“Molly’s ‘Oh…’”
I woke up Monday morning, the beginning of Holy Week, made some coffee, and settled into my chair for my devotional time. I was set to read the day’s psalm when I glanced at my phone and saw two messages timestamped after I had gone to bed.
The first was a video from Chicago in which my sister, one of her daughters, two of her grandchildren, and my grandson are prancing through the house in a makeshift conga line. Three generations making merry. A good time was had by all.
With a smile on my face, I looked at the second text, this one from Hawaii – a photo of friends dear to Jennie and me and a link to an article. When I clicked on the article, the conga line smile disappeared, replaced by an ache in the pit of my stomach.
The photo showed our two friends, Rob and Janet, pushing their 36-year-old daughter Dana in her wheelchair. She is wrapped snugly in a blanket. As the article details, Dana was born with congenital toxoplasmosis (look it up) that left her with brain damage, blindness, and cerebral palsy. She can’t sit, roll over, walk, talk, eat, or go to the bathroom without help. But Dana is well aware of what is happening around her. As those of us who were part of her church family at Coolwater Christian Church in Arizona can attest, she greets voices she recognizes with an ear-to-ear grin and jubilant shifting in her chair that brightens the room.
Rob and Janet retired to Hawaii over a dozen years ago. Three years ago, they found what can only be termed a godsend – a care facility for developmentally disabled adults nestled in the verdant reaches of Maui, the only one of its kind in Hawaii. They told us about their fortuitous find in a phone call. They had reached the point they could not give Dana the care they had given her 24/7 for the past thirty-six years. They were exhausted. Dana required special care. They would not leave her just anywhere. Then they found Kula Hospital’s nine-bed Hale Makamae wing. A room was open for the first time in years. They marveled at the individualized care offered there – a loving, caring home away from home for their daughter.
The linked article was titled “Displaced by storm damage, over 100 Kula Hospital patients cope with separation between Maui, Oʻahu facilities.” In early March, four feet of rain fell on the century-old hospital causing damage that may take years to repair. Dana and 111 other residents had to be relocated, many to other islands. Some, like Dana, are still seeking a place that can provide for their special needs.
Janet accompanied the linked article with a text that read, “Thoughts and prayers are appreciated. We are experiencing a Good Friday, waiting for a resurrection. We still don’t know what they’re going to do with Miss Dana. Love to you.”
One moment I was grinning over my grandson hamming it up in a conga line. The next moment, the plight of another child of God was juxtaposed. I shook my head and sighed, heartbroken for three people I dearly love, respect, and admire. “Jennie,” I shouted into the other room, “I’m forwarding you a text. Not good.”
As I sought to summon some sort of prayer, several items came to mind from recent weeks that deepened my aching introspection, further contrasting the carefree conga line of my own flesh and blood with the suffering of others’ flesh and blood. To wit:
Learning of the deadly Tomahawk missile strike on the Shajarah Tayyebeh elementary school building in Iran that killed 168, including teachers and children, the result of a targeting mistake by the U.S. military in the first day of the assault on Iran. I received updates on that tragedy in my news feed as I sat in a Columbia, MO, hospital corridor awaiting the birth of my third grandson.
Listening to a lecture by Palestinian-American poet/author Hala Alyan last week at Transylvania University. Mid-lecture, she read a few paragraphs from an article she wrote two years ago that named two particular atrocities in Gaza that pierced me. On the index card I carry to aid my memory of things I see, hear, and ponder during the day, I wrote the words dead children and zoo animals.
In her words, “For months, I’ve watched hundreds of clips of dead children…Babies whose faces are covered in burns. Mothers cradling white-shrouded children.”
And later in the lecture, a paragraph about a clip she had seen from of all places, a Gaza zoo where even before the war animals lived in atrocious conditions.
“It showed a baboon starved to death. It showed a wolf whimpering and darting around in circles in fear. The animals, the zookeeper told us, were nearly all dead. The ones that remained were terrified from the bombings. They wouldn’t let us get to the animals for weeks, he said. One of the zoo staff had been shot trying. There was a close-up on a trio of Palestinian foxes, flies swatting around them. The bodies were gathered together. Their eyes were ajar. Dead.”
In another jarring juxtaposition, Jennie and I received a call from our Chicago family telling us they were taking the kids…to the zoo.
Still seeking a way to pray, Paul’s words came to mind:
“We know that the whole creation has been groaning together as it suffers together…The Spirit helps us in our weakness, for we do not know how to pray as we ought, but that very Spirit intercedes with groanings too deep for words.” (Romans 8:22, 26 NRSVUE)
“Groanings too deep for words” brought to mind something I had heard or read years ago. Something about someone sighing silently in the face of some sort of suffering. What was it? Who said it?
Then it came to me, a story told by the late Fred Craddock which I found in his book Craddock Stories. In Oklahoma, Fred and Nettie subscribed to a nearby small town’s weekly newspaper because they enjoyed a column written by an Arapaho woman who called herself in English Molly Shepherd. She told of tribal customs and shared her unique worldview. Fred wrote appreciatively,
In her own broken English way, she had a gift of words, and it was sometimes almost poetic and flowing the way she talked.
One article, however, was very brief; I’ll never forget it. It was the afternoon paper on Friday following the death of President Kennedy. In the article, she said, “Molly has no words for you today. Molly has nothing to write today. Molly has no words today. Molly goes through the house all day saying, ‘Oh...’”
Dr. Craddock observed, “With Molly’s ‘Oh…’ she joined the travail of the world.”
About 1 p.m. this Friday, Good Friday, my beloved brother in Christ, Josh Santana, will stand in the chancel at Central Christian, Lexington, and sing Were You There, a spiritual sung by enslaved men and women that concludes with the haunting refrain “Oh! Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.” I don’t have to be there to hear it. Josh’s “Oh…” is etched in my memory.
In solidarity with the suffering of innocents everywhere, himself the victim of humanity’s guilt in unleashing sin and death on one other, animals, and all creation, Jesus uttered his “Oh…” from the cross on Good Friday: “Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani?” (Mt. 27:46). That solidarity – joining the travail of the world with what God did “on the third day” after – is what makes this Friday Good.
David has no more words for you today. David joins Molly, Rob, Janet, Hala, and Josh in the Spirit’s tether anticipating Jesus’ “Oh…” from the cross – all it means and all it portends.
