What can one person do?

"Love your enemies..."
Matthew 5:44

This is yesterday's Gospel, I realize, but I'm still chewing on it so please bear with me. There are years this Gospel has come around and I sit and ask myself if I even have any enemies. I try to work and play well with others and there are years I pronounce myself "enemy free!" Other times, like yesterday, I give it a really good think. We are so polarized in our country that it feels like I actually may have enemies. Those beyond the borders of my opinions can feel like enemies during times like these, when anger and emotions are running hot. It's easy to choose a side and then plant ourselves there--it's comfortable and has a nice view so I'm not budging. It's also easy to feel so overwhelmed by the magnitude of the problem that we feel helpless to do anything to fix it. These are the same problems our country has dealt with for centuries and they don't seem to be getting better. What can I, one person, possibly do?

Then I saw a news report about a woman, here in Boise, who was sitting on the patio of a restaurant, waiting for her friend to arrive. There were others dining on the patio as well, spaced out according to social distancing and all that. Suddenly a car drives by a the driver spews out a racial insult to the woman sitting on her own. Others looked up, alarmed, and she froze in her seat. The driver sped away. What happened next will be in my mind for a long time. What happened next was nothing. None of the other diners who had heard the word and saw the person the word was addressed to did or said anything to her. Now, this is Boise, where a few days before, many, many people had gathered in solidarity for a vigil honoring George Floyd. There are awakened people here in Boise (that's why I moved here!) but, at that moment, no one there said anything. The woman said the silence was painful. I have thought about this constantly since I saw it on the news. What would I have done? Dearest God, I hope I would have gotten up and gone over to the woman. I hope I would have stepped out of myself a tiny bit to acknowledge her pain right then. I hope I would have comforted her and let her know that it was a horrible thing that driver did. I'm always praising silence as an answer for many ills, but not in this case. In cases like these, we are called to speak up. It's time for us to ask ourselves honest questions. Yes, the situation as a whole seems overwhelming, but it can hit as close to home as a restaurant patio on a summer evening. It's a vast country-wide issue, but it can also be a person-to-person issue. I invite you to watch the news report (link below) and pray with this. One person can actually do quite a bit, if they just will. Love, heidi
Person-to-person