FILED and FORGOTTEN

FILED AND FORGOTTEN Blog 101

“Filed and Forgotten.” “How did you come up with that title?” you ask. That question will likely be answered far more fully later in a section of this blog. When I began to do seminars or book signings for by book, “FOR PETE’S SAKE, www.mentalhealthforpetessake.com, people would ask a similar question. What is that about? FOR PETE’S SAKE!!! ”Why, for Pete’s sake, don’t you ever think about mental health?“ we might retort” “Yes,” we would say, “FOR PETE’S SAKE”,(or some other exclamatory remark), of course, who doesn’t occasionally?” Google “thinks” about it at least 74,400,000 times! This reference to Pete is only one major component of this blog.
Several times at the Parke County Covered Bridge Festival in Central Indiana, people passing my booth at Bridgeton would laugh at the title, And sadly for them not stop and ask what it really was about. In the same way, we snicker at or ignore someone “different” and never get to know what I will be calling the “hidden treasure” to be found within that human being. What you see in the other person dictates honest response. Oh, you mean the focus is on “those people” whatever their difference from us may be? No, wait a minute.
To be sure, we can’t write this without calling attention to those people who find themselves in less desirable circumstances than we and who need our help. “They” are everywhere and confront us with choices as to whom to help. However, strangely, the emphasis is on US, not on THEM. We interpret “mission” as reaching out to someone or to some issue but if the missioner never looks inward, there is trouble. Simply said, it is whatever is in us, our minds and spirits, that separate us or assist in helping the needy in whatever way is appropriate. Neither will we be suggesting who needs help the most and how many dollars should you give. This is not about charitable contributions but rather about how we personally respond to an individual who needs hope, maybe only a smile acknowledging their personhood.
Lost in that 74 million Google hits is a man named Pete, my father who was institutionalized (“filed” if you will). Now his eldest son says,” He will not be forgotten, if I have anything to do with it,” and I ask you who read this blog to assist me in keeping alive his legacy as a person with mental illness and all others like him. As much as I loved my dad and deem his story to be important, there are millions more who suffer some form of mental illness, from minor to major, who are “Filed and Forgotten” on a personal level. The millions of them are made up one by one. We are thinking of any one person, a lost one, and not masses. Organizationally, we must work with the masses, but such is of little effect until that program reaches the individual.
People with mental disease roam our streets or fill our prisons “Let the experts take care of them,” and a man, a woman, a child in your neighborhood suffers from lack of our expressions of caring as one human being to another. So this is one of my special interests, making sure these are not “Filed and Forgotten” in our minds and without acts of compassion. In this blog we bring the suffering to our doorsteps, not for the experts, but for US, the average citizen, to assume some responsibility. We aren’t going “out there” to help, however legitimate our Global view of ministry certainly is, but to look around within our daily view. Nothing said here diminishes our global efforts, never. Overtime, we will return to this phase of our discussion about those who are “Filed and Forgotten.” Sometimes we will speak specifically about caring for the mentally ill and other times we will be speaking (Next blog) about another section of this dialogue, those who experience some kind of disability in body, mind, or spirit.
Your questions and comments are welcome, for my sake, as well as yours, because this writer, retired and aging, is “still in school," so to speak.