Be kind. Everyone
you meet is fighting a great battle. –Plato
Today is All Saints Day on the traditional Christian
calendar. I tend to like these minor holidays, appreciating how they celebrate some deep, human part of ourselves - but without all the commercial hoopla attached.
This one sets aside a time to honor “all saints, known and
unknown.” In Catholic churches, the holy day kicks off a month-long remembrance
of family, friends, and famous folk who have died, and their names are read
off solemnly from the “Book of the Dead” at each mass. I have always found this
practice hopeful. Naming the names, recognizing some you have known and loved among the long list that goes on and on throughout the month, embodies
a sense of continuity between life and death. The “official saints” are in
there too – the ones canonized because they did something extraordinary, like die
for their beliefs or create something outstanding that witnessed to them. Also
included in some lists (Robert Elsberg’s book All Saints is an inspiration)
are those we may not have known personally and have not been “canonized” by the
Catholic hierarchy but whom we generally acknowledge as saints for our time – a
diverse group that includes people like Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Caesar
Chavez, Dorothy Day, Stephen Biko… The
list as a whole reflects the “cloud of witnesses,” folks who put their particular talents and experiences
to work toward the betterment of the world and time they lived in, and who
still inspire us.
Most of them had fairly ordinary lives up to a point; many
had some pretty spectacular falls from grace as well. Scratch the surface, and
I’m sure even the most revered and “holy” saints venerated by the church racked
up their share of mistakes, failures, and “sins.” What we often remember them for is
that they got up again - and for what they did with their broken lives afterwards,
in service to others.
There was a 12-hour period earlier this week when I felt I
got an overwhelming glimpse of how this all might work, why we need to
remember, how important it is to see that hint of greatness and the reality of
true courage in the ordinary lives of people – even at their most broken. It was a “graced” moment for me, one of those
times when it seems as though a veil is lifted and you see the goodness right
in the midst of the messiness of the present moment.
On Thursday night, we hosted some young women from a local “maternity
home,” a shelter which offers food and housing and emotional support for mothers
and their young children while the moms go to school and get situated into life
as a family. Many come from violent backgrounds, all from some level of poverty.
One of the young mothers we spoke to – a
former runaway a recovering addict, a welfare mom - talked about some of the specifics of her violent
and abusive childhood (to make even this stereotypical phrase more clear: her
mother, to support her drug habit, prostituted her from the time she was 8 – which made
for a very confused, angry and rebellious adolescent a few years later). She expressed
the strong desire she has to provide better for her child despite the
obstacles. She described the hard work she is doing to get there.
Right after dinner, I had to dash off to the local prison to
visit a recent guest at our house who had been picked up after a few days of
disappearing from the house to go on a crack binge. A former New York gang
member with a rap sheet many pages long, all of his arrests have been drug–related.
And he is headed to prison for five to ten years. He tells me it’s not really him that does these things - that he's not that person, or doesn't want to be. And, cynical as I have become when listening to an
addict trying to explain, I detect that he is telling the truth. He wants to be
the man who planted bean seeds with little Riley, was teaching Johnny Spanish,
who made a mean tomato and cucumber salad, who befriended international students
and helped them learn English. He is
that person at one level, and we have seen that reality shining; But it is
being buried under the heap of bad
choices and addiction.
The next
morning, I woke up to a letter from an acquaintance, a yuppie in appearance
and profession - powerful, politically-astute, dressed for success - who
described some of the unconscionable acts of physical abuse he had undergone as
a child by a member of the clergy, some recent personal losses, and the ongoing
stress he feels sometimes affects his work in the community. “Welfare mom,” “crack
addict,” “yuppie” – all labels that tell such a tiny part of the story but by
which we base our decisions as to their character and their future.
The people I want to celebrate this day and this month, are
those “unknown saints" for whom great courage is required to keep going on in
the face of the odds against them. From
whatever walk of life, and at whatever stage of the journey they’re in – the falling
down, the on-the-ground, the getting up again - they deserve our respect, and
often our help. At the very least, they merit a true listening ear by which we can hear their stories and begin to understand.
To be re-membered,
put back together again so as to honor the big picture of who it is we are underneath
it all, and who we might be. This is
something we all long for, and something to celebrate.
