Can’t we all just get along?

With my heart still reeling—with our nation’s heart still gasping—at the shooting deaths of the innocent first graders of Sandy Hook, we witness a new horror of an IED exploded across the bright, sunny day of a community gathered to give witness and support to the hard-fought finish of their loved ones at the completion of the Boston Marathon. The unimaginable horror of shrapnel BB pellets and tack nails ripping through our loved ones on this celebrated Patriots’ Day and blessed tradition tore the racked hearts of Americans. We are still hearing the echoes of Rodney King’s plea, “Can’t we all just get along.”

And I recall the urgency I felt after Sandy Hook to care for my neighbor more deeply. And have I done that? Have we done that? I accuse myself as I think of all the things I wanted to do, but didn’t, of my good intentions gone astray lost to the demands of modern life. The reader comments after the online news articles startle me with their reflections on what it must be like in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan where so many have been subjected to similar attacks, and it seems like we are reaching a new consciousness of how we share this common burden of humanity around the world subjected to unrelenting, seemingly random acts of violence. And with this consciousness raising, we realize we must all do better.

This last point hit me hard this week. I have a neighbor just a few minutes from our house; our children attend the same Saturday school, 20 minutes south of us, so we find it convenient to carpool. My family made plans to visit the Cherry Blossoms after school, and this would necessitate my picking up my children from school. I took permission from her mother and invited her daughter to join us on our outing. This way I could bring her home, but after a significant delay. Then, when I picked up my friend’s daughter from school, the teacher gave me a bag for her mother. Can you give this to her? Sure, I said, no problem. Not wanting to be nosy, I didn’t check it contents. I simply put it in the trunk of my car. Cherry blossoms led to playing in the park, to running into friends, to eating out, to suddenly getting home very late and the bag long forgotten. I found it on Tuesday when I went to put groceries in my trunk—beautifully prepared stuffed grape leaves, homemade patties of lentil and bulgur sitting on a bed of crisp romaine lettuce, a few stuffed peppers carefully tucked in—all sprouting a nice cover of mold. I really cried; not only was I failing in being a better neighbor and a friend, I even ruined someone else’s efforts. But I think my tears were more than that; they were for that overwhelming sense of loss that somehow I am failing, that we as a nation our failing, that somehow despite all our goodness and efforts, we still are not doing enough to “Love our neighbors as we love ourselves.”

And here I am thinking how hard it can be to reach out to another to understand each other to cross our cultural, our country, our religious divides. Twenty years ago, I married a man from a different culture, a different country, a different religion, and though the blessings of this union are too vast to count, it has been far from easy sometimes to bridge the chasms of understanding. I can’t quite get into my new tribe of Turkish Muslims, but I long ago past the point where I could easily slip back to my tribe of origin. And here I navigate on a daily, and often moment-to-moment basis different understandings of the world, Turkish and English, Muslim and Christian, American-born and immigrant. It’s a common sentiment that we all want the same things-a good education and bright future for our kids, a clean environment, physical and economic security, a connection to something greater than ourselves. The trick is to get to these common points in all of us-our common problems of life, humanity, and this planet- because it is in these commonalities that “we can all get along.”

I’m amazed by my son’s circle of friends—he, a Muslim fourth grader whose best friends are a Sikh, a Mormon, and a Jew. They don’t separate each other by religion or skin color, but they unite around Minecraft, soccer, school, and other fourth grade concerns. I wonder what their future will be like. When you grow up living the truism, can you then as an adult forget it and have to be reminded to get along?

The other thing that is hitting me hard is the juxtaposition of the beauty and agony, how close together we live these two. For Muslims, the holiest months of the year are bearing down on us and will be here soon. The breezes are already here, catching me unaware, whistling through my heart, reminding me the month of Rajab is coming. Even in the horror, maybe especially in the horror, the breezes come, and they are all the more poignant for the contrast. How can you grieve for humanity, for your neighbor, for yourself, and yet at the same time taste the sweetness of love, the mercy of God. But there it is, the bitter with the sweet, the soul-rending heartache with the balm of the love. One after the over, riding the waves, until you think you will exhaust from it all, until you just want to melt into the moment, and let it wash away.

Today I have been deep in the ickiness of cleaning up after a child with a stomach virus, and a friend arrived with chicken soup. An overwhelming sense of gratitude for the need and the need being met. A soothing balm of earthy warmness healing the reeling bodies of myself and my children as we recover to face the next wave.