Costly Loving

My heart is always open and receptive to people who are victims. Through no fault of their own, they have been physically or mentally bullied, abused, degraded. They need my compassion and understanding; I need to walk with them and help them.

My natural reaction toward the perpetrators of pain is disgust. I want to see them punished for what they have done, locked up so they can't hurt anyone again. They should know what pain their actions have caused and they should feel that pain. This is especially true if they have hurt young children or vulnerable teenagers.

Recently the church where I worship has found itself in the unfamiliar and rather uncomfortable position of supporting people who have caused grievous pain to others, in both cases to teenagers and their parents.

One of these people, as pastor of a congregation, was in a position of great trust. He knowingly and willfully abused that trust by taking photos of young women in washrooms. He is waiting for his day in court.

This man asked for permission to attend our worship services. Church council prayerfully pondered the request, informed the church membership and asked for time to consider. After six months of deliberation, council again brought the request to the membership and we agreed (by vote) to allow him to worship with us. Parameters were put in place ensuring that he would never be alone while in the church building and that he would not ever have contact with young children in our congregation unless he was accompanied by someone.

Not everyone was comfortable with this decision and some who had been church members for years walked away. They could not be in the same building with a man who so blatantly misused the trust of others. They were concerned about the safety of children and young people, a very legitimate concern.

The second person is a truck driver and the partner of a woman who recently joined the church. For just a few minutes, while driving his truck, he drifted off. He entered a construction zone without slowing down. Three teenage boys were killed instantly and a construction worker was seriously injured. The truck driver suffered minor injuries. He has been charged with criminal negligence for causing the death of three people and injuring another.

Very seldom do I ask myself how the people who cause pain to others might be feeling. What they have done eclipses the fact that they too are hurting. My natural reaction is to judge them rather than to put myself into their shoes. I can't even imagine that I would ever do such a thing. I can understand and empathize with the truck driver to some degree because the pain he caused others was due to negligence, not to willful planning. But I find myself judging him too. He seemed to have an answer for every situation. I'm hoping this experience will humble him. I ask myself how I would feel if I was a parent of one of the teenagers who was killed. Would I even know how to address this pain positively or would it break me?

The pastor who misused the trust of his congregation just makes me angry. I had a high regard for him before I knew what he had done. I wonder how I could have been so gullible. I ask myself what else he would have done had he not been caught with his hand in the cookie jar, and what else he has done that we know nothing about. Now that he is part of my church community, I am forced to interact with him; if I try to avoid him, he is still in my thoughts and prayers.

I realize that people who hurt others willfully (like the pastor) have not learned to deal with their own needs adequately. But having this abusive person in our midst is causing me pain. How can I handle this situation constructively? Can I do it by giving in to my fears, walking away and thus rejecting him? That seems negative to me. Can I force myself to welcome him, to embrace his presence? I am thinking that will be healing for both of us, but it is a difficult journey; I can't do it on my own.

                               Let our strength be in forgiving as forgiven we must be,
                               One to one in costly loving, finding trust and growing free,
                               Gentle God, be our release, gentle Spirit, teach us peace.

                                                       Shirley E. Murray

Two Little Words

Today is filled with hustle-bustle, and tomorrow is a mystery, but our yesterdays are treasures from the past to be cherished and enjoyed again and again.

                                                                                          Barbara Johnson

A long time ago I found new words for something I loved to do. I was nine years old and a newcomer to Canada. My family left Paraguay in October of 1952 and we older siblings began going to school almost as soon as we arrived. We attended a country school near Didsbury, Alberta, located within walking distance of the farm house we rented that first year. My mother's cousin was our teacher and she spoke our mother tongue (Plautdietsch = Low German), so it should have been a gentle easing into the culture and language. I just remember being very confused by it all. I had finished Grade Two (in German) and was an excellent reader, but when my teacher asked me to recite the alphabet in German I couldn't do it. She decided to put me into Grade Two.

Although I didn't say much, I observed and listened. At recess I heard the children saying two words over and over again. I really wanted to know what these words meant but I couldn't figure it out. The two words were "let's pretend."

I thought my younger sister and I (we are 22 months apart) were in this together, but as I stood there, concentrating on these strange words, I saw a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. It was my sister, running home as fast as her legs could carry her. She had disappeared into the ditch at the side of the schoolyard and all I could see was the top of her head. She had enough of "let's pretend," she was done with it all!

I decided not to go after her. When I got home from school, she was still hiding under the bed. I don't remember what I did to coax her out but eventually she emerged and the next day we trudged off again, braving the cold wind and the strange new world in which we found ourselves.

It wasn't long until I learned many new words that enriched my life and "let's pretend" became part of my vocabulary as well. My cousin, my sister and I spent many hours pretending we were grown up and building our own home as we happily wallpapered chicken coops with homemade paste and left-over wallpaper our aunt gave us; or played on the large front porch pretending it was a huge ship and we were sailing the ocean. We never ran out of ideas, and at our cousin's place we could play all day long without being bothered by younger siblings or chores our mother had waiting for us.

I also distinctly recall the day when the words "let's pretend" no longer held any joy for me. I wanted to play with my sister who was having a tea party with our dolls but it wasn't fun any longer. Making paper dolls from the Eaton's catalogue wasn't appealing any more either. For me it was not a gradual easing into adulthood but rather a painful departure from the world of imagination to the world of reality. The imaginary world attracted me more but I could no longer lose myself in it.

I solved the problem by delving into the world of books. Here I could vicariously enjoy what other people imagined and put into words. It was the grown-up game of "let's pretend." My cousin and my sister were two years younger than I and they couldn't understand my sudden retreat. I had become more quiet and introspective. I began to write poetry and novels. My inner life became a safe haven in the more threatening outside world.

My mother made sure I didn't lose myself completely. I was the oldest daughter of eight children, and she needed my help in the house. Reluctantly I dragged my feet into her mundane world of dishes and diapers, always more than happy to leave it again.

The happiest place, of course, was that childhood world of the imagination, when we could be anything we wanted to be or do anything we wanted to do. Sometimes I can almost return to it now, through a smell or a sound that was part of my world then. The pungent aroma of the stem of a fresh tomato plucked from the garden reminds me of Tante Sarah  and her "Boklezhane" (which is one of my favorite words and means tomatoes in Russian -- I always thought it was a Low German word!). Dunking a Zwieback in a cup of coffee can take me back there as well. We used roasted Kefir grains with plenty of milk as a substitute for coffee in Paraguay. We soaked chunks of bread in our "coffee," and when all the liquid was absorbed by the bread we turned it upside down on our saucer. With the addition of cinnamon and sugar it became a cake of sorts. "Arbus" (the Russian word for watermelon) also sends me down memory's path. I can see my mother, holding a baby, both of them eating watermelon, the red juice dripping down the baby's fat tummy.

Simple things made us happy in those days.

  

Backward, turn backward,

O time, in  your flight,

Make me a child again

just for tonight!
                                                                                 Elizabeth Akers Allen