Emotional Journeys

This past week was a study in the roller-coaster of my attempts to observe and contemplate the complexities of our society. The week found me in downtown L.A. trying to smooth over a turf war among some of our more volitile cusomters and hand-holding the rep who is responsible for all this. While on the way to hotel after all the fireworks, I spied a highway sign indicating the exit to the "Museum of Tolerance". After making a few internal jokes about L.A. being the perrfect site for this museum, I decided to craft a humorous blog around this sign and the L.A. culture. Then on Saturday my bride and I got up early and drove to Oklahoma City to watch my 8-yr-old grandson and his daddy run in a 5K race. There were also 1/2 marathon and a marathon to go along with this. My grandson had been impacted by a young lady in the huddle group from church because she had been such a sweet spirit and had died in the last few months of cancer. There were over 50 people from their church who participated, but I think this was Eli's way of saying he still thought of her and missed her. The race was on Sunday at 6:30AM, so we had most of Saturday afternoon to tour the Alfred Murrah Memorial. At first my grandson was more into running around and being an 8-yr-old, but my bride took him in hand and in her quiet, impressive way took him around to all the different memorials within the context of the greater memorial and explained the horror and intolerance of this single act of hatred. I watched from a distance as my bride leaned close and almost whispered into his ear the impact of each stone, each name, each plaque. And from my distance I could see his eyes and body lean ever more intensely into her words and teaching. The Memorial is an impressive place. I find it hard to believe that almost 18 years have passed since the tragedy of that day. The babies who died in the daycare would be in college or just entering. There have been no skinned knees, no butterfly kisses, no first day of school, no driving lessons, no first romance, no first kiss, no graduation. In a blink and a flash, the hopes and dreams, unrealized expectations, the precious moments were all erased. Along with these were a couple of smaller plaques, one in particular of a husband and wife who died on the same floor of the building. In my minds eye I see them as having a chuckle together in the car before work, perhaps sharing a cup of coffee, maybe a quick have-a-good-day kiss before they unbuckled and strolled together into work. Maybe they weren't like that, maybe they had a quarrel, or simply rode to work in silence not knowing that the sand was down to the last few grains...and they were unaware. And the five plaques of the people who happened to be walking by the building, on their way to work when in a flash their world was gone, and the shpe of the world and the hearts of their loved ones gone with it. Was this their normal route to work? Or did they change their path to run by Starbucks or a quick errand and just got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time? Who knows? But as I walked and read and pondered, my mind kept coming back to the question of motive. Why kill all these innocent people? Why rob us all of the innocence that marked us before? We learn just a few short years later that indeed this hatred, this intolerance can be enacted on a much bigger stage. But this intersection of hatred and intolerance is only two of the streets. It is criss-crossed with courage and hope. As I stood there in the midst of that memorial, I could see poking above the walls the steeples of two churches. My cyncism took over for a few moments and I wondered, bitterly, where these communities of faith were, when the babies and grownups of the Murrah building needed them most? The very next morning I was sitting in the assembly hall of one of those churches, eating a free breakfst. It occurred to me that this little church, across from the memorial had given up their "worship" time to feed a bunch of people who came to remember the tragedy, to run for those who couldnt run for themselves. I heard the story of this little church acting as a clearing house of information for those who couldn't find their loved ones that tragic day. Of offering food and consolation where they could. It then came home that these little communities of faith can't change the events, or craft any big answers. They can only hug and cry and feed those who are so devastated that they can't think or respond because their world has been blown up by an intolerance and hatred that they never even knew existed. The Museum of Tolerance is an educational think tank, to use the atrocities of the Holocaust to teach an emerging society the lessons learned by the intentional acts of cruelty by a few men. Oklahoma City could add a few lines to that lesson. But the real teaching will be in the model of my bride, leaning close whispering the acknowledgement of the evil that exists, and the path to tolerance in the truths of a better way. The little church may have grave internal issues, but the willingness to feed and console and point to the hope of compassion is in their DNA. I wish my words here were better, but there is simply some things that impact us so deeply that we can't adequately express. My grandson wants to run next year. In four years he wants me to run the 1/2 marathon. I'll be 62, what better time to embrace the concept of tolerance as the only effective tool against hatred. If my knees can handle the strain I will do my best to fulfill his wishes. The future is in the hands of those who have heard the whispers of their Nena and compelled their grandaddy to act. Godspeed, we all have a race to run. I pray yours is downhill and downwind, but if not I pray you will run it anyway. Don