Serenity

Serenity

I spent the first three days of this week again in Louisville. I stayed with Michele Hemenway & her husband Hans Peterson. Michele is the education coordinator of this portrait project; Hans is a pre-school teacher. Michele has been working in Alicia Thomas’s 2nd / 3rd grade classroom at the Breckenridge/Franklin Elementary School in Louisville which serves a rough, low income neighborhood. I had visited this class several months ago to give an award to a boy there, Devontray, who had turned in his younger brother for having brought a gun to school. I wrote about that in an earlier journal. At that time I also told the students stories about several of the portraits and then we arranged to have two of them --- Sojourner Truth and Van Jones --- sent to the school for several days. Michele told me that they had four kids at a time sit in front of the two portraits and simply think about them. Finally, there was one 7 year old girl left, Serenity. So Michele had Serenity sit on her lap in front of the portraits. Serenity asked if Sojourner Truth had children. Yes, she did. Serenity asked, what happened to her children? Michele explained that Sojourner was a slave and that her children had been sold away from her. Serenity wanted to know if she had ever seen them again. Probably not.

This is Michele continuing the story: “Serenity was very, very quiet. I looked over and she had tears streaming down her face and I put my arm around her. She buried her head in my chest and began sobbing. My shirt was soaked with her tears and her worries about those children. Under my shirt lay my own broken heart at the thought of it. Her tears were sweet rain on the barren soil there. Perhaps Sojourner was reunited with her children in the afterworld. Perhaps Serenity, in previous life, was Sojourner Truth or was one of her children; some would say that the strength of her reaction could make that so. I only know that sobbing about someone's children being stolen from them as yet another layer of horror and grotesque manipulation of a life seemed the only reasonable response at age seven. For such a young girl, it was simply too much to bear. And for the teacher sitting with her, equally so.”

When Michele told me this story, I said that some people would probably think that Serenity was over emotional. But the truth is that all of us should react as Serenity did. Some people say that we need to be able to let go of the horrors and injustices of history --- otherwise we can’t function in our own lives. I agree. But not until we have allowed ourselves to feel them. Otherwise our ideas about injustice can remain superficial and abstract. The function of art is often to help all of us feel the experience of others.

It is, of course, ironic to think of a little African-American girl named Serenity weeping in anguish at the pain of a mother, the pain of her children. What kind of serenity is that?
But the only serenity worth having comes from facing the truth of injustice, empathizing with it, opening one’s heart to that pain, and then accepting that it is past and dedicating oneself to alleviating as much pain as one can in the present.

I spent some time with Serenity this week. She was joyful. She made me a folder on which she had written her hopes for peace and solidarity in the world.

Another boy in the class, Richard, wrote me a letter. He said, “Dear Mr. Shetterly,
The kids who got [ have got ] to make the right choice and not kill. We got to make the choice not to do violence. Then we can stand up for those who can make the choice to join hands. Then we might bring world peace.
Thank you, Richard.”

And another girl asked me a very interesting and difficult question. I had brought the portrait of Muhammad Ali, who is from Louisville, into the classroom. We talked about his life and she asked me why people had hated him when he did the courageous thing and followed his beliefs and refused to go to the Vietnam War, and then, years later, we honor him as a hero for doing the right thing?
There is no easy answer to that. I told her that people who take courageous moral stands often frighten other people who do not want to examine their own beliefs and lives. It’s easier to criticize than ask yourself if you should follow the lead of the courageous actor. Moral courage is a challenge and seems dangerous --- which it often is. Years later, unchallenged, we look back and are grateful because we know that there can be no moral progress without that courage.

Courage, like fear, is contagious. Unlike diseases, we have a choice about which one to catch.