Monday Music: What a Wonderful World

After looking at many different versions of  "Auld Lang Syne" I decided the best way to end the year would be with Louis Armstrong's version of "What a Wonderful World." Armstrong made his mark as a trumpeter/band leader in dixieland jazz, yet his gravelly joyful voice had its own special appeal as we can hear in this song that topped the charts in 1968 - that was a year we really needed a word of optimism.

The Feast of the Holy Innocents

Then was fulfilled what had been spoken through the prophet Jeremiah:

                                               

                                                      “A voice was heard in Ramah,

                                                      wailing and loud lamentation,

                                                      Rachel weeping for her children;

                                                      she refused to be consoled,

                                                      because they are no more.”

                                                              

                                                                     ~Matthew 2:17,18

December 28 is the Feast of the Holy Innocents. Dating back to the fifth century, this feast day commemorates the slaughter of all male children under the age of two as ordered by Herod, the Roman appointed King of the Jews.  Every year in the Christmas story, we hear of this action as recorded in the Gospel of Matthew. It is often given only cursory attention. The Coventry Carol recalls the tragedy of “Herod the King, in his raging/ Charged he hath this day/ His men of might, in his own sight/ All young children to slay.”  Usually I do not dwell on that aspect of Christ’s coming into the world.  When I do think about it, I think of how horrible an event like that would be, but I don’t let myself feel the pain of such a slaughter.  After all, it is Christmas – a time to dwell upon the joy and the wonder of the season.

This year, however, the death of the innocents came all too close to home. We could not help feeling the pain and the loss when the news came of 20 young children in Newtown, Connecticut being shot in their class room by an unstable man with a high capacity assault rifle. All of the children were 6 or 7 years old. For days the news of the killings at Sandy Hook Elementary School filled our TV screens. The President visited the town and spoke to the community and the nation at a prayer vigil for those children and adults who lost their lives. Funerals were held and the nation mourned along with the Connecticut families whose children were taken away in an instant.

This year, the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Newtown has given us a different perspective. We have been forced to realize that while we celebrate the coming of light into a world of darkness, we still live with much darkness.  We speak of the wonder of Emmanuel, “God with us,” while we are forced to ask ourselves were God was on this day.  For me, because of the truth that God is with us, then God must be here suffering with us, as God does with each daily tragedy somewhere in the world. We who are living are left to ask ourselves what we will do in light of this suffering to make our world a safer place.

Much has been written in recent days dealing with these very questions of how could this happen and what can we do now? While the story recalled by the Coventry Carol at Christmas can be neatly explained by an evil king with an army at his disposal, our tragedy is not so simple.  Rather than wringing our hands and saying,  “Oh, how evil this is,” we must address the systemic flaws in our country that make us more susceptible to gun violence than any other industrialized nation.  Many innocents died this December because we have a woefully inadequate mental health system, and we have woefully glorified the use and ownership of guns. These are problems that can be addressed if we have the courage to change our ways.

Here are a few articles that have been written in the wake of the Sandy Hook tragedy:

• 'I Am Adam Lanza's Mother': A Mom's Perspective On The Mental Illness Conversation In America by Liz Long
• Twelve facts about guns and mass shootings in the United States by Ezra Klein
• A Culture That Condones The Killing OfChildren And Teaches Children To Kill by Lucinda Marshall
• In the Wake of Another Mass Shooting, Let's Talk About America's Dangerously Gutted Mental Healthcare System by Lynn Stuart Parramore
• Do We Have the Courage to Stop This? By Nicholas Kristof
• When the Second Amendment EnablesTerrorism: Why Killing Children Isn’t a Well-Regulated Militia by David R. Henson
• "I Am Adam Lanza's Psychiatrist": A Response from the Mental Health Trenches to "I Am Adam Lanza's Mother"
• Christians must not let the Christmas lights go out this dark December  by Rabbi Jonathan Miller

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For this liturgical day to call to mind the Holy Innocents, here is a prayer from the church liturgy:

A Prayer To The Holy Innocents

Holy Innocents, you died before you were old enough to know what life means, pray for all children who die young that God may gather them into His loving arms.

Holy Innocents, you were killed because one man
was filled with hatred, pray for those who hate that God may touch their hearts and fill them with love.

Holy Innocents, you experienced a violent death, pray for all who are affected by violence that they may find peace and love.

Holy Innocents, your parents grieved for you with deep and lasting sorrow, pray for all parents who have lost young children that God may wrap a warm blanket of comfort around them.

Holy Innocents, those around you certainly felt helpless to prevent your deaths, pray for all who feel helpless in their circumstances that they may cling to God for courage and hope.

Holy Innocents, you who are now in Heaven, pray for all of us that one day we may join you there to bask in God's love forever.

Amen.



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Wednesdays with Dorothy: Freedom to Shop

(This is part of a series. For Table of Contents go here)

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One of the buildings at Partlow State School (photo by Naaman Fletcher)

Finding Appropriate Care

At the time of the Wyatt v. Stickney case, there were “over 3,000 residents living in overcrowded and inhumane conditions who had no legal alternative.”(1) Many of those residents were rather high functioning mildly retarded people who were even used by the mental health system to help run the institution. As Dorothy has recounted, they were called upon to help with the care of many of the severely handicapped residents and were enlisted to do the washing, cleaning, and cooking alongside employees and always without pay. Those at the "Boy's Colony" did the agricultural work that brought in income to the institution.(2)  It was these residents who surely knew that they were being denied options in life that they wanted to take part in.

On the other hand there were the severely handicapped residents who were warehoused and abused at the hands of poorly trained employees supervising the “high-grade” residents who participated in the care of the “low-grade” residents. In those days, parents of severely handicapped children were routinely advised by medical professionals that institutional care was the best option for their children, not realizing the detrimental warehousing conditions of those very institutions.

When I was Program Director at the St. Andrew’s Foundation, part of my duties included gathering information about new residents coming into our group homes. I will never forget the conversations I had with parents, almost always mothers, about their adult children with developmental disabilities. On one occasion, a mother described how she had been assured by the doctor that Partlow was the right place for her eight-year-old son, and how she watched as a staff person took her son’s hand and lead him away on the day he was admitted. My own daughter was around five years old at the time. I thought of how I could not bear to think of placing her, with her normal coping skills in some institution away from home, yet so many who lacked those very skills, were routinely institutionalized “for their own good.” We cannot minimize the hardships faced by parents of children with developmental disabilities. As a society we must offer resources to help. We must not, however, resort to insufficient means of caring for those children and their families.

Adventures in Shopping

Dorothy Burdette loved to shop, perhaps more than any other activity. When talking about her experiences at Partlow State School in juxtaposition to her life outside the institution, shopping was often the big comparison in her mind. At Partlow there was no freedom to leave the campus, no freedom to make decisions, no freedom to shop. Here are some of Dorothy’s adventures in shopping when she was finally able to leave the institution.

Dorothy Burdette

“Robbie worked at the group home. He made me mad one time. He said, ‘You owe me a cup of coffee, and I gave you a ten dollar bill.’ I said, ‘I didn’t ask for no money from you Robbie and furthermore, I don’t owe you no coffee! You owe me some!’ And later on he did get me a cup of coffee.

“What happened was, he took me to get something for my birthday, and he wouldn’t let me get it. It made me mad with him.  It turned out I didn’t have enough money – I was ten dollars short. We ended up going to Woolworth’s and getting some coffee.”

 “[When I needed to go shopping] I used to go downtown by myself half the time. I remember one time I went with Jim when he worked there. I got some of them week day panties and some of those soup labels – they used to make them like what came on Campbell’s Soup cans- and I got some of them. Cathy said they were for little bitty young ‘uns and I didn’t have any sense getting things that were not big enough for me. She told me I didn’t know how to buy the right size. It made me mad, and I told her, she didn’t know what I didn’t have, and I’d get what I wanted to and it wasn’t none of her business.”

 “I liked to make my own decisions about what I bought. When I was at Partlow, we couldn’t go out shopping, and we couldn’t make decisions about the clothes we wore or the things we bought. For our clothes, they would order cloth for the sewing room, then they would sew it into clothes and give ‘em to us. They had different staff that would come in and sew.”

 “Once I was at the group home, I went several times to shop and Cathy would always get mad. She’d say, ‘You always go off and leave us – you don’t wait for us.’ I’d get my cart and away I’d go. She said, ‘Can’t nobody keep up with you, you don’t wait on nobody.’ Usually they would take about two or three of us at a time when we went out shopping. I always went with who I wanted to. I didn’t much care for Cathy, she had a hot temper.”

“I liked the food better [at the group home] that at Partlow, and I liked that I could go with the group home staff to do the grocery shopping.”

“I remember my first Christmas in Birmingham. In the group home, we would go out to do Christmas shopping and to look at all the Christmas lights.”

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References cited:

1. The Legacy of Wyatt , http://www.mncdd.org/parallels2/one/video/wyatt.html
2. Penley, Gary, Della Raye: A Girl Who Grew Up in Hell and Emerged Whole (2002). Pelican Publishing, p. 71.

Photographs:

• The photo from Partlow State School was taken by Naaman Fletcher years after the institution was closed down. Naaman's photos are featured on his blog What's Left of Birmingham at http://leftbirmingham.blogspot.com/2011_12_01_archive.html .
• The photo of Dorothy was taken about the time she left Partlow. It was one she kept on her dresser in her apartment.

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