January 21, 7:00pm (Kevin Westling)
Well what do you say to a ten-year-old boy who is scared about the global financial crisis that has already made his family’s tenuous hold on life so much more insecure?
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Trinity @ 7
by Cam Miller
January 17, 2010 @ 7:00 p.m.
Good evening.
I just returned from two weeks in El Salvador
where we have a kind of sister relationship with a community,
and with a Salvadoran NGO.
The first week was purely cultural immersion
and one of our Trinity@7 folks went –
Paul Wilcox.
The second week was a medical team
that works with a Salvadoran Non-governmental Organization focused on health advocacy.
I want to tell you a story from the second week.
It is a story that will make any of you
who are Mental Health professionals cringe,
and you will want to tell me what I should have done.
It begins in a very poor city,
St. Martin’s I think is the name.
We were in a dilapidated community center
surrounded by the ubiquitous garbage of poverty
and the bent and broken everything
in a place where spare parts are limited
and material priorities truly different from our own.
My job last week,
with the medical team,
was to teach small-group classes
of meditation and relaxation techniques
to people with hyper-tension or stress
that the physicians or nurse directed to me.
So each day when we arrived at a clinic location,
I would scout out the best and quietest place for my classes.
Quiet is a misnomer
because when one or two hundred people gather
to stand in line for a clinic,
their children gather and play…loudly of course.
But each day,
in each new location,
I was able to find a patch of shade
under which to place eight or ten plastic chairs in a circle.
Occasionally, between classes,
I would do an individual or family consultation
that the medical providers felt was mental health related.
On the day in question,
in a particularly loud and particularly dusty place,
I am not sure “mental health” was the right diagnosis.
We were surrounded,
I should tell you,
by a contingent of police, army soldiers
and a couple guys from the mayor’s personal security force.
I had never experienced that kind of security before
so I asked what was going on.
“Gangs” was the terse reply.
Apparently our medical clinic that day
was situated in the midst of a pernicious and violent
gang struggle.
Time to relax, I thought to myself.
Anyway, the referral that came to me that day
was a ten year old boy,
with his mother and younger brother and sister.
The diagnosis was “depression” because the ten year old
cried a lot.
The mother was tired of it
and wanted someone to fix her little boy.
It must have been a strange sight.
A huge Gringo in a bright orange fishing shirt,
a red bandanna tied Pirate-style on his head –
that was me –
and a diminutive family of four facing him,
three stoic faces
and one stoic face with tears.
To make a long story short,
and to cut through the many preliminary questions I asked
in order to ascertain the situation,
the little boy was crying, I was told…
because of the “Financial Crisis.”
The financial crisis?
“Yes, he is scared about the financial crisis
and sometimes we do not have enough to eat.”
“For the rain drop
joy is in entering the river –
unbearable pain becomes its own cure…
in every color and circumstance,
may the eyes be open for what comes.” (Ghalib)
Well what do you say to a ten-year-old boy
who is scared about the global financial crisis
that has already made his family’s tenuous hold on life
so much more insecure?
I had a moment when I wanted to smack
whichever medical provider
sent me the diagnosis of depression
and a little boy before which to feel so powerless.
But of course my anger wasn’t at the doctor.
I began to breath deeply,
the way I had been teaching people all week.
Again, long story short.
What was there to say,
especially when I couldn’t discern other family issues
that surely were going on underneath the stoic curtain.
We were speaking to one another through a translator
and there were other families
and other children
within ear-shot if someone really wanted to hear.
Privacy is a rare commodity in poverty.
Finally, I figured out that I had all the information
I was going to be able to get,
and all the resources with which to help him
amounted to zero.
I asked him if he had ever heard of the Jewish religion.
He shook his head yes.
I told him there is a tradition,
a story among the great rabbis of old,
about the eight “Just Men.”
Actually, on the spot I couldn’t remember how many
Just Men there were but eight seemed like a good number.
I think I edited it to include eight Just Men and Women.
Any way…
I was reaching everywhere I could in the moment.
I told him that, as the story goes,
God had appointed eight people
who task it was to be compassionate
and hold all the sorrow
of all the injustices of the world.
I told him that, as the story goes,
every time one of those eight men or women dies,
a new one is born to take his or her place.
Those eight Just men and women
hold the sorrow for God
until the day that God brings about justice
for everyone.
It allows all the other people
to fight for justice,
and keep putting one step in front of the other
when they are sad or angry or afraid.
I said it was unusual for a ten year old boy
to hold so much sadness in his heart
for so many other people.
I said that maybe he was holding some sadness
for God.
Tears were streaming down his face
and he shook his head ever-so-slightly
that maybe he was.
I told him that most of the world is sad right now
and that he is not alone.
I told him there was much to be sad about,
and that when his mom and dad struggled,
it was compassionate of him to be sad for them
instead of just sad for himself.
I told him that the thing about his sadness
was that when it got to be too much
God would hold it for him.
I told him that if he wanted to,
or needed to,
every night he could ask God to hold his sadness
so he could get a good night’s sleep,
and that it would be there for him if whenever
he wanted to hold it again.
I told him that God
needed partners like him in the world.
Then I told his mother
that sadness was not the worst thing in the world,
and that her son was so sad
because he had a very big heart.
“Allow him to cry” I told her.
When he is done with the sadness he will stop crying…
or eventually manage his tears.
“You can not fix your son,” I told her,
so offer him affirmation and comfort
instead of embarrassment and challenge.
“God needs people
who are sad for other people,”
is what I told her.
That was it.
That was all I had.
I doubt it had much impact.
It didn’t fix anything.
If there was something to fix
I didn’t have the tools or know-how to fix it.
But what that little boy did for me,
and El Salvador generally – which is why I go –
is that it reminded me
that how we frame the world
and our own place in it,
makes all the difference in the world.
We can easily be overwhelmed by the torrential suffering
of Haiti, or domestic violence or Eastside Buffalo.
But we can also frame that suffering
in a way that allows us to hold it,
and respond to it,
and take action and live.
We get to choose the frame for our experiences
and the information that we receive.
Do not allow the commercial media
to frame your world.
They are out to make money off of us.
They are out to make money off of disaster.
Do not allow the commercial religions
to frame your world.
They are out to consolidate power through us.
Do not allow some author of some book,
or the speaker at some workshop,
or at Trinity@7,
to frame your world.
They may be great people
but you and I must choose our own frames…carefully.
There is more information than we can digest successfully.
There is more suffering that we can possibly address.
There are problems and pain we cannot fix.
How will you frame it all?
It makes all the difference in the world
and the question for us is,
does our frame empower us
or debilitate us?
So tonight,
at that candle wall over there,
there is a candle with your name on it.
It is a symbol of the light that you light for yourself.
It is a symbol of the light you create
to enlighten the darkness all around.
What is your frame?
If you don’t like the one you have, get another.
Tonight,
allow that candle to be a hope.
Tonight,
allow that candle to be a light.
Tonight,
allow that candle to be a declaration you make
about how to hold and carry the sadness of the world…
so that you continue to act,
and continue to keep one foot in front of the other
while walking toward your hope.
“For the rain drop
joy is in entering the river –
unbearable pain becomes its own cure…
in every color and circumstance,
may the eyes be open for what comes.” (Ghalib)
