Witness

You see something that has impact on something else; or someone. You think about it. The meaning of what you witnessed sinks in. Should someone else know about this? Is your witness needed to explain an event for another to process?


Most of life’s happenings are important only to us. Those happenings build toward broader meaning. Later the message and meaning is clear to our own mind. The meaning amasses and gives us understanding of our world, surroundings, other people, skills, talents and life itself.


It is this broader meaning of witness I refer to here.


Something happened in my life a long time ago. It stunned me. Grabbed my attention. The context is important, too. This was in 1968. Spring. Years of Civil Rights reading, feeling, witnessing and growing horror at the injustice. Then one day the world was turned upside down. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated. Out of the blue. The words of a leader who found the chord of feeling and understanding. A man who preached peace, mutual understanding and justice. Gunned down. In America.


I was not the only one upset at this crime. Millions were shocked, saddened and grief stricken. Some burned stores and office buildings. Others set fire to cars parked on the street. Entire neighborhoods went up in flames. Thousands of families were left homeless. Many people were beaten, maimed and killed in the aftermath.


Others held impromptu memorial services for Dr. King, the Civil Rights Movement, and social justice.


Much of those memorial services focused on the illness of racism in our midst, in our land. In America.


I couldn’t just do that. I couldn’t just help stricken innocent people in the ghettos. I had to do something else. The only thing I knew what to do was enter seminary and use the church for healing a sick nation.


I did enter the seminary. I was pulled toward the parish ministry, but that is not what I wanted to do. I wanted to be where people earned their living and interacted with the business world, fellow workers, customers, suppliers, and all the rest. I needed to be in the thick of things and lend my mind, spirit and effort toward mutual understanding and wellness of spirit.


I didn’t get far with constructing that special, experimental ministry. I left seminary after one year. But I did return to the world of work and found purpose in human resources, corporate life and community intersections of positive social justice. Later, that job led to many years working for a university. There I found more purpose, more opportunity to make a difference. And we did make a difference. In countless lives of students as they struggled to define themselves and their world. A mantle of diversity, understanding and justice was imparted.


Still later I found work in nonprofits where mountains of good outcomes were made and built upon for millions.


Witness is not just seeing. It is learning from the action and spreading the meaning forward to many others. Your witness is uniquely yours. Mine belongs to me alone. Together we make great things happen.


Now that’s what witness means to me. It is not all church. It is not only theology. But it is living life as humans, engaging that life, making a difference in the lives of others. Building a witness one memory at a time. Letting it light up another life so he/she has a witness experience. And all pay it forward. Unknown but very real. Things happening for a purpose. A use.


All coming from people believing in others and the importance of doing. Living life responsibly and purposefully.


What a gift that is. Witness is a gift that keeps on giving.


June 25, 2019