Spiritual Common Sense

When we were growing up my brother and I never knew who would be joining us for dinner.

My mother lost her mother at an early age.  All of her life she carried vivid memories of being passed from hand to hand, relative to relative, doing without, and never quite feeling like she belonged.

In her house all were welcome.  Everyone belonged and food was love.  No one ever went away hungry.

After my brother and I grew old enough to live independently, much of my mother’s affection was directed at her dog – an Airedale named Cassie.   Cassie was the runt of the litter.  Under Mom’s care she grew to be about as wide as she was tall.  It was not uncommon to find Mom cooking an egg or boiling a chicken to “sweeten” the dog’s dinner.

At the time it seemed funny.  Since then I have come to understand it as the manifestation of something more significant:   It is possible to give without loving; but it is impossible to love without giving.

The truth of this observation is abundantly evident in our lives.  What we call humanitarianism is nothing more than an extension of this basic instinct – a broader, more inclusive love.  As every mother knows, the impulse to give to those we love is irresistible.

Happy Mother’s Day.

Souls have been lost in the chasm between doing the right thing and doing the right thing for the right reason.

On Capitol Hill where I spent the first half of my professional life I became accustomed to seeing politicians fighting for the microphone, feeding their egos and taking credit whenever possible.

No less common in the world of charity where I now live is the citizen who conditions his gifts on gratitude, expecting the poor unfortunate he has aided to be forever grateful for every scrap of bread they have been given.

While one would claim responsibility for every favorable shift of the wind, the other would hold you in their debt for every kindness.  Both instincts come from the same self-serving source.

The more we seek credit or recompense, the more we seek to identify ourselves with the outcome of our actions, the more we risk losing our connection to the universe and our inner selves.  Our prayers become prescriptions and our good deeds take on the aspect of an economic exchange.

We must learn to detach ourselves from the ego’s need for control and credit.  The consequences of our actions are not in our hands.  Nor is the scorecard ours to keep.

James Durkee wrote, “When the great finals come, each one will be asked five questions.  First, what did you accomplish in the world with the power that God gave you?  Second, how did you help your neighbor, and what did you do for those in need?  Third, what did you do to serve God?  Fourth, what did you leave in the world that is worthwhile? Last, what did you bring into this new world which shall be of use here?”

There is only one answer.  The answer is love.

I learned that lesson from Hugh Jones.  Hugh spent his professional life in the banking business.  In l985, a year after he was made Chairman of the Barnett Bank of Jacksonville, Hugh started the Korean Heart program, which provided life-saving surgery for 70 children over the next ten years.  At the same time, Hugh established an unprecedented bank-wide employee volunteer program.  Under Hugh’s direction, all the bank’s employees were asked to put something back into the community through volunteer programs of their own design.  Walking the talk, Hugh took the lead in establishing a Ronald McDonald House, organized a local chapter of a wish-granting group for terminally ill children, helped create a homeless shelter for the city of Jacksonville, and built houses for Habitat for Humanity.

Hugh turns 82 today.  It’s safe to say he has touched at least one life for each day of his life.  Conservatively, that’s 29,930 lives.  If each of these people touches a similar number we have a geometric progression.  Hugh’s reach – and by extension, our own – is endless.

This is how the world is changed.  The smallest act of kindness affects the universe.

Every choice we make, everything we do is an investment.  As Hugh will testify, we enrich ourselves not by saving but by spending, not by investing in things but by investing in people.

Viktor Frankl is the only man I know who voluntarily entered the concentration camps.

I met Viktor in April of l985.  He became a friend and mentor who had a profound influence on my life.  Once in a quiet moment, he told me how he found his path, how he came to be in the concentration camps, and the value of that “abyss experience.”

“When the Nazis came to power,” he said, “I was the head of the neurological department of a Jewish hospital in Vienna. Anti-Semitism was increasing daily, and my family and I could see what was coming. Like many people, we began preparing to get out. I applied for a visa to come to America where I could continue my work.

“At the eleventh hour, as the Nazis were closing in, the U.S. Consulate informed me a visa had been granted for me to emigrate to the United States. This was the moment I had anticipated for several years and I rushed down to the consulate with great excitement. My enthusiasm fled when I realized the visa was only valid for one. I was confronted by the fact that if I escaped to America, I would have to leave my parents behind.”

In despair Viktor left the embassy and walked in a daze to a park nearby. Covering the yellow Star of David he was compelled to wear on his chest so the Nazis would leave him alone, he sat on the park bench in agony. What should he do?

“On one hand,” he said, “was safety, the opportunity to work, and nurture my ‘brain child’ — logotherapy. On the other hand, there was the responsibility to take care of my parents by staying with them in Vienna and, rather than leaving them to their fate, share it with them.”

Viktor could not find an answer. What would his parents do if he left? What could he do if he stayed? Would it make any difference to them or would all be lost?

“At best, if I stayed with my family, I would have the opportunity to be with them and protect them from being deported but who knew for how long before the Gestapo came for us all?” Viktor said. “If I stayed, my work and theories would perish with me.”

Viktor sat there and meditated for more than an hour. Finally, he realized he could not resolve the matter and got up to go home. He remembers thinking somewhat sarcastically as he left that if there ever was a time that a man could use a sign from God, this would be it. The issue was beyond human resolution.

Almost immediately upon entering his apartment, Frankl noticed a stone, a piece of marble on the radio. He called his father and asked him, “What is this and why is it here?

“Oh, Viktor,” his father said with some excitement. “I forgot to tell you. I picked it up this morning on the site where the largest synagogue in Vienna stood before the Nazis burned it down.”

“And why did you bring it home?” Viktor asked.

“Because I noticed that it is part of the two tablets whereon the Ten Commandments are engraved – you remember, above the altar?” his father said.  “In fact, you can see, on the piece of marble, one single Hebrew letter engraved and gilded.  Even more, I can tell to which of the Ten Commandments this letter refers because it serves as the abbreviation for only one.”

“I looked at it and had my answer,” Viktor said. “It was the commandment that says, ‘Honor thy father and thy mother.’ At that moment, my decision was clear. I gave up my visa and stayed in Austria. A few months later, the Gestapo closed the hospital. My whole family was arrested and taken to the concentration camps. My mother died in the gas chamber of Auschwitz. My brother died in a coal mine near Auschwitz. My father suffered first from starvation and finally succumbed to pneumonia.”

The only satisfaction in this was that Viktor was able to visit his father in his barracks and be with him in his final hours. As a physician, he could not help but notice the terminal lung edema setting in. He saw his father in pain. He heard his struggle for breath and knew when it was time to use the single ampoule of morphine he had smuggled into camp.

Viktor waited and watched until the morphine worked.  When it brought relief he asked his father if there was anything more he could do for him. They talked for a moment more, and then his father fell peacefully into the sleep Viktor knew would be followed by death.

As he left for his own barracks, Viktor said he knew he would never see his father again, but rather than sadness, he found himself experiencing happiness to a degree he had never known before.  There in the concentration camps, the most miserable of experiences, he found his greatest joy. He had honored his father. He had been there for him and stayed with him to the last and as a result had been able to ease his father’s pain.

At the same time, in ways he could not have anticipated, the decision to enter the concentration camp advanced his career and established the credibility of his work. For it was there that Frank found the laboratory to test and prove his theories.  Freud believed that if you subject the mass of humanity to deprivation, human differences would be minimized and man would be reduced to fundamental desires, animal instincts, and a single-minded pursuit of survival at all cost.

“But Freud was spared to get to know the concentration camps,” Viktor observed. “We who were there saw not the uniformity he predicted. People became ever more different when confronted by such a tragic situation. They unmasked their real selves — both the swine and the saint.

“In truth, I found it is the orientation toward a meaning to fulfill in the future – after liberation – that more than any other factor gave people the greatest chance to survive even this abyss experience. It is evidence of what I have come to call the self-transcendent quality of a human being – that is, a truly human being is never primarily or basically concerned with himself or herself, or anything within himself or herself; but rather is reaching out of themselves, into the world, toward a meaning to fulfill or another human being to love.”

It’s the stuff of legends.

A plane takes off from Tan Son Nhat Airport at 4:00 PM on April 4, l975.  It’s less than a month before Saigon will fall.  North Vietnamese troops are rapidly advancing.  Desperate people are pouring out of the country, fearing for their lives.

The plane is a C5A Galaxy – a cargo plane. There are 243 children on board, along with their escorts and Air Force personnel.  It’s the first plane in Operation Babylift, organized to bring orphans of the war to the United States.  A row of cardboard boxes runs down the center of the plane.  Each two-foot square box contains two or three infants.  Toddlers and older children line the sides of the plane, sitting on hard aluminum benches.

Twelve minutes out of Saigon an explosion tears the fuselage apart.   Cables are severed.  Control is lost.   Decompression fills the plane with fog and debris.

Somehow, the pilot turns the plane around and heads for Saigon.  Halfway back it’s clear they won’t make it.

The pilot does the only thing he can and brings the nose up, making the plane belly flop into a rice paddy.  It skids a quarter of a mile and then becomes airborne again, skimming the surface of the ground until it hits a dike half a mile away and breaks apart.

One hundred and thirty-eight people are killed instantly, including 78 children.  One hundred and sixty-five children survive – many of them critically injured and desperately in need of medical attention.

Half a world away one man hears what happened and decides he has to do something about it.  He is not about to wait the ten days the government says it will take to mount a relief effort.

The man is Bob Macauley.  He loves children, hates bureaucracy, and believes nothing is impossible.  He is driven by the terrible urgency of “now.”  In an instant, Macauley decides to rescue the kids and begins by calling every airline in the phone book.  All he needs is one willing to charter a plane to Saigon.

Pan Am is at the bottom of the list and as it happens they have a Boeing 747 in Guam.  “Yes, we can send it to Saigon,” they say – it’s the first ‘yes’ Bob has heard – “but we will have to pull it out of a commercial run.”

This is Pan Am’s way of saying they can do it but the cost will be steep.  They want a quarter of a million dollars, ten percent down, and the balance on arrival in San Francisco.

Bob tells them to put the plane in the air and he will put the check in the mail.   He doesn’t bother telling them he doesn’t have a quarter of million dollars.  He doesn’t bother to tell them he doesn’t even have enough to cover the deposit.  Still, he keeps his word and sends Pan Am the check he promised.

“This all happened on a Friday,” he would later explain.  “By the time Pan Am got the check, I knew it would be Monday.  I figured the kids would be safe by then.  We could worry about the rest later.”

Sure enough, on Sunday morning Pan Am calls Bob to say the plane is on its way.  They want the balance.  Bob cheerfully writes them another check and sends it bouncing along.  By the time a somewhat agitated Pan Am employee calls to find out what is going on, he has taken out a second mortgage on his house to make good his debt and cover the cost of his mercy flight.

The story behind the story is Bob’s wife’s response.  The first Leila heard what Bob had done was when the TV crews parked on the front lawn and started taking pictures of her house.  When the reporters told her what happened and asked her what she thought of all this, she said, “It sounds like a pretty good deal to me.  Bob gets the kids and the bank gets the house.”

How many women would respond like that?  How many people would do what Bob did?  How is it possible?

They would say it’s pretty simple.  If you know what your values are all your other decisions are easier.