New column: A fully human set of eyes
A man gave a brilliant speech in Washington D.C. on February 2.
As with most truly brilliant speeches in that city, it was underpublicized, underplayed and underrated.
Eric Metaxas, a Yale graduate and author, was the keynote speaker at the 2012 National Prayer Breakfast. Metaxas authored the powerful biography, AMAZING GRACE: William Wilberforce and the Heroic Campaign to End Slavery. He also wrote what might be one of the most important book of the decade, BONHOEFFER: Pastor, Martyr, Prophet, Spy.
In his speech, Metaxas—some say prophetically—challenged President Obama, Vice President Biden, Nancy Pelosi and the hundreds of other attendees, to consider the parallels between the pre-Nazi Germany of Bonhoeffer’s time and present day society.
Think that’s a stretch?
Just like the Nazi’s convinced every day German people Jews were nameless, story-less and worthless, all around us today are people with names we choose to keep nameless. People with stories we choose not to hear.
Take the unborn, for instance.
Take the elderly, in particular.
As a nurse, I take care of octogenarians and nonagenarians on a regular basis. Rarely visited and often ignored, our society is pretty good at hiding these folks away in homes and villages where we don’t have to think about their demise.
Pull a chair up beside their bed, though, and your view of them changes. Stories of sixty-year-marriages, world war battle scars, children they’ve birthed and who’ve died too soon—all of these stories and more pour from hearts.
My Grandpa Joe was one of these patients last week. A head injury and illness left him confused and confined to a hospital bed, where he required 24-hour supervision. I sat with him for many of those hours. I listened as he recited every story imaginable from his nearly 95 years of life: walking my Grandma to school when they were grade-schoolers; playing football at Tulane; attending a strict, Wisconsin Military Academy; working his way up the ranks in a factory and facilitating union mediations; raising two boys; faceting gem stones; catching small (and quite large) walleye; taking his bride to a fancy dinners.
To any passerby, Grandpa looked like a wrinkled up nobody, dressed in hospital-issued gown and draped in the same bleached white sheets as everyone else.
To me and my family, he was Grandpa: full of more stories than the world could hold; full of stories that mattered, then and now.
Millions of lives end before they have a chance to live, let alone tell, a story.
Millions of others waste away in places we’d prefer to pretend don’t exist.
Which brings me back to Eric Metaxas. In an article about Metaxas’ speech, Mark Joseph wrote: “After carefully describing the inhumane treatment of both Jews and Africans by those claiming to be Christians, he asked then answered a question: ‘You think you’re better than the Germans of that era? You’re not,’ adding: ‘Who do we say is not fully human today?’”
One of Grandpa’s recent caregivers was an African-American woman who told us stories of confused patients, and the awful things some of them say to her.
“One man, he called me n—– all the time, but I knew he couldn’t help it. I knew he didn’t mean it. I just saw him like Jesus sees him. And that made me love him a whole lot.”
There’s a difference between religion and Jesus.
One is a mindset.
The other is a whole new set of eyes.
You can hear Eric Metaxas’ entire speech at http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/NationalPrayerBreak.
Posted on February 22, 2012, in books, column, social justice and tagged Bonhoeffer, christianity, column, Eric Metaxas, jesus, justice, religion. Bookmark the permalink. 9 Comments.
Powerful and sadly, right on target.
BONHOEFER is on my “to read” list. I’ve read other books about Bonhoefer, but this one is exceptional. Even our son in Florida had heard about it on a Christian radio station before I recommended it to him. He plans to read it as well. The global economy and politics today are quite similar to the conditions that gave rise to Hitler and Nazis. We should be vigilant to watch for those evil dictators who can rise again. Thanks for posting this, Amy. I had no idea that Eric was the keynote speaker at the National Prayer Breakfast.
What a touching and needed post, Amy. Your grandpa sounds amazing – like so many others who have lived experiences so long ago that helped shape who we are today. I’m googling Metaxas’ speech. I’ve got to hear it now.
I loved watching Eric’s speech at the National Prayer Breakfast. I’m so glad he gave President Obama a copy of his book about Bonhoeffer.
I’ve lived, what some have described, a tragic life. Yet it’s been full of lessons from my Father and my Lord and only intermediary, Jesus Christ. I delighted in the one pregnancy granted me, communing with the growing life within, and feeling a depth of emptiness and loss of purpose for my body the night after he was delivered into this world. He and I were abandoned by his father when he was four, and bedtime stories became readings from the Psalms. Then, fifteen years later, immediately after my father passed away, my son and I faced yet another trial, this time presented to us by my sister: Either institutionalize my mother or move into a condominium with her. My knees were shaking as my son said there was no choice but to find a condominium. (Legally my mother was a ward of the court — pronounced “crazy,” my older sister, as her conservator and guardian, was ready to institutionalize her.) Well, we found a condominium, and began the “experiment.” My mother had two relapses, being locked up again in a psych. ward; but, as a believer, she would pray and recover enough to return home. My son and I were blessed to have fourteen years with her — the last ten years of her life being completely drug-free. We watched a saint in the making. The person my son and I had known all our lives was transformed. Yes, her body became old and deformed by Bell’s Palsy, yet her soul shined through. I’d sometimes catch her sitting with such peace and beauty on her face — it’s indescribable.
Life, human life, and the opportunity to reason with the Almighty and grow in his Grace, is an inexplicable gift — and woe unto them who murder.
Wow, Lisa, what a beautiful story. Thank you for your courage and for taking the time to share this here! Blessings on you and your son!
Thank you, Amy. Regarding my sister, she’s not as evil as she comes off sounding. She’s a believer, but easily misled. Strangely enough, it was she who recommended the Bonhoeffer book, which set me on a new path — the world of Eric Metaxas, Twitter and those whom he follows.
Your story of your grandfather is touching. I hope his stories have been copied down.
This is why it is so important to write the stories of our childhood so hopefully they will be preserved on a disc or in print. My mother gave me her life story and I typed it and had it printed and bound at the office supply. Today she doesn’t know who I am most of the time, and cannot speak in sentences. If I ever get to that place myself, I have written down all I can remember from the time I was three years old. Nothing spectular, just life. A few have enjoyed my blog stories, and I print each one to keep in a binder. Also I copy them unto a flash drive.
Your story is a beautiful one, Amy. Thank you for sharing it.
I brought my mom home to live with me after she suffered a stroke. She had a very hard time recovering from it because we lost my dad to a stroke just two years earlier and she sunk into a depression and really didn’t want to get better. Mom has since passed and I struggle with their absence every day. I miss both her and my dad’s wisdom and beauty of life. So often, it goes unnoticed until they are gone.
There is a treasure chest of riches in the elderly if anyone cares to listen to them.