Saint Patty's Day Craziness

In retrospect, this would've been easier to write if I hadn't been quite so lazy in getting it out the door.

Oh, well.

Towards the end of last week, I betook myself to sign up for another shift with '40 Days for Life'; and, feeling pretty good about myself, I signed up for the 10-12pm shift for Saturday, St. Patrick's Day. Which, I got to say, I felt pretty good about.
Right up until Saturday evening. Whereupon I was dead certain that: (a) I was going to be completely alone and surrounded by inebriated hipsters, and (b) I was going to be violently assaulted by about four dozen of said hipsters, probably continuously, all through those two hours.

But -- amazing awesomeness ensues -- I found out I had company! Brother Chad (from St. John Cantius Catholic Church) and his 'Crusaders' (that is to say, he has his own army of sidekicks) were on our bit of sidewalk, too, and in the same timeslot!

These awesome people.
Well, not these exact awesome people, but you get the idea.

A very wise, very fat, and very dead man once said that:

Two is not twice one. Two is two thousand times one.

And that's basically true: it makes an enormous difference when you're by yourself, and when you have even one other person with you. For some reason, that alone deters (probably) half of all the people who would otherwise throw insults, curses, or trash at you.

Anyways, we had an ... interesting time. Practically everyone who passed by, singly and in mobs, were young urban-looking types; practically all of them were hooting and hollering and looking for a raucous good time; and practically none of them bothered us or made any noise at us at all.
Matter of fact, we had several downright decent conversations with some of them; and they all turned out to be, if not completely accepting of our purposes, perfectly courteous and reasonable in talking with us. We talked, and they talked, and there was a general sense of bonhomerie and 'agree to disagree' all around.

Of course, we had our share of loonies, too.
The only one who really stands out in memory was a man, who stood on the street-corner (a good 20 yards at least), and started ... screeching. I swear that I'd never thought anybody could make a noise like that even once without sustaining permanent damage to their vocal chords; but there he was, screeching away. To be honest, the first six or seven times he made that noise I thought he was doing his angry-falcon-stoops-on-chipmunk imitation.

It was absolutely incredible. Hatred seemed to clog his voice, he was so incoherent. He just stood there, screaming some insult at us, over and over for about two minutes. And then, equally mysteriously, he turned around and left.

People are weird.

But on the other hand, people are also courteous and reasonable and considerate. People are many things, good and bad, beautiful and ugly.

Don't let your apprehension about meeting one or two of them throw you off; but speak the truth in love and courtesy and compassion. Let them react as they will.

SAAAAAAAAVE!

Ever since Monday, I’ve had this little miniature soccer player running around in my head doing that silly airplane thing that soccer players do after they score a goal.

Wheeeee!

Why’s that? Because we had a SAVE on Monday! Some of us have been going out there for a couple of years now, and this is our second 40 Days for Life campaign, but this was our first known save! Right smack dab at the midpoint of this spring’s 40 Days for Life vigil, we were treated to a behind the scenes look at what our prayers are, aligned with God’s will, bringing about!

When I arrived for my afternoon shift, I found that one of the leadership team members, her friend, and one other woman (the latter two were out at the vigil for the first time!) were speaking with a woman who had stopped to talk. She’d come up to them and said, “Are you guys always here or something?" She told them she was pregnant and she’d been passing by Planned Parenthood for the last three days, hoping that there would be no prayer volunteers around when she finally went in for her abortion. She said she saw people even at night and it made her think, “What the h--- are they doing?” Well, she finally stopped to ask.

She told us about how she’d lost both her husband and her three-year-old son to violence and that she was afraid to have another baby only to lose someone again. She had worked up the determination to go for an abortion that day, but she really didn’t want one. She was open to the idea of adoption, but worried that her baby would grow up to hate her for it. Two of the volunteers shared their stories of how adoption had positively impacted their families and after hearing their stories, she decided against abortion! She exchanged phone numbers with them and we gave her information about the local pregnancy resource center, which can help her get medical care and put her in touch with several adoption agencies. Hugs were exchanged, and then we all huddled together and prayed in thanksgiving.

It was truly a beautiful moment and I thank God for saving this baby and mother, for allowing us to be a part of His work, and for letting us know that being out there 24 hours a day really does make a difference! I can’t think of a better way to mark the halfway point of the vigil! We are so blessed!

Not a thankless occupation!

I’d like to ask those of you reading to please keep this mother in your prayers! She has been through a lot and still has a difficult road ahead of her. Pray that God gives her the strength to carry this child and that, by turning to God and trusting in Him, she finds healing for her past sorrows.

Sharing Love, Exchanging Ideas

“Why are you here? Are you protesting?”

It’s a question I’ve gotten a few times since the start of this spring’s 40 Days for Life campaign. I suppose it’s a matter of semantics to most people, but I like to point out that no, we’re not protesting, at least not in the traditional sense. We are not protesters, but prayer volunteers, in the parlance of 40 Days for Life. The rest of the year, we might be referred to as prayer warriors, at least that’s how the Pro-Life Action League’s fantastic Life Witness Prayer Book refers to us, though I can understand why we don’t use that term during the campaign. We know we’re fighting powers and principalities, but those in the secular world has a hard time wrapping their brain around that one.

Don't hate me because I'm awesome.

Which is fine, because it took me a little while to wrap my brain around it, too. There was a bit of a learning curve for not getting personally offended and angry when someone reacts poorly to our presence. I had to learn to respond to angry people with compassion rather than a heated argument. In my nerdier moments, I like to think about it like we’re in the Matrix and we never know when a normal looking person passing by is suddenly going to be taken over by Agent Smith.

Whoa!

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean to imply these people are possessed or infested or anything like that (not that it doesn’t happen, but it’s so rare). What I mean is that they are not the enemy. Rather, they are haunted by a past abortion-related wound and need our love, not our retorts. Abortion is as much their enemy as it is ours; they just don’t realize it yet.

But we here at Prayer for Life at Division and LaSalle would be remiss in letting you think that all our contact with passers-by is negative. In fact, this year I’ve had far more positive reactions from people than negative ones! It’s probably because I’ve been taking more morning and early afternoon weekday hours, rather than evening and weekend hours. There are quite a few regulars who offer me a “God bless!” or “Thanks for being here!” as they pass, and even one van that claps and hollers, “Yay, pro-life!” every Sunday morning.

The concerned friend

And then there was one sunny midday last week when a young man came out of Planned Parenthood and asked to sit on one of the vigil stools. He was waiting for a friend and preferred to be outside on the gorgeous, if windy, spring day, rather than inside the clinic. As we chatted, I discovered he and his wife (newlyweds!) had been helping out a younger woman who is from an abusive family situation, already has one child (his wife was baby-sitting at home while they were at the clinic), and had become pregnant again. That day, she’d come for a post-abortion check-up. Though it was too late to save this young woman from the pain of an abortion, I told him about the local crisis pregnancy center (and gave him a brochure), explaining that they could refer her to post-abortion counseling if she ever needed it. When I mentioned that many women engage in self-destructive behavior after an abortion, he mentioned that she had a history of cutting. I encouraged him to continue, with his wife, to be a good friend to this young woman, because she would need their love and support. We talked for a while, about school and jobs and other normal things, and I hope he left knowing that we prayer volunteers are normal people with normal lives who care about women and babies and just want to make sure people know about the help that is out there.

The academic

Shortly before this young man left with his friend, another man, a PhD candidate at my graduate school alma mater, stopped by and asked about our motivations for being out there. As a secularist, he seemed genuinely excited to have come across someone who, having a PhD in genetics as I do, could discuss the issue of abortion from a scientific and secular perspective, though I certainly made sure to point out that the campaign was driven by prayer. Our discussion did not revolve around whether or not abortion was right or wrong. He mentioned he had two children and he said he respected my stance that it was wrong to take a life. His concerns mostly stemmed from his time spent in China doing research. He completely agreed with me that their one-child policy was ruthless and wrong, but he felt their economy and standard of living would actually improve with the decline in their population, with labor shortfalls being made up for by increased mechanization. Meanwhile, I pointed out that other economists predicted their economy would stagnate. We also discussed how all people need to do more to help people in need. His view was that people are crummy by nature and charity needs to be enforced by the state, while I argued that enforced “charity” is no longer charity and that it desensitizes people to their responsibility to care for others, and that putting the state in charge creates large bureaucracies that waste resources and are poorly equipped to meet the specific needs of individuals, while private charity based on the principle of subsidiarity could do more, better, with less. Ultimately, he concluded that he was just too cynical to see my way working and I told him not to worry: I was pretty cynical in graduate school, too.

It's hard not to be cynical when your soul is being crushed for years on end.

It’s easy to start to flinch when people come up and ask you what you are doing, but both of these interactions were pleasant (though the former was tinged with sadness). As prayer volunteers, we have an opportunity be witness to the love of Jesus in many situations, and we get to meet all sorts of people we would have otherwise never crossed paths with. It’s truly a blessing to be out here!

Look at all the Angry People

People are weird.

(I mean, seriously.)

I'm not, of course, talking about the great mass of men and women, most of whom don't care overmuch what other people think, live in step with their judgment and taste, and so are regarded (ever so slightly) as "weird" by all their friends.

I am talking about those few, exceptional, and probably distressed individuals who, for some mysterious reason, decide that I am the Enemy Of All That Is Good In The World, and proceed to break every law of courtesy and decency in telling me so.

Case in point: I was pulling the 10-12pm shift for '40 Days for Life' outside the 'mill' last night, along with a certain young lady. And we were enjoying a warm, windy, non-eventful night when a woman (apparently on her way back home) approached us.

Now from this woman I learned many unexpected and startling things. For instance: I was informed that I was actually a liar and a hypocrite on the subject of virginity; that I was "crazy", and my facial expressions marked me out as such; that I probably thought myself a "bad-ass", with the implication that such was an unfortunate and raving delusion; and, finally, that I was both a "faggot" and a "rapist", and that my very appearance confessed such iniquities.

Like this guy, but sketchier.

Such revelations, you might well imagine, were tremendously startling; but none so startling as the very fact that they were made at all. I could think of no connection between the physical facts of our occupation of that particular bit of sidewalk, and the coarse and hateful way they were denounced. There seemed to be no apparent proportion between two young people mildly talking on a street corner on a mild evening, and an older woman (with an unfortunately vulgar vocabulary and an adamant expression behind her eyes) accosting and wildly excoriating them.

The interview didn't last long. The vulgar woman repeatedly talked about how we should "get the f*** off [her] sidewalk", and when she threatened to call the police I suggested that that might be really the right thing to do after all. Not sensing the irony in the encouragement, she realized that she didn't know any number for the Chicago Police Department that wasn't "911"; and, upon hearing that we didn't know the number either, decided that her doorman would probably know. And with that (and a few more carelessly-selected words) she left us alone to cope with the aftereffects of adrenaline withdrawal.

Less mustache, but you get the idea.

To Our Pro-Life Readers: You will encounter hatred eventually. There are many people in the world who were 'sold a bill of goods' on abortion: that it was a quick and easy way out, that it would solve their problems, that it would enable them to pursue happiness more freely. The sad truth is, though, that the acceptance of abortion entails a rejection of the things we know as most human: hope, joy, courage, sacrificial love. It does violence to biological fact in support of "preference" or "convenience". Such a choice cannot but lead eventually to bitterness, hardness of heart, shame, and hopelessness.

Or, as has been so succinctly said so often on the Interwebs: h8ers gonna h8.