With Respect to the Color Purple and Prayers. The Great Whatever Needs to Let Up Some

The summer after I graduated high school, I pulled a copy of Alice Walker's The Color Purple from my mother's bookshelf and sat out back of my Cherry Heights home to read. It was the first book I picked up after completing mandatory readings at my school that seldom, if at all, told stories of Black families and their struggle in the United States. I remember how my mother and her friend, Lori, couldn't wait to see the movie when it came out.  In junior high school, I remember their emotional conversations about the book - two White women in a suburban tier of Syracuse - and the impact it had on their lives. As a young man, their conversations mattered. They talked about race. They talked about America's history. They talked about a hard, but beautiful book. They shared that Alice Walker opened their minds. They grew.

The Color Purple opened my eyes, too, and I wanted to know more of the history she introduced to me (especially our nations relationship with Africa). Two scenes from the book and movie, too, have always stayed with me: when Shug finds herself in a river to baptize herself for a less complicated, more spiritual life (& herself to a higher power) and when Celie and Harper sit on the front porch as a couple, who should despise one another, but who join in the complicated harmony (call it love) they found in their lives after living their lifetime of strife and struggle.

When the twins were here, we talked often about the NFL phenomenon of taking a knee and Abu asked, "Why is kneeling offensive? Isn't it the ultimate sign of prayer? Of bowing down and asking a higher power to look over us? To help us heal? Isn't it a sign of desperation, but also respect, like when a flag is presented to the family of a killed soldier?"

I've been thinking about this a lot, like I've been thinking of the scene where Robin Williams, as Patch Adams, finds himself at a mountain screaming to the sky, trying to make sense of the pain in this world where his humor no longer works.

What do you want from us? 

That's what I'm wondering, as I look at the logic of both man-made and natural disasters that have overcome our world in the last few weeks...events that have culminated from years of hidden stressors, human choices, a lacking of empathy, hatred, and distress. Movies provide redemptions: a butterfly arrives, a sun comes through the clouds, an individual repurposes their life. My meaning comes from yelling to the Great Whatever, and simply saying, "Enough. It's too much. Help me to make sense of the chaos."

Yesterday, I met with Superintendents of Schools who were discussing the lack of an education budget in the State of Connecticut, the decreasing funding of K-12 schools that is coming each and every day, and the normal struggles teachers face in all learning environments. With the tragedy in Puerto Rico where schools were wiped out, it is predicted that many youth will relocate from the island to continue their education in other American schools - but this is at a time where schools are laying off faculty, serving kids in oversized classrooms, and without resources to support who they already have. In one district, nurses, school counselors, paraprofessionals, literacy and math support, custodial staff, after school sports and activities, and security have been cut. They do not know where else they can trim to save money.

"The kids lose. The cruelty falls onto the kids, and this is most true in our rural and urban schools," one district leader said. "But now, the suburban schools are feeling it, too. It is a tragic time for us all."

I know through my own work with K-12 schools through my National Writing Project work that what was once available has dwindled more and more each year (in most cases down 75%). I've tried to adapt to keep kids and teachers at the forefront, but the pressures they face now are indescribable. In a room full of professionals, we brainstormed, "What can we do when many who are voted in are also dead set on taking away support systems for children?"

I don't have an answer. And I don't pray much. I simply talk to the Great Whatever hoping there is someone or something listening.

I have to agree with Abu. My knees hurt and they crack. I can't get up fast, especially after I kneel down, and anyone who knows me recognizes I'm a lousy parishioner.

But I am praying. I am down. I am hoping that human beings begin looking inward at what they are doing to one another, have done to one another, and set out to continue to do to one another. Hurricanes are out of our control. Violence, spite, cruelty, and hatred, however, are in our grasp. I am simply praying that more and more individuals begin to question what they are doing in the short lifespan they have, especially in the most fortunate civilization this globe has ever known. We can do better. We need to do better.

I am waiting for my butterfly.