Traditional Hasidic wisdom tells us: “Rake the muck this way. Rake the muck that way. It will still be muck. In the time you are brooding, you could be stringing pearls for the delight of heaven.” I’ve been brooding, yes, but I’ve also gathered pearls of image and word to string together this week.
On Tuesday, former Vice President Joe Biden told a story from November 22, 1963, when little Yolanda King came home from school in Atlanta. Jumping in her father’s arms, she said, “Oh, Daddy. Now we will never get our freedom.” Biden told of her father’s response, reassuring, strong, and brave. “Now don’t you worry, baby,” said Martin Luther King, Jr. “It’s going to be all right.” We shall overcome . . .
When King himself was assassinated five years later, presidential candidate Bobby Kennedy faced a serious choice. Kennedy was urged not to go to the planned rally site in the poor, mostly black section of Indianapolis, and had every right to surround himself with bodyguards, hunkerrd down in his own remembered grief. Instead, deciding to address the crowd, he painfully broke the news of Dr. King’s death. As Michael Rosenwald later described, “Kennedy, wearing his brother’s overcoat and speaking without notes, quoted the Greek playwright Aeschylus. ‘Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart . . .’” Following Kennedy’s words, “the threat of violence subsided. Everyone went home.” Across the nation that night, cities burned. Not Indianapolis.
A year later, at a time when many community pools were still segregated, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him in a kiddie pool to cool off his feet, to take a break from his work as a neighborhood police officer. In that iconic image, Fred Rogers and François Clemons sit side by side, a white man and a black man in the water of shared baptism. As the scene concluded, Fred Rogers took a towel and dried Officer Clemmons’ feet.
In 1992, having learned a new song for his day care center’s Black History Month program, our tow-headed three-year-old stood in the mall’s food court and belted out: “We shall obercome.” O yes, Dan, even in these days, I still string that pearl of memory and hope: “Deep in my heart . . .”
Another Dan was in Dallas in November 1963. Later, he filled the news anchor seat at CBS Evening News for twenty-four years. Now at eighty-eight, elder statesman Dan Rather continues to lift his voice. In response to his own question of what gives him hope, he concludes his thoughts with this: “And I see millions of my fellow Americans saying give me a hammer, give me a bandage, give me a ballot, let’s go out there and get to work.” Sing on, Pete Seeger – we’ve still got a hammer, bell and song.
Columnist Connie Schultz has created an on-line community I visit each day. In these difficult times, she faithfully posts a daily photo, often of her grandchildren or canine companions Franklin and Walter, with the reminder to pause and to breathe. A community member asked how she can remain positive, and her answer handed me the final addition to my strand of pearls. “I’ve tried to be open about the times when I, too, struggle to remain hopeful. I cry sometimes, and at times I am so angry that, to paraphrase a long ago friend, I run out of walk before I run out of rage. I rest a bit, and keep walking.” Schultz continued: “I am a hopeful person by nature, and most of the time I can count on optimism winning out, even during some of the hardest times in my life. This is such a challenge, but I grasp onto joy wherever I can find it. That is what is keeping me going.”
The strength of a father’s arms. The prophetic mantle of a brother’s coat. The cleansing water of a child’s pool. The promise of a three-year-old’s song. A hammer, a bandage, a ballot; a bell and song too. The reminder to breathe. Glimpses of joy. These are the hope-burnished pearls I’m gratefully stringing to wear in June 2020.
No comments:
Post a Comment