France

When the first you hear of the news is on a local pop music station, you know it’s going to be bad. Driving to Erie last evening, I first heard of the terrorist attacks in Paris, France. Tweets, television coverage and newspaper articles confirm the horror of the attacks at a concert, hotel and soccer match.

Fear. A typical Friday evening ripped apart by gunfire, bombs, blood, carnage. The random killing of civilians out for a drink, a sporting event, a concert. The randomness of it is chilling because we know it could easily be any one of us, anywhere, anytime. Such is the world we live in.

How do we live? How do we respond?

Some seek to attack --- doing so with blaming, fueling-the-fire postings about Syrian refugees and a larger plot to destroy “our way of life.” Fear so easily removes our heart, our sensibilities, our compassion.

In such chaos, life becomes reduced to the simplest and the smallest details. I turn to the wisdom of Fred Rogers.

Mr. Rogers would often recount the story of when he was a little boy and a tragedy would occur and in his fear his mother counseled, “Look for the Helpers, son. Look for the Helpers, they are there.” Friends stemming the blood of strangers with their t-shirts; doctors staying and helping, offering a calming presence; first responders and police rushing to the scene. Look for the helpers.

Today happens to be the birthday of the renowned Impressionist painter, Claude Monet. The first artist to present and excel in this manner of painting, it was said that Monet saw and painted “life as it felt rather than as it was.” There are no stark, definitive lines in his paintings --- everything is fluid and able to change. Today, we feel frightened, angry, sorrowful; nothing is as it used to be. What is left is how we will respond.

Sj;
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