For Kindness and Grace

Thoughts on a fraught Sunday and Mother's Day

“…and we pray for all for whom this is the first Mother’s Day without their mothers.”

I sat in church today very melancholy. Tears welled up and the lump was high in the throat. Yes, this is my first Mother’s Day without my mom. She died in November after suffering for more than 45 years with debilitating MS. She had an incredible gift to face her challenges with a grace I don’t think I could ever muster. She made it easy on us, even as we could see her struggle. She kept her humor. She was grateful for the help of others, almost to a fault. But it was absolutely genuine. Her last ten years were spent depending fully on my soon-to-be 90-year-old dad and the aides who came five times a day at their assisted living community to help her with her most basic needs. She knew the value of the aides and their care. And they also knew how appreciative she was of them. We watched this and marveled at her grace.

There are lots of other people who live with common decency, grace, and daily gratitude. I’ve come to learn these are the quiet people in the world. They understand the fragility of life and their own vulnerabilities. They understand this is universal. All of us can, in an instant, become fully dependent on the care of others for our daily, even hourly, survival. I have often been dumbstruck at some people in our world who have never thought about this for themselves, who somehow do not have a beloved person in their life who struggles similarly, or who live in denial and refuse to show any love or care or gentleness or grace toward others.

My parents taught us as children, “You never make fun of another’s weakness.” It has been painful to watch life in our country in the last ten years display a seemingly ever-increasing number of people who are fine trafficking in cruelty. Our president is one of them. It is hard to imagine he is not a sociopath, for his cruelty and apparent lack of any conscience is frightening. So many, however, have come out of the woodwork and displayed their own rank cruelty as though they feel full permission because of him to do the same. Making fun of people’s weaknesses - which should be a baseline prohibition for every one of us as humans who live on this planet together - is almost the least of the cruelty we see before our very eyes. ICE is pulling people off the streets, including women and children, and disappearing them. In the process, they are throwing children to the ground and grinding their heads and faces into the pavement before wanting to send them to foreign prisons where unspeakable things are done to people. Who does this?! Our president is gleeful about it. Our Secretary of Homeland Security, with damning coldness in her soul and face, thumbs her nose at all attempts at reining her in. Plenty of ICE agents (including Proud Boys?), full of angry testosterone, are signing up to shamefully mask their identities while engaging in pure, corrupt victimizing of others. And the list goes on.

Mother’s Day is a fraught day. So many people have yearned to be a mother but cannot. We would never make fun of people who so yearn to love their own child. And many others have had difficult relationships with their moms. Would we even think about ways to be cruel to them in a time of real vulnerability? I should hope not! If, then, we would do our own self-restraint in real-life experiences like this, why would we not exercise our own self-restraint in making fun of others? Or, in looking the other way when people and groups are maligned and targeted by our very national administration? Or, in being scared to speak up and speak out when the most egregious cruelty is on display on our TVs every single day, led by a sociopathic, conscienceless President who has no business being our highest national leader?

This is perhaps the most fraught time in all of our lives. Today, Mother’s Day, should be a true soul-searching reset day for every one of us - and not just you who are reading this, but all the people in this country who we should be holding to a much higher, more kind, normal, and human standard. We cannot stay silent any longer. We cannot look away. We have to feel a deep urge to defend our neighbors, those who are strangers but are victims, our own inner equilibrium, our national spirit, and our communities’ and neighborhoods’ very health.

For a new American kindness and grace, for a new American health, for a new American vision of humanity, goodness, and pride, I beg of you - stand up, speak out, demand change and goodness, write and call your Representatives and Senators, pray earnestly for God to intervene and help us, especially the most vulnerable and hurting and suffering. For the sake, at least, of your own self-preservation (although I hope your heart is turning for a lot more than yourself!), demand much better. It could be you someday, very easily, who is in deep need of care, love, and help from others. Or your mom or your dad or your siblings. This is just real life. Let’s not play games anymore. No more making fun of people’s weaknesses. It’s just purely mean, I don’t care how much someone may get a stupid laugh out of it. No more silence as young mothers and babies are snatched off the streets by our out-of-control administration and ICE thugs. No more! Search your heart. Make a change today. Go deeper than you ever have in kindness, gentleness, humility, and gratitude. Our country and lives depend on it and depend on you! Thank you, in advance, for every good gift of grace you give to the world around you. May this Mother’s Day be a day of transformation for you, me, and our country.

Be brave, everyone. It’s in you!

Andy