It’s great to see everyone’s thankful blurbs all over Facebook and Twitter. Even in the craziness of this broken world, it’s good to know people are finding joy and hope in their families, friends, jobs, etc… The older I get, the more obvious it is that problems abound – big and small. I often refer to the Bible verse that promises this – John 16:33. I can get really stuck in the mire sometimes. I won’t answer the phone or the door. I’ll stare at the computer screen until my eyes cross, because its content has some inexplicable numbing effect on the darkness. Eventually, every time, I realize that my perspective is the only thing that can change my mood. The muck will never go away. It’s part of this life. But gratefulness can make the muck seem smaller.
I held back from writing anything during those three or four days when all people could post about was the Paris attacks and the Syrian refugee crisis. My opinions were fighting with each other inside my head, so I knew there was no way to coherently put them to paper. One minute, I was terrified. The next, defiant.
I have family that lives three hours Northeast of Paris, close to the Belgian border.
My cousin was supposed to be at the soccer game where one of the attacks happened, but, for some reason, he didn’t make it into the city that night. Thank God.
Over the past couple of weeks, their little town and its vicinity has been raided over and again, apartments searched, military police lining the streets. The news stories and videos are bone-chilling to me. Even after I’ve seen and read the horrors of other atrocities all over the world, this attack on France hits me harder than the rest.
Why?
Because pieces of my heart are at stake.
My dear aunt, who loves nothing more than to sit, all morning, in her basement kitchen that smells like butter and coffee and all things country French. Her elbows rest on the checkered tablecloth while she gossips and giggles with me in slow, melodious French (which I mostly understand.)
My impish uncle, whose tongue stays quiet as he tends to tomatoes and currants in his Eden-esque garden, whose wrinkles curve upward in pride as he checks on a batch of his homemade grappa in the chicken house. He has little patience for gossip, a tender heart for children, and a temper that springs like a jack-in-the box, surprising, then disappearing.
My cousins, one after another, are my heart. One who loses her car keys every time the wind blows but can quote great philosophers and thinkers from every decade. Another whose voice I hear in my quiet – singing Italian folk songs, whose face I see in my dreams – pointing out the gardens of my ancestors on a hilltop in Calabria and picking me a sunflower.
Some of my most cherished moments are there, where war is erupting like an angry boil. I hate it. I fear it.
The truth is that beneath the hateful words people are spewing all over social media, there is fear. We are all afraid. We all have pieces of our hearts that we cannot live without.
Our families.
Our friends.
Our children.
When we let our minds spin and land on all of the what if scenarios, the desperation can leave us dizzied with fear. We are blinded by it, changed by it, hindered by it. Not to say that the fear can be easily overcome. Sometimes, it simply cannot. It’s a human reaction. And when fear morphs into hate, it divides people. I see that happening on my own little square of the world. Comrades are lashing out at each other over their differences of opinion. Issues are far too heated to bring up over dinner with new friends.
It’s sad that in today’s society it’s so much easier to be blatantly hateful than it is to be transparently afraid.
I have chosen to sift through the hate and to empathize with the fear that lies beneath every ugly word. I know it well. I feel it too.
And this choice has kept me anchored - only by a hair - to reason over this trying time. When humanity is slipping through the cracks on both sides of an issue, each side boasting its own self-righteousness, I stand firm on compassion. Every time I see or hear a hateful remark- whether it’s about Syrian refugees or people of a certain political sway, I remind myself-
We are all afraid.
I think of my aunt’s subdued smile and the way she wipes the sweat from beneath her glasses in the heat of August in Calabria.
I picture my uncle pinching the cheek of his great-great niece from America, then slapping his knee with joy over having had the opportunity to meet her.
I remember the smell of roasting chestnuts and the cold that bit my cheeks as I strolled over the Alexander Bridge in Paris with its great golden statues. Too beautiful to be threatened, really.
But it is.
And I choose to freely admit – I am afraid.