One of my richest blessings is to have both my adult children and their spouses living close by, and the highlight of my life is being a GrandMarnie. I frequently babysit the younger two while their parents enjoy date night, and I often hang with or chauffeur the near-teen and not-yet-driving teen. (One of the best things about being retired is that I rarely have to say no to a request or invitation to spend time with these dear folks, when previously I was always working.)
When I got home from Africa last summer, one family shared that they were happily expecting their third child. I admit that other than the initial excitement and ongoing prayers for the health of mom and baby, the pregnancy seemed more like life as usual. It didn’t loom in the forefront of my mind, at least not until labor started, and then I grew increasingly anxious. Eventually the news came that a healthy baby boy had been born, and I was relieved that mom and the little one were doing well.
Like probably all loved ones of a new arrival, I was grateful and excited to meet Baby Boy – familiar feelings from the births of my other four grandchildren. I was unprepared, though, for another stronger reaction: an immediate, persistent avalanche of grief and dread. It’s an existential sadness, fear, and, yes, anger about the world that is this new child’s home.
Baby Boy is born into the richest and most privileged country to a family that has the means, knowledge, and maturity to care for him well. His life, like those of my other grandchildren, is extremely unlikely to be wrecked by poverty or racism or denied access. He won’t suffer cruelty, or be overlooked, or face discrimination. His rights aren’t in jeopardy, and he will have access to the best possible medical care, education, and experiences.
Yet he is entering a culture where privilege is viewed as the norm, even the right of those who enjoy it. He faces the resurgence of society’s selfishness – the ME, FIRST attitude not just of people, but of the institutions, including too many religious as well as political ones, that support a selfish mindset. He will grow up in a land of entitlement, division, acrimony, and a narrow exclusivity of the haves versus the have-nots, a near total focus on MY or MY COUNTRY’S needs and wants with near total disregard for who may be harmed. My heart breaks for how Baby will inescapably be influenced by the nation and environment that surrounds him.
Recently, a friend shared a quote from a woman described as one of the most influential political theorists of the twentieth century – Hannah Arendt, Ph.D. She was born in 1906 into a well-educated Jewish family in Germany, fled her country in 1933 after a brief imprisonment by the Gestapo, lived in Paris, and then came to America in 1941, where she became a U.S. citizen. Arendt wrote extensively about wealth, power, and evil, as well as politics and totalitarianism, especially as seen in her native World War II-era Germany. Her most famous phrase is “the banality of evil,” and she declared, “Thoughtless zealotry is the face of evil in the modern world.” When I read that statement, my spirit immediately rose up with Yes, that!
Dr. Arendt’s viewpoint rings as true for me as anything in recent memory. And it slays me. Although it is unseasonably cold this beautiful April morning, I’ve built a fire more to warm my heart than to toast my body. As I shared in last month’s blog, sometimes I feel as if I’ll be consumed by my freezing angst over the state of our political and religious climates.
I comfort myself in knowing that this precious Baby Boy, like his cousins, has healthy parents who know how to be attuned to him, how to foster his positive attachment, and how to repair any breeches, which are inevitable parts of any relationship. Both sets of parents in my nuclear family deeply love God, each other, and their children wholeheartedly. My grandchildren, five of them now, have the best possible chance to thrive.
But what of other children in our community, in our state, our country, and the world? I am plagued by the unanswerable question of “fate”: Why should I and those I love be born into our easy situations with the resulting privileges and opportunities that bless our lives? Why not arrive into the abject poverty I saw in Africa, into the violence that besets so many homelands, into the oppression that crushes others? It seems so cruelly unfair to those who live in circumstances so dreadfully different from my own.
I keep thinking of the biblical principle “To whom much is given, much is required,” derived from Luke 12:48 and Jesus’ stories about stewardship and accountability. I believe with all my heart that those of us lucky enough to be born into the richness of America have responsibilities toward those who are not so fortunate. We get to provide bread and water for those who are starving and shelter for those who lack it. We can supply education and healing for those who will remain ignorant or ill without our assistance. We get to support one another, including easing life’s burdens, and to treat kindly the other, the “Samaritan man” left to die on the side of life’s road. We get to join forces peaceably with other people and nations who share these humanitarian goals.
The critical question is will we? Will we be what Jesus called salt and light in the world, will we share generously what has been entrusted to us, will we assist without judging the worth of those in need? Or will we succumb to the banality of evil? While not practicing intentional malice or wickedness, will we, as ordinary people, prioritize our own privileged state, blindly follow authority, conform to an unhealthy system, and fail to exercise our critical thinking? Sadly, it seems the prevailing answer is yes, we will, and we are.
Looking in the face of my cherished new grandbaby steels my resolve to make the world a better place. He is a little bundle of hope wrapped in a soft swaddling blanket. A quote attributed to Carl Sandburg says, “A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on” (although it was his stated recollection of what a friend said to his grandson, not something found in Sandburg’s writings.) Perhaps, instead, the birth of a vulnerable baby is God’s reminder that those already living should care about the lives of others.
Charles Dickens said about babies, “I love these little people; and it is not a slight thing when they, who are so fresh from God, love us.” I commit to loving this newest baby in our family, and I commit to providing love in a practical way to others who are equally fresh from God, no matter how old they are or where they live. For me, that starts with calling out the banality of evil.
Marnie C. Ferree
Founder of Bethesda Workshops