On Being Bigger Than We Are
It’s Easter – Good Friday – and that should mean something, shouldn’t it? I don’t mean in any way particularly religious, but in a more human fashion. We’re supposed to remember, as at times like November 11th, that a good man died. He was someone who longed for more – the end of poverty, the rights of the ignored, the importance of children, the need people have for personal redemption, the importance of forgiveness, the need for injustice to be corrected.Many have permitted their dislike of religion to overlook what it’s like to have personal longings that are greater than our ability to fulfill them – our quest exceeds our grasp. Others, like myself, find great inspiration in what is the noble death of someone like Jesus who endured the ignominy of it for the sake of the needs of others. The dignity of that death could only be possible following a life of dignified service – just like Martin Luther King Jr., Mohammed, Gandhi, Raoul Wallenberg, Mother Theresa, or Socrates. There was something embedded deep within such individuals that they knew in an instant when something was greater than they were.On February 12th, 1944, thirteen year-old Anne Frank wrote these words in what became her famous diary:“Today the sun is shining, the sky is a deep blue, there is a lovely breeze and I am longing – so longing – for everything. To talk, for freedom, for friends, to be alone … I’m restless. I go from room to room, breathe through the crack of a closed window, feel my heart beating, as if it is saying, “can’t you satisfy my longing at last? I believe that it is spring within me. I feel that spring is awakening. I feel it in my whole body and soul. I feel utterly confused. I don’t know what to read, what to write, what to do. I only know that I am longing.”In so many ways we have all felt this longing – the need to move outside of ourselves in order to gain comfort with our inner selves. Philosophers called it “a desire of the part to return to the whole,” while mystics preferred to term it as, “the spark of the divine in us.” Martin Luther King Jr. saw it as a “dream,” while John Kennedy preferred to “ask” what was the best you could give to your country. I prefer to think of it as the old term of being, “fired into life,” and searching for that fire ever after.I know a lot of people around me who are anything but ordinary. They have refused to settle for a good job, a home, good food, and a life of luxury as all there is. They have trouble sleeping at night because they’re turning problems over in their minds about how to assist the less-fortunate, the environment, a neighbour, a faltering country, or a needy world. Many are trying and failing to live up to what they wished they could be, but continue regardless. Others are discouraged because the world isn’t as they thought it would be. At times lonely in their longing for a better world, they nevertheless refuse to address its needs alone. They are the embodiment of what Edward Schillebeeck described: “What you dream alone remains a dream. What you dream with others can become reality.”Some of us just can’t let things be. The cry of the hungry, the wailing of the slave, the moaning of the dying, the shivering of the homeless – these call out to us and we feel little choice but to respond. I have a simple religious faith, but it can never fully comfort me if it merely brings me comfort. I don’t want to be like the person Charles Peguy talked about who, when he came to the end of his pilgrimage and reached heaven, God asked, “Where are the others?”I am a Canadian, through and through, just like most of you who read this blog. I grew up thinking of others, not because I was special, but because my country was making moves to shelter the oppressed, whether here or across the globe. I learned growing up that seniors deserved our respect and therefore acquired things like pensions. I easily intuited that the sick needed help and that a kind of universal health care could assist. Like many of my age when I was young, I desired peace in the world and then I learned of Lester Pearson. I saw the wounds on my Dad’s body from the war and instinctively understood that they were his personal scars from helping others. It was all a world of wonder to me – people reaching out past the comforts of a pleasurable Canada to ensure that others could have a shot at it too.You don’t have to be religious to comprehend that Christmas is about life and giving, or that Easter is about death and sacrifice. But surely we should pay homage to those who through their life and death taught us that everyone dies at some point, but not everyone truly lives. Here’s to my friends, family and fellow citizens who prove this point to me each and every day and who remind me that the one who died on that first Easter died not in vain, but paved the way for these noble souls to reach for more than they are so that others might enjoy that same privilege. A meaningful Easter to all of you.