Sticks and stones

I'm telling you to love your enemies. Let them bring out the best in you, not the worst. When someone gives you a hard time, respond with the energies of prayer, for then you are working out of your true selves, your God-created selves. This is what God does. He gives his best… to everyone, regardless: the good and bad, the nice and nasty.
—Matthew 5:44-46

Sticks and stones were all that 8-year-old Ramzi could find to throw at the intimidating tank that had invaded his village. He did not understand the political struggle between Israel and his land Palestine; he only knew the fear and pain the long struggle had caused his family and friends.

So with tear filled eyes he threw rocks at a tank.

 In 1988 a photographer captured this very event.

Courtesy of the artist. A poster shows Ramzi Hussein Aburedwan in 1997 at age 18, alongside the iconic photo of him throwing a stone in 1988.

Frustration and anger can lead you to throw stones or sticks. They can lead you to throw darts with your eyes, spears with your tongue, or let loose incendiary shrapnel-filled outbursts. Frustration and fear can also lead you toward indifference and isolation. It happens to everyone at many points in life. Some like young Ramzi live with it 24/7.

How do you overcome? How do you rise above the noise, the hurt, the “stuck-ness” of frustration or fear and be your better self? Failure to transcend makes you captive to these emotions. You are in a jail of emotional energy, yet you hold the key to your release!

It is all too easy to be your lesser self and fight fire with fire; lower yourself to their level, or to seek revenge. Seeking to be our better self, to transcend the moment requires a different perspective. A perspective that is not about you alone, but is more expansive, including others…particularly those who trouble you.

The passage above calls for us to love those who trouble us, to see them differently through God’s heart...to respond in prayer; actively seeking the means of relational healing, without blaming or throwing stones.
Ramzi learned this. He became a classically trained musician and founded music schools throughout Palestine.  It is here that children learn that, as Ramzi says: “It is through music, you can make from negative energy, positive energy."

What do you to do to change the negative energy into positive energy? Music works, so does prayer and taking a deep breath!

In a few moments you will be caring for a patient, their family, an employee or physician partner who may be caught up in the jail of frustration or fear. Be your better self and help them find freedom!