Death And Love And Marriage And Grace

This political cartoon is becoming iconic
after last week's news  

Last week was a rare moment in which grace managed to overpower, however briefly, the crudeness that is the usual way things seem to go nowadays.

These moments of grace were ironically born of that crudeness.

The grace partly had its roots in the terrible racial murder of nine people gathered in a Charleston, South Carolina church for Bible study.

The grace came after years of hate and misguided "morality" lectures aimed at gay people, some of whom just wanted to marry each other. The U.S. Supreme Court said Friday that in our nation at least, these gay people had the right to marry.

The grace was visible in the majority opinion written by Justice Anthony Kennedy:

"No union is more profound than marriage, for it embodies the highest ideals of love, fidelity, devotion, sacrifice and family. In forming a marital union, two people become something greater thatn once they were.

The White House Friday evening. 

As some of the petitioners in these cases demonstrate, marriage embodies a love that may endure even past death. It would misunderstand these men and women to say they disrespect the idea of marriage.

Their plea is that they do respect it, respect it so deeply that they seek to find its fulfillment for themselves. Their hope is not to be condemned to live in loneliness, excluded from one of the civilization's oldest institutions. They ask for equal dignity in the eyes of the law. The Constitution grants that right."

By far the leading trending hashtag on Twitter was #LoveWins. For once, love DID win.  

There was something dignified, graceful in all those raucous celebrations in the moments after the Supreme Court announced its decision. Rainbow colors are fun, and they were everywhere Friday. Rainbow lights even bathed the White House, as President Obama celebrated the decision.

Obama had his well-reported graceful moment Friday - even singing "Amazing Grace" - in a scene that had nothing to do with gay marriage.

The President was eulogizing the Rev. Clementa Pinckney, gunned down with eight others in the Charleston church by a young man drowning in racial rage.

Said Obama, describing the actions of the killer and the hand of God:

President Obama reminded us about grace as
he delivered a eulogy in Charleston, South
Carolina Friday. He even sang "Amazing Grace"
to emphasize his point.  

"Blinded by hatred the alleged killer would not see the grace surrounding Reverend Pinckney and that Bible study group, the light of love that shown as they opened the church doors and invited a stranger to join in their prayer circle.

The alleged killer could have never anticipated the way the families of the fallen would reside when they saw him in court in the midst of unspeakable grief with words of forgiveness. 

He couldn't imagine that. He's given us the chance where we've been lost to find our best selves. We may not have earned this grace with our rancor and complacency and short-sightednees and fear of each other, but we got it all the same. He gave it to us anyway. He's once more given us grace."

We live in a world of Internet trolls insulting everyone in their path. We live in a world of blowhards on the cable news shows all screaming over each other and talking nonsense. We live in a world in which politicians, our so-called leaders, stir up divisions, hate, their own political fortunes at the expense of the common good. We live in a world in which activists preach hate, and encourage it, just  so they can line their pockets with the money given to them by gullible donors.  

Sometimes it seemed like the world was completely overrun with this dark scenario that I just described.

Sure enough, by the time I woke up Saturday morning, it was back to the usual awfulness in the world. A few dozen tourists had been killed by an attacker at a Tunisian hotel.  They're still searching for an escaped killer in the Adirondack wilderness. The blowhards were back on cable news. The Internet trolls ranted unimpeded.

However, the wonderful, graceful moments so many people show on Friday proved once again that good will is not dead. In the darkness of our media, political and social landscape, there are bright, inviting pockets of light.

Friday proved that.

It's time to embrace that light. With grace and love. #LoveWins.

Outrage: Newton Hero Getting Harassed, But Grace and Kindness Emerge, Too.

Some bad outsiders are invading the grace and strength of Newtown, Connecticut a month after a gunman killed 27 people there, including 20 sweet first graders. 

The outrageously bad here is  made worse because it's happening to a very good man. 

Newtown, Ct. hero Gene Rosen

In the news reports right after the Newtown shooting, you might have seen a kindly man named Gene Rosen in interviews. He lives very near the school. Six kids and a bus driver fled the shooting and wound up on his lawn. Rosen hustled the kids inside his house, and kept them safe, comforted them, gave them juice and toys and called their parents so they could come get them.  

The interviews showed him to be a generous, good man, the kind of guy that any community would be proud to have in their town.

So what does Rosen get for his grace and warmth? Lots of harassment from conspiracy theorists, according to Salon.  

These conspiracy theorists insist the Newtown massacre was a hoax, a way to take away our guns, establish a dictatorship or something. Who knows? 

From  the Salon article:

“I don’t know what to do,” sighed Gene Rosen. “I’m getting hang-up calls, I’m getting some calls, I’m getting emails with, not direct threats, but accusations that I’m lying, that I’m a crisis actor, ‘how much am I being paid?’” Someone posted a photo of his house online. There have been phony Google+ and YouTube accounts created in his name, messages on white supremacist message boards ridiculing the “emotional Jewish guy,” and dozens of blog posts and videos “exposing” him as a fraud. 

Salon writer Alex Seitz-Wald went on to quote Rosen:

"Here’s my fear: If I start talking like this, will one of these truthers read this and will it embolden them? Will they say, screw that guy, how dare he impugn our credibility or question our intellect, I’m going to go one step farther? Am I being stupid?” he asked.

After thinking about it, Rosen decided that he had to speak out: “I talk to you about this because I feel that there has to be some moral push-back on this.” Rosen said he’s a staunch believer in free speech, and realizes there is little legal recourse possible unless he gets direct threats, so he had a different idea.

“There must be some way to morally shame these people, because there were 20 dead children lying an eighth of a mile from my window all night long,” he said, choking back tears. “And I sat there with my wife, because they couldn’t take the bodies out that night so the medical examiner could come. And I thought of an expression, that this ‘adds insult to injury,’ but that’s a stupid expression, because this is not an injury, this is an abomination.”

Rosen has the right idea, but good luck shaming the conspiracy theorists harassing him. Many of them have no shame.

On the bright side, Rosen said he's also gotten a large number of messages and emails praising him for his actions. I don't know his email address, but if he were to read this, I totally agree with those positive messages.

Hang in there Mr. Rosen!

Now on to some undeniably heartwarming news our of Newtown:

In an incredibly nice gesture, Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz, known more widely as members of the Talking Heads and the Tom Tom Club, invited a group of child singers from Newtown, Conn. to their home studio to record a version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow."

Proceeds from the recording, which went on sale Tuesday, will go to the Newtown Youth Academy and United Way of Western Connecticut, which are helping Newtown recover from that tragic December massacre. 

The singers also got help from Sabrina Post, a Newtown-based vocal coach and Tim Hayes of the famed New York nighclub CBGB.

The video of the group recording the song, below, really tugs at your heart. Bring the tissue.