In Beth's words...
The last few days have been an incredible melange of sites and sounds and feelings. Our journey to Oklahoma City began with amazing natural vistas as we traveled through New Mexico and all of the peace and serenity and wonder that being in nature can bring. I am always grateful for the reminder, when I drive along the bluffs and crags and pinnacles, that these beings have been standing there for far longer than I have enjoyed and cherished and endured and suffered the diverse slings and arrows of this life we humans create for ourselves, and that evolution takes time. Change comes slowly if it is real change, lasting change, but it does come. Just as the wind and rain carves out new vistas in the rock that a generation or two or three may not notice, still the change happens. And each day allows us another opportunity as conscious human beings to participate in this world. To share with each other in conversation, in compassion, and to carve out a small change ourselves and add it to the whole.
The Oklahoma Memorial was another such reminder for me, an amazing testimony to the resilience and strength that we humans can share with each other. On either end of the site of the bombing are arches that you walk through.
One arch is carved with the time 9:01, the moment of innocence before the bomb exploded. And the other arch shows 9:03, the moment after the explosion when all that everyone could hold onto was the hope that the innocence could be regained and that travesties such as this need never happen again. This is itself is an incredible recognition of how one individual moment can change everything, and how it is also all of the individual moments that come after that bring about lasting change.
I expected to feel completely drained and emotionally devastated by the memorial and instead I walked away filled with hope that the violence could end, that it would end. That we could treat each other with respect, and compassion and understanding and acceptance. The bookstore inside is filled with books for children talking about respect; with magnets and stickers that are printed with words of respect and self esteem and honest communication, and with images of hope. Outside there is a wall of tiles that were painted by children and sent to Oklahoma after the bombing. They are loving images to comfort and support those who suffered. And even more important, there are large blackboards embedded in the ground in front of the wall, with buckets of chalk next to them, for the children who visit today to leave messages and speak from their hearts.
The night before the visit to the memorial we had been awakened in our hotel at 2:30 am by a fire alarm, a blaring siren that shocked our entire systems, as we jumped up and threw on clothing and an eight story hotel poured out into the parking lot below. Thankfully there was no fire but the entire next day I felt, as did Lani, that shock in my body that the alarm and rush downstairs had created, all the time knowing that it was maybe one millioneth of the shock that the people involved in the bombing, the survivors and rescuers, felt on that day in 1995. And I could not even begin to imagine what they carried in their bodies still from that horrific event.
And later that day, as we were standing outside the memorial at the wall of remembrance looking at all of the gifts that had been left there, the photos and the stories that had been pinned and tied onto a chain link fence since the bombing 14 years ago, a woman spoke to us who had been part of a medical team across town who responded to the casualties. At the time she was a nursing student, and had not returned to the site since the bombing, and I saw in her face how hard it had been. And still she came with her husband and child because she too wanted to feel the hope again.
Domestic violence comes in all shapes and sizes. What happened in Oklahoma City happened on such a grand and terrible scale that it is memorialized today. What happens in families and relationships across the country is covered up and forgotten, or denied. Why is that, especially when we as individuals have so much more ability to affect the life of one person, to understand and help one another in small ways each and every day, than we can shift something as horrific as a bombing, or 911 or a war? And yet it is those small changes, those small gestures each and every day that will ultimately end the greater violence.
How have we become so numb to the suffering of those around us? During a break from the memorial Lani had a conversation at a health food store with a woman whose family had been severely affected by domestic violence, who told us that Oklahoma City is a hotbed for this issue. And again, even as moved as I was by the message and the energy of peace and non-violence that the memorial stood for, I wondered where was the help for those individuals, for those women and men and children who lived with violence on a day to day basis.
Every person in that city knew about and related to the bombing in some way. And yet, how many of them knew about and related to the violence that surrounded them in their neighborhoods every day? Once again I was struck by the feeling that domestic violence, Including sexual abuse, is the least talked about, most serious issue our country faces.
In Oklahoma City they have memorialized their history so that hopefully it will not be repeated. How many of us know our own family history, or the history of our partners and extended family and friends? Perhaps if we did, perhaps if the issues of domestic violence were not swept under the carpet or buried in the closet, we could all create a living memorial that would finally allow everyone to participate in ending this abuse. Perhaps if we all knew, because the dialog was out in the open and we actively paid attention to it, that we are all capable of violence or disrespect or lack of compassion, then the guilt and shame would finally dissolve and hope could spring anew that change is possible. That the cycles of violence large and small could be broken.
At a memorial in Oklahoma City children are encouraged to speak their feelings, to share their concerns, to look at violence and what it can do to a life, or hundreds of lives. How often do we encourage our children to share with us their thoughts and feelings? How often do we encourage them when they bring home an art project from school, or even better fail a test, or lose a game? How often do we let our children see our fears and sorrow, and hear our questions about our own lives? How often do we let them comfort us?
One thing I do know … we are all here together. Isn’t it time to make that an assumed benefit and not a possible curse?
No comments:
Post a Comment