Wednesday, May 7th 2008

7:45 AM

Blame

I just got back from taking Jackson (the black lab) for a walk. Jackson is a sweet dog, great disposition but left to his own vices, he would sleep all day long. If this dog got any more docile, he'd be comatose. So I'm trying to walk him a couple of miles a day.

Today we headed down to the pier where I met a lady who just moved here from Coco Beach, Florida. While we were visiting she got three phone calls -- "Sorry, it's my stockbroker," she said.

I never had a stockbroker. I wouldn't have a clue what to do with one. The only kind of stock we have in Eastern Oregon walks on four legs. Cattle. Horses. Dogs. That's the kind of stock I'm used to.

The kind that requires a shovel.

And some steel-toed boots.

I heard on NPR yesterday that a bunch of Wall Street folks could find themselves without a job soon. They said jobs in the financial market are sparse given the price of food and gasoline.

I understand that for many people, the kind of people who have stockbrokers, the 1980s were very good years. Time of growth. Not for me and Tim. I mean they were good years, but they were hard years too. Years when we didn't make enough $$ to pay a car payment, buy gasoline (when it was cheap) and had to rely on federal food programs to help feed our children.

We did what we could to scrap by. If it hadn't been for Tim's folks and my mother, it would have been a much more difficult time. They shared what they had -- which wasn't all that much.

To be honest, when we married we were pretty clueless about the finanical aspects of raising a family. We got by. With some grace and help from loved ones and strangers.

Now there would have been those who said we got what we deserved. Getting married during our senior year of college. Having too many babies too soon. We should have been smarter. Made our fortunes then raised a family. Only see, it never occurred to either us to be about making a fortune. Neither of us had grown up in households where people stockpiled money. Tim's parents, missionaries, gave away anything extra they had. My mama just did what she could to get by. They didn't have money to save for college -- ours or our children. They struggled to pay their own bills. Jus the same as Tim and I were doing.

It's the way of the millions of Americans. This getting by mentality.

Since those early years of marriage, I have rarely felt as though Tim and I or our children lacked for anything. We've traveled. We've eaten well -- too well at times. We've had the money to fix cars, and houses and put shoes on the kids. We didn't pay for their college education. I mean we started to, but then I quit that job and well, we just couldn't. But they got through college and all are gainfully employed, or working on being gainfully employed. I hate that they have loans they have to pay back but they are managing. Nobody is going hungry. Yet.

In other words, I feel very, very blessed. Not that God loves me more. Just that I'm thankful to Him for what we do have.

Which is why this morning I was thinking I ought to get on a plane on fly to Myanmar. If only I could get into the country. I was in New Orleans 4 months after Katrina hit. I saw the devastation. It remains even to this day. It's awful. And it's awful to realize that here in the US of A we have abandoned our own people. If not for the churches and aid organizations that have come alone to assist the people of New Orleans, the situation would be so much worse.

I spoke to a woman last week whose son and daughter lost everything in Katrina. Everything but their lives. She told me she stood in the rubble of her son's home and wept at all he'd lost. "But we were thankful that nobody lost their lives."

It makes you put life into perspective, she added. Standing admist the rubble.

But, of course, hundreds did lose their lives in the midst of Katrina. And thousands more lost their lifestyles.

I sat at the pier this morning, trying to imagine what it must be like in Myranmar, where 25,000 maybe more have lost their lives. Hermiston is a town of 15,000. I try to imagine an entire city being wiped out. I recall the devastation that I saw at Fort Jackson and in the Ninth Ward and I mean it looked like something out of a end-time flick, so to think of 25,000 people killed and 40,000 homeless, well I just can't get my mind around that.

When I got back home, I read the following in the NYT:

"Mr. Bush’s called for openness from Myanmar a day after his wife, Laura, criticized the country’s military leaders for not warning people before the cyclone hit on Saturday.

In reply, Australia’s foreign minister, Stephen Smith, was among those who urged countries to focus on helping Myanmar instead of criticizing its government. “The priority now is rendering assistance to thousands of displaced people who urgently need our assistance,” Mr. Smith said in Hong Kong."

I don't know what Laura Bush said. I haven't looked it up yet. But I know how much crap I heard, continue to hear about Katrina and the problems in New Orleans, about how it's all their fault because their city officals are so dadgum incompetent, and they ought not live by the dadgum water to begin with, on and on.

Makes me sick to hear people talk like that.

I am often left wondering do we not care because these people are people of color? So they aren't like us?

They aren't as smart, as organized, as open-minded as us?

I can't get on a plane to Myranmar. They aren't granting Visas, yet. I'm not sure what I would do if I were there, except maybe hold somebody's hand and cry with them. I could do that. I'm good at that.

But, honestly, sometimes all we really need is somebody to do just that.

And the last thing we need is somebody telling us we're to blame for the bad things that happen to us.

For the cyclone that ripped through our country.

Or the hurricane that destroyed our city.

Or the marriage that fell apart.

Or the death of our child.

Or the friendship betrayed.

Blame is counterproductive to anything.

Blame doesn't solve anything. Doesn't cure anything. Doesn't heal anything. The only thing blames seems to do is to alleviate the guilt that maybe we ought to be feeling in the first place.

Guilt is productive, when addressed in the right way. If we feel guilty over hurting someone, we have the option to go seek their forgiveness. But if, instead, we blame them for our guilt, there's no reason to seek forgiveness and no reason to seek restoration.

Blaming the government of Myanmar for the devastation created by an act of nature accomplishes what?

How much better it would be if instead of blaming them, we simply continued to hold out a hand of mercy to them? And try to figure out how we can best help.