Mr. Rogers once said, “When I was a boy, and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.’”

I have been holding those words close this week—like a smooth stone in my pocket—because the news from Minneapolis, and from other cities and small farming towns across our country, has felt heavy and raw. What is happening across this land is terrifying. It makes me angry. It makes me sad. And if I’m honest, it leaves me unsure of how to show up in this small weekly space that I try so carefully to nurture into a place of rest and reflection.

Most weeks, I lean into birdsong and tree-light, into the healing sway of grasslands and the steadfastness of river stones. I try to trace the creative and restorative power of the universe and to rest in the quiet mystery and balm of God’s love. This is usually a place for breathing more deeply—not tightening our shoulders against the world’s sharp edges.

But this week, silence felt like hiding.

Or more truthfully: silence felt like privilege.

I know that word can be hard for some to hear. It has been twisted, tugged, and weaponized in ways that make people flinch before they even listen. Yet words are meant to be bridges, not barricades. They are meant to carry meaning—not be locked away where they cannot help us name what is real.

So let me say plainly what I mean.

When I say I move through this world with privilege, I mean that my life affords me comforts I did not earn: the ability to walk down a street without being questioned, the likelihood that I will not be asked for identification, the assumption that I belong. As an aging white woman, I do not carry the daily fears borne by those who are profiled because someone decides they “look like they might be” something dangerous or unwanted. I am not greeted with suspicion, nor measured against cruel stereotypes that mark some people as threats before they even speak.

This, too, is part of the storm we are facing as a country.

During my years teaching middle-school students, we often introduced the bullying circle, a concept developed by Dan Olweus. We taught that bullying is never a one-person event. It requires a crowd. It requires a circle.

There is the bully, who seeks power through harm—always wanting an audience.

There are followers who join in, repeating the harm.
There are supporters who cheer or nod along, fueling the fire.
There are silent onlookers who watch and say nothing—which, in its own way, says, “This is fine.”
There are hesitant watchers who feel the wrongness in their bones but do not know what to do.
There are upstanders who move quietly toward the wounded one, their presence saying, “You are not alone.”
And there is the victim, carrying the weight of an unfair power imbalance, singled out and hurt on purpose.

We teach children:

Bullying grows when people support it or stay silent.
Bullying shrinks when people stand up and help.

We tell them they do not have to be loud or heroic to be defenders. Sometimes simply standing near the one being harmed is enough to change the whole story. And we remind them—again and again—that they always have the power to choose kindness, compassion, or empathy.

But here is the grief that presses most tenderly on my heart: it is not only adults who are watching the unrest in our cities and communities. It is not only grown-ups absorbing the shouting, the blaming, the gnawing fear echoing from screen to screen.

It is the children—the tender ones still learning how to be human in this world—who are watching us right now.

They are watching how we choose to show up.
They are watching how we treat our neighbors, especially the vulnerable ones.
They are watching how we speak, how we listen, how we bear witness, how we defend.
They are watching which part of the circle we stand in.

And because they are watching, I cannot remain silent—not if this space is to offer anything true or healing.

So I will not use this blog to argue politics or stoke division. But I will use it to ask, gently and firmly: Who do we want to be in the circle? What are the children learning from us today? And what will they remember about how we treated one another when the streets were full of fear, and the headlines shouted their loudest?

Mr. Rogers told children to look for the helpers. And there are helpers—quiet ones, brave ones, everyday ones—walking into the chaos with compassion in their pockets. They are neighbors bringing meals. Strangers offering shelter. Volunteers tending the wounded. Teachers steadying frightened hearts. People of all colors and creeds linking arms to say, “This is not who we will be.”

Each small act of kindness is a sliver of hope—a thin beam of light falling across the shadowed places of our shared life.
And as we have been promised, from words older than the ground beneath our feet:

“And the darkness has not overcome it.”

May you notice the helpers—and be one when you can.