​HUMAN POTENTIAL

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
There were no formerly heroic times, and there was no formerly pure generation. It is a weakening and discoloring idea that rustic people knew God personally once upon a time – or even knew selflessness or courage or literature – but that it is too late for us…In any instant the sacred may wipe you with its finger…In any instant you may avail yourself of the power to love your enemies, to accept failure, slander, or the grief of loss, or to endure torture.      Annie Dillard
 
Nelson Mandela, Natan Sharansky, Wang Weilin, Ieshia Evans, Annette Goodyear.  The names may or may not be familiar at first glance, but the reasons you should know them most certainly resonate.  Within your lifetime, these individuals made the times we live in heroic by their actions.  They are, in retrospect, remarkable, even exceptional individuals.  In other times and other circumstances, they may have been ordinary and unnoticed.  But, as Annie Dillard says, they were wiped by the finger of the sacred.
 
They are products of our generation – not a pure cohort, certainly not rustic, and positively not an iteration of the human family that can claim to know God personally.  At a moment in the natural course of their lives, each one responded to an opportunity that presented itself and refused to be overwhelmed by it.  It was a choice, not an inevitability.  Some went on to build on that moment and others disappeared into ordinariness.
 
I admit to enjoying the achievements of other people.  I find them inspiring.  It prompted me to create The Sixty Fund, which irregularly awards a nice letter, a home-printed certificate and a small check (really small) to people I notice who display courage, compassion, wisdom, or generosity that might otherwise go unnoticed.  Actually, to say I created it is not 100% accurate; my family gave The Sixty Fund to me as a 60th birthday gift, and it has turned into one of the best things I do. I have the chance to acknowledge people who were wiped by the finger of the sacred.
 
Some of their stories will be told for generations while others will be discarded with the newspapers and expired online links that brought them to attention.  But what is correct is that not a one of them – just like you and me – was born to be a hero.  They were presented with an opportunity and found themselves without a real choice of how to act if they wanted to do the right thing.  Countless others have faced similar chances.  Some rose to the occasion and others responded to different impulses.
 
A debate among rabbis took place many hundred years ago about Noah the ark-builder.  The Bible calls him a righteous man “in his generation.”  Was he righteous only in comparison to the general wickedness of his society, or would he have been considered righteous even among a community of admirable people?  That is, in “his” generation or in “any” generation?
 
The debate is unresolved, but the question is more important than the answer.  In righteous times, Noah’s heroics would have been unnecessary.  He would have been an ordinary man, even if he were among the righteous.  Circumstances even in those allegedly pure and rustic times were what produced heroes who expressed selflessness or courage or literature. Writ large or small, you yourself have been that person when you otherwise had no choice – the comforting arms for a bereaved companion, the rebuke to a bully, the acceptance of responsibility for a hurtful mistake, the profession of love to a lonely friend, the endurance to power through pain – if you wanted to do the right thing.  Your action was biblical, epic, legendary, emulable.  It was not dependent on reportage.
 
So many stories and teachings we call holy attain that status because they are distant and old.  Did the people who lived them recognize their significance as they occurred?  Maybe.  More likely, no matter how close they felt to revelation or inspiration or holiness or achievement, they still fell short of their ancestors who lived in a formerly pure generation and more rustic times.  They believed that the noise of contemporary society drowned out the primal connections to nature and creation that the Elders knew in their bones.  They were as wrong then as we are now. 
 
Our lives attest to the potential for greatness.  Especially in complicated times, simple survival is heroic.  If our forebearers beat a path for freedom across the wilderness on any continent, then we and our descendants are no less the successful pioneers for navigating asphalt and technology.  And if, when presented with a chance to rise even above the extraordinary fact of living every day, we do so by reflex or intent, then we owe it to ourselves and those insecure ancestors to acknowledge and give thanks for having been, in that instant, wiped with the finger of the sacred.

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