Recently I finished a book a church member gave me as a Christmas present entitled “Why to Kill a Mockingbird Matters”.
I finally got to reading the book after it sat on one of my tables for months. I had packed away most all of my books for an impending move, and it was one of the few I had left to read.
Harper Lee’s novel, and the movie it was based on, had always been favorites of mine and it was one of the few times where, for me at least, the movie was as good or better than the novel it was taken from.
I was looking forward to reading an analysis of both and having author Tom Santopietro tell me my “Mockingbird” matters.
And, I wasn’t disappointed! Santopietro’s book was filled with amazing insights from a man who loved the novel and movie “Mockingbird” as much as I did.
The novel and movie contains two quotes that are essential to not only its humanity, but also to our own.
If we could live by them we would be wiser and more of the human beings God created us to be. I can think of no better quotes that can serve us as we live through the Coronavirus Pandemic.
Both apparently were offered by the novels main character, Atticus Finch, and remembered by his daughter: “You never really know a person until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them” and “You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view…until you climb in his skin and walk around in it.”
It is always hard to really understand a person, or what they are experiencing, without actually being that person or having their experiences; for we are not them and their experiences are not our own.
However, we all are human beings and as such we share a deep and abiding affinity with one another.
Even if we are not the other, we can imagine being them. And even if we do not have the same experiences as another, we can imagine having them.
That’s partly what it means to “ stand in someone’s shoes and walk around in them” and “to climb in someone’s skin.”
When I began my parish ministry, I knew I was at a disadvantage with many of my dairy farmer parishioners because I wasn’t a dairy farmer who had their experiences. I was born and raised in a city and not on a farm in the country.
Because I was newly married with no children, I knew little of what married and family life were.
I hadn’t yet experienced the death of anyone close to me and it’s accompanied grief and I hadn’t experienced too much financial hardship or any real hardship.
In light of this I wondered how I could be a good pastor to people who were so unlike me who had many experiences I had not. I determined early on that one way I could answer God’s call as pastor to my people was to at least try to “stand in their shoes” and “climb in their skin.”
Now, there is this pandemic I am living in and trying to get through…we all are living in and trying to get through.
We all are experiencing it together, even if in our own way. Because of this it makes it easier to “walk in each other’s shoes and climb in each other’s skin.”
We might not have lost our jobs but we can see others who have and imagine we might. We might not have contracted the virus and become sick or died, but we can see and hear about others who have and imagine they could be us.
I never really knew what it was like to live alone or to be shut in. I had always lived with family until my parents. Then my wife died and my children moved away to begin lives of their own.
I was forced to live in isolation in an attempt to not infect others or be infected from the virus. Each day for over two months now, I face waking up alone.
I go through the morning and afternoon without having much contact with or seeing other human beings except for talks on the phone, on walks or on errands like to the grocery store.
And as darkness descends and transitions into evening, my only company is myself, the television, a book, my art and my God.
Countless others are “in my same boat”, not only on these pandemic days, but everyday. I understand them now, not just because I “walk in their shoes shoes and climb in their shoes”, but because I am them.
This pandemic can teach us many things, but one of the most important is how to be a human being. And we are never more human than when we are empathetic.
Empathy keeps us distancing ourselves from others, from being detached from them because we are not them and they are not us.
Empathy teaches us we are them and they are us.
It is in that lesson that we learn to love one another as our God and Christ love us.
