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.