That's what I saw
A dozen or so years ago, I wrote a song called “That's What I Saw.” The song is a series of short vignettes of incidents that I had witnessed, incidents that stuck in my mind and returned to my thoughts with some regularity. Here's the chorus of the song:
That's what I saw today;
I'm not saying it's wrong or it's right.
But that's what I saw today;
It's still on my mind tonight.
Three recent incidents stick in my mind; all three took place at the church I attend. As in the song, I'm not going to say whether what I saw is wrong or right; I'll leave that up to you. But here's what I saw; here's what's still on my mind:
About a year ago, I was talking to a man at church about Holden Village, a religious retreat village near here. He was planning on going to Holden soon, and knowing I had been there several times, wanted to know what it was like. Among other things, I told him that the people there were very open and accepting of others, and that he'd likely see openly gay people during his stay at the Village. A few months later, he came up to me after church one Sunday and told me that he'd been to the Village, and that he didn't see any gay people there - “They've really cleaned it up,” he said.
One Sunday shortly before the anniversary of the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan (August 6 and 9, 1945), I took to church with me a couple dozen copies of a paper I'd written on the U.S. possession and use of nuclear weapons, intending to leave them on the literature table. (I had received permission from the pastor to do so.) A woman told me that I couldn't put my papers on the table; that some people might be offended by them.
A local trailer park was closed down recently, leaving its mostly low income residents to scramble for affordable housing. Churches and other groups agreed to each “adopt” a family from the trailer park, helping them to find affordable housing and otherwise helping however they could. My church adopted a family from the trailer park, and one recent Sunday a woman from the church asked me how the family was doing. I shared what little information I had on the family's current situation, and she told me she wished 'those people' would do more to help themselves out.
There you have it: that's what I saw, that's what's still on my mind.
That's what I saw today;
I'm not saying it's wrong or it's right.
But that's what I saw today;
It's still on my mind tonight.
Three recent incidents stick in my mind; all three took place at the church I attend. As in the song, I'm not going to say whether what I saw is wrong or right; I'll leave that up to you. But here's what I saw; here's what's still on my mind:
About a year ago, I was talking to a man at church about Holden Village, a religious retreat village near here. He was planning on going to Holden soon, and knowing I had been there several times, wanted to know what it was like. Among other things, I told him that the people there were very open and accepting of others, and that he'd likely see openly gay people during his stay at the Village. A few months later, he came up to me after church one Sunday and told me that he'd been to the Village, and that he didn't see any gay people there - “They've really cleaned it up,” he said.
One Sunday shortly before the anniversary of the use of nuclear weapons against Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan (August 6 and 9, 1945), I took to church with me a couple dozen copies of a paper I'd written on the U.S. possession and use of nuclear weapons, intending to leave them on the literature table. (I had received permission from the pastor to do so.) A woman told me that I couldn't put my papers on the table; that some people might be offended by them.
A local trailer park was closed down recently, leaving its mostly low income residents to scramble for affordable housing. Churches and other groups agreed to each “adopt” a family from the trailer park, helping them to find affordable housing and otherwise helping however they could. My church adopted a family from the trailer park, and one recent Sunday a woman from the church asked me how the family was doing. I shared what little information I had on the family's current situation, and she told me she wished 'those people' would do more to help themselves out.
There you have it: that's what I saw, that's what's still on my mind.
posted by Jim Allyn at 10/28/2008 03:13:00 PM
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