Have you noticed how many people are putting out statements lately?
This happened with Ukraine, Black Lives Matter, the Dobbs decision, and countless other milestones and conflicts in the last few years. I worry that making statements is replacing making commitments.
Like many of you, I am heartbroken about the situation in the Middle East, and that two already-oppressed groups are further oppressing one another. I’m reminded of the saying, “Hurt people hurt people.” There is so much wounding, and so little healing.
Some of you might be politicians, policymakers, humanitarian aid workers, international peacekeepers. You likely have nuanced opinions about what is going on. For the rest of us? We have to find compassion in our hearts even if we don’t understand everything. We have to keep committing to love. We have to spend more energy loving and serving than in having and spouting opinions.
I had a poignant example of this today.
It’s part of my spiritual practice to attend the monthly memorial for unhoused people at Bellingham’s Lighthouse Mission. I have never personally known any of the deceased, but recognizing and celebrating their lives has profoundly impacted me. It’s unconscionable that a town the size of Bellingham needs a memorial every month, but I’m so grateful we have one.
Today’s service remembered three men (Tod, Russell, Bruce), and I want to share two stories that reminded me that the way we live our daily lives matters.
The mission staff read to us a letter that had been sent about Tod from LifeCenter Northwest. In his death, 42-year-old Tod had donated organs to four people. His right and left kidneys, his liver, and his heart. His heart went to a 30-year-old mother of two. Tod’s untimely death gave life to four people. Here’s a man who had struggled with addiction, who had been in and out of rehab, who had made the streets his home and struggled his whole life to survive. I’ll bet he had some opinions about how the world works. I’ll bet he could make some serious statements about the discrimination, unkindness, and apathy directed his way over the course of his life. Instead, he gave life.
When it came time to remember Bruce, two women shared. One was a volunteer at the food bank where Bruce was a guest, and the other was in an AA group with Bruce. Bruce lived in a tent in the woods out in the county and he was trying to get sober in the last year of his life. He was surly, his social skills were poor, but these women fed and loved him and drove 20 miles to come to his service today. “I’m not a public speaker, but I saw Bruce come out of his shell. And I know he had two cats that he cared about. If anyone knows the whereabouts of those cats, I will take them in.” This got me bawling. I had already been thinking about this theme of “commitments over statements,” and here were two women whose actions spoke much, much louder than words.
What is love calling you to do? Give money? Do research? Make food? March in the streets? Make friends in AA or with your neighbors? Listen before speaking? Grieve? Be in humble unknowing? Be in discomfort? Give that all-precious resource of time? Take in someone’s pets? Volunteer at the food bank?
Anyone can make a statement. The world needs us to make loving commitments and maybe even to live them out without broadcasting it. Thank you, Tod, and thank you, salt-of-the-earth women, for showing me the way today.