Spiritual Common Sense

I have spent a lifetime looking for heroes.

When I was young, they came larger than life.  They were people – loosely defined – with super powers, overdeveloped senses and abilities, or mythological figures often of divine descent, endowed with great strength or courage.

My heritage kicked in early. I sought the perfection and near invincibility of Achilles, the strength of Hercules, later the marksmanship of Robin Hood, Ivanhoe and Hawkeye. 

Some came with colorful costumes, some without; but they were basically courageous and admirable people, almost always men, not too far from reality, prototypes for the heroes of the Silver Screen. 

There, heroic figures of every description, real and imagined, protagonists of books, films, plays, and myths. filled our dreams and fired our imaginations.  Cowboys and Indians prevailed. They followed us home from the movie theaters and battled in the back yard,

I still remember most visibly the summer my big brother honored me by bestowing on me the title of “cowboy.”  It was a gift. Everyone knew the cowboys always won – no matter the odds, no matter the challenge. 

We chased each other around the neighborhood, whooping and yelling until I found myself captured in the coal shed, watching while my brother tied me to the stake.

Fortunately, he wasn’t much of boy scout and lost interest when our mother called lunch; but, unfortunately, not before dropping the match he was holding. 

Lunch or dinner was always a subject of great interest at our house.  I wriggled free and followed my brother into the house, thinking nothing of it until the fire trucks arrived.

A couple of years later, I met a hero of a different sort.  Mrs. Parmalee, the City librarian, had taken a liking to me.  Routinely through my high school years, she asked me to help clean out her inventory at the end of the year with the understanding I could keep whatever surplus books or magazines I liked.

The National Geographic was particularly prized.  I always went there first and went home with a full year’s supply.  That’s where I met Jane Goodall.  She was not much older than I was at that time but she had courage far beyond anything I could imagine, courage enough to wander off alone into the African jungle to study chimpanzees, courage enough to deny the doubters who said she couldn’t, said she wouldn’t, and couldn’t believe she did.

She was a girl, first of all, and “girls didn’t do things like that.” She was slight – maybe 110 lbs – and far from physically imposing. She was gentile in nature with a quiet determination that served her well.

Standing next to her in Baltimore some 60 years later, I am still amazed by the strength of her spirit, commitment and will.  I know she is a week shy of her 91^st birthday (April 3), and I know she has been traveling non-stop for 50 years, making her case for chimpanzees, mankind, and other endangered species. I know there is a crowd of several thousand waiting to hear her speak, including a couple that had driven from Mississippi to Maryland for the occasion. I know there is a crowd of similar size waiting for her at three stops later in the week on the West Coast.

When we hug, I can feel the weariness in her bones. Yet, strangely enough, I can feel myself drawing energy from her and I know there is no quit in her.  She will do what she can and long as she can to make the world a better place for every living thing.   Would that we would all do the same.  After a lifetime searching, I now know what a hero looks like.

A few years back this time of year when the Heart of America Foundation was just getting started, we visited an elementary school in Prince Georges County Maryland. At the end of the day after we had distributed our books and finished our library makeover project I went looking for the school’s principal.

I found her outside watching the kids pile into their school buses. Many of them stopped to give her a hug, clinging to her dress and holding on to her in a rare display of affection.

I watched her seperate herself from the children with some difficulty and send them on their way. She was tired frustrated.

“You must be looking forward to the holiday,” I said.

“Actually, I hate this time of year,'” she said.

She caught me by surprise,

“What do you mean?” I said.

“At least when their here,” she said. “I know they’ll be fed. I know they will be warm. I know there will be someone for them to talk to.”

It was the first time I heard that response, but not the last. Stuffed to the gills, I am reminded yet again how much I have while many go are hungry.

Billy Shore and our friends at No Kid Hungry have put a sobering number on it. They say one fifth of the children in this country go to bed hungry.

We can do better than this.

“The greatest challenge of the day is how to bring about a revolution of the heart,” Dorothy Day wrote, “a revolution which has to start with each of us.”

A few years ago, I helped bring a matched pair of children from the Middle East to Give Kids the World, a resort for terminally ill Children in Orlando, Florida.  Eight-year-old, Maataz Kishta came from the Palestine.  Nine-year-old Chiam Salinas was from Israel.

Both boys were fighting cancer.  Both had undergone a bone marrow transfer.  Both faced long odds.  Both were hoping for a miracle.

I met them at the airport in New York City.  Almost by design, they seemed to come from different ends of the plane.  Chiam arrived first, Maataz a few minutes later.  They took positions on opposite sides of me while my translator helped me greet them and their escorts.

While we waited for the plane to Orlando, they kept as much distance between themselves as possible.  Both wanted to know what we had planned for them, but each asked their questions independently.  There was no direct communication.  They could not avoid being close from time to time, but there was no connection between them.

A week later, after eating together, sharing rides, playing together, and experiencing the wonders of Orlando’s theme parks, they left as friends.  Somehow along the way, they learned they had more than a disease and a desire to meet Mickey Mouse in common.  All they really wanted is what all children fundamentally want – the right to enjoy life and grow up in peace.

“This is the most beautiful thing,” Maataz’ father, Aatef, told Antonio Mora of ABC News as they were leaving.  Chiam’s mother, Shula, agreed.  “We hope people can learn from this” she said.  “I know I have.”

If we believe there is one God, if we believe He is the Father of us all, then no child of God can be said to be outside the pale of human kinship and no individual can be considered less human, fundamentally different, or apart.  No matter how great and grave the differences between us may appear, below and above all is the eternal fact of brotherhood.

Now more than ever, it is important to remember hatred cannot answer hate.  Only love can do that.  The simple fact is we must learn to love each other or die.

Edward Everett – not Lincoln – delivered the Gettysburg Address.

Everett was a pastor and a politician who served as a Representative, Senator, Governor, and Secretary of State.  He also served as President of Harvard University.  He was 69 years old and known for his oratory.

It was four and a half months after the Union armies defeated the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg.   Through the summer, General Lee had pushed northward into Pennsylvania. General Mead and the Union Army met him at Gettysburg on the 1^st of July. They fought for three days.

When it was over, the battlefield was strewn with more than 50,000 bodies. To put it in perspective, nearly as many Americans died at Gettysburg in this one battle than in the totality of the ten years we were engaged in the Vietnam War.

Twenty thousand people gathered for the dedication of the Soldiers’ National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania on November 19, 1863.  After a prayer, Everett spoke for two hours, delivering a 13,607–word oration.

Lincoln was invited to be present at the last moment. The words of his invitation were explicit: “It is the desire that, after the Oration, you, as Chief Executive of the nation, formally set apart these grounds to their sacred use by a few appropriate remarks.”

Lincoln felt no slight and took no offense. He wanted to be there and meant to use this opportunity.  He spoke for two minutes and in those two minutes transformed Gettysburg from a battlefield into a symbol of national purpose, pride, and ideals. It only took him 272 words.

In a letter to Lincoln written the following day, Everett praised the President, saying, “I should be glad if I could flatter myself that I came as near to the central idea of the occasion, in two hours, as you did in two minutes.”

“Four score and seven years ago,” Lincoln famously began, “our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

In so doing, Lincoln reiterated the fundamental principles of the Declaration of Independence. He followed by proclaiming “a new birth of freedom” that would bring true equality to all of its citizens.  In other words, Lincoln redefined the Civil War as a struggle not just for the Union, but also for the principle of human equality.

A hundred and fifty four years later, we still struggle.  The two great founding principles of our nation – liberty and equality – are said to be in opposition and Lincoln’s challenge remains.  We can’t help wondering how “any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”

The best way to navigate these troubled waters is to remember where we began.

In a speech to his fellow Puritan colonists in 1630, John Winthrop set the direction for our nation by defining the vision for the society he hoped to establish in the new world.  “All true Christians are of one body in Christ,” he said; “the ligaments of this body which knit together are love.  All parts of the body being thus united…in a special relation as they partake of each others’ strength and infirmity, joy, and sorrow…If one member suffers, all suffer with it; if one be in honor, all rejoice in it.”

“We must be knit together in this work as one man,” Winthrop warned.  “We must entertain each other in brotherly affection.  We must be willing to abridge ourselves of our superfluities, for the supply of other’s necessities…For we must consider that we shall be as a City on a Hill. The eyes of all people are upon us.”

This is a large part of what makes the United States unique in the history of the world. America is the only nation composed of people drawn from another place.  It is the only nation whose people are not connected by blood, race, culture, or original language.

The differences between us are many, but we are united by the ability to see ourselves in others and the understanding that the most selfish thing we can do is to be selfless.  One cannot succeed without another.  Our true interest is a mutual interest.

Three years after Gettysburg, Senator Charles Sumner, in his eulogy for the slain President, said Lincoln was mistaken that “the world will little note, nor long remember what we say here.” Rather, Sumner remarked, “The world noted at once what he said, and will never cease to remember it. The battle itself was less important than the speech.”

Sumner was right.  Consider this.

Up to the Civil War “the United States” was invariably a plural noun:  “The United States are a free country.”  After Gettysburg it became singular: “The United States is a free country.”

At Gettysburg, Lincoln transformed the union from a mystical hope to a constitutional reality.  He saw beyond the moment to the spirit of America.

As we are now daily reminded, the battle continues.