The slap struck a nerve. And depending where and how and why your particular nerves are already shot, it struck them accordingly, writes HeidiStevens13.
Three weeks into Russia’s lethal invasion of Ukraine, two years into a pandemic — surrounded, that is, by death on all sides — South Carolina quietly reserved the right to execute people by firing squad.
I thought about that a lot this week as I saw person after person declare “violence is never the answer” in well-meaning social media posts, spurred to such a conclusion by Will Smith slapping Chris Rock at the Oscars. This? This, I thought, is where we draw our line? A grown man’s righteous anger boiling over at another grown man’s cruel joke? This is the time when we’re checking our nation's moral compass?
But I don’t know how much any of it matters if it doesn’t move us toward a kinder version of ourselves. A version that’s quicker and freer with grace. A version that examines our own complicity or shortcomings or stinginess with our mercy. A version that acknowledges we have all said hurtful things to people who didn’t deserve them, and we have all responded to hurtful things in less-than-helpful ways.The better angels of our nature were also on display at this particular Oscars.
In 2019, I interviewed Sister Helen Prejean, author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “Dead Man Walking,” about the year she spent as a spiritual adviser to a death row inmate. Prejean was in Chicago for the staging of her story at the Lyric Opera.
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