aggressive, passive, blaming, accountable, “yes, but,” “I told you so,” forgiving, humble, responsible  and sometimes, thankfully, reasonable people.

Last night, I watched part of a favorite television series that aired in the late 70’s, based on a novel written by Lillian Rogers Parks, My Thirty Years Backstairs at the White House. Lillian and/or her mother Maggie worked as maids and seamstresses at the White House from 1909 until 1960, and were privy to many private thoughts of our Presidents through the years.

This collection of episodes started at Harding and ended with Calvin Coolidge. Tonight’s will pick up at Hoover and go through WWII and FDR. Coolidge, VP to the bumbling rowdy Harding who likely died from the excesses of his life and the stress of the Teapot Dome scandal, was a bright and personally frugal man who, according to Parks (at least in the TV script), elected not to run for reelection in 1928 because he could find no way through the detritus of WWI and the inflation and fraud he had inherited from his predecessors. Having lost his younger son to blood poisoning while in the White House, he was discouraged in more than one arena.

Of course, we know what happened next. Hoover took office in March of 1929, and seven months later the stock market crashed, banks failed almost unilaterally, and we were thrown into the Great Depression. It took FDR’s WPA and CCC, the galvanizing effect of another World War that lost half a million Americans, and the grace of God to put enough Americans back to work, but the economy eventually recovered. I owe my existence to that recovery, along with my 70 million boomer compatriots.

Today, I read the results of a poll from the National Association of Business Economics, conducted between the end of December and the beginning of January that finds economists more hopeful about overall economic growth, the job market and demand for companies’ products and services than they have been since the start of the Great Recession.

Are they whistling in the dark? Or are the signs, though slower than we spoiled instant-gratification-driven adolescents would hope, predictors of recovery?

Is President Obama the 21^st Century Coolidge or the counterpart to Roosevelt? A little of both or neither?

I don’t know, but one thing’s for sure. People haven’t changed. I just hope we don’t have to have another world war to get back on track.

“I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.” –Albert Einstein

Just after 9/11, a group of us were talking about our fear and the impact the event had had on our lives and an African-American gentleman in the group was strangely silent. I asked him later why he had not participated in the discussion.

A sad smile appeared on his face. “Black people in general aren’t saying much,” he said.

I realized that what he’d said was true, so I asked why, and he answered. “As a whole, we’re not afraid of what happens from outside the US. We’re more afraid of what happens from within.”

Still confused, I asked him to explain. He chuckled. “It’s obvious you’ve never had a cross burned in your front yard.”

“Oh,” I replied, finally beginning to get it. “I didn’t think about that.”

A few years later, I sat in a committee meeting where we were discussing how much to charge for an event we were having. Somebody suggested that we charge more for single tickets and less per ticket for couples. As a marketing professional, I understood the logic—it wasn’t quite “two for one” but it did seem to be an incentive. The price for two, even with the discount, was more than the price of a single ticket. As an unmarried woman who wasn’t seeing anyone at the time, though, I felt punished, and I suspected a few widows and other single friends would feel the same.

Later, when I mentioned it to the leader of the group, she said, “I’ve been married for so long, I didn’t even think about that.”

This morning, in honor of MLK, I reread the letter he wrote from the Birmingham jail. The same part always gets me, and it always will, no matter how many times I read it:

“…when you suddenly find your tongue twisted and your speech stammering as you seek to explain to your six-year-old daughter why she can’t go to the public amusement park that has just been advertised on television, and see tears welling up in her eyes when she is told that Funtown is closed to colored children, and see ominous clouds of inferiority beginning to form in her little mental sky, and see her beginning to distort her personality by developing an unconscious bitterness toward white people…”

I suspect at least one of the clergymen to whom he wrote the letter, one who had a little girl of his own to whom he might one day have to explain some inhumanity shown to her, read that and said to himself, “Ooh…I didn’t think about that.” At least I hope so.

“You have to be carefully taught,” says the song from the musical “South Pacific.” That’s true, in part, but there’s a lie in it, too. It implies that the teaching occurs explicitly—that everyone sets out, with malice, to teach their children that those with different skin or religious beliefs or political opinions are bad, inferior, less than.

I don’t think so. Instead, I believe we have become so self-absorbed, so closed, so focused on our own lives that we never even think about the pain we may cause others in our obliviousness. Until, that is, someone incredibly innocent, incredibly undeserving, is caught in the crossfire of blame for another’s rage, another’s fear, another’s frustration.

Perhaps it’s time we thought about that.