The Wisdom of Solomon

I watched an episode of Grantchester that had a happy ending that left me sad. Do you know the show? Set in an English village in the 1950s, a priest and a detective, each with their own demons, are a crime-solving pair. In this episode two couples want the same baby. An adoption agent dies and it could be murder. It was an accident, as it turns out, and after a good bit of wise counseling by our priest-detective duo, the final scene is a christening with both couples in attendance and the priest telling the story of Solomon and the child claimed by two women. In Grantchester, there was no need to split the baby; they shared it.

So what made me sad about that?

The biological parents were not married and the dad was a good hearted n’er-do-well. The would-be adoptive parents were well-off; the man desperately wanted a son, but his wife was just fine with no children in the house. The solution? One couple raises the child, the other provides financial support so the boy has a good chance to make something of himself.

It was a good piece of story-telling. You felt the longing and pain of both couples, so the ending that gave them each some of what they wanted and needed was particularly satisfying.

So what about that made me sad? 

Look around. We aren’t doing that these days. We aren’t compromising. We aren’t honoring the feelings of others. We aren’t trying to understand them. Push them aside, take them to court, that’s what we’re doing.

The priest and the detective from Grantchester would be appalled. In their village there is all the bigotry, hate and murderous rage we face today, but somehow they manage to talk to one another, to try to understand one another, to see their common humanity.

We’re not doing that. That’s what makes me sad.

Oh, what a foolish dreamer you must think me, to be so naive as to believe life could ever be like a moralizing tv show. To which I say, how can we accept that it is not?