…we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses…
– Hebrews 12:1
It was in May of 1997 that Mr. Rogers turned an awards show into a spiritual exercise. Invited onstage to accept a lifetime achievement award, he chose to skip offering a standard-issue acceptance speech. Instead, Mr. Rogers chose to spend his time at the microphone inviting the audience to take 10 seconds of silence (imagine 10 seconds of silence on television!) and remember the, “…special ones who have loved us into being… the people who have helped you become who you are. Those who have cared about you and wanted what was best for you in life.”
And then the silence began. Should you watch the above video, you will see the camera move around the packed and suddenly quiet auditorium. And you will see tears on more than one face.
I suspect that the Mr. Rogers’ 10-second exercise was so moving to so many people for a couple of reasons. First, there was the man himself. Mr. Rogers had a profound and abiding sense of empathy, a gracious and generous love that was simple without being simplistic. He was a living illustration of Richard Rohr’s maxim: Transformed people transform people. Mr. Rogers could take a statement or a practice that would almost assuredly be silly or superficial or saccharine in lesser hands (consider “I like you just the way that you are,” consider a TV show that began every week with the quiet ritual of a man putting on a wool sweater) and transform it into a deep moment of connection, a deep moment of grace. To be invited into silence by Mr. Rogers is to consider the possibility that silence matters.
Second, notwithstanding the vein of individuality that runs throughout our culture, most of us understand at some core level that we are who we are thanks to our parents or teachers or friends or neighbors, thanks to that great, interconnecting love that the Christian tradition calls God. We understand that we truly have been loved into being. Thus, an exercise in which we remember the many people who have helped us – some of whom we know or knew intimately, some of whom we never met, but who still shone a light into our lives – can scarcely help but evoke big feelings.
I wonder how you might answer Mr. Rogers’ question? If that gentle and wise man were to dig out his stopwatch right now and offer you 10 seconds (take longer if you want – there’s no rush) in which to remember the people who gave you the gift of their kindness, their encouragement, their questioning, their companionship, and so on, who would come to mind? Who helped you to become who you are? Who is helping you still in your ongoing becoming?
“Whomever you have been thinking about,” Mr. Rogers said as his time at the microphone neared its end, “how pleased they must be to know the difference that you feel they’ve made.” How pleased they are, indeed.
