Last week at dinner church one of our kiddos was telling us about being an upstander. This means that instead of being a bystander who just watches something happen an upstander is someone who stands up for others, practices kindness, and helps other people. An example might be if you hear a child say something mean to another child you then go talk to the person who was the recipient of the mean words and say something nice to them.
An example of how we be upstanders as adults come from a recent interaction on Facebook. Recently one of my friends, who I know from volunteer work in Eugene, posted about how he was so frustrated with certain people. After a rant of about a paragraph he ended with the words “when I hear about shootings I get it”. When I saw the post it said that he had written it 3 days prior and not a single person had reacted or responded to the post. So I immediately responded with a light hearted comment about understanding his frustration and saying that in middle school I wished I had a bubble machine so I could keep all the obnoxious people away from me without hurting them. And then I private messaged him asking if he was planning something and what support he needed right now for his frustration with other people. We ended up having a great interaction and he told me no one else had reached out to him. His posts usually have about 10 responses or reactions. But when he mentioned frustration and talked about a shooting -nothing. I am sure most people didn’t know what to say, didn’t want to engage. But this is exactly how these things happen. People make comments and we don’t respond and it builds in their minds and suddenly we are reading their names in the newspaper.
Being an unpstander means being curious about the people around us and responding to them with love. It looks different for all of us. I could have responded in lots of different ways, but because of our relationship I went the direct route. Sometimes it means intervening in the moment, sometimes it means support for a person after an incident, and sometimes it means just reaching out and checking in on someone. Part of our faith is to act in ways in the world for good. May we all be upstanders rather than bystanders.
-Eilidh
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