“What do I stand for, and WHAT am I going to do about it?”

Listening to a conversation with writer, Joan Chidester, it was about where we are right now in society, not only here in our country but also in the world in general. There was a mention that “we seem to be like a boat without a rudder”, and that there is a fear that “we have lost our moral compass”.

This set me to reflect upon myself, and how I see what is happening around me… it is often very easy to look away… to think that problems only happen “somewhere else”, but I (We) need to realize that we are not immune to what is going on. Since then, I have had to do some hard thinking about the answer to the question, “What do I stand for, and what am I going to do about it?”

There is no doubt that many people seem to shrink their worlds to include just family and close friends… this is SAFE, at least we think it is, and we block out what is going on in our neighborhoods, our communities, etc. Oftentimes, I find my own self looking away from the “news” because it is scary and depressing.

I can vividly remember my first week of Clinical Pastoral Education in our University hospital… our ER was the place that was a Level 1 trauma center, so most gunshots, bad accidents, etc. arrived at our doors. It was an eye-popping experience, because things that I saw only on TV were now right in front of me, and I was in the position of having to help family members as they waited for news of the person who was injured… many times I was with the doctor when they delivered the news that the family member did not survive. It brought me face to face with the REAL WORLD.

Since that training almost 30 years ago, I have seen a lot…. some that is good but a lot that I wish I could forget. Way back then, I remember being with a family who had come to the ER, waiting for word on their loved one. She had been shot, and as I went back and forth from the trauma room to the family, the anxiety was all around. The doctors were trying desperately to save the woman, and the family grew in size, with all the adults talking, etc., but the one who caught my eye was a little girl sitting alone in a chair that seemed to swallow her up.

I walked over to sit down with the little girl, Nickolai was her name and she held up 4 fingers when I asked her how old she was. When I asked if her Mommy or Daddy was here, she pointed to a large man talking to the police… she told me that her aunt got hurt, and was brought here. She lived next door to their house, in a very poor part of town as I remembered. When I asked her about her house, she told me that she was always scared, especially at night, when she was in her bed and she could hear the sound of gunshots outside her window.

My heart sank as I listened to this child tell me how hard her Mommy and Daddy were working, so that they could move to a place that was quieter… at about that time, her father came over and picked up his little girl, telling her that everything was going to be alright. He thanked me for sitting with her, and the 3 of us said a simple prayer.

About 30 minutes later, I had to follow the doctor into the “quiet room”, while he told the family that they had done everything they could but could not save the woman’s life. He told them how sorry he was and then left, and the large man asked me again to gather us all together to pray… as they left the hospital slowly, the little girl looked back at me, and I can still see her face in my mind after all these years.

So, as I reflect upon what I stand for, I know that I stand against guns, and against violence… over the years I have tried, in different ways, to reach out to those who can find no way out of the poverty, the violence, the situations they come from, and I often wonder about Nickolai… I hope and pray that her family was able to get to a safer place.

But today, it seems to be much worse, as we hear of school shootings, children being innocent victims of violence… today I PRAY, and I try to speak out when I can about helping each other, across lines of wealth, race, or anything else that divides us and pits us one, against the other.

And I pray, that someday we will see peace….