Keeping the Dream

I am reminded of the scenes where Jesus restores sight to the blind. The music swells in the background, the camera zooms in on the face of the healed, as the realization that they can now see sinks in. There is amazement, wonder and joy.

But it doesn’t always happen like that, does it? Sometimes, we are so shocked by what we see, so chagrined at the realization of whatever insight our new sight brings us, that we struggle to put the scales back upon our eyes.

Perhaps we first notice our disheveled and torn clothing, the soil and stains of years bumping into walls and stumbling through mud and falling in dirt. Or maybe our gaze falls onto our hands. Is that blood? Perhaps the heart of a child we hurt, the spirit of a young one we crushed while struggling under the weight of our own blindness?

Sometimes the hardest part of healing is being healed, the hardest part of being free from lies, facing the truth. The only true victim is a child, but when that child grows up, healed or not, healthy or not, they become responsible for how they live and for the lives they touch.

Sometimes the illusions, the pictures we create in our minds about ourselves in the darkness of our dysfunction are preferable to the cold light of day.

Maybe that’s why such a big part to the ministry of restoring sight to the blind is the teaching of forgiveness.

We need to practice that, you know, for ourselves. When you start in the pit, it’s hard not to have hurt anyone else on the way out. But if you want to make a difference, you must.

Or go back to being blind, which once you see is damned near impossible to do.

The bravest ones are not the daredevils and thrill seekers, but the regret-facers. It’s not easy. It is easier though to scale that mountain on the wings of Grace.

Demian,
~DreamSinger -

UUCY BEECH TREE CONCERT SERIES
Presents COFFEE HOUSE #5
Featuring
DREAMSINGER

(Demian Elainé Yumei and Stacey Young)

Music of a Healing Journey

Saturday March 25th
7:30 pm
Unitarian Universalist Congregation
925 S George Street, York, PA 17403
$5 Donation - Includes Coffee, Soda & Snacks

Opening with Original Music of Jerry Cohen & Scott Fisher
Poetry Reading by Kate Bortner
Hamlet Act I, Scene II: Performed by Carol Stowell, Rich Burrill & Peter Klotz

Yesterday, my son was over for a little birthday party. He turned twenty-one last Sunday. Saturday night into Sunday morning was his time with his older sister, but yesterday was spent with his little sister…and me.

Brhiannon blew up the balloons, I put up streamers, and cooked a meal for Sean. Of course, there was ice cream cake. He graciously listened to my kind of music for a while until he couldn’t stand it anymore. Then I found a Metallica CD (which I like) and put it on for him. We gave him gifts. This is what Brhiannon made for him.

Claywork of her big brother carrying her.

I used to carry him. I look at him and I think, was it all that long ago, when I used to hold his little hand in mine and carry him on my hip? Oh, but God help me, even as I look at him and have to lean my head back, because he’s so much taller, I still see that little boy. Doesn’t matter if my eyes show me something different or how much I know he’s a young man now. In my heart he’s my baby.

I don’t think that will ever change.

I don’t want it to. It’s my right as a mother….and one I will always exercise.

Demian,
~DreamSinger

I was in Taco Bell last night with my youngest daughter, when I noticed a woman berating a very young child for not eating. She scolded her saying she needed to eat, so they could go to church and that they were already late. The girl was sitting in a high chair. She was fussy and evidently, not eating much. Maybe because it was close to 8:00 P.M., and this child should have been in bed instead????

I heard the woman threaten to throw away all the girl’s toys the next morning. Of course, this was really helpful and cheered the child right up.

There was another child at the table, a slightly older boy, and someone I presumed was the father. I was sitting across the aisle and about a table up from them facing way, but I could see them clearly in the reflection in the window, so I could watch them without staring directly at them. At one point, the father got irritated with the boy. Evidently, the boy wasn’t eating properly or something, and the father grabbed the food out of the boy’s hand, while he was eating, and said, “You’re doing it wrong.” And tossed the taco or burrito back on the table. The boy objected with some plaintive whining.

He had been eating. He just wasn’t doing t right. So now, he sat there not eating at all, not saying or doing anything. All of a sudden, the woman reached out and slapped the boy in his face. I was shocked. The boy didn’t scream out like it hurt a whole lot, but he was stunned by the suddenness of it and started crying. I, too, was stunned. I could not believe my eyes. It was a quick slap, maybe not the hardest…not to leave a bruise or red mark, but regardless how hard it may or may not have been, to strike a child like that was just wrong. Ironically, I heard the father comment to the boy that he’d better not disrespect his mother, totally oblivious to the contempt the mother just showed the child. She might have told him to eat after his father took the food out of his hand, and he didn’t, but it appeared to have come out of the blue to me.

This is where child rearing “style” merges with child abuse. No doubt, they thought it was their parental duty, probably divinely ordained according to their interpretation of scripture, to obtain complete obedience through any means. To me, it was child abuse, verbal, emotional and physical, hands down. But legally, that’s another story.

I had to leave. I told my little girl to wrap up her food, I couldn’t stay here.

When I got up, I had to pass the table on the way to the front to get a take out bag. I looked the father straight in the eye. He looked at me, and looked away, could not hold my gaze. I looked at the mother, she did the same. I could not hide what I felt inside. I know it showed in my eyes. I was angry for the children, for not only tonight, but for the years of damage they would inflict on those kids.

I wanted to say something, warn the parents, that what they were sowing today they would reap, and that the pain they inflicted on these kids would come back to haunt them. But if people can treat their kids like that in public, just how much worse is it at home, and how much would those kids suffer if “their disobedience” caused a stranger like me to embarass them in public?

I couldn’t help but think about those kids all night. It bothers me that it happened. It bothers me those kids were and will continue to be defenseless for years to come. It bothers me I didn’t know what to do, that I felt helpless to help in that moment.

Jesus said what you do to the least of these, you do to me. Maybe they covered that in their service last night.

Demian,
~DeamSinger