The other day, I heard a great Southern gospel song.
OK, some of you are groaning at even the possibility. And by "some of you," I'm not just talking about my wife and kids.
Yes, there are great Southern gospel songs. I get to find that out when I'm listening to the radio in my truck. Alone.
That's where I first heard The People in the Line, a song I would place in more of the modern interpretation of the genre. Like many Southern gospel favorites, it's sung by a family group. This group is called The Talleys.
The song is told from the perspective of a woman who becomes impatient with people ahead of her slowing down the line she's in, like the woman at the cash register who nonetheless won't get off her cellphone. Subsequent verses shift the scenario, but the situation remains the same: Others who seem inconsiderate get under the skin of the story teller.
But the person telling the story comes to realize that "chances are good that there's a broken heart standing in front of me or right behind." Or that the person driving inconsiderately on the road might have someone they desperately need to reach as they drive "barely hanging on to hope."
"So I pray," the singer says, "to have more grace for things that I don't know."
Wouldn't that be an outstanding gift?
We humans tend, it seems to me, to lean toward a self-centered nature. When traffic backs up and we see red and blue lights flashing up ahead, the first response can often be one of impatience. Do we think to ourselves about how it's a good thing the authorities have arrived to render aide? Or is the thought something along the lines of "Where's a side street I can take?" or "How late is this going to make me?" Does it matter that a firefighter is putting himself in harm's way to rescue someone stuck in a car crushed in that wreck? Would our attitudes change if, when we got close enough, we recognized the car as one driven by a next-door neighbor?
Do we consider that no matter what, the person in that car is someone's neighbor, somebody's loved one? Or that they, too, wanted to get to their home or work on time?
In the realm of political issues, it's very tempting to have the same kind of reaction, and I've been thinking about that a lot as the national debate over the use of public bathrooms gets people all tied up in knots.
The issue is being blown way, way out of proportion. In recent days, the Obama administration has riled education officials and government leaders across the nation by sending out directions on how school officials should handle a transgender student's wishes to use a bathroom designated for the gender the student identifies with rather than the one the student's birth gender would demand. Because it's so darned effective in producing hope and change, the letter threatened legal action for districts that failed to comply.
This led to Gov. Asa Hutchinson to urge Arkansas school districts to disregard the letter. He called it "offensive, intrusive and totally lacking in common sense. There is no recognizable problem in Arkansas on this issue. The federal government is stirring the pot and meddling in the local control and administration of our schools." Late last week, the Arkansas Legislative Council approved a measure discouraging school districts and higher education institutions from following the federal government's lead.
Without a question, the federal government's actions involved a heavy-handed presumption that local educators needed the direction from Washington, D.C.
Richard Abernathy, executive director of the Arkansas Association of Educational Administrators, said last week Arkansas' districts have been accommodating students with various needs for many years.
"Accommodations have been made for students with learning needs, physical handicap needs, safety needs, etc., and districts have always tried to make sure students feel safe and secure when they enter school. Individual student rights are always taken into account as accommodations are being considered. This is really a non-issue in most districts across the state," he said.
In short, Arkansas educators in most cases will work to the benefit of the child. Arkansas educators are far more likely, in my mind, to apply common sense to individual circumstances than some bureaucrat in D.C.
Within local school districts, I'd bet the response to an individual student's needs would be -- has been -- approached with a hope "to have more grace for things that I don't know," a compassion for the difficulty the student is going through and a desire to sensibly remove barriers to the student's educational success.
There's a difference between these high-level political debates focused more on the next election and real-world problem-solving in the hallways of school buildings. If I were looking for the more compassionate solution, I'd put my hope in my local teachers and administrators.
But that doesn't make headlines.
Commentary on 05/23/2016