vulnerability

The Passive Voice

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

The other night my husband and I went to an art show opening at the church I used to serve and left in September. It was quite fun, with beautiful art and old friends. Several people made it a point to say to me, “You are missed” which was lovely, and which got me to thinking.

Of late I’ve also noticed several social media posts which say something along the lines of “remember you are loved.” I wholeheartedly agree with that sentiment. I think it can be the difference between life and death for some people. I think it can melt the heart of grinches and open the eyes of Scrooges. And yet….

And yet I’m curious about the choice to use the passive voice. I enjoy writing and I hope to be a decent writer, and something my high school English teachers and preaching professors drummed into me floats up to the top of my brain and into my fingers on the keyboard: avoid using the passive voice. It’s less powerful. It’s murkier. And more than that, I think using the passive voice lets us off the hook.

Granted, to say “I love you” or “I miss you” is an act of vulnerability. It risks our not being loved back, or not being missed in return. “You are loved” or “you are missed” becomes this general statement, but I wonder who loves me and who misses me. Do you, the say-er or writer of these words? Or are you speaking on behalf of someone else? Or are you speaking for that anonymous ‘they’ that pervades the social world?

I don’t know, and I certainly do not mean to discount the kindness and grace of saying to another “you are loved”, “you are missed.” But maybe we can take an extra step, because I know for a fact that there are people out there in the world who, if told they are loved, would wonder who exactly loves them. It might mean so much more to have a real human being say to them, “I love you. I value you. I see you. I miss you.”

In these days of meanness and cruelty, of greed and power grabs, maybe one of the great acts of resistance we can do is to say clearly and actively to people that we love them. To do that is an act of kindness, and act of truth (hopefully!), and an act of resistance against the powers that say that some people are worthless, wrong, or forgettable.

I will not tell you I love you, the person reading this, because I do not know all of you. But I do appreciate your taking the time to read this Sunday morning’s musings. Be strong, and be courageous, and be well.

(One of three paper collages I made out of the sympathy cards I received after my father died. The love expressed in them continues to carry me through my grief. Today would be my dad’s 94th birthday; he told me he loved me, which is the world.)

The Unknown Owl

/ Beth Merrill Neel / 1 Comment

eastern-screech-owl-georgia_67926_990x742This past summer while on vacation, my husband and I took a walk in the woods with our dog. I’ve walked this particular path hundreds of times – the woods are on property my extended family has owned since the 1940’s.

Anway, it was dusk and we wanted to take the puppy out for his evening constitutional. The sun had mostly set; it had been a clear day and it promised to be a beautiful evening. As we entered the woods we heard an owl, and as we walked deeper into the darkness, we heard the owl (or what we presumed to be the owl) following us.

I love owls, and I give J. K. Rowling a good bit of credit for that. I also love them because I think they are beautiful, and they eat mice and insects and make a pretty sound. But for some reason, this owl spooked me a bit. I don’t find the woods scary, and I wasn’t alone, and I love owls, but something was amiss.

It was the puppy. At the time the dog weighed about six pounds. He’s a little thing and always will be. And this owl was following us, and I didn’t know if it was just being friendly or if the puppy appeared to be a tasty morsel.

Now I know most owls avoid puppies for dinner. Or I think I know that. Just writing that I worried that the owl would eat my dog makes me realize how ridiculous the thought was – in lawsa bit like that scene from the original movie The In-Laws, where Peter Falk as the maybe mentally imbalanced CIA agents tells Alan Arkin as the hyper normal dentist about the time the giant tsetse flies flew away with the babies from the village.

Still, my husband and I turned around, and I carried the puppy, and we left those woods.

What made it amiss was the realization that I was responsible for a vulnerable creature. Our dog was with us, and we needed to protect it from whatever real predators were out there. The problem is that I don’t know if the predator was real or imaginary.

Everyday people have to decide how to protect the vulnerable from predators imaginary or real. We’re doing it right now with Syria; we do it as we think about how to spend taxpayers’ money in aid programs; we do it as we clarify rights for the mentally and physically disabled. We do it with our kids and with our elderly and with those who look so normal and fine who a few of us know are really in anguish.

The threat of the owl seemed so real; the vulnerability of my puppy was so real. And there I was, at the end of dusk, trying to see what to do.