I choose to be a witness. Terry Hershey

“Please, tell me how to hold it all?” she asks me in an email. “Do you ever want to close your eyes, and plug your ears?”

“Yes.” I tell her. “If I’m honest, a few times a day.”

Her email was one of many. So many are struggling with what is happening. As if the ground is shifting under our feet. The news cycle feels relentless. It continues to sow disbelief, fear, and outrage, headline after headline.

It leaves many, feeling sad, anxious, unsettled, and even alarmed. Please know this my friends: they are all indicators that you still care. You heart still works, and that matters.

In answering the email exchange question, “What exactly do we do?”

Today I have an answer. I am a witness. You are a witness.

As a witness, I choose to pay attention while I am here.

In a world that rewards “dog eat dog”, I choose mercy.

In a world where demeaning someone is applauded, I choose to honor dignity.

In a world where exclusion is real, I choose the Gospel: “You belong. Your humanity is not up for negotiation. Your presence does not require anyone’s permission.”

I choose to be a witness.

Yes. I can choose to show up now. Bravely, both strong, and tender.

What does this look like? Oh, it’s the little gifts my friends.

It makes a big difference to hug the hurt. To kiss the broken. To bandage the wounded. To befriend the lost. To love the lonely. To listen, making room for sadness. To grieve.

To stand up for the humiliated, and the degraded. To honor the dignity in every human. “I see you.”

To say Yes, to little gifts of compassion, connection, dignity, empathy, kindness, generosity, and peace that leave people better than we find them.

To say No, to cruelty, and mercilessness.

Thank you, my friends, for all your gifts of presence, and courage, and resolution, and kind-heartedness.

When people learn that I am a minister, they’re often curious to ask what I “believe”. And when I visit different churches, some people like to ask me. They can’t help themselves.

Okay, here you go:

God has a heart for those who are left out, forgotten, and excluded.

God's grace is bigger than anything which distances and separates and wounds us.

You are God's beloved child, and God's love for you is unconditional.

And when I see acts of exclusion, or acts that disparage inclusion, I feel it, viscerally, and my beliefs matter, and they summon and fuel a choice: I want to be a witness to God’s Mercy and Grace.

Pope Leo reminded us all. “Caring for others is ‘the supreme law’ that comes before society's rules.”

And caring for others, well, that is music worth singing. And it is the music of Grace.

What do I “believe”? Bottom line? I want to be like Jesus. Yes, Jesus, who sat with prostitutes and lepers (the “least of these”), and kept company with the outcasts and the downtrodden.

Let us be on the lookout for those left out. To say, No, to segregation and to cruelty.

Easy? Not really.

Stress-free? Not really.

I’m learning that this week. “I am cancelling my subscription.  I need spiritual support without political intrusion,” wrote one reader.

In my recent Sabbath Moments, I’ve been “confessing” that in much of my ministry I worked hard (made certain) at not pushing any boundaries. “Mincing” words, in order “to not offend,” or ruffle any feathers. “What would people think?”

I now regret some of the choices I made. I can keep my head down, but my soul will pay the price. Let’s just say that this Sabbath Moment homily is to the man I now see in my mirror. Sabbath Moments

Because kindness is a virtue, it must be tied to other virtues such as justice, courage, and prudence. Moreover, like all virtues, kindness moderates between an extreme of excess and an extreme of deficiency. Kindness is the balance between the vices of contrariness (or quarrelsomeness) and obsequiousness (or flattery). And, like all virtues, kindness has an opposing vice. Some assume the opposite of kindness is cruelty, but there is a longer tradition that, perhaps surprisingly, points to another vice as the one that directly opposes kindness: envy.

While kindness is essentially good will toward another, envy is ill will. Thomas Aquinas defines envy, simply, as “sorrow for another’s good.” While good will leads naturally to acts of kindness, ill will leads easily to cruelty—actions that increase the suffering, rather than the joys, of the object of envy. Envy arises from vainglory, Aquinas observes, and produces “daughters” of its own. Envy leads to gossip and defamation, joy at another’s pain, and pain in another’s joy.

Kindness is rooted in the desire to love one’s neighbor. Envy is rooted in the desire to best one’s neighbor. Envy culminates in hatred. Before Cain murdered his brother Abel, he envied him. Charles Dickens

…

Envy consumes.

Kindness generates.