Out of the mouth of babes. ~ some wise toddler

Nobody made a greater mistake than he
who did nothing because he could do only a little. ~ Rev. Sydney Smith

What I want to bring out is how a pebble cast into a pond
causes ripples that spread in all directions.
Each one of our thoughts,
words, and deeds is like that. ~ Dorothy Day

I’ve always found the truth of the following saying troubling: “The more things change, the more they stay the same.” It sounds like Eeyore. Gloomy, glum. It feels defeatist. It smacks of a justification offered by a professional couch potato or a guilty bystander who is quick to add: “I don’t do guilt.” It sounds the way arms look when we throw them up in the air and say, “Whatya gonna do?”

What stays the same, it seems, is the seismic struggle between caving into the human capacity to be inhumane and the human capacity to choose daily to transcend the self and live a life of embodied love (is there any other kind?).

The Dionne Warwick version of this song—”What the World Needs Now”—takes me back to my youth, say, the years 1965-1969, and the loss of innocence—the grief that comes with it, carrying within me at the same time the sunny summers in Seattle and the sunniness of Hal David’s and Burt Bacharach’s song contrasted with the inarticulated anguish and the ever-present anxiety and fear of the Vietnam War, racial unrest, mayhem in the streets on the nightly news, the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy.

The seismic struggle is captured as this familiar pop classic from the 1960’s is sliced with another classic that captured the zeitgeist of the decade “Abraham, Martin, and John.” In addition, disc jockey Tom Clay infused the familiar song with periodic news bulletins, jarring sounds of war, live reportage of assasinations, inspiring speeches, a eulogy with a cracking voice of a devastated brother, other sounds of madness and mayhem sandwhiched between the voice of innocence that cannot ptonounce big sounding words but can and does leave us with a sobering indictment and gripping diagnosis: “I think it’s when somebody’s sick.” Out of the mouth of babes, out of the mouth of the anawim, a truth is spoken.

And I blink my way from my four-minute extended moment of nostalgia, my relisten to “What the World Needs Now” and the voice of a little girl who gobsmacks us with her final word of wisdom that makes me wince, not say, “How cute.” And the radio man from March 4, 2024 not 1968 gives me an update from across the room on the obscene war in Ukraine, the egregious violence and loss of innocent lives in Gaza, and the nearly four thousand escaped inmates from the main prison in Haiti who are running wild in the streets, terrorizing the country because they can.

It’s all a bit more than overwhelming. Is it not? What are we to do? Turn the radio off, roll over in bed and cover our head and ears? The prophet Isaiah said, “Cease to do evil. Learn to good. Make justice your home forever.” Rabbi Heschel said, “God needs our help. . . By a deed we carry out, we either retard or accelerate the coming of redemption.” Pope Paul VI said, “If you want peace, work for justice.” Jesus taught, we either see him in the needy and the most vulnerable and respond with compassionate love or, like the priest and the Levite, see the person in the ditch and cross the road to get to the other side.

“Why did the priest and the Levite cross the road?” “To get to the other side. To get to church. To get to work. To dodge getting involved, getting blood on their pants, on their hands. Because they were in a hurry, couldn’t be bothered, didn’t have the time, after all someone less rushed, less busy, less important than them—they rationalized—will come along, stop, and help. I don’t know much about first aid. Someone more capable with less on their plate can lend a helping hand. And, besides, I think the person in the ditch is illegal and I’m already late to meet friends for happy hour.” Sometimes we’re the person in the ditch. Too often we’re the ones looking both ways, then crossing the street. And occasionally (I guess I shouldn’t use myself as a [low] bench mark), we do the one thing necessary—we incarnate love.

Perhaps the hardest thing for me about the gospel, about living the Christ-life, is to admit that it’s really not that hard. The principles are pretty basic. The defining deeds of the faith are easy enough for a second grader to understand. Someone’s hungry. What should we do? Someone’s sad. What should we do? Someone’s lonely. What should we do? Someone’s sick? What should we do? Someone’s sleeping on a heat vent so as not to freeze to death. What do we do? Someone’s being bullied. Someone’s being excluded. Someone’s being treated unfairly. What should we do? It’s so easy but we make it so hard because our tall and wide and unhealthy ego gets between what’s expedient and what’s called for; between our self-concern and what’s needed, right, just, and loving.

We either practice not-so-random acts of kindness, compassion, hospitality, and love in our sphere of influence and the world becomes a kinder, more compassionate, hospitable, and loving place to live or we fail to do so and bear personal responsibility for the incremental invasion of cruelty, callousness, hostility, indifference, and violence until we wake up and realize they’ve won the day. Heschel also famously said, “In a free society, some are guilty, but all are responsible.” Which is it: choose or refuse? That is — choose or refuse to incarnate love? The well-being of our families, neighborhoods, countries, and planet weighs in the balance. What’s fascinating and edifying about the enactment of love is that whether it manifests in a small gesture or a giant action, it’s the one same love.

People ask, I ask, “What difference can I make? What can I do? I’m only one.” What say we find out? What say we “do little things with love” (thank you Mother T) and find out what happens? We know what happens. Love evokes love. Let’s start a movement, a revolution, a conspiracy of love. We’ll call it the Pebble People’s Love & Liberation Movement and our motto will be: “Be a pebble in the pond nearest you and see what the ripples do.” Just a thought —one to be remade into a just action.”

Interviewer: What does hatred mean?           Little girl: I don’t know what it is.

Let us build one another up to love and good works. Heb. 10:24

ARTWORK: Eeyore: played by Eeyore; The Good Samaritan, Van Gogh; Over the Town, Chagall.

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