Author: Sharron Burnett

“Let’s face it!” he said. “No matter whether it’s at work or in government we always do better if our leader is a mean son of a bitch who gets the job done without worrying about peoples feelings.” 

Such was a recent commentary from someone that I know and love, someone that I believe is well meaning but so terribly wrong. Ultimately the true “strong man or strong person” does not have to resort to cruelty, dishonesty, anger or force to achieve greatness. It is more often than not the quietly confident individual guided by moral purpose and love for fellow humans who moves mountains. A “son of a bitch” may get compliance for a time because people fear him or her, but the man whose goals are unselfish and thoughtful will ultimately bring out the best in others.

Scrooge was a “mean son of a bitch” but a lonely and feared man. People avoided him at all cost and only complied with his anger to keep their jobs. He inspired nobody. Only with his transformation after meeting the spirits of the past, present and future did he realize how anger and greed had left him miserable and lonely and empty. 

I often think of a neighbor from my childhood whom I knew as “Mr. Barry.” He was a quiet and reserved man who drove off to work each day in his Buick. He was the president of a bank and he did quite well for himself and his shareholders but he did so with love and kindness. He valued his employees and treated them with respect. He got to know his customers personally, genuinely wanting to help them. His goals were simple. He worked hard and never asked anyone to do anything that he himself would not be willing to do. He saw his job as being helpful and honest with both his employees and his customers. He was a resounding success.

Mr. Barry was also a wonderful father of six children. Even after long days at work he took the time to laugh and play and enjoy each member of his family. Whenever I was at his house visiting with my friend, Lynda, he always made me feel comfortable and welcomed. He was never a stern man but it was also apparent that he wanted his children to develop certain marks of character that would make them good people. He guided them by example.

I remember a time when Mr. Barry took me and Lynda to a prayer service with him. We were both excited that he had thought to invite us and we were determined not to disappoint him with our behavior. Unfortunately the event ended with a litany of the saints in which we were supposed to respond, “Pray for us!” After about five iterations something about the repetition tickled me and Lynda and, try as we may, we were unable to stifle our urge to giggle. The longer the litany went on the more we had to hold our breaths to keep loud chuckles from emerging from our mouths. All the while Mr. Barry remained calm, not even giving us the stink eye for our inappropriate behavior.

On the way home instead of scolding us for our lapse of seriousness he explained the meaning of a litany in a calm voice. He assumed our goodness and instead seemed to think that it was only our ignorance of the situation that had led to our silliness. He did not chide us nor make us feel bad about what we had done. I decided in that moment that Mr. Barry was a truly wise and great man. 

I learned from Mr. Barry on that day. He handled a negative situation in a very positive way. He might have had every right to fuss at us but he chose a more powerful way to help us to become better. I would think of him over and over again as I grew older and was charged with the care and education of my daughter sand my students. From him I knew that much more is accomplished with understanding than with anger. 

After Mr. Barry had died I spoke of him with his daughter, Lynda. I mentioned that evening at the prayer service. She did not remember it but smiled when I gave her the details. I told her that in my mind her father was a saint whose name should come up in one of those litanies. She nodded in agreement and asserted that she and her siblings had all said the same about him. Remarkably the man that I saw as a small child was obviously the same no matter where he was or what the situation might be. He was calm and loving and guided by his moral values. 

We are living in a time when quiet souls like Mr. Barry might be thought to be unfit for leadership. Nobody would note that Mr. Barry was a hero in the Navy during World War II or that he competently fulfilled his duties as a bank president for decades. They would not seem to realize his tremendous gift for inspiring people to be their best, but I saw it and often stop to reconsider how to get things done by remembering this incredible man. He was proof for me that we don’t need “a son of a bitch” for success.

Of late there has been a great deal of discussion about religion and what it’s relationship with politics and schools should be. it’s a sticky subject because of it’s very personal nature. Each of us embraces an association with religion based on a multitude of factors that have affected how we choose to believe. 

Statistically around thirty one percent of the world’s population claims to be Christian followed by twenty four percent leaning toward Islam and around fifteen percent naming Hinduism as their religion of choice. That leaves around thirty percent of the world’s people who are either members of many different kinds of religions or among those who are atheists, agnostics or simply not aligned with any particular religious group. The fastest growing religion in the world is Islam which is projected to overtake Christianity by 2035. 

Statistically it would be incredibly difficult to adopt a singular religion to represent the entirety of the United States. Our diversity is such that even among Christians there would be little agreement on which of the many faiths is most akin to what the majority of people believe. Perhaps that is part of the reason that the Founding Fathers rather explicitly demanded freedom of religious choice while also insisting on a wall between church and state. 

Many of the earliest groups that came to what would become the United States were fleeing from state religions and persecution of their unique ways of believing. They balked at the idea that kings were the divinely determined religious heads of certain faiths that they were pushed to follow. They wanted the freedom to pray and believe in their own personal ways and for the most part the rules regarding religion in the United States have consistently protected those freedoms. It is only of late that there are concerted efforts to make our nation Christian. 

I was born and raised as a Catholic. I even went to Catholic schools from grades one through twelve. I had regular religion classes where I learned about the rituals and spiritual beliefs of my church. I have had discussions with Christians of other faiths who literally do not consider me to be a Christian. They label my faith as being different enough from theirs to create a special category for Catholics. Perhaps we Catholics are most like Episcopalian and Lutherans but even within those denominations there are differences that make us only similar but not congruent. 

I suppose that I see the rationale for keeping religion out of schools and government because of the obvious difficulties of honoring and respecting all people. I have little doubt that if we are not careful we will end up with a significant proportion of people feeling isolated and disrespected in the public domain. It is virtually impossible to give adequate air time to all the different faiths and lack of faith without crossing the line of fairness and ruffling feathers. Religion should be based on the choices of families, not political parties. 

The history of the world demonstrates that when we attempt to overlay one religion on an entire population trouble ensues. Trying to balance everyone is also virtually impossible as I learned at an event celebrating religious diversity at Stanford University. What was billed as a nod to all religions required over four hours of demonstrating a small taste of the many possibilities in the world. While it was interesting, it became apparent to me that we should never try to insert religion into the public sphere because there would always be persons or groups feeling left out and maybe even persecuted no matter how hard we tried to please everyone. 

Even references to God were added to our rituals much later than the moment of our founding. Mention of God was not part of the pledge of allegiance until 1954. The phrase “In God we Trust” was first added to paper money in 1957. The United States Constitution does not explicitly mention God and there are valid reasons for that. 

Many of the Founding Fathers worried that religion would corrupt the state and that the state would in turn corrupt religion. In many ways we are witnessing their fears play out as we see political leaders using religion to curry favor with voters. They imply that they were sent by God to save the people and pray while wrapped in the American flag. At the same time preachers are urging their congregations to vote in certain ways. The blurring of the line between church and state is creating dangerous situations in which people’s beliefs are challenged. 

I am a cradle Catholic who still follows my faith. It is my own personal relationship with God and I would be happy to talk about what I believe with anyone who asks. What I would never want to do is force others to agree with me. Even among my siblings I am the only one who still chooses to be a Catholic. One brother is now a Baptist and the other mostly leans toward being agnostic. He has a good relationship with God but he does not believe any man-made institutions have managed to determine how that relationship should be fostered. I respect each of them for coming to conclusions on their own just as I have. 

I worry greatly about making religion an issue in our schools and in our halls of government. One should never bleed into the other. There is absolutely nothing more personal and free than being able to decide how to feel about God. I would never want to take that choice away from anyone. When I pray I want to know that it is just between the Lord and me and how I have chosen to believe.

I have had a remarkably good life but it has also been quietly difficult. I learned a long time ago that life can change in the blink of an eye. The chapters of my story read like a Greek tragedy and yet if I tell the tale in its entirety it sounds as though i have always been the luckiest person in the world. I suppose that my grit has carried me through the ups and downs that seem to be the way things are in most people’s lives. 

Anyone who has followed my blogs knows the challenges I have faced as well as the wondrous happiness that I have experienced. Until I was eight years old life seemed perfect to me. I lived in a kind of wonderland of middle class abundance. I rode around in a new fancy car. My beautiful home was filled with fine furniture, books, music, artwork. My parents were brilliant and well educated. I attended private school and had many friends that I still count among the special people in my life. I suspect that I might have been the envy of people who saw the seeming perfection of how I lived.

My roller coaster ride began from the moment my father announced that we were leaving our model life behind and striking out for adventure in California. I eight years old and never really adjusted to saying adieu to everyone and everything that had seemed to define who I was. Somehow I was not inclined to be as daring as my father. He had constantly moved from one place to another with his family when he was a boy. He liked the idea of exploring and trying new things. He had a kind of wanderlust baked into his personality. I would have preferred staying with what I knew.

After my father’s announcement that we were heading to California we seemed to hook up with a whirlwind from October to the following May. Ours was an unsettling journey from one place to another as my father struggled to find something that I never quite understood. After living in San Jose and Los Angeles California and then Corpus Christi, Texas, I felt like the kid who comes and goes to different schools never having the time to make friends or understand the expectations of how to behave in a new environment. I was an unhappy vagabond until we finally landed back in Houston, Texas at the tail end of the school year. I set aside the loneliness and confusion that I had been feeling and looked forward to a new beginning in the city where everything and everyone that I loved seemed to be.

Of course I had not counted on losing my father in a car accident. I had never heard of anyone whose parent died at the age of thirty three. The trauma that I felt would alter me and stay with me for years before I felt that I was in control of my life. I went inside myself and learned to celebrate small moments while not counting on anything to last forever. 

My new outlook on life made me cynical but it also kept me optimistic as strange as that may sound. I learned not to be surprised when terrible things happened. In fact I expected such things to take place. But I also knew that if I took a deep breath and kept pushing forward even the worst times would ultimately go away providing me with respite from my sorrows. 

Thus has been my life. I have had long stretches of good fortune almost always followed by painful challenges. Because of my background I have navigated through life with a sense of wariness but also the knowledge that I have the ability to weather any storm. So when my mother was diagnosed with mental illness that would last for the remainder of her life when I was only twenty I grieved for a time and then set to work facing the reality of the situation. There would be beautiful ups and tragic downs in my relationship with her but I chose to concentrate on the times when she was well and happy and inspiring. 

I somehow found the perfect husband to accompany me through both the good and bad times. He has always been supportive in the situations that threatened to break me. When he contracted a fungal disease that is sometimes deadly and spent many months in the hospital being treated with chemotherapy I prepared myself for both the best and worst possible outcomes. I shed my tears and focused on my two little girls and kept the faith that his doctors would know what to do to restore his health. 

Surprisingly after all of these tragedies had affected me and the people I loved until my late twenties there came a decades long period of relative calm that allowed me to enjoy my family and my friends with only minor annoyances. While I still had to watch over my mother who would have many recurrences of her worst symptoms I mostly felt a sense of balance and stability in my daily routines, I enjoyed my family, my work, my neighbors, my friends, my trips. My children grew up, went to college and left home to begin their own lives. There was a tranquility in my world that was healing. 

Now that I am older it seems that the challenges are arising with great frequency once again. None of the elders who supported me for all of my life are still alive. With each passing year more and more of the friends who were so important to me have also died. I have grandchildren now and many of my friends are young enough to be my children. The changes keep coming more and more rapidly and sometimes I do become afraid. Then I tell myself that I know the drill. I have suffered many times and each time the sun has risen once again and I ventured forward in happiness. I don’t worry as much as I once did because now I am certain that I know how to do whatever I must do. 

We’ve all heard the jokes about how differently men and women communicate. We’ve seen books about men and women being from different planets. We’ve encountered the frustrations of wanting to be heard and then realizing that others have totally misinterpreted what we were attempting to express. All too often two people can hear the same words and react to them in totally different ways. It is what causes disagreements in families, rifts between friends, differences between political groups, wars between nations. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we might one day find a tried and true methodology for expressing ourselves so clearly that everyone understands exactly what we are attempting to say? 

I know that each time I string words together to form sentences that hold the keys to my thinking I am risking being totally misunderstood. When that happens I often think about a discussion of Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet that occurred in an advanced English class from my college days. I recall being stunned when a male fellow student insisted the the main theme of the play was a critique of the absurdity of youthful love. He maintained that Shakespeare was not so much worried about the differences between the two adult families but instead wanted to emphasize the tragedy of disobedient children defying the beliefs of their elders. 

I remember the professor stumbling over his own words as he attempted to give the unique analysis a tinge of merit, but even he had a difficult time hiding his surprise at the puritanical thinking that gave the warring families a pass but denounced Romeo and Juliet as ungrateful teenagers who should have listened to their parents. Nonetheless, the incident in the classroom has stayed with me for decades as an example of how outrageously twisted interpretations of words can be. No doubt bad communication is a two way street that has the power to destroy relationships. 

We all know someone who just gets us. They have the power or the listening skills to seemingly read our minds even when we are struggling to express our feelings. They know when we just want to vent and they sympathetically listen. They understand when we are grasping for wisdom or advice and measure their ideas with reflective responses that tell us that they have interpreted our thoughts correctly. It is a joy to be with someone who is so simpatico. Sometimes we make them our best friends, our partners, our spouses. They might be a family member, a coworker, a neighbor or just a long time friend. Sometimes they are simply very special people who have mastered the art of listening and understanding. 

I have been fortunate to encounter such people again and again. I worked with a woman who carried the same moniker as mine with a different spelling. Sharon was perhaps the most thoughtful and insightful person I have ever known. She had a sixth sense when it came to knowing the essence of who I am. She knew what I needed whether it was laughter or nonjudgemental support or wise advice. She was gifted in her ability to truly love people just as they are. Sadly she died a couple of years ago leaving a gaping whole in my life and the many others whom she counseled and befriended.

I have a nephew, Nathan, who seems to possess the same kind of vision about people. He is seemingly spiritual in his ability to know when to reach out and what exactly to say to anyone who needs his support. His is an uncanny reading of the people that he loves. He listens and hears exactly what each person is attempting to express. He reads a room full of people with accuracy and knows who is hurting and who is doing fine. 

My beloved friend, Zerin, is yet another person who literally reaches across the miles whenever she senses that I am struggling even as I may be attempting to hide my concerns. I will receive a phone call from India and know that she has read between the lines, realized what message I have been attempting to convey. Like Sharon and Nathan she is a powerful presence in the lives of the people that she encounters. She has a rare gift that might have been used in diplomacy but instead became her way of teaching sometimes very difficult young people with great love.

I don’t know if there is a way to instruct everyone in methods for not only really listening to one another, but also in how to express feelings in a clear and honest way that does not hurt or accuse anyone. So many of the world’s problems might be settled peacefully if only we all knew how to have meaningful and understanding conversations. Instead we too often react before we have attempted to fully discern what a person or group is really trying to say. We may view them as whiners or “snowflakes” or even enemies when they are simply grasping for the words to clarify their anxieties. Communication is difficult when someone holds back or misinterprets without first assuming the best or the benefit of doubt. Only when it is totally clear that another person or group is simply being hateful is there reason to walk away and even then we might do well to wonder what deep down inside has made them this way. 

The world is filled with a cacophony of voices competing to be heard. It can be overwhelming to attempt to know what they really want us to hear. We can be chewed up and spit out by those whose minds are closed to the possibility that we might actually share common ground. Nonetheless Sharon and Nathan and Zerin are people whisperers and they would urge us to at least try to listen and reflect.

Maybe the next time it sounds as though someone is gunning for a fight we might slow down and take a moment to gently allow them to explain what they are feeling or thinking instead of simply writing them off as not being worth our time. Who knows where the conversation may eventually lead. We may find more in common than we ever imagined. It all starts with the act of hearing them rather than debating them and respectfully allowing them to explain.

It’s a cold rainy weekend day as I write this. For many that would be a rather dreary prospect but I happen to enjoy the kind of days when the skies are gray, the temperature is low and everyone seems to be more inclined to stay inside. I find that such days put me in a very appreciative mood. I think of my good fortune in having a sturdy roof over my head and a heater that keeps the rooms feeling just right. I’ve got time to write blogs and read books because nobody wants to do much more than stay home on days like this. I have the perfect excuse for simply reveling in the quiet and slow pace that such a day seems to bring. 

I hear the sound of the falling rain interrupted now and again by a clap of thunder and I know that my plants will be very happy. I think of making some hot tea or maybe even baking a cake or some banana bread. I have every possible excuse for doing whatever tickles my fancy on such days and with all of the bad news seemingly overtaking us day by day I like the idea of using the rain as a way of easing my anxieties. The weather provides a mental health day that I need not explain to anyone. It is my way of taking a breather and resting a bit. 

It is quiet in the house save for the pattering of raindrops on the roof. Somehow the sounds of nature doing its thing are all that I need to feel refreshed and part of the bigger picture of life. Just when I felt a bit down here came the rain to brighten my spirits. 

Now you may be thinking that rain would be a downer for me. Surely I would enjoy a sunny day much more. Those blue skies and bright lights are quite lovely indeed but I know that there are places where there has been little or no rain for quite sometime. An overabundance of dry days has filled the landscape with shades of brown and earthen colors in many parts of the world. Where I live the rain keeps things green and lively. I am incredibly grateful for that. 

I think of those who are enduring famine or fires because of a lack of rain and am reminded to take the time to do something to help them however I might. Just because I have what I want and need does not mean that I should forget the places and the people who worry about the plunging levels of water. Rain has more and more become like gold as long as there is not an overabundance of it. 

There was a time after hurricane Harvey when rain made me worry. I was unable to relax as I constantly looked out my window to be certain that the water in the street was flowing away from my lawn. I was awakened by the arrival of storms and sometimes not able to return to my slumbers.

I suppose that I have become less concerned that rain equates with danger in the eight years since that incredible event brought over fifty inches of rain to the area where I live. I still wonder how it was possible that the rising levels of water never went over the curb and into my yard. When I saw the damage done to the homes of nearby neighbors, friends and relatives I almost felt guilty to have been so fortunate. For a very long time rain made me a bit crazy but now such feelings are gone. 

My flood insurance costs a small fortune these days and is bound to go higher and higher over time. I wonder what the tipping point will be for those of us who live in places that flood from time to time. Still I am certain that I would rather worry about water encroaching on my home than fire overtaking it. I can clean out the muck and replace the walls but when a home burns nothing is left. I suppose that fires in Hawaii and Los Angeles have made me feel more and more partial to the rainy days that seem to show up regularly. 

So today is a good day. The skies are gray but my heart is feeling content. I have time to dwell on the luck that I have had for most of my life. I know I need to share some of the good fortune that began with my wonderful parents and has continued with a host of dear friends and an extended family that is ever present to help me with all of my needs. Out of gratitude I will do something wonderful for someone who is having a difficult time. The rain reminds me of my duty and gives me the opportunity today to plan for tomorrow. How lovely is that?