How to Heal a Hurting World? Be Kind. Be Kind. Be Kind.

“Simple kindness may be the most vital key to the riddle of how human beings can live with each other in peace and care properly for this planet we all share.” —Bo Lozoff

This is the story of Jo, or Josephine, if you want to be formal. Jo is the sweet and kindhearted daughter of a colleague and good friend, and she’s a typical kid in many ways. She wants to play the ukelele like her mom. Jo sings in the church kids’ choir, and loves to go to the beach, and idolizes her older sibling. Jo always seems to have a big smile, at least in the photos I see of her on Facebook.  But in one unique way Jo is unlike any other five-year-old kid I know or have ever known. 

You see, for Jo’s fifth birthday earlier this month, she had but one wish. One hoped for gift. One item at the top of her present list. She pined not for a doll or a baseball glove or a board game like Candyland. Not for a pair of new shiny leather shoes or some kid sized crocs. Nope. All Jo wanted for her big day was to watch her favorite local sewage disposal company pump out her family’s septic system in the side yard.    

That’s it. That is what she wanted the most.

Jo’s love affair with the Bay State Sewage Disposal Company began when, as a toddler, she’d watch company technicians do their thing with a big, huge pipe shoved down into a hole in the ground and, for whatever reason, she was fascinated by this.  Mom Beth decided to let the company know and that’s when the kindness began. The care. Jo was invited to visit their headquarters in person and there was welcomed with open arms and real enthusiasm, given an official lime green T-shirt to wear, with the company logo, just like the grown-up sewer specialists got to wear.  

Who knows why kids have the likes that they do? At the age of three, my baby sister Claire liked nothing more than to watch the weekly visit of the trash truck guys as they manhandled and dumped out our dented and full metal barrels.  When I was five, I was fascinated by all things John F. Kennedy, me being his namesake and all, as an election day baby.  Some kids love Legos. Other kids love sanitation I suppose.

Now Jo’s big day—one day after her birthday—was on the 10^th of April. That morning Bay State Sewage Disposal technician Nichole came by for a visit and a tech call. Jo stood by and watched with joy as all the family’s…well, let’s just say “muck” …was sucked up and out and then into a bright red truck. Jo got to sit up in the cab, her arms stretching up to hold on to the big steering wheel. Nichole brought a birthday card for Jo signed by folks from the office. But the biggest surprise for Jo was about to come.

As Jo and her mom and dad stood at the end of their suburban driveway, a convoy of eight trucks from the company drove by and with their air horns honking and their drivers waving to their number one fan, they gave Jo the best present of all, the most amazing gift really any of us can hope for in this often rough and tumble life. 

They showed Jo kindness, simple human goodness, and care. They didn’t have to do that and no doubt they could have been out on some other calls or just hanging out back at the office but instead, all of those people went out of their way to make a little girl feel special, like the most important person in the world.

Who among us would not want to feel that way? To be treated with such surprising kindness and such sincere warmth and attention.  All of us as children of God, as very human humans—we each need to know and be reminded every single day, that we are loved. That we matter. That our life on the earth makes a difference in the lives of others.  There’s a little five-year-old kid still alive in all of us and all they want, all we want, really, is to be treated well, with a little mercy and a little love and a little joy.  If I get that every day, no matter what the world might throw my way, I can take it and why? Because I am strengthened for someone showed me kindness. A stranger. A friend. A neighbor. A co-worker. A family member.

It's no great revelation to name the truth that right now, our world is so often anything but kind.  Open the newspaper or listen to the news or surf the web and these are all filled with sadness, so much carnage and hurt. Mean-spiritedness too. It seems worse now in 2023, more than ever before. I’m not sure why. Maybe it’s because we have public leaders who bully others, and an ex-President who somehow made it socially ok to verbally beat up and publicly humiliate people. Maybe it’s because of the gun violence that is so prevalent now, that it is so prevalent and so shocking, that we are no longer shocked by such cruelty.  Maybe life feels less kind because COVID sent us all away from each other.

Who knows? But this I absolutely do know.

Kindness counts. Kindness creates a better world. Kindness is never, ever wasted. Kindness is needed by you, by me, needed universally.  No kindness? No life. No good life. So, happy birthday Jo! And happy kindness day Bay State Sewage Disposal Company.  You cared. You were kind. God love you!

As the American philosopher William James once said to a nephew seeking life guidance, “Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.”

Today, be kind.           

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

   

The Marathon Bombing Ten Years Later: Remember. Be Strong.

“And every third Monday in April, you welcome people from all around the world to the Hub for friendship and fellowship and healthy competition -- a gathering of men and women of every race and every religion, every shape and every size; a multitude represented by all those flags that flew over the finish line.”                        --President Barack Obama

Why does it seem so often that it is such a beautiful day when the bombs go off? When planes become weapons? When a race becomes a place of the fallen and the courageous and the innocent?

It was bright and a bit chilly, a typical mid-April Boston day, the 15^th of the month, 2013. The sun peaked in and out of white puffy clouds in a sharp and clear blue sky, looking down upon the race course and runners. They were 26,000 strong who gathered in Hopkinton at dawn. It was the race of a lifetime for many of them, as they ran to raise funds for charity or ran to prove to themselves, “I can do it!” or ran for fun or ran to win.  At 9:00 am, when the “BANG!” of the starting pistol went off and the mobility impaired and then the wheelchair racers came out of the chute, thus began the long trip east to the Hub.

It was and still is 26 miles, 385 yards, from a New England town green to Copley Square.

For the 117^th time on that third Monday in April, Patriots Day, Boston was playing host to the oldest marathons in the world, begun in 1897.  Tens of thousands since then had run the suburban streets and urban hills, hopping gracefully over trolley tacks, moving through the tunnel of screams by Wellesley College, grabbing cups of cold water proffered by the thousands of enthusiastic spectators that lined the route. 

It was supposed to be a normal Marathon Monday, exciting and fun and a great race. Folks from around here know the drill for the day. Some have even been known to go for a hat trick. Start at 5:30 am in Lexington for the reenactment of the shot heard round the world, then head into Boston and Fenway Park to watch the Red Sox play an 11:10 morning game, and finally after the game, walk over to Kenmore Square and watch the runners as they near the finish.

An absolutely perfect Boston day.  Until it wasn’t.

I was home working on a newspaper column when a little before 3 pm, the radio reported that there had been some type of explosion near the finish line. Surfing on my keyboard to Boston.com for the latest update, I discovered it was frozen, static, overwhelmed by too much traffic. Then the radio confirmed that there were two suspected bombs that had gone off and there were, no doubt, many dead and injured.

And my heart fell.

The first person I thought of was Michelle, a good friend, fellow singer in a community choir, whose kind spirit still makes everyone she meets feel special. Just hours before on Route 135 in Natick, a group of us had cheered her on, waving wildly as she ran by us, in her first Boston Marathon.

“Is she ok?” Like so many of us I wondered and worried. For her. For friends over by the finish line in the cheering crowds and people on the patios downtown drinking beer and celebrating spring and of course, all those runners.

So earnest. So committed. So strong. So threatened.

Later we’d learn that a pair of terrorist brothers packed pressure cookers full of shrapnel and bomb material and left them on the street in backpacks to take down and take out anyone in the vicinity. Three died: Krystle Campbell, a 29-year-old restaurant manager from Medford, Lingzi Lu, a 23-year-old Boston University grad student and 8-year-old Martin Richard, from Dorchester. It’s so important to remember their names and their lives, especially a decade later.

Remember the more than 260 people maimed and injured. Remember the traumatized runners like Michelle and how so many people that day asked, pleaded, “Is she ok? Where is he? Please God, please….” There were the brave first responders. The amazing doctors and the nurses who saved so many lives. Anonymous crowd members who rushed into the mayhem to rescue and to comfort the victims. Remembering it feels like a bad dream, a memory so hard and intense and sad I can’t shake it.

If there was anything redemptive in those initial days after, it was the fierce and brave Boston strong response of so many. From ordinary citizens. Leaders too, like Red Sox star David Ortiz who reminded a packed Fenway crowd a week after the bombing, “This is our _____ city! And no one is going to dictate our freedom. Stay strong Boston!” He expressed our communal commitment to get back up and our communal anger at so cruel and hateful an act. 

It still makes no sense. So much pain and tears and loss and why? Sometimes the world just breaks apart. Sometimes evil emerges from the shadows. And then we must respond with courage. President Barack Obama spoke at Trinity Church Boston at the memorial service for the bombing victims, forty-eight hours after the explosions. He reminded America and the world of the greatest powers of all. Faith. Community. People united.

“Our faith in each other, our love for each other, our love for country, our common creed that cuts across whatever superficial differences there may be — that is our power. That’s our strength. That’s why a bomb can’t beat us.”

Ten years. May God bless our sacred memories. May God bless Monday’s marathon too.   

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

     

The Sideshow of American Politics: God Help Us All

“Politics is a sideshow in the great circus of life.”    --Robert Dahl, American political scientist

I don’t want to hear about it. Read about it. Watch it. Period.   

Yes, I’m trying my best to be on a news embargo this week when it comes to the indictment of…you know who I’m talking about. The guy. Oversized tie. Loves McDonalds. Owns a tower.

I’m trying my best to ignore just what he is being indicted for.  Is it for some complicated illegal plan? A backroom conspiracy worthy of Watergate like press attention? Nope. In 34 felony counts he’s accused of paying off or suppressing with hush money the stories of….1) His supposed mistress, an actress in pornographic films. 2)A doorman who claims to know about his other extramarital affairs and 3) A Playboy playmate of the year who says she had an affair with him as well.  

You can’t make this stuff up.

The depressing part, at least for me, is that the sideshow accompanying this legal action against an ex-President is being supersized in importance by the media, by other politicians, by comedians, by pundits, by seemingly anyone (I suppose myself included) with an opinion on the situation.

I apologize if I, by writing this, am also a part of the problem.

The 45^th President is not the first President to be indicted. Ulysses S. Grant was arrested in 1872 in Washington D.C. for speeding in a horse-drawn carriage. He was apparently having a ball, racing through the streets of the capital. Grant was taken to the courthouse (he actually gave the arresting cop a ride) and put up $20 bail. When he failed to show up the next day, he forfeited the money.  That was the end of his saga. President Richard Nixon almost certainly would have been indicted for his role in Watergate but that was short-circuited by President Gerald Ford who pardoned him for all those alleged crimes. At least Nixon resigned from office and slipped off into semi-retirement in California. He knew when the show was over and when it was time to exit—stage left.

I know there are lots of folks who are convinced this is the story of the moment and therefore it deserves all the coverage it gets, even as it sucks up every whiff or oxygen in the room called American life.  Anybody else suffocating? I know an argument could be made that this is big news, what must be the lead, 24/7, at least for the next few weeks.  

Me? I’m not so sure. I think of the stories that really, really matter and that deserve continuing coverage much more, but have been bumped from page 1.  Have we already forgotten the six who died in a Nashville school, killed by an AR-15 wielding assailant? Or how school and mass shootings are now so common? Or how about the war in Ukraine? The fact that global warming is causing the accelerated melting of the world’s glaciers, with half of them projected to be gone by the end of the century.  

The indictment story has been raised to a fever pitch, to breathlessly breaking news by every major and minor media outlet. It would be laughable if it wasn’t so sad and singular a moment in the history of our nation.  Maybe we are focusing on this political soap opera because we don’t have the attention span or the civic right stuff to actually take on and solve, together, real issues. Maybe we are just getting the leaders that we deserve, that the problem isn’t the idea and ideal of democracy.  The problem is the cast of circus performers we keep electing to office. The ones who desire power more than public service and infamy more than humility. 

And that’s on both sides of the aisle.

But this is what our politics have come to. You might even say that politics is the new religion.  As David Brooks observed in a 2020 New York Times column, published just before the Presidential election, “Politics has become a way to define and signify your identity, and that is elevating politics to too central a place in life.” As central now, maybe, as religion once was in American life.

The numbers reflect this changing reality. A Wall Street Journal/National Opinion Research Center poll revealed last week that the number of Americans who view religion as “an important value” has dropped precipitously, from 62 percent in 1998, to 39 percent in 2023. If folks aren’t going to church or synagogue or mosque to contemplate ultimate meaning, to be in community, and to work together for change, are they now finding this communal identity in rabid partisanship? In being a Democrat or a Republican, a liberal or progressive or conservative or moderate?

How else to explain our cultural and media fascination with a person who hasn’t even sat in the Oval Office in for more than 800 days, two plus years?! Is it about entertainment? Scandal? Being riveted to the news, like watching a car wreck in real time? I just don’t get it, not at all.  Then again, I don’t get the Kardashians or Survivor or The Real Housewives of Wherever TV shows either. 

Wake me up when the circus is finally over and when the circus leaves town. Wake me when we are more interested in following leaders who have integrity, wisdom, and decency, and who work for the common good, and not just their own narrow partisan beliefs.  God help us all.

Until then? I’m loving my podcasts and reruns of CSI Las Vegas.

For now, no news is good news.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org