GOD BLESS THE CHILD

My wife and I like to watch the BBC News that comes on PBS at 10 pm in Minneapolis.  A different perspective, more international focus.  But last night, as you might imagine, the news was all about the baby prince that had been born.  Live shots outside the hospital, the “reaction of the world” and so on. We switched to the local “news leader” and got the usual mix of mayhem and misdemeanors, followed by a cheerful, indeed chirpy weather report (low humidity is on its way!), and a sport reporter’s righteous indignation about a baseball player being suspended for the year for steroid use (“I’m shocked! Shocked that gambling is going on here!” declaimed Inspector Renault)

I hope the Third in Line to the Throne has a blessed life.  I hope the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge get some help with their interrupted sleep (I imagine they will).  Having raised two daughters, I know the joy and the travail of that great work.

But seriously, is this child more important than all other babies born July 22, 2013?  Is his life going to make that much of a difference?  We say in this country that we are all equal, but we know that circumstances of birth make such a difference.  A child born in an affluent neighborhood has a leg up in so many ways in relation to a child born in a poor neighborhood. 

I’m not discounting family values or individual initiative nor the power of people and communities to change.  But Grosse Pointe, Michigan has received a lot more political and economic favors than Detroit, Michigan, no matter how much people scream about those receiving food stamps.

We humans have built an economic system and a political system in which there are many winners and many, many more losers. We humans built it, not some unseen hand or divine idea.

There’s been a lot written and said about Trayvon Martin—whether George Zimmerman saw him as a threat because he was black.  I haven’t heard or seen much that maybe Zimmerman saw him as a threat because he was young.   So many of the youth in our parish have related stories about being followed in a store, or stopped by police, because they are with a group of other youth.  So many youth feel judged by adults in their community.  True, many of these are people of color, but even the white youth have had that experience. 

It is so easy to see “the other” as a threat, and when there are more than a couple of “them”, our fear rises up.  One reason we run a youth leadership program at our church—where youth go into the neighborhood and engage adults—is to help break down adults’ fears of youth.   I hope we’re making a difference.  “Stand your ground” with a gun usually begins with “this is my ground and not yours” in the mind.

I’m not Pollyannaish about the world (look it up, young people!), but I want to see the world today as a blessing—for the little prince and for all the little ones we call human beings.

Be blessing. Be justice.  Be beauty.

Patrick

P. S.  Here’s the beginning of a poem of mine in progress, about the role of fate.  I’d love to hear ideas about where to take it:

CHANCE

Maria was born in Reynosa

and Mary in McAllen; one has
the right to drive across the Rio Grande,
the other the right to swim across the Rio Bravo.

Abraham was born a Christian

and Ibrahim a Muslim, and both
believe the other will live forever in hell.

Delwyn got to the party a half hour

after the fight broke up, but just
in time for the bullet.  A tornado
took Paulette’s good tree, and left
the bad one standing…