Do you ever draw a blank? Have a great idea, and then when it comes
time to put it to paper, you can’t remember it?
Or start what sounds like a great idea, and then it just fizzles? That is what has been happening to me
lately. I sometimes think I should carry
a recorder with me all the time, just to catch my “brainstorms” for later. But
perhaps I’ll capture them, just to discover they weren’t so great after
all! I don’t know if this is a temporary
condition, or another part of my new life condition, but it will be interesting
to see what happens.
I was very excited a few weeks ago
to read an article in Smithsonian about rocks.
Rocks? you might ask. Yes,
rocks. The article, entitled “Life and
Rocks May Have Co-Evolved on Earth,” seemed to confirm a theory I have held for
a long time, and it made me feel a little less crazy. I have always thought that rocks and
minerals, like animals and plants, are living organic things; they just move at
a much slower pace, more slowly than we can detect. Each time we dynamite our way through a
mountain, or drill a tunnel, or a well, we are harming a living thing. And that in turn reminded me of a very
controversial book I read back in the 1970s.
It was written by Dalton Trumbo,
who had his own share of controversies.
He was a Hollywood screenwriter who was blacklisted for refusing to
testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947. He was forced to work clandestinely, winning
two Academy Awards (for Roman Holiday and The Brave One) while using
pseudonyms and “front” writers. The book
was Johnny Got His Gun, an anti-war novel about a young man named Joe Bonham,
that won the 1939 National Book Award Most Original Novel prize. (It was also made into a powerful film in
1971.)
What struck me most about the
story was not Joe’s horrific wounds - he loses all his limbs and his face,
including his eyes, ears, tongue, and teeth - but the way in which he is
treated. He is kept in a dark room with
no sunlight, even though he can feel the warmth of the sun on his skin. He can communicate by pounding his head in
Morse code, but no one pays any attention to his wishes - only one kind nurse
who has little power. He asks to be
placed in a glass box and tour around the country to demonstrate the horrors of
war. Of course his wish is not
granted. He tries to suffocate himself,
but he has a tracheotomy he can’t control or remove. His brain still functions perfectly, but he
is treated as if he doesn’t exist. He is
utterly powerless.
Sometimes many of us feel like
Joe. We feel powerless to control our
situations. Our doctors or caregivers
don’t listen to us, or don’t seem to hear us.
We feel violated, impotent. We’re
like rocks, mountains, being blasted and drilled, and no one thinks anything of
it because we’re just there. We’re not
like “real” people, we don’t really matter.
It’s like my friend’s priest, who said there was no need to install an
accessible bathroom, because people in wheelchairs “never came to church.” “Did he ever think,” she asked him, “that
maybe they didn’t come to church because they knew they wouldn’t be able to go
to the bathroom?”
It is hard to reckon with
unthinking people, especially when they’re clergy. But it isn’t a call to lie down and quit
trying. It’s a call to be there, to
remind them, to be the little pebble that scratches the lens in the glass that
causes the person to focus more carefully.
We are not nothing. We matter. We are many, and we can be a force with which
to be reckoned, if we just remember whose we are.
“For it was you who formed my
inward parts;
you knit me
together in my mother’s womb.
I
praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
Wonderful are your
works;
that
I know very well.
My frame was not
hidden from you,
when
I was being made in secret,
intricately woven
in the depths of the earth.
Your
eyes beheld my unformed substance.
In
your book were written
all the days that
were formed for me,
when none of them
as yet existed.” Psalm 139 13:16
Dear Lord, remind us that when we
call on you, you hear us. Remind us that
you planned our days and our years, and we do not live them alone. Remind us that you have a purpose for us, and
there is a purpose behind everything that happens to us. And no matter how grim our circumstances, no
matter how unseen or unheard we might feel, let us remember that you are with
us. You are our strength, our hope and
our light. Amen.
I call upon you, for you
will answer me, O God Psalm 17:6
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