When did people turn? Can we pinpoint the exact moment when profit trumped compassion? When the most admirable qualities of mercy, reflection and charity were deemed as being "wussy" or for "losers"? Would the old fashioned and loving version of Jesus Christ be looked at with incredulous smirks by present day publicists and sponsors? Would Abe Lincoln be forced to get a set of veneers and undergo Adam's Apple reduction surgery? When every instinct to help our fellow man has reams of fine print attached to what should be a shockingly simple act is the defining characteristic of those who would be the leaders of our nation, it is time to revolt or throw in the towel. No middling, considered responses that eat into action time: boot 'em or lay down.
Since the introduction of the concept of Profit into the human vocabulary, the concept has spread like a toxic frost through our collective DNA, crystallizing any effort as a species to raise itself above the beasts that skulk in our nature, paralyzing the healing, unifying compassion just at the spot where it knocked at the door, to go no further.
But there are heroes, whose voices are rarely heard above the din of the stock exchange floor. They come from all walks of life. They are your neighbors, your friends, your family. They are the likely and the unlikely. Until the day something mysteriously impels them, overcomes them and, in a split second they act to change the course of another person's life for the better. Some are thrust over the line of safety and into a realm of danger. Others go about their days, quietly putting themselves second and someone else first.
There was the small quarantined village of Kikwit where a motley band of humanitarian surgeons scrambled to treat victims of Ebola virus. Not enough surgical gloves and gowns to go around, no facilities to sterilize bloodied garments and sheets; the eyes of the bedridden dying staring out through a haze of smoldering debris and cremated corpses; the wails of undernourished children piercing the leaden air as their helpless mothers look on. Death was here in the village of Kikwit.
In a makeshift clinic, behind a screen, a wizened woman bears down into the waiting hands of a gowned and masked doctor. She, amidst all this, is giving birth. And the doctor assists. A nurse, frightened and hesitant, stands near -- but not too near. Ebola is blood-borne -- and there is blood.
The moment arrives. Across the parched lips of the struggling mother a joyful smile almost forms, but stops. The newborn is choking on its umbilical. The doctor must move in quickly. His view momentarily obstructed, he rips his mask down, exposing his face.
He frees the trembling and twitching child. The mother grimaces. Suddenly she hemorrhages, blood spewing into the exposed face of the doctor who, though stunned, manages to shield the child.
"My god, doctor. Do you know what just happened?" the terrified nurse whispers. "Yes. Yes I do." he answers, his eyes glazed with resignation. And awe.
The doctor hands the swaddled child to the nurse and walks to a basin to wash. But he knows it's too late. They all know. Gravely, he continues his rounds, his duty clear: to comfort those who, like himself now, have no hope of ever leaving the village of Kikwit, where Death is...but heroism reigns.
And Grace is a 42 year old woman (is the word "dowdy" still allowed?) who rises every morning at dawn. She takes a 45 minute bus ride to a red-brick building, where she walks to the end of a shiny institution-green hallway, enters the classroom and waits. In no time, the classroom is a cacophonous, clattering madhouse, as 6 and 7 year old kids (the "special ones": lots of beige hearing aids and coke-bottle glasses held tight with elastic bands) whirl around in feral blurs. And Grace is there all day-every day, to minister to these creatures in ways that have escaped all others who have tried before. But she has the knack. She has the patience. She has the will. And she has the love. She oversees the building of a Lego castle. She puts a Band-Aid on the scraped knee of a pinafore-clad girl, whose leg brace caught on the brass doorstop and tripped her. She leads them in patriotic songs and teaches them the unpronounceable Pledge of Allegiance ("...wun nayshun, under god, invisible, with litterbee and justiss...").
Carlos' shoelaces flail madly as he runs. They always have. Grace snares him in mid flight and gives him a quick primer in Lace Tying. Amidst the din, Carlos is focused utterly on the kneeling Grace as she explains the mysteries of the Knot; his shiny red lower lip trembles as she describes the intricate beauty of the Loop. "Now you try it." He kneels, like Grace, and looks at the mess of undone laces. "S'like spaghetti..." Grace smiles and patiently demonstrates again. The boy stares at this irresolvable puzzle and his face reddens. The lower lip sucks in and out as his breath comes in short heaves of mounting frustration. He shakes his head in a saliva-hurling arc: "No, no, no, no, no--". Grace rests her hands on his shoulders to calm him, but his no's turn to shrieks and her veined hands move to gently cup his face. "Sssshhh..." she whispers, "It's all right, Carlos. It's all right." He grows quiet, his fit slows. Then he looks up and behind her, an astonished smile growing on his face. Grace hears the giggling behind her back and rises, leaving him to ponder his new infatuation: Lucy Campanella's blonde braids. Grace stands to the side and watches as Carlos and Lucy communicate in the way her "special ones" do: so coded, so intimate.
And at the end of the day, when every chair has been placed on top of every desk, and the paints have been put back in the closet, and the blocks put in the bins, the "special ones" stand in line having zipped up their winter coats waiting to receive their parents who come to take them home. And as Mrs. Delatorre walks past Grace with her Carlos in tow, the boy tugs on Grace's hem to get her attention. Grace looks down and her lips part in gratified wonder. Carlos' shoelaces are tied. He beams up at her and marches out into the industrial-green hallway: Master of the Knot and Guardian of the Secrets of the Loop.
Yes, there are many individuals -- heroes -- who prize the qualities of mercy and love and service but those persons, those forces are marginalized and mocked by the cynical actions of those we have entrusted with leading our nation. Our leaders must emerge from the pool of humanity rather than the rarified compounds of the profiteers. And they are here. They walk and work among us. And it is by them that humanity will move to the next level, to evolve from the crude, arrogant smugness that now defines its trajectory, embodied by its slick, conniving spokesmen, the "leaders" who preach one thing and do quite another. Once again soon, we will have choices to make and consequences to bear. To continue our fealty to the current way of things is to ensure our descent and deny the imperative that will ensure our survival: to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly.