Libraries as outlets for caged youth

Dr. Melba Pattillo Beals, one of the Little Rock nine shared stories from her terrible  adolescence. She gracefully talked about how libraries helped her understand that there was another world outside the cage she was put in by the society.

Melba like young warriors are still around us. They are looking for help and this is one reason why  libraries are still needed.

One hand washes the other

If I were to use this title, in Romanian, about my relation with some other person the implication would be that we are helping each other get a clean image even though we are doing some kind of dirty business. Until yesterday it never occur to me that this can be a positive expression about help, forgiveness, community.

Due to some unfortunate events I ended up having a heavy burden that I was supposed to carry with me for a number of years. Because it was partially my fault I accepted it. At the beginning I was confident I will be able to pull it along however I soon realized that month after month the burden seemed heavier. One evening I had a thought that I should confess to somebody about it. I knew a member of our church community works with more or less similar problems so on Sunday I just asked if I can talk with her. She listened and understood my physical and psychological burden from my few sentences. More than that she promised to look into my case and see if there is any way she can help.

The next day when I talked with her on the phone and she told me she was able to waive my dept, I literary felt like my burden was taken away from me, like I had this dirt on me and it got washed off. It felt somehow similar to the feeling you have after confession and communion in church but different in the same time. It surprised me and reminded  me about the meekness we should have to see God’s mystery and grace coming so powerful from a regular person. I felt like a hand that just got cleaned and can now clean another hand.

One hand washed the other and both the face goes the saying. Through this experience I learned though that one hand washes the other and both can and should wash the feet of the persons we meet everyday in our life.

Crash

The biggest lie is to say that you can understand what somebody is feeling when you never experienced something similar. The closest think to understanding it, would be to imagine how it feels like based on some similar experience of yours.

There was some talk last weeks about sexual abused small girls and some celebrities were defending them, trying to explain how much, an unfortunate experience like that, can affect them. I  felt very sorry for the abused children and, of course, very angry with the abusers but I could not really see how this can affect all their life…Now I can see how. I had a car accident last week and even though nobody was physically hurt, it was not my fault, I started to feel depressed. My body was in shock after it happened and my mind was sending ”everything is OK” messages but the body did not respond for a long time. I still feel guilty for something that happened that it was not my fault. Now I can start to imagine how hard must be  for a small girl to try to make sense of a person abusing her.

 I am happy that I can find NGO’s like Artemis – Center for concealing against sexual abuses and violence close to my home back in Romania.  I never could completely understand what are these people doing but now I come to appreciate their work.  First of all they support people that really need somebody to understand them.