If this day of infamy is to be truly life changing, we must tell ourselves truth. The truth is that evil can be done to others when one feels no connection with victim. The hate crimes that have been perpetrated in our country are same evil. The difference is scale and fact that we have witnessed horrific killings first hand from a televisions lens.

To truly honor memory of men, women, and children who were murdered in yesterday’s attack, may I suggest that we explore our own connections with others. Whose voices do we turn off because of prejudice? Are we willing to explore another point of view? What words of vindictiveness and cruelty do we stand by and hear without comment?

Can we make our workplaces open for give and take of ideas, opinions and honoring of differences? With whom do we need to reconcile so that our space on this earth is not splattered with bitterness?

Let us not hide behind fear of vulnerability for such fear leads to either bluster and posturing or hunker-down and retreating. Rather, let us be courageous and use this event as a catalyst to connect human web in our work, our community, our nation and our world.

Consider this plain talk for painful times.

© 2001 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved. Reprints must include byline, contact information and copyright.

What are odds that my 86 year-old Florida-based mother would fall while visiting her baby sister? What are odds that there would be room down hill in St. Anne’s Home for Aged where mother could recover from a multi-fractured hip? What are odds that each one of her children could arrange schedules to fly across country and take turns caring for her and that convent would find room for us? Mystery beyond mystery.

Psychologist Carl Jung would have called my mystery, “synchronicity”. This fortuitous set of circumstances- “synchronicity”-- is fraught with meaning and it is my task to figure lessons.

Spending days between a health care setting where many will never leave due to infirmity and another home where women stay because of faith, I find these initial lessons most universal:

Lesson One: From breakdown comes build up. Mom is getting stronger in weaker places of her body. She still has more life to live. We all have broken places to rebuild.

Lesson Two: Caring for ending of life is as precious as caring for beginning. May we learn to see its beauty.

Lesson Three: Respectful listening is greatest gift we give each other. No other species can verbalize its experience and feelings and have it held in sacred trust.

Lesson Four: Shared memories create a bond as potent as fire. A memory can either burnish or destroy. It’s our choice.

I’ve retraced my route and crossed Susquehanna River. I am flying home to California from Baltimore with these lessons packed in my heart. Perhaps you might find them in a corner of yours.

© 2002 by Eileen McDargh. All rights reserved. Reprints must include byline, contact information and copyright.