Under the baobab: Working together to get Americans off the ledge

We heard him before we saw him. There was a gut-wrenching scream like that of a young child in unbearable pain.

“I want to die,” he yelled, “let me die. You all want me to die.”

Once we turned the corner of the building, we saw it was not a child but a young man in pain. He was in his mid-20s, clothes disheveled, hair scruffy. He was perched on a ledge high above the Pacific Ocean outside San Francisco’s abandoned Cliff House restaurant. The only other person nearby was a police officer, a negotiator, it turns out. He was trying to talk him down. So far, he was unsuccessful.

The young man was about ten meters away. We could see his bloodshot eyes. We could feel his unbearable pain. We could sense his feelings of total abandonment. I knew those feelings. I had had them myself. No, I was never standing on a ledge ready to jump. But I have teeter-tottered on a precipice above an abyss feeling lost and abandoned.

We locked eyes. Praying, I tried to reach across the chasm between us. I whispered that he was wanted, that he was loved. We did not want to see him die as he kept proclaiming. He looked away from me toward the gathering crowd of mostly tourists. More police, fire, EMT officers arrived. They went about their routine procedures preparing for one of two possibilities — life or death.

After an hour or so one of the officers asked us to please move on so they could move in more equipment. I was concerned that the young man might read our departure as abandonment, but I concurred with the authorities and prayed they knew what they were doing.

There are many in our community who share that young man’s pain. Some turn it inward. Clutching instruments of self-destruction to their naked breasts, they attempt to smother the flames of nothingness which seem to engulf them.

Some turn outward. Seeking to scapegoat their own anguish, they load their grief into the expanded magazines of military rifles. Then they climb onto roofs and fire into crowds of Fourth of July families gathered to celebrate the nation’s independence.

Or they invade primary schools to slaughter children and their teachers.

Labeling others as enemies because of their skin color, some travel hundreds of miles to sit in blinds outside supermarkets to butcher senior citizens thereby exponentially expanding the community’s suffering.

Many young ones gather in gangs, clubs, affinity groups and drug cartels brandishing guns and other weapons of mass destruction using violence to manifest their identity, seeking power to control that which is beyond control.

In 2020 over 45,000 people committed suicide in the U.S., more than half using guns. Since 2020 firearms have surpassed automobile accidents as the leading cause of death among Americans 1-19. So far in 2022 over 22,000 people have died through gun violence. More than 12,000 by suicide. More than 323 have been killed in mass shootings. Almost 900 were children under 17. We must restrict availability of military assault weapons to the general public.

But, that is only part of the problem. Our children are suffering from despair. Many do not feel loved and valued. They are not being nurtured. Failing to find it in church, school, mosque, or synagogue, they are seeking their self-worth at the O.K. Corral.

Sisters and brothers, it is not just our pocketbooks, our ballot boxes and our minds than we must open. We must open our embrace for our children, all our children.

A few minutes after we left the young man came down off the ledge. He had stopped screaming and begun crying. That is one — 44,499 to go. We can do this. We must.