Tim Madigan > Quotes

“But the Esquire passage I found most poignant and revealing was this one: Mister Rogers' visit to a teenage boy severely afflicted with cerebral palsy and terrible anger. One of the boys' few consolations in life, Junod wrote, was watching Mister Rogers Neighborhood.

'At first, the boy was made very nervous by the thought that Mister Rogers was visiting him. He was so nervous, in fact, that when Mister Rogers did visit, he got mad at himself and began hating himself and hitting himself, and his mother had to take him to another room and talk to him. Mister Rogers didn't leave, though. He wanted something from the boy, and Mister Rogers never leaves when he wants something from somebody. He just waited patiently, and when the boy came back, Mister Rogers talked to him, and then he made his request. He said, 'I would like you to do something for me. Would you do something for me?' On his computer, the boy answered yes, of course, he would do anything for Mister Rogers, so then Mister Rogers said: I would like you to pray for me. Will you pray for me?' And now the boy didn't know how to respond. He was thunderstruck... because nobody had ever asked him for something like that, ever. The boy had always been prayed for. The boy had always been the object of prayer, and now he was being asked to pray for Mister Rogers, and although at first he didn't know how to do it, he said he would, he said he'd try, and ever since then he keeps Mister Rogers in his prayers and doesn't talk about wanting to die anymore, because he figures if Mister Rogers likes him, that must mean that God likes him, too.

As for Mister Rogers himself... he doesn't look at the story the same way the boy did or I did. In fact, when Mister Rogers first told me the story, I complimented him on being smart - for knowing that asking the boy for his prayers would make the boy feel better about himself - and Mister Rogers responded by looking at me first with puzzlement and then with surprise. 'Oh heavens no, Tom! I didn't ask him for his prayers for him; I asked for me. I asked him because I think that anyone who has gone through challenges like that must be very close to God. I asked him because I wanted his intercession.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers

“life isn't about what you've done, but what you can do:-)

--Fred Rogers to Tim”
― Tim Madigan

“A friend is one to whom one may pour out all the contents of one's heart, chaff and grain together, knowing that the gentlest of hands will take and sift it, keep what is worth keeping and, with a breath of kindness, blow the rest away.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“If the dedication of Mount Zion had been a hint of heaven, that morning was surely a taste of hell.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“Fred wanted to know the truth of your life, the nature of your insides, and had room enough in his own spirit to embrace without judgment whatever that truth might be.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“The older I get the more I feel this is true, “There’s a loving mystery at the heart of the universe, just yearning to be expressed.” Mr. Rogers/Quoted in I AM SO PROUD OF YOU”
― Tim Madigan

“Well, sit down next to me on this porch swing,” Seymour Williams said. “And we’ll tell you about something that never happened.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“We confess before Thee that if life were all smooth, there would be no patience; were it all easy, no courage, no sacrifice, no depth of character. We acknowledge before Thee that what is most admirable is the child of adversity and of courageous souls unafraid to face it.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“those of us with whom you have shared are all the richer because you've allowed us to walk in your inner garden," he wrote then. "And what a glorious garden it is!" Another time he wrote that he had discovered the South African word ubuntu, which means: I am because we are. "Isn't that lovely!" he said. "My identity is such that it includes you. I would be a very different person without you.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“So they would attack a church, too. Mann squeezed off a few final shots at the whites across Greenwood Avenue and followed the boy down the back stairs, then out the door for the half-mile sprint to Black Tulsa’s Alamo.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“can often see our twilight zones better than we ourselves can. The way we are seen and understood by others is different from the way we see and understand ourselves. We will never fully know the significance of our presence in the lives of our friends. That's a grace, a grace that calls us not only to humility, but to a deep trust in those who love us. It is in the twilight zones of our hearts where true friendships are born.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“That morning, Fred, his two grandsons, and I found a pew near the front of the sanctuary. I remember consciously trying to freeze each surreal moment as I stood next to Fred and sang hymns, and watched him wrestle with his fidgety grandchildren in the pew. I can attest that even Mister Rogers became exasperated with little kids in church.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“historian John Hope Franklin (a native of Tulsa, as it turned out) or his book From Slavery to Freedom (McGraw Hill, 1994). At Ross’s suggestion, Franklin’s book became the launching point for my crash course into black history, and I’m now of the opinion that it should be taught in every American high school. Until reading Franklin’s book, I was only vaguely aware of the horrors of slavery. I was almost completely ignorant of the terror and hardship that came with emancipation—the murderous rides of the original Ku Klux Klan; the reign of Jim Crow; thousands of lynchings; racial hatreds that were not only tolerated, but widely condoned and endorsed at”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“I still marvel that in that time of personal hell, I had been blessed by the human embodiment of heaven.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You: My Friendship with Fred Rogers

“So black men swung by their necks by the dozens, murdered again and again for sex crimes almost always more imagined than real.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“What demons could withstand such a perfectly and consistently loving assault?”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“white men never hesitated to find their pleasure with Negro women. Before the Civil War, Southern slave owners kept their white women on pedestals, hidden away from the slaves; they made those women icons to white purity and the Southern way of life. But such veneration came with a cost. Women on pedestals tended to be frosty in bed, so the white man had his way with the Negro women and girls. Southern white boys crossed the threshold into manhood with a romp with a woman slave, who refused at the risk of a whipping, or worse. Even the white overseer could help himself whenever the urge arose, and it arose often, and all those mulatto babies were the result. But then the Union triumphed and the slaves were freed. Mingled with the Southern white man’s fury at the destruction of his way of life was this fear: what sort of retribution might the “black buck” now exact on white women? Negro men were now free to do to the white men’s beloved wives and daughters what the white men had done to the Negro women. Great vigilance was required to prevent such abominations. After all, how many rapes began with just a smile?”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921

“Anything mentionable is manageable," he would say, inviting me to share further. Or he would paraphrase his good friend, the Roman Catholic priest and celebrated author Henri Nouwen, by saying, “That which is most personal is most universal.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“With grief there is, inevitably, some times of anger and you know, God can take our anger," he had told me that first day in his office. "I think God respects the fact that we would share a whole gamut of feelings.”
― Tim Madigan, I'm Proud of You

“The white man’s guilt further added to his rage.”
― Tim Madigan, The Burning: Massacre, Destruction, and the Tulsa Race Riot of 1921