Beth and I saw “A Beautiful Day in the neighborhood.” Fred Rogers was about a culture of love, compassion and genuine caring. He made people precious and was fearless in mentioning difficult issues in the human experience. Fred was the prototype of the sensitive feeling male and a wonderful role model. I loved him and was shaped by him like so many. He brought a sense of order to peoples lives just in the way he changed in and out of his jacket and changed shoes. He proved that Love can sell in the culture.
After the Tree of Life incident in Pittsburg, I can’t but think about the message of Love that Mr Rogers would express today if he were alive.
Channeling him I’d believe he’d say something like:
‘sometimes we all get sick, we cough, we need to blow our nose, we need more sleep. We usually get better. Some people never get better and sometimes they die. This makes their friends and families very sad. But someday we will all lose somebody we love very much and many boys and girls could feel very scared or sad or even angry about that. And sometimes people are very sick on the inside and they hate other people so much they want to hurt them. Sometimes they hurt them very badly and they die. This has happened in our city in one of the places where our friends go to pray. How does this make you feel? I know it makes me feel very sad and even very very angry. I want to thump on the lowest keys of the piano over and over again; it also makes me so scared and so mad. I feel like punching my pillow a thousand times. I am am so afraid somebody could kill somebody I love or even me.
What can we do about this? Maybe we already have. Maybe just saying out loud these scary sad feelings helps us feel a little better. Do you think we can continue to love one another so people who are sick on the inside can see that they might be able to find love inside their own heart too? Would you like to do that with me now—- just think about spreading love in the world so we can make things better? Come on, let’s have a moment of silence and think about spreading the love we have inside to the whole world. Let us think about helping the people who are sick on the inside feel better. I You are a wonderful person with a lot of love on your heart. I think I can understand how you feel. And do you know what, I think we can spread a lot of love in the world today and tomorrow and the next day too. Do you think we can both work on that? I think I can and I think you can too.’