Special, Just the Way You Are

This is me as a small child, getting into trouble.  

I enjoyed taking books out of the bookcase and sitting in it.

Along with just about everybody else in the US whose life has been touched in some way by Fred Rogers, I have seen the movie "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" It is a touchingly but not cloyingly sweet look at the life and ministry -- and yes, his work with children was his ministry -- of a genuinely kind man who never lost touch with the inner aches and fears he suffered as a boy.  He was able to do what so few of us are able to do as adults:  he could remember how it felt to look at the world with the eyes of a child, and he translated that into honest interactions with children around their dreams and their fears.

I didn't watch a lot of Mr. Rogers when I was a small child.  My appreciation for him came during my college years.  That may sound strange, but the same anxieties that plagued me as a girl continued to put in an appearance as I made the transition from teenager to young adult, and there was nothing as comforting as watching this slender man with the gentle eyes slipping into one of his home-made sweaters and hearing him say that he liked me just the way I was.  The acceptance and love that radiated from him was palpable and powerful.  Not in a muscle-bound, heavily armed sense but powerful in the grace-filled sense in which what the world calls weakness is actually greater than anything in heaven or earth.  Fred Rogers understood that the world is full of things that are frustrating and scary and wasn't afraid to say so.  He gave children (and by extension, adults) the permission to own their feelings, including the ones he was never allowed to give voice to when he was growing up, although he learned to channel his own adolescent anger through the keys of his piano.  By taking children seriously and giving them a sense of control over their emotions, he restored some balance to the seriously unfair world of childhood and helped to produce a better sense of person-hood in many young people.

Because he didn't fit neatly into the expected mold, he was an easy target for ridicule and mockery. He wasn't like most men on television or beyond it, for that matter, because he didn't talk down to anyone, including children, and he didn't use threats or violence to command attention.   Because of his message of acceptance and love, he was vilified by some as promoting an "entitlement" culture among children, and his funeral was protested by some who gleefully announced their belief that he was roasting in hell.  One can only imagine that he would have quietly tried to engage them in conversation to find out what in the world they were so afraid of, while standing his ground as the loving Christian man he always sought to be.  He made living like that look easy; it was and is anything but.

I was not alone in wiping away tears at the end of the movie.  I heard surreptitious sniffling and throat-clearing from others in the theatre.  The depth of emotion called up stems from a variety of reasons, some of them sentimental and nostalgic, but more than that, I think it's because Fred Rogers offers us a different lens through which to view the neighborhood of our world.  He offers us a chance to reflect upon what it really means to be a neighbor in a world that is bitterly divided, showing us that there is a better way to engage and express oneself than with the internet trolling and name-calling that have become the lingua franca of the day.  And he certainly exemplifies a kinder way of being a neighbor to the vulnerable children among us, understanding that childhood trauma is not easily healed and that little ones need to be loved and cherished and nurtured in healthy relationships within families, not tossed into institutions where their physical needs are barely met and their emotional needs not at all.

Above all that, he points us towards Jesus Christ, who didn't fit the mold, either, the One who embraced and valued children and saw in them the very essence of the kingdom of God, the One who was asked to define "neighbor" and responded by telling a story.  Fred Rogers didn't invent compassion or love or respect for his neighbor, but he lived his life as a follower of the One whose grace for each one of us doesn't depend on us earning it or deserving it, for we are all special, each and every one of us, just the way we are.  I'm glad Mr. Rogers was my neighbor.  I hope I can be one, too.