by Tom Summers
member-at-large, board of directors
Pastoral Care Network for Social Responsibility

Recently, two events occurring less than twenty-four hours apart displayed a startling contrast between social injustice and hope.

The first happening took place at the Federal Court house in Columbia, South Carolina.  I was in attendance at a pretrial arraignment for a peace-activist friend.  Over the years, we have held mutual interest in a variety of organized social action efforts.  Some of these activities have included nuclear disarmament, the Sanctuary Movement, gay rights, and the matter of the Confederate flag in South Carolina.

This courageous man was arrested last fall during a visit that President George W. Bush made to Columbia.  Along a boulevard leading to the Columbia airport, he was carrying a sign, "No Blood for Oil," in opposition to Bush's Iraqi war plans.  He was told by authorities that it was necessary for him to leave this area and go to a "free speech zone" that had been set up deliberately quite some distance away.

Indicating that it was his assumption that all of the United States was a free speech zone, he refused to leave and was then arrested.  Displaying signs of support for Bush, many other persons were left alone.  Under a law that allows the Secret Service to restrict access to the President, federal prosecutors charged the protester with trespassing.

Ironically on April Fool's Day, he faced these charges before a federal judge.  The shadow of a gross social injustice could be sensed hovering over the court room arena.

The second event, which had transpired fifteen hours earlier, was experienced in a hospital.  Its "birthing zone" represented a much different atmosphere, to say the least.  Instead, this was sacred space. There, my family stood in amazement and with moist eyes, as we all peered into the beautiful face of a newly born granddaughter--Marilyn Jane Summers.  Similar to any human birth anywhere, her precious six pounds and ten ounces of cherished potential signals to the world an inbreaking of hope.

Stepping from having witnessed the marvelous mystery of my granddaughter's entrance into the world one day into the next day's fearful clutch of unjust repression can represent a perplexing metaphor for our current historical era.  For, as we warmly gaze into the face of any beloved one, our soul also carries a concurrent awareness of the assault done to us today by war's awful violence and the demise of free speech.

But a balm for our confusion can be the joy that might radiate brightly from the newness of life seen anywhere on this planet that we call home.  Such birth, potential, new resolve, or redemption serves to undergird and inspire our clinical pastoral commitment to work both individually and systemically on behalf of furthering hope in our world.

Both my social activist friend and Marilyn Jane Summers are verifications that there is profound hope being born amidst today's wrenching social challenges.
 

 

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