The thing about doing not much, is that you don't get too much to think about. But there was a newspaper feature not too long ago that reminded me of something.

The story was about how 2 journalists had posed as a fighting couple in four  (?) venues, the man abusing the woman, pulling her hair and treating her violently. The report mentioned that most local people didn't interfere, and when people finally intervened, all but one were expatriates. Now, isn't that sad? Don't we have enough moral courage in us to defend someone being abused?

But then, I think, what would I have done? Plus, it does make a difference that I'm a girl, right? I wouldn't be able to physically restrain the guy, and is it serious enough to warrant dialling the emergency number? Ask another passerby to do something?

But then, I remember, I didn't do anything. It was a year or two ago, maybe, and I was taking the train back from church, and there was this man and a girl, probably his daughter, of primary school age, and a younger boy, sitting across from where I was standing. The father was scolding his daughter, saying she was bad and worthless and she was crying in the corner seat. Now, everyone in the carriage felt bad- but what would we do?

Then he took her head by the hair and rammed her head into the plexiglass divider with a loud thud. 

For a second, I'm not really sure I believed it happened. I did think about doing something, going up to the father and saying you shouldn't do that and then I thought about what would happen after that? He'd get angry at me, then when they got home he'd take it out on her/them for embarrassing him in public and it would just be worse for them. It's not like my intervention would make him stop doing something. No one else moved, really, and I think we didn't even dare make eye contact with each other.

So I stood in my corner and prayed. They got off before I did. I went home and took a nap. 

I'd forgotten about this incident, really, till I read the papers. What would have been the right/best/wisest thing to do? Not that I can save the world-

I've also been reading church history (well, up to the first 800 years) because I'm attending a course on early church fathers. What strikes me is how often these people were ordained against their will (or at least, they protested) and how it's the individuals' stories that make for the most interesting reading. Yet their stories are short. Barring those of a few megastars, like Augustine, the lives of most of the other remotely famous people get described in a page or two, even though by anyone's standards, they lived full, significant lives.

Everyone else doesn't even warrant a footnote.

But God remembers all of us!

We are a cathedral made of people
A kingdom that the eye can't see
We're a house, we are the bride
That God's Spirit lives inside
And nothing ever
Can stand against her

-Cathedral Made of People, downhere