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Thirteenth in my series of talks for the Unitarians -
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Once I lived the life of a millionaire,
Then I began to fall so low,
'Cause nobody knows you
When you get back on your feet again,
One of my favorite Bible parables from childhood was the one about the Good Samaritan. According to Luke, this story is used by Jesus to teach a lawyer about the "loving your neighbor as yourself" part of how to achieve salvation. Having been around a few lawyers, it isn't too surprising to me that he wanted a precise definition of "neighbor", or "fellow-man." Heaven forbid he should waste his efforts on someone undeserving! You all no doubt have a lot of opinions on salvation - what it means, whether it exists, do you need it, and such as that. I imagine those opinions run the gamut, from thinking of salvation as literally attaining the kingdom of heaven in the clouds, or becoming one with the universe in the Eastern religious sense, or perhaps as just a metaphor for achieving a high level of personal ethics and self-actualization. But let’s put the salvation part on hold, since many of us probably can agree that helping someone who is down and out and in need is probably a good thing for some reason or other. Let’s recount the parable of the Good Samaritan. Now keep in mind that Luke was a physician and a contemporary and friend of the apostle Paul, so they were traveling together, speaking and writing about 50 years after the time of Jesus. In this Biblical time, Samaritans were reviled. This ethnic group, living in northern Israel, was thought not quite good or moral enough by the good folks who ran things in Jerusalem. In fact, they were generally despised, and the word “Samaritan” was used as a slur. For a modern day equivalent, substitute any marginalized group you know of, or happen to belong to. If you want to feel the love, try joining one. For those who don't recall, can't find a Bible, don’t have a Bible, haven’t even browsed through a Gideon’s Bible in a hotel room, or whatever, here is the RSV version from Luke 10: [29] But he [the lawyer], desiring to justify himself, said to Jesus, "And who is my neighbor?" [30] Jesus replied, "A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, and he fell among robbers, who stripped him and beat him, and departed, leaving him half dead. [31] Now by chance a priest was going down that road; and when he saw him he passed by on the other side. [32] So likewise a Levite [a member of a respected class in Jerusalem], when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. [33] But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was; and when he saw him, he had compassion, [34] and went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. [35] And the next day he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper, saying, `Take care of him; and whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back.' [36] Which of these three, do you think, proved neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers?" [37] [The lawyer] said, "The one who showed mercy on him." And Jesus said to him, "Go and do likewise." One of the reasons adults recite parables, particularly to children, is to impress a moral lesson upon the subconscious. I don’t see a problem with this, except that the same technique can be used to impress any idea on a child, so it is up to the adult to choose what is, and what isn’t, moral. That part scares me a lot. Our heads do funny things with this subconscious imprinting. As we become adults, we learn through the school of hard knocks that other people have different ideas about morality. We soon learn that there really are some bad folks out there who have no hesitation about harming us in order to benefit themselves. This is when our mental conflict starts. Somehow, we have to resolve our imprinted sense of moral duty with our real-world experience into some decision-making process. In the parable, the Samaritan was assisting a clearly wounded man, so I’ve thought about how it might relate to scruffy looking people wanting a donation. Every city I’ve been in has its share of pan-handlers, buskers, vagrants, and beggars of all sorts. They always have, and I suppose they always will. I was in Austin in late November, on a rescue mission to see why my youngest daughter’s car was overheating, so she could make it home for Thanksgiving. As I was driving around, I noticed that at some intersections, there was a guy on every corner, usually with a sign of some sort, asking for money. Some would walk down the column of cars while we were stopped at the light, and look inquiringly into the window. I don’t know about the rest of you, but this makes me really uncomfortable. I think the root of my discomfort isn’t a fear that these men might hurt me; it is because I am torn by indecision. On the one hand, I want to help someone truly in need, based partly on that parable imprinted in my brain. On the other hand, I am concerned that these guys might be scammers, having found an easy way to make enough money to relax in the shade with a bottle of cheap wine, or whatever it is they do rather than work. So in the end, I keep my window shut, then feel guilty that I may have turned away someone who really needed a helping hand. The first time I saw a “Will Work For Food” sign, I thought it was really clever, but I always wondered if it was really true. M sort of ran an experiment once when she saw a guy holding one of these signs at the interstate off ramp near where we live. When we got home, she made a nice sack lunch, with a couple of sandwiches, a piece of fruit, and a soda, and took it to him. He seemed surprised, but also grateful. Cynic that I am, I asked her if he had offered to come and do some work for her, but she just gave me a disgusted look. I think the most money I ever gave to someone working the street was to a man and woman working the underground in London. They were audacious enough to jump on the subway car, take out a guitar, and belt out a ballad to us bored riders between stops, passing the hat just before the doors opened. The quality of their entertainment was better than some musicians I’ve paid to see, and I was impressed that they were acting in defiance of the strict ban on buskers riding with paying passengers, so I plunked a pound coin in the hat. That’s me, the big spender. Perhaps the widest variety of street people I’ve ever seen was in San Francisco. There were people who were obviously in a severely altered mental state, walking around and talking to nobody in particular. There were families sleeping on the sidewalk, and there were winos and junkies in the parks. I could look out our $120 per night hotel window and see people sleeping under newspapers in the atrium of a vacant building across the street. All this in spite of the fact that San Francisco probably has some of the most generous programs for helping the homeless of anywhere in the country. I had no doubt that there were a lot of really down-on-their-luck people there. M put a lot of quarters in a lot of cups as we walked around that beautiful city, going through some decision-making process of her own. You can get too carried away with this money-in-the-cup business though. One morning, on that same trip, we were walking to breakfast at the IHOP near our hotel, and there was a disheveled looking guy leaning against a fence, holding a Styrofoam cup. When M reached out to drop a quarter in his cup, he snatched it away indignantly. It was full of coffee, and he was apparently just waiting for work to start at a construction site nearby. She apologized. But enough about street folk. Giving someone a few coins isn’t too risky a decision for most of us, and it doesn’t require much personal sacrifice. I think a fair number of people, who have been smiled upon by fortune, are willing to do this, especially if they’re in a good mood. We have a tougher decision to make when we have to choose between helping someone and inconveniencing ourselves. There was a story in the news recently that illustrated perfectly the internal conflict we humans have when it comes to stopping to render aid when we’re in a hurry. This story sounds bizarre, yet I can imagine it happening. You may have already seen this: ORANGE CITY, Fla. (AP) — A mob of shoppers rushing for a sale on DVD players trampled the first woman in line and knocked her unconscious as they scrambled for the shelves at a Wal-Mart Supercenter. Patricia VanLester had her eye on a $29 DVD player, but when the siren blared at 6 a.m. Friday announcing the start to the post-Thanksgiving sale, the 41-year-old was knocked to the ground by the frenzy of shoppers behind her. "She got pushed down, and they walked over her like a herd of elephants," said VanLester's sister, Linda Ellzey. "I told them, 'Stop stepping on my sister! She's on the ground!'" Ellzey said some shoppers tried to help VanLester, and one employee helped Ellzey reach her sister, but most people just continued their rush for deals. "All they cared about was a stupid DVD player," she said Saturday. Paramedics called to the store found VanLester unconscious on top of a DVD player, surrounded by shoppers seemingly oblivious to her, said Mark O'Keefe, a spokesman for EVAC Ambulance. She was flown to Halifax Medical Center in Daytona Beach, where doctors told the family VanLester had a seizure after she was knocked down and would likely remain hospitalized through the weekend, Ellzey said. Hospital officials said Saturday they did not have any information on her condition. "She's all black and blue," Ellzey said. "Patty doesn't remember anything. She still can't believe it all happened." Ellzey said Wal-Mart officials called later Friday to ask about her sister, and the store apologized and offered to put a DVD player on hold for her. Wal-Mart Stores spokeswoman Karen Burk said she had never heard of such a melee during a sale. "We are very disappointed this happened," Burk said. "We want her to come back as a shopper." It isn’t hard to understand people being trampled in a panic during a fire or other emergency, but there are plenty of other examples of people in a mob behaving this way because getting something they want is more important than anything else at that moment. Once the mob is moving, it’s almost impossible to stop. Thankfully, there are usually a few people in any crowd who are able to put aside their own needs long enough to stop and render aid, as they did in this case, but like the priest and the Levite in the parable, most are still content to walk on by. When I think about really putting yourself out to help somebody, like the Good Samaritan did, I think about the times I’ve seen people stranded on the side of the road. I’m ashamed to say that my record here is spotty. Over the years, I’ve stopped a few times to assist when it was obvious that a wreck had just occurred, or if it was a woman, or something else led me to conclude that it would be safe for me; that my personal risk would be low. But when I’ve seen a man walking alone from a stalled car, even if he had a gas can in his hand, I’ve usually been unwilling to take the risk, even though I doubt that many criminals use this as a carjacking technique. When it has been my car that has broken down, or I needed a ride for some other reason, I’ve wished I could somehow let the passing cars know that I’m one of the “good people” and would really appreciate the help. But I haven’t ever come up with any visual signal that works. I desperately needed a ride from Silverton to Durango some years ago, when I had hiked out of the southwestern Colorado wilderness a day early on account of an abscessed tooth. I was running a fever and had long since eaten all the aspirin we had, and the pain was intense. Having been in-country for a week, I imagine I was pretty nasty looking as I started walking down the road with my pack on my back and my thumb out. I kept thinking that surely nobody would suspect a backpacker of nefarious intent. But the big motor homes and late model cars just whizzed on by. I was near delirium when a skinny guy in what must have been the last, beat-up hippie van in Colorado stopped, and he said those three magic words, “Need a lift?” Fortunately, there are some people in this world who are willing to take more risk than me. Back in mid-September, on a sunny, warm Sunday morning I was playing hooky from attending the Fellowship over here. M and I were on the road, towing a boat to the lake, like a few other people celebrating such a glorious day. When we were only a couple of miles from the boat launch the car lurched suddenly. I looked in the rear view mirror just in time to see the passenger side trailer wheel wobble at an impossible angle, then come completely off and roll right on by us in the ditch. Since the boat weighs 2000 pounds, that side of the trailer banged down hard on the pavement and made an awful scraping sound. My reactions are pretty good in situations like this, something I attribute to many years of driving a go-kart as wildly as possible when I was a hyperactive kid. Within a split second, I began braking to a halt while moving gently off to the side, plowing up the soft dirt and grass with the bare spindle. In spite of an annual bearing checkup and an occasional greasing, it still happens. Maybe my mechanical engineer friends could figure out what I'm doing wrong, but I can't. I do know that most people who tow things have similar stories. They say, “Oh yeah, that happened to us a while back.” They set out to have a good time, and then literally had the wheels come off. That must be where the expression comes from. Being stranded on the road isn’t the best thing, but it is something you can prepare for to some extent. We carry spare bearings, a spare wheel and tire, tools, and a cell phone these days when pulling a trailer, based on past experience. So, being a good working team as we are, M and I set about repairing the trailer bearings there on the side of the highway. No use letting a little challenge spoil that still-glorious day. We were still getting things out of the car to get started when a man and his wife pulled up behind us in a pickup truck, dressed for church. He leaned out and asked if we had a cell phone to call for help. We thanked him for stopping, assured him we did, and they drove on their way. As we were jacking up the trailer, a big black woman in a little white sub-compact car stopped on the other side of the road and yelled at us to see if we needed help. We yelled back that we had it under control, but thanks anyway. All that dragging of the hub through the dirt had made some fire ants hopping mad and they found us quickly. We really didn't mean to destroy their homes - it was purely an accident, but they didn’t know or care. In between brushing off the little critters, we finally got the trailer jacked up and the hub off. It occurred to me as I looked at the ruined bearing that we didn't have any grease for the new bearing, and we needed paper towels and needed some way to deal with the ants. So, we unhooked the trailer and I headed off down the road a couple of miles to a little store to get the supplies while M kept the boat company. When I got back, our first move was to unleash a weapon of mass destruction on the ants so we could work in peace. Yes, we used chemical warfare. They never had a chance. We had just got started working again when a pickup truck pulled up behind us and a man got out to ask if he could help. He was in country church clothes – nice clean blue jeans and a shirt with a collar. When he saw what we were doing, he came over and jumped right in, working with us to get the old bearing races off. He got a can of gasoline off of his truck to wash the grease and metal shavings off the spindle and hub while I held them over the grass. He and I worked together to pack the spare bearings with grease, and they went on with no problem. In 30 minutes or so, we had the hub back on, with the retainer nut adjusted and pinned in place. The man went back to his truck and returned with a jug of Go-Jo and helped me get the grease off of my hands. When we were both cleaned up, he asked if we could take it from there. We thanked him for his help, he wished us a good afternoon of boating, and we were soon all on our way again. While we were all working together there and talking, the man had told us he was a local resident who worked at this and that to make ends meet, but there wasn’t a lot of work to be had these days. He certainly was not a high flier, or wealthy, or socially elite. He was just a good, decent, honorable man. When I think of other times I've been stranded in a car for some reason, my experience has been the same. When someone has stopped to offer help, they have never been high on the socio-economic scale. In fact, it has been just the opposite. I've scratched my head about this observation a bit. How many of us take the time to stop and help a neighbor in distress? I figure at least 30 cars passed by while we were toiling there, and three stopped. That's about 10 percent – a high number I attribute to being in a very rural area. In the parable from Luke, the "higher-class" people were the ones who went on by, not wanting to get involved. It was the one who was humble and unpretentious who gave freely of his time and possessions. It wasn’t too long after the boat trailer adventure that I was on a job interview in West Virginia, and an opportunity arose for me to help someone else. There was at least a part of me that wondered if I was being tested. I had just driven into Charleston, the state capital, and had stopped at a gas station at a busy intersection on my way to the airport around noon. A 20-ish man came up to the rent car as I was refilling it and he began speaking to me. Surprised, I turned to look and saw his wild eyes as he began gesturing rapidly and pleading with me to give him a ride to where he could "get his medicine", somewhere near the airport. The first thing that popped into my mind was that I owed someone a favor after the boat trailer incident, and maybe this was my opportunity to repay it. I told him maybe I could help, but after a minute or so, another man came out of the store and stood by the car, ready to get in the back seat. I turned to look at him and said, "Who are you?" "Oh, I'm with him," he said. Worried for my safety now, I raised my hands, palms out, and said, "Deal's off guys. No rides." About this time, the store attendant, a bearded, burly man came out and stood nearby watching, ready to lend assistance if needed. As the wild-eyed man kept pleading, he finally said, "Leave the lady alone and get out of here." The two men looked at one another and finally walked away, the first one still very animated and still talking about getting his medicine. The attendant went back inside, then said over the speaker at the pumps, "Sorry about that ma'am." I went inside to get a receipt and to thank the man for coming to my aid. It turned out the first man was asking him where the methadone clinic was before he came out to my car. I thanked him again for the help, and he said he was glad to do it. And he was going to call the cops if the guy came back. I was haunted by the methadone man the whole way back home. In fact I still think about him occasionally, and when I do, I still see those wild, pleading eyes. It was as if they were shouting to me, “Please, help me.” The real help that man needed was no doubt a lot more than a ride to get his next fix, but you have to start somewhere, and I just couldn’t risk my safety. I’ve never been accused of being a bleeding heart, one who obsesses over the misfortunes of others. And I’d like to believe in karma, where we get repaid eventually for what we give or take, be it good or bad, but I’ve seen too many folks who have yet to receive their just reward to be entirely convinced. I’ve always thought we are each responsible for our own lives, and that another person’s bad decisions are not my responsibility, just as my bad decisions are not their responsibility. But there was something about that encounter in Charleston that softened my position a little. Maybe it was because of having recently come through a difficult spot of my own that I could consider that each person’s life is full of complicated twists and turns, and there really are people who are down on their luck through no fault of their own. And even a bad decision or two shouldn’t sentence a fellow human to a life of misery. Maybe I could finally picture myself walking in the methadone man’s shoes. Maybe I’ll be more willing to take the risk of lending a helping hand next time.
dm 1/11/2004 |
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Last Update 1/11/04 |