The Oregonian reported today that 6 Oregonians are among 200 female World War II pilots who are to receive the Congressional Gold Medal for their service to the country–only about 60 years late.  These undaunted fliers had to pay their own way to flight school.  If they failed to make it, they had to repay the government for their room and board and travel back home.  If a woman pilot was killed in training, her family had to pay for shipping their loved one’s body back home–and no flag was allowed on the casket.

Eighteen years ago, I was in search for a church.  I interviewed, or pre-candidated, at 10 churches before choosing and being chosen by Portland’s First Unitarian.  And what was one of the questions most commonly asked of me by search committees?  “Do you think you, as a woman, could minister to men?”  (Can you imagine the reverse being asked of a man: “Do you think you, as a man, could minister to women?”)  Portland did not ask this question. 

No doubt about it, women are making gains in all professional fields.  But it is tight at the top.  When I became the Senior Minister of a large church, only one other woman in our denomination had done so, without being married to a male co-minister, at the time.  And let’s look at the top echelons in business today: in 2009 there were15 women CEO’s in Fortune 500 companies, down from 20 in 2006; and there were 28 women in Fortune 1000 companies.

In the film business, no woman has ever won an oscar for best picture–until this year, when Kathryn Bigelow won for “Hurt Locker.”  She was up against her former husband (and friend) James Cameron, who had directed “Avatar,” the best-selling film ever, with over $2.5 billion in tickets worldwide.  “Hurt Locker” was independently financed and sold about $14.7 million in tickets in N. America and and $6.7 overseas. 

The NY Times reported that the filmmakers were so insecure about their film’s financial draw that when the film opened in NY, “the screenwriter, Mark Boal, stood on street corners with his teenage nephew handing out free tickets to passersby with the idea that if they could stack the house, perhaps the theater owners would book it for another week.”  The filmmakers had made the best film they could, proceeding with integrity, not really thinking they could hope for much money or public attention.  Turns out they were wrong.

Between the triumph of Kathryn Bigelow and the African American filmmakers and actors who made the startling good “Precious,” I felt anew the truth that Monique voiced that evening as she accepted her well-deserved award for best supporting actress: “Sometimes you do the right thing, and it’s recognized.”   

Yesterday’s Oregonian featured on the front page a story entitled “An Overwhelming Gift of Love.”  The story recounted the fundraising efforts of Molalla and Mulino students for the “Share the Love” program.  The students pick needy recipients, and in past years have raised over $37,0000.  They have given $1,750 for a middle schooler’s kidney transplant; $3,200 for a former Molalla High student’s cancer treatments; $12,000 for grandparents in retirement raising their grandchildren.

Joe Zenisek, a science teacher who started Share the Love, says “people are communal creatures hard-wired to feel empathy for one another.”  He believes that Share the Love has proven him right.

I’m not so sure.  I recently saw the documentary “Reporter” about the work of journalist Nicholas Kristof, who travels the world, calling readers’ attention to injustice and desperate human need.  In the film he explains that when he writes a story, he has to find one person, a person, who is a symbol for the generalization he wishes to make in his story–because readers just don’t respond compassionately to statistics. 

So in the film, Kristof goes to the Congo and searches for his one victim, and finally finds her, one among the hundreds of thousands of people murdered by warring factions in the Congo.  The camera shows a young woman, all skin and bones, with a large bleeding sore that has become infected.  She was once doing fine–had some land and a few animals–but soldiers raped her, and so no man would marry her, and no one was left to care for her, so she had been deserted in the jungle and was dying.  Kristof writes about her. 

He explains to the camera: studies reveal that if you show people a picture of one starving child, they are empathetic; if you show them two starving children, the level of empathy goes way down.  And the amount of empathy continues to go down in relation to the number of victims affected.  He is saddened that readers will not respond if he gives them horrendous statistics–say 50,000 women have been raped–but he recognizes that he must get the big picture to people through the specifics.  Kristof is not chiefly about empathy–he is about policy change.

So what are these high schoolers learning?  They are surely learning that they can make a difference in someone else’s life when they work together on a project.  They are learning that it feels good to give.  And that’s OK.  But I’m hoping that somewhere along the way in their growing up, they begin to ask hard questions like, “Why don’t these children have medical care?” and “Why do elderly grandparents have to depend on high school fundraisers in order to feed their grandchildren?”  I hope they are learning that empathy and love are not just sweet words that can be simply translated into Thanksgiving baskets and Christmas Toys for Tots. 

As one of my activist friends wrote, “Justice is love in action.”  And action for a grown-up means looking at the big picture and becoming politically active and trying to change the policies that cause and support human suffering.  No, we’re not hard-wired to care about statistics.  But as we mature in our spiritual and civic lives, we will go beyond where our heart strings pull us, and head off suffering and injustice at the pass.

The figure skaters at the Olympic winter games have to practice for years, honing their skills for this remarkable event.  But once they skate, their performance is not over.  They then repair to what is known as the “kiss and cry” room–a space that is camera-ready for fans to watch their every gesture, every twitch of the mouth, every tear of joy or disappointment that might creep out. (Facts taken from NY Times, 2/22/10, pp. A1 and A3)  

A major set with a backdrop and lights was created for “kiss and cry” for the first time in 1988 in  Calgary.  And ever since, the skaters have had to endure not just the stress of their performance on ice, but the stress of sharing their emotional response to their performance with . . . well, the whole world.  Some skaters try to smile, no matter what.  Others wave to folks back home.  Still others gesture, sending secret messages to special friends or family.  It’s all so awkward. 

The United States team practice their “kiss and cry” responses in a special training program.  After all, no one  wants to sit in an unseemly position on camera (girls), or make the mistake of cursing after failing to do well on the ice (boys).  In 2009, after Jeremy Abbott, a two-time U.S. champion, saw his score, he “made shooting gestures, into the camera and into his head.  Then he screamed, ‘I love kung fu!’ because he had been inspired by the movie Kung Fu Panda.” (NY Times)

Last week American competitor Evan Lysacek skated beautifully, setting himself up for the gold two days later.  Afterward, he sobbed.  Just sobbed.  His coach, Frank Carroll, said, “I’m very stoic in a way, very disciplined, and I think, when the ski jumpers, when they win, they don’t start to cry.  Let’s put it this way: I don’t like figure skaters to cry.”

Coach Carroll, this is what I have to say about that: I have two grown sons, and I hope they can cry.  I hope they cry when they’re very happy, and I hope they can let tears loose when they are sad.  Crying allows us to ease the mind, cleanse the soul.  When tears remain unshed, especially tears of anger or sadness, you can be sure that those feelings will be released in other ways, too often in destructive ways.  

Little boys are held and comforted by their parents when they are hurting.  But there comes a time when boys are told, “Big boys don’t cry.”  And they start holding in all those feelings of hurt and sadness that all human beings experience.  They don’t cry anymore.  But part of their humanity is then constrained, cut off.

How would our world be different if men were allowed the full range of emotional expression?  Would there be as much violence in the home?  Would war so often be the recourse when nations disagree?  Or would there be more emotional space for compassion?  Men, I think, would live longer and would have more emotionally and spiritually intact selves. 

So Coach Carroll, let your boy cry.  There is much to grieve, but there is much to celebrate.  And it takes a whole person to do either.      

I was very moved by an article I saw in the Oregonian yesterday (2/18) on page 1 of the Metro section: “Dancing (and living) Her Dream.”  The piece concerned a young woman, Kiera Brinkley, age 16, who is a dancer.  But not just any dancer.  You see, she contracted meningococcal disease when she was 2, and in order to save her life, doctors had to amputate her legs above the knee and her arms below the elbow.  I thought about this child–never able to carry out the simple functions of everyday life on her own, never able to brush her teeth or touch the face of a loved one with her finger tips. 

Kiera has always known she looks different, the reporter tells us, but her mother, Elesha Boyd has ensured that the difference her daughter feels is only on the outside.  Kiera’s social worker at Shriner’s Hospital says that Kiera was “obviously distraught” after the amputations, but her mother saw her “as the same girl, just shorter” and she always treated her like a normal kid.  So Kiera saw herself as normal, too.

Therapists taught her to walk with prostheses, and when it was time for Kiera to enter elementary school, her mother asked the school to show a film about children who come to Shriner’s.  So when Kiera showed up at school, she was seen as a movie star, because she was like the kids in the movie.  She lived up to that image.

Kiera became a cheerleader, using prostheses.  Then she discovered that she like to dance, and she began tap-dancing lessons, wearing pants on the bottom of which her mother.had fitted taps.  “When I dance,” Kiera says, “people see me as a girl who’s smiling.  They don’t see me a girl who’s not considered whole.”

Last year Dream Factory got in touch with Kiera and asked her to tell them her wish.  She was shy, but she finally admitted that her dream was to travel to New York and go to a workshop at Julliard.  She and her family went, and Kiera worked with some of the best dancers at this prestigious school.  After the workshop, the dancers said they wanted to learn from her.  They lined up behind her and she taught them a dance she had choreographed herself.

Kiera danced for her school last week.  Her dance was full of heart, and she danced as though she had no limbs missing at all.  Students began clapping in time to the music, first one, then others, then everyone.  When her dance was over, they rose up and gave Kiera a standing ovation.

I thought about this extraordinary young woman and her personal accomplishments.  I mused upon what had made it possible for a child with such a difficult beginning to live with such verve and confidence.  The story has a lot to teach all of us:

–When we are little, we learn who we are by how others perceive us, especially our parents.

–The eyes of love are a powerful antidote to fear and hopelessness.

–We can all do some things well–we need to find those things and give our gifts to the world.

–We need to dream always.

–We need to voice our dreams, no matter how outlandish they may seem.

–All of us, no matter how much of an “expert” in our field, can learn from others.  A truly great person is always characterized by humility.

–Giving makes a person feel strong and valuable.

On February 11, 1990, Nelson Mandela left a South African prison after being imprisoned for 27 years.  He had been given the option to leave earlier, but he refused to leave until his people were made free.  Can you imagine it?  Prison is supposed to break the prisoner’s spirit, change his resolve.  But here was a prisoner who dared to dictate the terms of his own release.  Mandela said in effect to his captors, “I will leave only when you change, when you transform.”

Mandela’s release was celebrated by freedom-loving people everywhere.  But not doubt his witness meant the most to those who, like himself, were held captive in various dictatorships around the world.  The NY Times last Sunday (Sunday Opinion, p. 11) printed statements from six of these individuals.  I will summarize three of those accounts here.

Jack Mapanje was in Mikuyu Prison in Malawi when Mandela was released.  The news was whispered to him by a daring prison guard.  President Banda, a fervent support of apartheid, was shamed, says Mapanje, and almost immediately afterward, the prisoners’ food improved, the strip searches happened less frequently, and political prisoners held in isolation were allowed into the general population.  By the end of 1992, Mapanje writes, there were no more political prisoners at Mikuyu, and multiparty elections were initiated.  “Nelson Mandela’s release changed permanently the politics of Malawi . . . .”  JACK MAPANJE is a visiting fellow at Newcastle University Center for Literary Arts in Britain.

Wei Jingsheng was one of the Tiananmen Square demonstrators.  In August of 1989 he was sent to Hebei Prison for “incitement to overthrow state power.”  Those imprisoned with him were pessimistic about China’s future and wondered why they should bother to persist.  But then they read newspaper reports and saw TV news about Mandela’s release.  Jingsheng writes, “He had never lowered his noble head in front of his enemy, and eventually his enemy had retreated.”  Jingsheng told his guards, “This guy is just as ‘silly’ as I am, but he reached his goal.”  He ends his statement by saying “it is important to bear life’s setbacks, and maintain unbending confidence in eventual success.”  WEI JINGHENG  was in jail in China from 1979 to 1993 and now lives in Washington.

It was during Ko Bo Kyi’s second term as a political prisoner in Burma that an article on Mandela’s autobiography, Long Walk to Freedom, was smuggled into the prison, and he had a chance to learn of Mandela’s refusal to give up his witness.  Mandela became an inspiration to all of the other political activists confined there in Rangoon’s Insein Prison.  The Burmese authorities pressured Ko Bo Kyi to co-operate with them, but he was able to resist.  When he was released, he escaped to Thailand and got a copy of Mandela’s book, where he read the words, “The challenge for every prisoner, particularly every political prisoner . . . is how to emerge from prison undiminished, how to conserve and even replenish one’s beliefs.”  KO BO KYI spent nearly 8 years in prison in Burma before escaping to Thailand and co-founding the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners.

Not everyone is a Nelson Mandela, called by history and place, and given the courage, to make social change.  But never forget that each of us lives as a witness every day, in word and in deed, and others are watching and listening.  Something we say or do we may see as inconsequential, but it may have a lasting influence on another’s life.  To understand this is to walk in the world with more grace, courage, and compassion.