Tag Archives: charity

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Mother Teresa, For The Ages

By: Chris Warren.

I had started an article about Mother Teresa over a year ago, then changed my plans and never finished it. Now that Mother Theresa is officially Saint Teresa of Calcutta, it’s a good time to finish the story, even though the story of Mother Teresa will never end, nor should it.

Mother Teresa’s path to greatness started the same way as most great people: She wasn’t looking for greatness, she was just looking to make a difference. After starting the Missionaries of Charity religious order in 1950, Mother Teresa set out on a quiet mission to serve the poorest of the poor, the forgotten, the unseen, the unwanted, the untouchables.

Earning a Nobel Peace Prize, several honorary doctorate degrees, dozens of other awards and honors, being celebrated by Popes and Presidents, and even having an airport named after her was never part of the plan. Through it all, this woman of God kept plugging along and never diverted from her calling.

What impresses me most about Mother Teresa is her sense of humanity. Not only in her public service to others, but also her private personal struggles, admissions of doubt in her own faith, and her open acknowledgement that she was really just a regular person, a sinner in need of God’s salvation and no better or more deserving than all the rest of us.

It’s easy to see someone like her as some perfect being who operates on a level the rest of us will never realize. Yet, Mother Teresa herself would be the first person to deny having a special pipeline to holiness. She did not see herself as being much different than those she served.

If we dig into the biographies of figures who changed the world by peacefully serving others we find people who were, well, just people. They had faults. They did things they later regretted. They sometimes hurt others and were hurt by others. At their roots they were ordinary folk who somehow found a way to rise up and do big things in spite of their personal shortcomings. Their greatness was not that they were flawless, because they weren’t, and they knew it. Their greatness came from their faith that they could overcome both internal and external obstacles and live what they believed.

These “star throwers” know they are never going to save everyone, but that’s not the point. It did not stop Mother Teresa because trying to save everyone and coming up short is more virtuous than using the impossibility of the task as an excuse not to try at all. Her effort had the added benefit of being an example to others. Mother Teresa never knew how many others saw her good works and were inspired to go out and do something good themselves.

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Pope Francis recently Tweeted, “To offer today’s world the witness of mercy is a task from which none of us can feel exempted.” This serendipitous statement is everything Mother Teresa lived for. Mother Teresa does not live on in the form of anything she directly did to help others, although those contributions are indeed memorable. Her gift to the world, and what she would want as her legacy, was her role as a guiding light for the rest of us to join her. As Pope Francis teaches, none of us are exempted.

No one ever received God’s grace, much less became a Saint, by watching others perform acts of mercy. To that end, the world’s adulation of Mother Teresa does not mean much if the world will not also walk a path of selfless service. Saint Teresa of Calcutta’s message for the ages is that she did not want to be admired; she wanted to be emulated.

Author’s Note: Please also see my related article, Strong Enough To Throw A Star.

 

We Can’t Know What Christmas Is Unless We Also Know What It Isn’t.

By: Chris Warren

Ahhh yes it’s “the most wonderful time of the year” (or whatever cliché pleases you). The complaints are also clichés, albeit true ones: Christmas is rightfully derided as having been turned into a celebration of materialism and faux congeniality. ‘Tis the season for pining about what Christmas really means. We can also learn a lot from what it doesn’t mean.

Christmas is not about being seasonally nice. If you can smile and wave to that crabby neighbor on December 25, why is it so hard to do any other day? Or every day? Does it feel funny going back to being a stand-offish jerk on December 26?  I have a coworker who is always doing small favors for everyone, even people who are not all that kind to him in return. He does not wait for a special day, or be helpful only to those who are helpful to him. He treats others with class, every person, every day. That is the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is not about being a part time philanthropist. People feel inclined to leave large tips or donate to charity at Christmas. That’s nice and should not be discouraged, but the wait staff at your favorite burger place needs to make money in July, too. And the burdens carried by social service groups still have to be funded in the off season. It does not help a poor man to buy him an expensive multi-course steak & seafood dinner once a year and let him starve the rest of the time. I know a guy with a very middle class income who gives to several charities each month. The donations are not large, but he always comes through with something. He does it so the poor man gets a modest but respectful meal every day. That is the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas is not about Christ. Let’s get something out of the way: I don’t say that to be politically correct. It’s well established that Twenty First Summer does not concern itself with making sure no one’s precious sensibilities are offended. But the reality is that for many, perhaps most, Christmas is not a religious holiday even as they celebrate it anyway. Christians should seize this opportunity to share their faith because it may be the only time of the year when nonbelievers are open to hearing God’s Word. It’s important for Christians to demonstrate their faith all the time, but Christmas is prime “hunting season.”

An acquaintance of mine is very involved in his church and he invites everyone he knows to their Christmas pageant. It’s part Broadway musical, part worship service. The place is always packed, and many of those present would never consider going to church under any other circumstances, much less a very conservative Baptist church. No one really knows how many lives are changed for the better as a result of attending this one event, but the church got it right: You first have to get their attention if there is any hope at all of winning their hearts. By the way, this particular church reaches out to to the community all year long with assistance and events specifically aimed at non-members. That is the true meaning of Christmas.

Even though a lot of goodwill does come out of Christmas, the holiday has become too much about one day. The higher calling of being concerned for others during the rest of the year is usually overlooked. Or worse, everyone thinks they can be kind to their fellow man in December and they have done their duty until next year. You can tell everything about a person’s understanding of the meaning of the season by what they do (or don’t do) in February and July and October. Those who respond to that call long after the sales are over and the decorations are put away don’t merely know the true meaning of Christmas, they are the true meaning of Christmas in the spirit Christ Himself expects all of us to be.

Twenty First Summer wishes everyone a merry and blessed Christmas.

Peace be with you!

Strong Enough To Throw A Star.

By: Chris Warren.

There is a well known story by American author Loren Eiseley (1907-1977) that goes something like this:

“There was an old man who would take a walk on the beach every morning before he began his work. One day, he was walking after a big storm had passed and found the vast beach littered with starfish as far as the eye could see, stretching in both directions. He noticed a small boy approaching. As the boy walked closer, the man could see that he was occasionally bending down to pick up an object and throw it into the sea. The boy came closer and the man called out, ‘Good morning! May I ask what it is that you are doing?’ The young boy paused, looked up, and replied ‘Throwing starfish into the ocean. The storm has washed them up onto the beach and they can’t return to the sea by themselves,’ the youth replied. ‘They will die, unless I throw them back into the water.’ The old man replied, ‘But there must be tens of thousands of starfish on this beach. I’m afraid you won’t really be able to make much of a difference.’ The boy bent down, picked up yet another starfish and threw it as far as he could into the ocean. Then he turned, smiled and said, ‘It made a difference to that one!’” (adapted from The Star Thrower, 1969, 1977).

Numerous versions of this story are floating around out there, but the lesson is the same: Very few of us will change the world for everyone, but one person can make a difference to someone, and to that someone it’s a very big deal.

In 1991 Cathy was a middle aged working mom with four kids who earned a modest living as a call center service rep at a large company. A few blocks up the street from her office was a well worn and austere apartment building used for low income senior housing. Owned & operated by a local faith-based charity that clearly had more good intentions than money, nobody would choose to live there unless the alternative was a cardboard box by the railroad tracks.

One day Cathy recruited a coworker to help her deliver a chair to a friend over lunch break. They pulled up to the senior housing building in Cathy’s beat up old minivan with a large padded recliner chair crammed in the back. The coworker was a strong, young twenty-something male specifically chosen to provide the muscle needed to lug the heavy piece up several floors to an apartment door in a dark hallway.

A weak old lady answered the door and warmly hugged and greeted Cathy. As they entered, the lady candidly mentioned, “I think I had a little accident in the bed.” There is no delicate way to describe it: Wall to wall, floor to ceiling , the place smelled, literally, like shit. The young guy set the chair near the window; it looked out of place as the only decent piece of furniture in the entire apartment. He waited uncomfortably while Cathy helped the lady change in the other room and hoped they didn’t know that he knew about the wretched, disgusting funk in the air. His courtesy of feigning ignorance was pointless since there was no possible way not to notice the “accident.” There was some idle chit-chat, and the pair of coworkers headed for the door. On the way out, Cathy tells the old lady, “I hope you like your chair. I’ll come by later and finish cleaning up. You’ll be ok till then.”

On the short trip back to the office, Cathy explained to the visibly puzzled young man that she met the old woman months back through a random encounter at the store and simply “adopted” her. At the end of the workday, Cathy returned to the dumpy apartment to take care of her friend; he went to his clean, odor-free home in a nice neighborhood.

Star-throwers are hard to spot because they deliberately avoid being noticed. Like mysterious little spirits, they quietly go about performing good deeds. The boy on the beach didn’t say anything about what he was doing until someone asked, and Cathy did not disclose the true purpose of the lunch hour chair-moving mission to her young helper until the topic could no longer be avoided.

Nearly everyone at some point in their life has helped others. Lots of people are habitually helpful, but not everyone is a star-thrower. True star-throwers go beyond doing something nice once in a while. They instinctively see stars that others miss. In a world that is so difficult for so many, stars should be easy to find like the beach in Eiseley’s parable. But in the real world they can and often do hide in plain sight. People in need may mask their difficulties, be too embarrassed to ask for help, or be in denial that they have a problem. More likely, many of us don’t want to notice the stars all around.

Loren Eiseley teaches that the need is far greater than one person can handle and admonishes lazy bystanders through the character of the old man. Sooner or later the boy must stop throwing starfish. He feels sorrow for all those he did not get to and guilt for leaving them behind but knows that at least some of them are safely back in the water. Compare that to the attitude of the old man, who not only saw no higher purpose in throwing starfish to begin with but also has the nerve to tell the boy that it’s better to let them all die than to save just a few.! Uncharitable people often use this twisted logic to explain away their lack of compassion. It’s easy to say the job is too big and assuage one’s guilt for not even trying than to give one’s best effort and know it would have mattered to someone. Mocking others for doing what you are too unmotivated to take on yourself is an old bit.

When I agreed to help move the chair, it never entered my mind that doing an ordinary favor was going to result a lesson that I would remember for years and years. I later lost contact with Cathy but her sense of humanity and kindness and showing love to God by showing love to others will never leave me. There are so many stars. Like the boy on the beach, Cathy knows she will never save all of them. The apartment building is still there. I seriously doubt the old lady is alive. She was in her late 70s or early 80s at the time. This incident happened twenty three years ago. Either by luck or divine intent two souls were both in the right place at the right time and again proved the old man wrong. A Star-Thrower made a difference to a poor,  sick, elderly lady who was tossed back into the life giving sea so she would not whither and die on a beach.