Penn State

Looking at all the conflict stirred up by the Penn State revelation, I find myself awash in the tide of backlash, noting the philosophical and political waves of commentary and strife. All the turmoil turns folks away from the actual carnage, the truth most worth our attention and I cannot avoid my conclusions about all this correctness writhing. Being philosophically correct is a nowhere game. Being politically correct is the same when we’re dealing with such stark loss, the unavoidably compelling call for justice, for refusals of distractions from those whose lives have been shredded by rape. Their work to heal requires our unflinching look at their stories.

Speaking from the heart, I can say that if I think of these children who were brutalized, I can only be enraged that they were so horribly victimized, that they may take decades to rid themselves of the imprint, the injury. And that some of them may not succeed. That, as with physical injuries, some may be maimed in ways nothing, no belief system, no doctor, no miracle can undo. There’s no way out of that fact. And the anger associated with it is a direct representation of the value of what these fiendish acts brutalized. The validity of outrage doesn’t change any laws of power or prosperity. Those who perpetrated these violations don’t deserve the waste of our energy by stewing in anger over their sicknesses. They are responsible for themselves. We are responsible for how we allow this to inform and inspire our actions as people united in love and in protection of value.

That Penn State did what Penn State has been doing all this time is not a shocker. It’s appalling, yes. But it’s not a surprise. We don’t grow into ownership and embodiment of truth overnight. Penn State might not any time soon since they seem, for now, only to stand for profit. We cannot always trust institutions. No matter how long their tradition or how reputable. We can work with them to further our own purposes. We can join with them to further our own causes. But, until institutions begin to embrace love and truth as their mission, we can never assume that our need for diligence in discernment or our responsibility as the gatekeepers for our children (or anything we nurture) is even slightly lifted by the presence of an institution’s reputation or supposed reliability or statement of purpose. We, the parents. We, the neighbors. We, the administrators. We, the co-workers have to assume the buck stops with us or it doesn’t stop at all. Not with the guy with more clout. Not with the bosses. Not with the lady with the social services degree. Not anywhere but here. With the one living her life, cultivating what she believes in and making sure the fruit of her fields sing of integrity down to the core. Because at the end of the day, and at this point on the timeline of our story, association with an institution does not make a person any less vulnerable to exploitation or apathy. It’s up to the individual to raise and keep the standard, to grow up beyond a need for mommy/daddy/institution to parent, rescue, protect. It’s that simple and that tough.

My heart goes out to the parents whose diligence did not shield their precious children from sexual violence. Our culture inflicts on parents an interminable burden, the crush of overwork and overwhelm in a world gone off the rails, where quality of life, cost of living and corporate greed collide, devouring precious value. Our culture makes it excruciatingly difficult, and at times impossible, to discern when we’ve placed our children in the care of predators. We must ask ourselves how, as a world responsible, we can lift the burden that so often results in the sort of collateral damage revealed by Penn State’s egregious failure, the collateral damage wrought by “reputation” and “prestige”. How have we succumbed to the cultural siren song of what Bertrand Russell calls “the gospel of work”? And how might we revolutionize our world such that what has now become the tyranny of work does not dull our discernment and lull us into a blind trust of those institutions inhabited by highly fallible humans? As caretakers, as parents and as tribe, we are all of us responsible for what our children encounter when we send them out to be educated. We must wrest ourselves from that tyranny so we can become more and more empowered to be even more effective gatekeepers in a world straining for healing.