Soul Scream

Last night I was watching a movie and there was a scene where a stray bullet from a gang fight went through a window and killed a 9 year old boy. The mother walked in and, of course, began sobbing and holding him. To be honest, the scene didn't affect me very much. I guess the news and entertainment venues have desensitized us so much to the pain of strangers. I watched this horrific scene, completely unmoved. Until the mother screamed.

The scream took me back into the past. Now, I have never experienced honest, gut-wrenching pain, or the death of someone really close, whom I love. I don't know if that's fortunate or just setting up the potential for major tragedy. But the movie scream took me back to a moment about 6 months ago, when I was at a good friend's house with her family, the night after her dad's funeral.

The family was all there, along with close friends. They were doing really well, and I was actually dumbfounded at how they were coping. Sure, they would cry occasionally, but someone would soon tell a funny story about that funny man, and tears would turn from sadness to laughter. Until the scream.

I don't know why it impressed itself so strongly in my memory, but I'll never forget it. The mother, having just lost her husband, friend, lover, and the father of her children, had disappeared to be by herself in her bedroom. The rest of us were talking in the living room, when she let loose the most horrifying sound I have ever heard. It was rage, sadness, hopelessness, mourning, all wrapped up in a vocal, gurgling, trembling, primal scream. I had never heard that sound before. The actors on television and in the movies have nothing. Nothing.

I've been listening to a lot of music lately, since I have a 40 minute drive to and from work. I've really been digging the blues. Now, I admit that I know nothing about the music. I'm just an amateur who has an appreciation. But what really strikes me about the music is the lyrics. They're usually quite simple, maybe even trite, but they're always honest. They almost always tell a story of a painful event in the singer's life. But you have to listen really closely to feel the pain. Just listening to the music, you wouldn't be able to detect sadness at all. The musicians all have something in common: they have soul. I've been thinking about what that means, and so far I think I've come up with a pretty good definition. Soul is the ability to take pain and turn it into something beautiful.

I hope that I have soul. We all like to think we do. Honestly, I hope I never have to find out. But that's impossible - loss is a part of life, and it will affect all of us, if it hasn't already. From what I hear, my friend's mother is doing great. She has channeled her love and sadness into a force for change, and is blessing her community and her friends and family. That's soul, and that's something I hope I have deep down inside this superficial exterior.

I guess that we think we've been desensitized to the sadness of strangers, but we haven't, really. We've just learned to disconnect from what we see on the television and what we experience in our day to day lives. From the perspective of the man sitting in front of the television, watching a movie where a mother is holding her dead son is no different than watching a woman in Haiti holding her dead son. It looks the same, sounds the same, feels the same. But I guarantee you, that scream feels completely different to the people surrounding that woman in Haiti. To them, it sounds like exactly what it should - a cry for help from the human community.

If we stop trying to fill every empty moment of our lives with entertainment, we will become more sensitive to the needs of others, as well as our own. And it doesn't necessarily mean going to places like Haiti to help, although some people are called to do so. It simply means loving those around us. That's it. And doing that on a regular basis, that's soul.