I am mourning a murder; One I have done. - from "In Mourning for Betrayal" by Robert Bly
June 23, 2007 was a Saturday. It was an ordinary day in the life of a convenience store on the corner of 25th and Hillside in Wichita, Kansas. Sometime during the day, 27-year old LaShanda Calloway, (left) bleeding from stab wounds just inflicted, staggered into the store and fell to the floor. Who would step forward to help?
This was not New York City or Baghdad. It was the middle of the Middle West and there were plenty of folks there to help. No one did. Instead, video surveillance cameras show several shoppers walking around and even stepping over the wounded mother of three.... (http://www.firstcoastnews.com/video/player.aspx?aid=104690&bw=)
Fortunately, we live in a time of 911 and cell phones when professional help can be summoned instantly. One of the shoppers had her cell phone handy. She flipped it open, aimed it at the dying woman, snapped her picture and walked away.
Perhaps you are wondering if now is the time when I tell you this is all made up. It isn't. As any health care professional can tell you, two minutes is a long time in the life of a badly bleeding patient. Cameras show that Ms. Calloway struggled to her feet three different times during this two minutes, vainly seeking assistance as other shoppers stood and stared.
Later, in a Wichita hospital, three small children learned their mother was dead. Will they ever know how she died? What will they think of their fellow human beings?
What other "murders" happened in that convenience store during that terrible two minutes? Five bystanders are shown walking over or around Ms. Calloway. They likely carry no legal responsibility since the law generally does little to punish those who fail to help.
Do we need laws to enforce Love?
My guess is that one hundred percent of the people in that store were familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan. Shouldn't we be able to help others even without the need of that great parable?
In the inevitable follow-up interviews news stations do with professionals to try and understand the inexplicable, a psychologist, Dr. Molly Allen, described the shopper's responses as a sort of passive group think."That's where if somebody doesn't step in to render assistance, then
the entire group might get the message that for some reason it's not
okay to render assistance..." Dr. Allen explained. In other words, the ethics of the group seem to short circuit the morality (and sap the courage) of each individual.
We've all seen this phenomenon in less fatal but still devastating ways, haven't we? A friend becomes the victim of an unfair verbal attack by a bully in a group. Instead of speaking up for the victim, we often sit silent.
Was it group think (and personal cowardice) that caused the Apostle Peter to thrice deny that he knew Jesus? Was it group think that led to Jesus' crucifixion?
Two thousand years after the telling of the Good Samaritan parable, the vast majority of folks, regardless of where they live in the world, remain stunningly unmoved by the suffering of their "neighbors." They remain bystanders to violence instead of rising to help. They live paralyzed by self-interest.
The greatest horror around the death of LaShanda Calloway is how often this sort of thing occurs. Ten years ago, my own son (then twenty-eight) came upon a man who had been stabbed and was lying bleeding to death near a busy subway booth in Boston. Hundreds of commuters streamed past, presumably on their way to appointments more important to them than stopping to help a wounded man.
Out of the big crowd, only one person stopped. I'm grateful to say that it was my son. Once he reached down to help, then another person, a woman, paused to assist with her cell phone. "It was a remarkable few minutes," my son recalled. "It was as if the three of us, strangers to each other, were all caught in a tableau - bathed in some field of light that isolated us from the passing crowd. We waited until the ambulance arrived and then we all parted ways. I never knew their names and never saw either of them again."
Will we ever truly accept the idea that we are all children of God? Can we ever overcome the odd notion of other people as strangers not worthy of our love?
Some may say that for every story like the one above there are many more about heroes and bravery. And they would be correct. But, why is it brave to call 911 to help a wounded woman? Why is it heroic to stop and give aid to a stranger in need? The few Lovers who do help never think of themselves as heroes.
Is such Love really so rare?
What do you think?
-Erie Chapman
