The Boomwhackers are Contagious!

Twenty-four hours later I am still pondering how the biggest joy of the entire 7th and 8th grade middle school concert at Mooresville Middle last night was to watch the special needs students work together with their peers to play their own concert! They were called "The Boomwhackers."
They were amazing . . . as were their peers seated in the audience.

Sometimes in life is it awkward when you are faced with a situation in which folks are different from you and there is an uncertainty in how to act/react.

On the Sunday after Thanksgiving we decided we would go to see a movie (along with the rest of Birkdale Village). I didn't realize that all the seats would fill up in the theater so I had my pocketbook sitting in the chair next to me.

A few minutes later two men came up and sat down right beside me. We were of different ethnic backgrounds - which at first wasn't something I noticed, until after they sat down I took my purse and moved it to the floor. He looked at me and said, "I was not going to bother it. You can leave it there. It's ok."

Then I realized he thought I moved it because I suspected he was going to do something to it! He seemed very upset by the fact that I had judged him.

Pretty soon into the previews I noticed he went to sleep. Prior to that I noticed he muttered quite a bit and seemed to have some uncontrollable movements occur periodically. After a few moments of sleep he jerked awake and began muttering again . . . at this point several people turned around and stared at him, some even commenting and sighing loudly.

At this point it became very obvious he had some special needs. His peer with him tried to settle him down and encouraged him to watch the movie that was getting ready to start. He did in fact calm down after a few minutes and things would be fine for awhile and then that whole scene would replay itself again.

The stares and gawks in the few seats around us were uncomfortable at best. After a few minutes I decided that my part in making him uncomfortable needed to be rectified. So I took my pocketbook, gaping open as it was, and put it back in the chair, in fact in the middle of the chair, in between us. He looked at me and simply said, "Thank you."

In the past two weeks I've been in two very different circumstances with people different than me. One in which it was painfully uncomfortable because of society's reaction . . . and the other where there was universal acceptance and love.

Ironic that the situation that bore the most love was the one with the middle school students. When the Boomwhackers were finished playing the students lept to their feet yelling and cheering them on! One young man was so moved by the recognition, support, and cheer that he raised his hands in the "touchdown" pose and kept saying "yes" over and over again!

In the season of Advent I find it interesting to remember that just as the universal symbol of hope and love came to us in the form of a child, perhaps some of the best lessons we have to learn also come from children. Those students at MMS changed the lives of the special needs students and their families by so quickly offering generous love! What would this world be like if we did the same thing?

Let us live this season as if we were living like a child . . let us love unconditionally . . .say things as we see them and don't play games. Let us be loyal and give our love without asking for anything in return.

Let us be, for all people, a conspiracy of goodness and love!