human – Marilyn R. Gardner

Acknowledging Imago Dei

Published on September 18, 2013 by Marilyn15 Comments

It’s the only way I can make it through these conversations, it’s the only way I can be okay with all I’ve seen and heard the last few weeks – Acknowledging Imago Dei. Remembering the Image of God stamped across his creation, a picture of his care for humanity even when all around screams broken and evil.

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15 minutes from the resort with the swimming pool is a slum, Moti Dongor in Margao. I shake my head as I try to reconcile the contrast between where I just was, in pristine beauty with palm trees beckoning towards a bluer than blue pool, to where I am. A skinny dog is digging through garbage that ranks. Small shacks made of corrugated metal and other materials are crowded next to each other, making room for one more shelter. Through the garbage to the left skips a little girl, she looks to be about seven years old. She is lovely in energetic youth. Her smile and her gait are light, free from the bondage that I feel in the surroundings. I stop, ask permission to take her photo, and she smiles with glee. We look at the photo together and she happily approves. Imago Dei. This little girl – reflecting the image of God by a garbage heap. Imago Dei.

Further up the hill we walk, the area becoming more congested and crowded, until we come to a narrow stairway to the left. Up the stairs and into a community center. The room we enter is small but full of sewing machines and young women, all hard at work creating. Creating through crochet needles, creating through sewing machines – no outside surroundings can snuff out the creative spirit endowed by their Maker. Imago Dei.

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I slowly hear stories about Syria from my husband. They hurt my head. I can’t take too many. I can’t wrap my brain around the harm and evil of man on man. Natural disasters are one thing, war is completely different. The camps of internally displaced people where I worked a couple of years ago in Pakistan – they were a different story. Yes people were displaced. Yes they had lost much. But they were back in their villages with the hope of rebuilding. They had food – fish in abundance because of the flood waters, rice, chapatis. They had community.

These stories? They hurt the brain. Refugee camps with no water and no latrines, but twelve thousand people milling in chaos. Stories of violence and useless sacrifice, of elementary school wagers resulting in tragedy. But despite this – in the midst of this horror, people survive, they live. They don’t lose hope. If that is not evidence of the image of God, of Imago Dei, then I don’t know what is. This resilience cannot be man made.

And so I am certain of one thing in these days: that we are stamped with the image of God. Yes – it is tarnished and marred beyond recognition at times, but it emerges solid just when I start to lose all sense of perspective and hope. Acknowledging Imago Dei, I whisper ‘thank you’.

“Murmuring thanks does not deny that an event is a tragedy and neither does it deny that there’s a cracking fissure straight across the heart. Giving thanks is only this: making the canyon of pain into a megaphone to proclaim the ultimate goodness of God.” from Ann Voskamp One Thousand Gifts Devotional

The Courage to Call Out Evil

Published on March 25, 2013 by Marilyn3 Comments

“There’s a word for what happens when one group of people sees another as less than human and insists on its right to hurt and humiliate them for fun. It’s an everyday word that is often misused to refer to something outside of ourselves. The word is ‘evil’.” Laurie Penny

I was a block away when I saw the crowd of teenagers. There were at least 20 of them on the corner of a city street. I hated going home this time of day. Packs of city teens traveled the subway together and reflected all the insensitivity and crowd mentality normal to that age, and unbearable to those looking on.

My heart beat faster seeing them. They were surrounding someone, something. Taunting, laughing, not a flicker of emotional IQ showed. I suddenly realized they were surrounding the disabled man who usually lay, prone, in a motorized wheelchair in a spot where on sunny days the sun would shine, a spot where he wouldn’t be too cold.

The wheelchair was tipped over and he was on the ground. On the ground surrounded by teens, being taunted and mocked. Because he couldn’t fight back. He was an easy target.

He was a nothing to them, good as dead, a piece of skin and bones that could be pushed around, shoved to the ground. He had so little dignity to begin with that it was easy to rob him of the rest. Rob him of the honor of what it means to be ‘made in the God’s image”. The words ‘Made in the image of God’ were not something this group understood.

I breathed hot rage and started to run-walk to the scene. At just that time, police officers showed up and began dispersing the crowd and helping the man. The teens muttered profanities and walked off – looking for their next victim.

Had I been closer would I have had the courage to call them out? To call out their behavior for what it was? Evil in its dismissal of humanity? Evil in its demonstration of superiority and cruelty? Would I have faced 20 or more teens, most taller (and arguably stronger) than me?

Do I have the courage to call out evil? To call evil for what it is? No excuses? No “well … those who did this come from bad backgrounds”. No “they’re just being kids!” No “I’m sure they didn’t mean harm by what they did! They just didn’t think!”

None of that – just plain calling out cruelty and evil. Using words that are politically incorrect in a society that justifies all sorts of bad behavior. Calling out behavior that dismisses others as ‘less-than’, strips them of their agency, and attempts to dismiss the image of God within.

On Tuesday I read an article that had the courage to call out Evil. On Wednesday I read another article; another essay that called on courage, called out evil.

The women behind these article couldn’t be more different – but both used their voices and called out ‘evil’.

In ancient days prophets had the courage to speak truth and call out evil – and they paid, sometimes dearly. The Prophet Isaiah had harsh words for people who dismissed or failed to recognize evil: “Woe to those who call evil good and good evil, who put darkness for light and light for darkness, who put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter.”

And this was and is a picture of redemption – to see and hear evil called out in a world that dismisses and justifies, to read past accounts of courage to confront evil — to know there are those still willing to call it out today, reflects a Good God – a God that redeems, a God that cannot tolerate evil.

A God that loves his creation too much to let them wallow without consequences in a pig sty. Could it be when we call out Evil, we call up Good?

But the question remains: Do I have the courage to call out evil?

The Cry of Humanity

Published on October 21, 2012October 21, 2012 by Marilyn21 Comments

Subways in cities are a microcosm of our world. In an enclosed space with graffiti and advertisements for art, we bump into, and sit by, complete strangers. It is in subway cars that languages from all over the world blend together, a verbal match to the rhythm of the train, and every shade of skin color is present. You never know if you are sitting next to a soon-to-be Nobel prize winner or someone who can barely make it to the next day.

Except sometimes you do – because sometimes the person is so drunk that they teeter across the moving train and fall against you.

Sometimes the person is so mentally ill that if you make eye contact you will face burning rage that reveals itself through a nonsensical tirade.

Other times the person is violently lashing out and your heart beats a little faster, wondering if now is the time to pull the emergency lever.

It’s these times that there are clear distinctions between the sane and the insane; between the ‘broken’ and the ‘whole’; between the drunk woman and the rest of the car.

It was like this the other day. The sane and sober watched as a drunk woman took the stage on the ride home. She alternated between angry belligerence and tearful grief. She stumbled and fell, held up by the sober man who was with her. Her face spoke a hard life with mascara and lipstick smeared, premature wrinkles, and a glazed hard shell over her eyes.

What grieved me was the laughter and mockery her performance yielded. It was human on human attack and inside and outside I cringed. There was no effort made to hide it; she was a person to be mocked and avoided.

But what resonated to my core were her words just before we reached my stop. Sobbing she looked at the man with her and said “Just let me go! Let me cry! Let me be. You don’t care anyway!”

The words struck me as the cry of humanity – a cry that pushes away, that can’t receive comfort, that, despite the tears and sorrow, wants to go it alone. The cry that reminds me of a two-year old “Do by self!” — emphatic in its scream of independence.

The cry of humanity that every one of us on the subway understood, but that most of us have learned to disguise.

The woman pushed away at the man who was with her the way I push away at God.

Let me go! Let me cry! Let me do it my way! Let me be! You don’t care anyway. The cry of all of us really. The cry of humanity that has echoed to the Heavens since time began.

The man wouldn’t be put off. He held her as she pushed back. He took the punching and the hitting and spoke softly to her. He stood tall as she fell against him, finally defeated, finally realizing that yes – she did in fact need him. She couldn’t have taken two steps without his support, his strength,his sobriety.

And the rest watched – mocking.

We got off at the same stop. I went one way. They went the other – the woman leaning on her support as he walked her toward the exit.

It struck me that despite appearance, they may be the two sanest people in that subway car. The one – who realized despite her drunken state, that she was desperate for support; the other – determined to stay with her and support her through the ride.

These two, broken and exposed, illustrated in virtual reality both the cry of humanity and the answer to that cry.