that are by nature very personal, shaped by a life lived through more than 7 decades starting immediately after the end of the 2nd World War (and thus also with the beginning of the Cold War), and extending through many serious changes in the world, political, religious, social, economic, and technological.
And perhaps also moral as well.
Tomorrow is Memorial Day. We remember many who died in service to this nation. Does that make them heroes? Cannot I honor the sacrifice without surrendering my belief that those who were responsible for the wars in which they died are worthy of at least criticism if not outright condemnation?
There are many I have admired as I encountered their words and actions. Among those I am more than willing to honor are those well known and those of whom the audience for these words I now type may be hearing for the first time.
So I will offer some thoughts/reflections/mental meanderings.
For more than two decades I have been a teacher of adolescents, and for much of that time my primary course has been American government. As such I have led the study of many significant figures in our history. Yet NONE of these is someone I can admire without criticism.
Think for example of George Washington. I certainly admire his refusal to allow his officers to declare him King (and themselves the nobles), his willingness to limit himself to two terms, his insistence upon fair treatment of prisoners, and so on. Yet he was a slave-holder when he should have been able to recognize the basic immorality of that status. His recklessness as a colonial military officer started a world war, even if we only called it the French and Indian War and the Europeans called it the 7 Years War.
Or what about Jefferson, with the stirring rhetoric of the Declaration, his insistence upon the Virginia Statute of Religious Freedom gotten through the legislature by Madison, his establishment of the U of Virginia, and his foresight in westward expansion? There is Sally Hemings. There is his own slave-holding status in conflict with his noble words. His attitude towards the non-Europeans already on this continent is far from admirable.
I go forward to the President I perhaps most admire, Lincoln. While I can understand his motivations to some degree, I look at his willingness to suspend civil liberties with a certain amount of horror.
Perhaps it is because as I have gone through life, I have come to realize that as humans we are all far from “perfect.” I hope that I am neither praised for my good deeds or criticized for my many failures of judgment (some all too well evident here) or errors of action/inaction or even meanness pettiness or large without looking at me in a more complete fashion. No human is only her greatest accomplishments or his largest failures.
As I want a generousness of spirit applied in looking at me, I must apply it as well. It starts with how I perceive, speak to, and act towards my students, keeping in mind the possibly frightening words of Henry Adams that “ A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.”
And yes, I realize that there are those for whom the negatives make it effectively impossible to perceive or react to them in any way except negatively. In the past century one might well come to that conclusion about Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, to name just a few. Certainly in our own time we here are probably very much inclined to think that way about the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania NW and many of his sycophantic enablers and acolytes, of whom I think the most damaging is actually the Senate Majority Leader, who began his destructiveness well before Trump was a political factor.
Still, as a Convinced Friend, a Quaker by choice rather than by birth, I try to abide by the aphorism of George Fox that we are to walk gladly across the earth answering that of God in each person we encounter. For me the “gladly” part has always been the more difficult.
I am also enough of a political person to realize that compromise is often unavoidable. It may require me to violate something “sacred” to me because to not do so is to acquiesce in a greater evil. Here I am reminded of the words I read from someone I greatly admired, the Russian Orthodox monastic, thinker, and writer Archimandrite Sophrony. He was a gifted painter in Paris who gave it up to become a monk on Mount Athos in northern Greece before ending his life as abbot of a monastery in England. He was on Athos during World War II, although he did not have detailed information about the nature of that conflict. He writes that he prayed that the less evil side would win. Note that construction, with its recognition that no matter how we may justify it, war is of its very nature imbued with evil. It is not merely deliberate atrocities, like those at My Lai to use an example perpetrated by our own. It is what is often called collateral damage. It is the rationalization that leads to firebombings of entire cities — Hamburg, Dresden, Tokyo — or the use of city destroying nuclear weapons killing tens of thousands in an instant -Hiroshima, Nagasaki — just as well as the deliberate starvation of a city by encirclement and siege — Leningrad or Vicksburg.
Were I to think of people I have personally encountered who have had huge influence upon me, three immediately come to mind. One was a high school teacher, Thomas Rock, who was the first to ever challenging me to live up to my intellectual potential. Another was a piano teacher, Joseph “Jimmy” Block, who at Julliard was known as the man with the golden ears, who in my last piano lesson with him simultaneously gave me high praise and strong criticism by telling me that within the limits of my technique I played Bach as well as anyone he had ever heard. Another is a man who served as my spiritual guide for more than a decade of the 14 years I was an Orthodox Christian, the former Geronda (elder) of Simona Petra monastery on Mount Athos, who challenged me spiritually and morally, but who also displayed an unwavering belief in my essential goodness. His challenges in large part kept me from accepting opportunities that would have been very dangerous paths for me to follow.
Yet I do not view any of those three men as heroes. I can admire them, praise them for what they did for me — and for others. There is no hero worship on my part towards them, just as there isn’t towards Washington or Jefferson or Lincoln.
Does a person’s human flaws diminish the value they provide to the rest of us? I have grown ever more deeply admirable of many of the words of Martin Luther King Jr as I have grown older, even as I am very well aware of his very human flaws.
Perhaps my political involvement over the years has made me simultaneously less “worshipful” of any political figure at the same time as I am sympathetic to many of the hard choices they may have to make, perhaps not always wisely. That was true growing up in a very politically active family, was further developed by being involved in local politics in Media PA where I lived for a number of years, and has very much continued in the almost 36 years since I moved to Arlington VA where over the years and because of things like my writing here have given me access to politicians and political activists at local, state, and national levels. I see what is involved up close. I also have found myself influenced by the words of Sophrony in my activism— sometimes vigorous — on behalf of candidates whom I view as the less evil among the possible choices.
There are others I have greatly admired. Some I have known well. Two professors at Haverford come to mind, the late John Davison, greatly beloved as a teacher of music and a human being, and Roger Lane, the Bancroft Prize winning historian who has now been a part of those of us in the class of ‘67 for 55 years. Some I have only admired from afar, often because of specific words or actions: here the late Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson comes to mind. Some I have come to know personally by chance — Pat Derrien, wife of Hodding Carter, who was Jimmy Carter’s Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights comes to mind.
There are others not well known. I think of one of my fellow social studies teachers at Eleanor Roosevelt who retired before I did — Joan Magin was a tiny woman who had a huge presence in the lives of the students who passed through her classroom. I think of several I knew at Haverford or through alumni affairs who have had serious impact upon human rights — Vince Warren, Bob Swift, Billy O’Neill — or in some cases upon important international issues — Dan Serwer, whose son Adam is now a very important voice of sanity through his perceptive writing at The Atlantic.
Sometimes we can admire someone for one distinct act or set of words. It can be Mother Maria Skobtsova of Paris, now canonized by the Orthodox Church, who stepped forward to be executed in a concentration camp to save the life of another. It can be someone who offered a key set of words that directly shaped one’s own life. Here I think of John Erickson, whom when I was exploring going to seminary asked why I had to consider ordination, why couldn’t I just be a good green grocer, which connected me with similar words experienced by St. Anthony of the Desert. I think also of Kirk Scattergood, now an eye doctor in Green Bay WI, who was my student when I was a teacher intern at Moorestown Friends School in 1974, whom my wife found a way of reconnecting us, who thanked me for being the first adult to take his political ideas seriously.
So what is a hero? Certainly the willingness to surrender some of one’s ego to be of benefit to others even if it does not seem to directly benefit oneself.
It might be a person who is regularly kind to others. Here I think of the words of the current Dalai Lama: “My religion is kindness.”
Jesus offers the words that “No greater love hath a man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” We need to think of those words beyond the immediate sacrifice of life as in military combat, or as comes to mind that of Holocaust survivor Liviu Librescu, who held the door of his classroom at Virginia Tech so his students could get out the window and away from the murderous fusillade of bullets by the shooter that took his own life. It can be the person who gives up the opportunity for wealth or prestige to serve and benefit others. Here I would include Pat Tillman not because of how he died, but because of how he chose to give up a lucrative career for something he thought more important, even if I may disagree with that war of choice.
I am long past the notion of hero worship.
I will never give up the notion of offering admiration and praise for words and actions and lives lived I think worthy of notice and admiration and praise.
Do I believe in heroes and heroines? Yes and no. Yes, in that all humans are worthy of praise and admiration for what they do that is good, or even self-sacrificing and self-effacing even if for a cause or purpose with which I strongly disagree. No in the sense that such admiration and praise does not eliminate my willingness to be critical on other grounds.
Tomorrow we will formally remember those who served, perhas giving what Lincoln called “the last full measure of devotion” on behalf of this nation.
I am not uncritical of this nation, or of its heroes and heroines, perhaps because I know all too well its imperfections, historically and currently.
I criticize because I want it to be better than it is, no matter how good it is.
Paul of Tarsus tells us to hold fast that which is good.
I connect that with several concepts encountered during my spiritual wanderings, include the notion that the truest icon of an incarnate God is the individual human being — however seemingly flawed — that is before us. That leads me again to the notion of George Fox of walking gladly across the earth ANSWERING that of God in each person encountered.
Do I have heroes? Yes, for particular actions to be sure. Also for lives which as a whole inspire. Here I think of Dorothy Day of the Catholic Worker movement. I think of Fr. Louis of of the Abbey of Gethsemani in Bardstown KY, better known as the writer Thomas Merton.
The single action — there is a scene in Dostoevski’s Brothers Karamazov where Alyosha, the youngest and most religious brother is counseling a troubled woman and tells her a tale about someone who had been a great sinner whose guardian angel was pulling her out of hell for a single good deed — giving an onion to a hungry person — and that one act was going to be sufficient to save her until she tried tokick way those clinging to her as she was pulled up claiming selfishly “this is my onion.” The idea that a single onion could redeem us.
If we are to offer heroes to our young people, perhaps we should present examples that are not totally “heroic” — that is, examples of people who still have flaws and failures. To me, as a teacher of adolescents, that is far more meaningful.
As for me? I make no claims to being a hero. I have done some good things, and hope that as I continue with what is left of my life those good things will outweigh the many flaws and missteps and small-minded things I still do.
Just a few random thoughts about heroes and heroines.