“I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.”  – Ecclesiastes 3:12

“In a way, the world is a great liar.  It shows you it worships and admires money, but at the end of the day it doesn’t.  It says it adores fame and celebrity, but it doesn’t, not really.  The world admires, and wants to hold on to, and not lose, goodness.  It admires virtue.  At the end it gives its greatest tributes to generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better.  That’s what it really admires.  That’s what we talk about in eulogies, because that’s what’s important.”

Reading that quote stopped me dead in my tracks, causing me to go back and read it again, then again and again, until I became blinded by the tears in my eyes.  It is from a book I am currently reading, The Time of our Lives, by journalist Peggy Noonan.  But something about that one passage jumped off the page at me, stirring my soul.

It may have had something to do with the moment of time I was in.  Ironically, I came across the book while browsing through a bookstore with my oldest granddaughter, Madeline, who happens to love books.  The two of us were hanging out together awaiting the birth of her new baby sister, Eliana, who would arrive later the following day.  Not long after that I would be holding that gorgeous tiny infant in my arms.

These back-to-back encounters, first with the oldest then the youngest — the symbolic bookends among my five grandchildren — caused me to consider what it is I hope to leave behind, what would be the most meaningful legacy to my grandchildren.  (Grandparents think about things like that.)  And that quote pretty much summed it up, perhaps why it struck me with such deep emotion: goodness and virtue — “generosity, honesty, courage, mercy, talents well used, talents that, brought into the world, make it better.”

King Solomon had it all — wealth, fame, wisdom, and worldly accomplishments.  Yet in the Book of Ecclesiastes, his brilliant essay about life, he declares it all meaningless, except for this: “I know that there is nothing better for men than to be happy and do good while they live.”  Goodness and virtue — if I can teach that to my grandchildren, it would be the greatest legacy I could ever leave them — “because that’s what’s important.”

“. . . we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.”  – Romans 5:3-5 

Rabbi Harold Kushner in his marvelous book, When Bad Things Happen to Good People, tells the story about a couple who, in grieving the tragic loss of their teenage daughter, confessed to him that they had neglected to fast during Yom Kipper, as if their failure to observe religious custom had somehow precipitated their daughter’s untimely and unexpected death.  They needed an answer, and having none, blaming themselves provided a handy explanation.  As it turned out the couple’s otherwise healthy daughter had suffered from the sudden rupture of a blood vessel, something no one would have ever suspected or detected.  Yet, understandably the couple was desperate for an answer, and the answer that was in reach was to blame themselves.

We don’t do well with unanswered questions, and human nature desires there be logical explanations for everything.  The good news is that most of the knowledge we have obtained thus far — from scientific discovery to the development and advancement of such disciplines as mathematics, engineering, philosophy, psychology, theology, art, music, and the study of history — is the result of our high sense of intellectual curiosity and desire for explanations. The bad news is that it is also the reason we have such a tendency to place blame when things go awry — blaming others, ourselves, even God.

On January 28, 1986, just seventy-three minutes after launch, the whole world watched as the space shuttle Challenger broke apart killing all seven crew members.  What went wrong and whose fault was it, we all asked?  Extensive investigation eventually proved that an O-ring seal, which was not designed to fly under unusually cold conditions, failed at liftoff.  Who would have known?  Yet tragic as it was, our intellectual curiosity from the Challenger incident has led to great advancements in space travel.

Knowledge is never perfect or complete.  So, there will always be unanswered questions we must suffer.  But these unanswered questions are why need hope; for it is hope that inspires the human spirit.  Therefore, “. . . we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope.  And hope does not disappoint us . . .”

“Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”  – Zechariah 7:9 

“The word compassion is derived from the Latin words pati and cum, which together mean ‘to suffer with,'” according to Henri Nouwen who many years ago co-authored a book by that very title, Compassion.  “Compassion asks us to go where it hurts,” he explains, “to enter into places of pain, to share in brokenness, fear, confusion, and anguish.  Compassion challenges us to cry out with those in misery, to mourn with those who are lonely, to weep with those in tears.  Compassion requires us to be weak with the weak, vulnerable with the vulnerable, and powerless with the powerless.  Compassion means full immersion in the condition of being human.”

Compassion, though, does not limit our “suffering with” only to those who we commonly identify as the downtrodden — the sick, lonely, grieving, broken, poor, weak, vulnerable or powerless — the obvious. We are also called at times to be compassionate toward the less obvious, the ones who appear to have it all together — self-confident, strong, intelligent and powerful, sometimes even the arrogant — who, buried beneath their facade of being in control, also suffer, and in need of compassion.

Charles Dickens’ classic story, A Christmas Carol, is a great illustration in which Ebenezer Scrooge is depicted as a heartless, self-centered old miser who has no interest in being bothered by the suffering of others — the poor, the widows and orphans, or even the plight of his overworked, underpaid clerk Bob Cratchit and his special needs son Tiny Tim, the obvious among the downtrodden.  But then Scrooge has an encounter with the ghost of his late business partner Jacob Marley, who in his earthly life had walked in Scrooge’s shoes as a heartless old miser.  Marley, bound for eternity in the chains of his transgressions, had come to warn Scrooge of his own similar destiny lest he repents.

It was not so much to condemn Scrooge that Jacob Marley appeared to him. Instead, his was a mercy mission to rescue Scrooge from the same fate.  Plus, knowing Scrooge better than anyone, and having walked in the same earthly shoes, that buried beneath the facade of being mean and controlling, he too was just a suffering, lonely, vulnerable, broken human being.  Yes, even old Scrooge needed some compassion.  Doesn’t everyone?

“Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up.  But pity the man who falls and has no one to help him up.”  –  Ecclesiastes 4:9-10 

“For without friends,” Aristotle once said, “no one would choose to live, though he had all other goods.”  In his writings known as the “Nicomachean Ethics” Aristotle identifies three kinds of friendship, the first based on the pleasure of another’s company, or “friendships of pleasure”.  The second has to do with usefulness in association, or “friendships of utility”.  And the third is about mutual admiration, what he refers to as “friendships in virtue”.  All are essential to the good life, according to his writings, and the best sorts of friends will not only admire each other’s excellence, but take pleasure in each other’s company and find their association of mutual advantage.

I am self-employed and work alone.  It has been my life’s dream to do this, to do my own thing, be my own boss.  It is a glorious way to live to be given the opportunity to make a living doing what one loves to do, where work does not feel like work.  I love it more than anything I can ever imagine.  But I must warn that in some ways working solo is a dangerous endeavor.  More than once I have learned of its hazards the hard way; for as with any occupation certain support functions are required in order that the primary purpose be pursued, not all of which are fun nor am I particularly good at them.  Example:  some time ago I received notice from a government agency that I had failed to file a certain form.  It was not intentional, of course, simply an oversight — ignorance more precisely.  It took at least a day in total to resolve the matter, time taken away from my primary purpose, which I found most aggravating.  Such administrative distractions are more common than I care to mention.

I am learning, however, to surround myself more and more with trusted friends and colleagues who help me in supporting my best efforts.  Even though I remain self-employed and work alone, I cannot do it by myself.  I need a team.  I need colleagues within my profession from whom I have much to learn.  I need others who are good at the things I am not.  And I need the company of family and friends who give me pleasure.  For as the wisdom of scripture reminds us: “Two are better than one, because they have a good return for their work: If one falls down, his friend can help him up.”

“This is what the Lord Almighty says: Administer true justice; show mercy and compassion to one another.”  – Zechariah 7:9 

Despite being a conscientious objector who refused to carry a rifle, Desmond Doss bravely volunteered to be a combat medic during World War II, participating in, among others, the battle of Okinawa, considered to be the bloodiest battle of the Pacific theater, where he repeatedly ran alone into the kill zone facing heavy machine gun and artillery fire with nothing to protect himself except his Bible and his faith in God.  One by one he carried wounded soldiers to the edge of a 400-foot cliff where he singlehandedly lowered them down to safety.  It is estimated that in one night alone he saved between 75 to 100 lives.  For his valiant service President Harry S. Truman later presented Doss the Medal of Honor, the first conscientious objector ever to receive that honor.

The late Fred Rogers, longtime host of PBS’s children’s show, “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood”, once mused: “When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping.'”

It was Desmond Doss’s story on which the 2016 Academy Award Nominee movie “Hacksaw Ridge” was based, which for me was the most gruelingly violent war movie I have ever seen; except for one thing, the bloody combat scenes were not the primary focus.  Instead they provided necessary background so that the spotlight could be shown on the faith and courage of Pvt. Desmond Doss — the “helper”.

Just recently my wife, out for her morning exercise, stubbed her toe and fell flat on her face causing enough damage to require a few stitches.  As she lay sprawled on the jogging path a stranger appeared who helped her up, cleaned her wounds as best she could, and gently walked her back to our home. .

“Look for the helpers.  You will always find people who are helping”, whether Desmond Doss, brave responders to disasters such as the 9/11 attack, or a kind stranger on a jogging path, they’re out there — everywhere.  “Pity weeps and turns away,” St. Francis of Assisi once noted, “but compassion weeps and puts out a hand to help.”