“Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything is worthy of praise, dwell on these things.” Philippians 4:8
My dad savored this Bible verse. Like most humans, he was many things, some of which I have trouble forgiving. But this memory from my growing up is a sweet one. It matches the man who woke us on Sunday morning by playing a lilting classical record that included Bach’s cantata “Sheep May Safely Graze.” The man who prized the reflected delight of a modest Christmas tree on our faces and in our eyes. And who worked at a job that skewered him with unrelenting anxiety and fierce headaches—so that my sister and I would know a secure, book-and-art-and-music-filled growing up.
But it’s the Bible verse that arrives so often in my consciousness. That comes to me both in moments of incredible loveliness and, now, in this time of death and suffering and even more unimaginable calculated evil.
My dad’s passion for loveliness and truth came not as fluffy wishful thinking or sarcasm. Little of Paul Sherfy’s growing-up or his college years or his inevitable turn in World War II’s navy had been easy or pretty. I’m not sure that his very strict minister father and strait-laced mother had ever cosseted him with “I love you’s.” The love in his youth would have been celestial.
And in the last decade of his life, he focused more on trouble and difficulty. But I trust my memory of his faithful attachment to the beauty of a wheat field against the Kansas sky and the loveliness of soaring anthems and the ever-so-wonderful tastes of ice cream and sausage gravy biscuits.
I link my dad’s focus on truth and honor with what my wise, belly-dancing hairstylist Bobbi said one visit: that she chose to avoid TV coverage of disasters because she felt that attention to pain and horror and ugliness added to the world’s misery. That our very focus intensified it.
Which, for me, doesn’t mean wearing blinders or ignoring the dark horrors around us. Or running only toward ease and pleasure and forgetting. Rather, for me, it means living two truths: That there is deep pain throughout the world. AND that there is phenomenal beauty and honor close at hand as well. And also for me, it means giving far more heart and attention and thought and celebration to loveliness.
In my thinking, there’s a critical alchemy at work. For certain, not fuzzy woo-woo denial. Not even magic so much as common sense. Human sense. If I concentrate on joy rather than fear and ugliness, you—you will see that and feel it. And maybe, just maybe, that will give your day a bit of light and hope. That, in turn, you might just share with someone else. Or savor as you approach the next sentence to write or wall to paint or class to manage or shelf to restock.
In fact, we’re more acquainted with the reverse. If I approach you in anger and paranoia and panic and unease, I will have darkened your day. Triggered your defenses. Left you disquieted. And then you will take out your agitation on someone else.
Yes, I believe that all 8 billion of us on this planet do, in fact, play temperamental “telephone” every moment of our lives. That we infect each other with our moods at lightning speed. In fact, scientists call the phenomenon “emotional contagion.”
And, within those diseases of emotion, despair and distress and disbelief have a particularly potent effect: We give up. We give in. We turn away from what we might do and concentrate instead our angers and grievances.
Likewise, I believe that hope and joy and honor are the engines of change. Of solutions. Of seeing possibilities. Most of all, of actions.
Except that for each of us—each little single all alone one of us—knowing what to DO, what action to take often seems complicated. I am fortunate to be able to give a bit of money to causes that matter to me. But it’s too easy to write a check. And my check is never enough. I have volunteered a bit of my retirement time. But once more, not enough to make a difference. And not in any direct way for the humans who hurt the most. Who are dying. Now. Tonight.
So what is it that I can do that will matter?
I let that question simmer for a couple days. And finally realized that a mash-up of other favorite Church of the Brethren scriptures had begun stirring in my memory. Likely verses that my father could have quoted verbatim. The exhortation to pray in private rather than ostentatiously. The Beatitudes’ encouragement to be meek and merciful and make peace. The annual financial appeal that reminded us to be cheerful givers. And then, my clearest memory of a Brethren entreaty was the one to attend in love to the hungry and sick and thirsty and alone and imprisoned—the “least of these.”
All of which bowled me over, brought me up short. Reminded me that my very worry about how to “fix” those who are suffering is itself a sophistry. A ploy, maybe, a dodge to getting on with everyday neighboring, everyday smiling, everyday letter-writing, everyday phoning—always the most obvious and doable of tasks in my world.
And so I was right back where I began. That seeing and celebrating all that is true and beautiful and honorable—in all people and in every action, every day—is what I can do. What we all can do. In our teaching or building or performing surgeries or serving food, driving trucks, flying planes, writing, painting. It is, after all, the quiet kindnesses and cheerfulnesses and celebrations that change the world. ©
