Palm Sunday Introspect


Introspect: the Sunday of the Passion

Half a century ago this very spring, an ethics course at the University of Michigan defined pornography for me. Porno (Greek, evil) and graphy (Greek, writing). The case was a front page newspaper headline and photograph of a little boy on his tricycle who had just been crushed under the front wheel of a car. It may have been news for many, may even have sold newspapers, but in a way, and to an extent, the event ruined my life. 

The abiding horrific image. And not only of the little child, but of what people can be, and are. And can do. Even what entertains us.  

 My memory and the debilitating mental image of standing on the flight deck of USS TRIPOLI that day off Vietnam, now seemingly a hundred years ago, watching as our Marine Corps helicopters landed and brought aboard for medical treatment in our ship's hospital, a dozen or more little Vietnamese children who had horrendous injuries and war wounds -- is another.    

When we were growing up, my mother, God rest and forgive, would sometimes take hold of the story of a terrible tragedy and harbor it in her mind, and she would tell it and tell it and tell it again and again off and on for years. Even when I said, “I remember your telling about that,” she would go ahead and finish the story, at least the horrible part. At some point later in life I learned to say gently, “Mama, there’s nothing I can do about that, and hearing about it will only make me sad and depressed,” and she would stop.

There must be something wrong with my being that can’t handle terribleness, that suffers the anguish of each horror personally. When there is nothing to be done about it but weep, my usual thing is either turn off the television or quietly and quickly leave the room. It’s happening at the moment. In Georgia someone has murdered a baby. I glimpsed the headline in the New York Times online and purposely avoided reading more. But it occurred to me that it would be on TV and I would need to make a point of turning away. And sure enough there it is, and the young mother weeping, and the tiny boy's smiling picture, and there is nothing I can do but weep with her, and nowhere I can go but sadness and terrible, deep depression, about this, and about what we are, have become, are becoming. 

Even my own moral view of what a moral and just society should properly and scripturally do to those who commit such cruel, senseless, unspeakable atrocities, far, far down beneath and beyond draconian, takes me so far down that I understand the Great Flood and think that, with God, I’ve had enough, too much, and It's Time.

A parishioner who is a special friend shared this deeply poignant video with me. 
Watching it, it came to me that the murdered infant was The Christ Child Come Again, and that now it can never happen forever.

Palm Sunday: Sunday of the Passion

TW+