On the Boston Marathon

It was a terrible day in the neighborhood at the Boston Marathon last week.  When I heard about the bombing I was stunned. Then I felt angry, then frightened, sad and then confused. Again in our world, guns and bombs, more hate and more violence. Why?

Why does anyone have such hatred and feel driven to express it in such vicious ways? The explosion, I read, had been engineered to disperse shrapnel at near ground level tearing apart the legs and lower torso’s of runners and bystanders, a sadistic touch to a vengeful act. There is a dark side to our human condition. 

At the marathon, people were gathered together to celebrate life, to take pleasure in their mobility, to delight in the simple joy of being alive on a sunny day and enjoy feeling a part of a community.  Joy is life’s premier gift. Joy wants to be celebrated and it wants a community to celebrate with.

The violence seemed so meaningless to me. I know that in the perpetrators’ minds the calculated violence was purposeful and justified.  I cannot see how. Madness? A sense of righteous indignation, perhaps?  Some messianic delusions, or maybe were they two deprived or abused boys?  Only God knows.

We’ll soon hear theories about why these men acted as they did. 

They will be only explanations, attempts to be rational about what isn’t rational and while explanations may serve psychological or perhaps political curiosity, and the explanations will ultimately satisfy none of the survivors of Boston. Reasons offer cold comfort.  Comfort can be found in adversity, but the comfort comes not from explanations. It comes from helpers.

Fred Rogers of Mr. Rogers Neighborhood once said,  “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.”

This quote went viral in the media, recently. It struck a chord. I had the thought that Mr. Roger’s ghost had returned to earth to tell a violent world someone is always going to be there to help.  Mr. Rogers knew all about the dark side of the human condition. His life was spent in helping children embrace the dark side so they would not have to be afraid of it. It’s hard for kids or adults to have a wonderful day in the neighborhood when they’re hurt, feel alone or are scared to death.

In the Boston neighborhood that day, there were helpers everywhere: they shepherded people through the dark, held one another, prayed together. A physician who ran the race continued on running to the hospital where he could operate on the wounded. Nurses left private homes and showed up just to lend a hand and soon a sense of solidarity in suffering arose from the desolation of the carnage.

As the shock of crisis settles, grief and mourning begin. It is a slow process. There’s a lot of darkness that must be traveled. For grief and mourning to do its work, it must have helpers.  Helpers travel with the wounded through the dark, lift up the injured, hold the grieving, calm the frightened, helpers who just ‘show up’ and listen to the stories of fear, loss and sadness that must be told. Healing requires the kind of listening that communicates to someone that they are not alone.

In Boston that day, there was a healing presence, the kind Mr. Rogers communicated to children who feared they’d be lost in the dark.

It was a terrible day in Boston’s neighborhood.  But neighbors endured because helpers made all the difference in the world, the difference between despair and hope.