So many articles and posts and news stories about the most disheartening, sad things.
Sometimes even the responses: beautifully-written reflections, or calls for action,
reflecting truth and justice,
leave me just feeling more overwhelmed by how much bad there is.
(Rock on to those who feel called to seek good through writing them! But:)
My little blog isn't going to say anything new or helpful about those sad things.
Yet leaving lament unsaid feels wrong, too.
As a form of lament, for me, I'm keeping a list of when the Internet shows me something that resonates with me as truly good.
Things I think have comparable
Things I think have comparable
power and poignancy in their goodness
as is found in the stories of cruelty and suffering.
The good stories don't negate the bad ones.
They just exist, also.
For now:
I hope my actions in my daily life grow in mercy-love and justice-doing.
On the social media/Internet front:
Here are
three things I saw online that I found truly, deeply, resonantly good.
(1)
Like a real one. Like maybe IN THE NEXT FEW YEARS.
Like, finding out your kid has cancer could be a bummer, going to need a few weeks of treatment and then they are FINE. Like a cold.
Can you imagine?!
A trial was completed this year with 22 children who all had cancer which was progressing despite every common form of treatment. Like kids whose parents were told "there's nothing more we can do."
AND TWENTY OF THEM ARE NOW FINE.
How amazing is that?!!!
(2)
The physicist who came up with cosmological inflation theory was proven right;
a worker on the team who finalized the discovery showed up on his doorstep to tell him.
I just LOVE this video (here's another article about it).
I love the expressions on Andrei Linde and his wife's face- I love how the shocks sinks in for her first and she spontaneously gives the guy telling them a hug, while Andrei is still going "What? What? What did you say?!". I love that he found out without any warning that his life's work had been successful. I love imagining how that must have felt. I love that the team member had the idea to go show up and randomly tell him as soon as they found out. I just love it.
Also, the little bit I could comprehend about the theory itself is amazing.
"[Andrei Linde] proposed that our universe is one of a vast – and perhaps infinite – number of inflationary universes that sprout off an eternal cosmic tree, without beginning and without end..."
Um. What. That just....
is so insanely big.
That makes me worship God so much.
(3)
"..Aaliyah Taylor, a 17-year-old senior at Ballou High School, walked up to the officer
and started playing “Watch Me (Whip/Nae Nae)” on her phone.
Then she did the Nae Nae dance..
.
The officer, according to Taylor, laughed
and said she had far better dance moves than that."
"...For Taylor, she said the dance-off marked her first positive interaction with police officers in her neighborhood.
She has six sisters and one brother and, according to Taylor, all have been arrested or detained for non-violent offenses like breaking curfew.
Taylor, who said she’s never been arrested, recalls her siblings saying that the officers acted unnecessarily rude and rough during their arrests.
Those experiences, Taylor said, had shaped her perception of police officers.
“I thought all cops were cruel because that’s how I saw them,” Taylor said.
“I’ve now seen there are good cops out there.”
In a different article, Aaliyah Taylor was quoted as saying:
“Instead of us fighting,
she tried to turn it around and make it something fun,”
The cop was reached but refused to be named because she didn't want to make the story about her;
her boss simply said she is someone "known as a hard worker and committed to policing."
Not only is this just, lovely and wonderful,
it also is a perfect example of one of my favorite attachment principles:
playfulness builds relational bonds AND lowers the stress hormones that impede learning.
There are some really good things happening.
