Spiritual Common Sense

After my father died, my mother became my greatest concern.  My parents had known each other most of their lives.  Taking care of him and raising her family had been the focus of her life.  I knew she missed him terribly.

I could always talk with my Mother about anything so when I saw an opportunity I shared my concern.  To my surprise, she said that it was difficult but it was also a gift in a way.  Dad had been sick much of his life, she explained, and had already suffered so much.  “Can you imagine how difficult it would have been for him if I had gone first?”

With that I began to see her suffering in a new light.  Far from an act of desperation, it was, in fact, an act of faith and fidelity. For years we had shared a wish we could do something to ease Dad’s pain with little success.  Now, she was saying, at least I can spare him this.

When I told Viktor Frankl my mother’s story, he took out one of the black
Flair pens he favored and wrote an equation:  D = S – M.

“Despair is suffering without meaning,” he explained.  “Like your mother, each of us is challenged to find the meaning in our suffering and use it to give purpose to our lives.”

More often than not, our first instinct when we are ill or hurt is to focus on ourselves and our problems.  Self-concern makes us more self-centered as we turn the eye inward in doubt, despair, and wonder. Those who cannot find a purpose in their pain are diminished by it.  Those who do are strengthened by the process.

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

Both boys were fighting cancer. Both had under gone a bone marrow transfer. Both faced long odds and 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 playing together, eating together, sharing rides, 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. They realized 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 then with ABC News.

Chiam’s mother, Shula, agreed. “We hope people can learn from this” she said. “I know I have.”

No matter how great and grave the differences between us may appear, below and above all is the eternal fact of brotherhood. 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.

Pat Ireland was shot three times at Columbine High School, including once in the head. His dramatic fall from the library into the arms of waiting SWAT teams created the most memorable image of that tragic event. While millions of people remember that day, hardly anyone knows much about Pat, what he learned from this tragic incident, or what he had to say about the mentality that produced it.

For a year, Pat was silent. He refused to speak to the media and would not discuss what happened. Finally at a student rally organized to mark the first anniversary of this tragic event, Pat talked about what happened.

For the first time, Pat described where he was and what happened. He concluded by saying that day and the days that followed had taught him something about the nature of love and hate, the meaning of courage, and the preciousness of life. Pat asked people to remember those who lost their lives and those who were injured, but to take a moment also to think about their own responsibility.

“The battle against hate begins with simple acts of kindness,” he said, “knowing people’s names and speaking to everyone. Making a point to just be nice to people.”

You can’t solve a problem on the same level as it was created. Anger breeds anger. Revenge brings retribution. Violence feeds violence. When hate is used to combat hate, hate wins. The only way out of this descending spiral is to rise above and seek higher ground. The only way to drive out of the darkness is to be the light.

The girl looked like nothing so much as what she was – an awkward adolescent, with pale hair and a plump body trying to make the painful transition into adulthood. She looked nothing like what she had been – a prostitute working the streets of LA.

This was no Pretty Woman fantasy of happily ever after for the hooker with a heart of gold. This was the cold hard reality of a young girl forced to live on the streets because the streets were safer than home, the kindness of strangers more constant and reliable than the concern of her own kin.

In testimony to the depth of the scars left by her childhood, the first place she worked was the small town where she was raised and her father served as sheriff.

“Didn’t it occur to you that he was bound to find out?” I said.  “Didn’t it occur to you that maybe that is why I did it?” she said.

The girl was one of a dozen I met at Children of the Night and one of thousands Lois Lee, the program’s founder, has rescued from the streets. In the process, my perception of prostitution was forever changed. Until that time, I always looked down or looked away. Thanks to Lois, I came to understand the distance between us and them is not as far as it might seem.

In our own way, many of us spend our whole life prostituting ourselves. We live with the illusion that we can buy love with good behavior, good grades, success, money, or material things. Often, we become what our parents want us to be, do what our children want us to do, behave the way our friends want us to behave in the hope that they will love us or love us more.

We are responding to the subtle message of conditional love communicated to us at an early age. It comes disguised as “if”. I will love you if you give me what I want, if you do what I tell you to do, if you look the way I want you to look, if you marry well, if you graduate from college, if you become a doctor or whatever.

The “ifs” populate the psychiatrists’ offices, distort our self-image, and fill us with insecurity and doubt. In accumulation, the “ifs” can kill you. But in our hearts, we know love can neither be bought nor sold. To be real, love must be unconditional. Love is a gift of a willing heart or it is nothing at all.

Brianne Schwantes was born with thirteen broken bones. All the major bones in her arms and legs were broken, along with a number of her ribs.

The doctors told Brianne’s parents she would only live a few hours. The hospital priest was called in to give her the last rites and her parents cried.

But Brianne wouldn’t give up. Somehow, she made it through the night.

The next day she was diagnosed with a rare bone disease called Osteogenesis Imperfecta. The doctors now said they didn’t know how long she would live, but they were certain her bones were so brittle they would never bear weight. The doctors told Brianne’s parents she could never have a normal life and live independently. They said that the best thing to do was to put her in an institution and forget about her.

But they didn’t know Brianne. They saw the size of her body but they could not see the size of her heart. Nor could they see the strength of her spirit.

Fortunately, her parents did. They decided that if she wouldn’t give up they wouldn’t give up either. They took her home on a feather pillow, popsicle sticks taped to her limbs as makeshift splints, and went looking for alternatives.

They found a group of physicians who were just starting a research protocol for children with this disease and enrolled her in this program. Brianne was so fragile she could break a bone by sneezing, but they encouraged her to learn to walk and challenged her to grow.

Since then, Brianne has had face surgery, leg surgery, and back surgery. She spent her sixteenth birthday in the emergency room with a neck brace, and has had, in her words, more broken bones than Evil Knievel. But each time, she wouldn’t quit. And each time, her fragile body has gotten stronger.

“It’s hard to stop listening when people tell you to quit,” she says. “It’s hard to ignore the world when it seems no one thinks you can succeed; but it gets easier. The first time you believe in yourself enough to accomplish the impossible an inner strength is created that lasts a lifetime.”

To be blessed, like Brianne, we must be willing to step out into the unknown with only faith to face fear. Risk must be taken. If we do not extend ourselves, we simply cannot learn, feel, change, grow, love, or live.

Brianne surpassed all expectations for her future on the second day of her life. In the years since, she has single-handly rewritten the protocols for treatment of her disease. She graduated graduated from American University and is currently in graduate school at Marquette. She lives independently and walks without assistance. She still breaks an occasional bone with the frequency the rest of us get the flu, but nothing can break her spirit.