christianmystics.com

"We can't do great things in this life . . . We can only do small things with great love."

Mother Theresa

 

If you have enough children or live long enough, you attend high school graduation ceremonies. In fact, I can remember the first stageplay I ever saw -- "You Can't Take It With You" by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart. The father in the play spends his time going to graduation ceremonies at the nearby college for entertainment and edification.

When I remember my own graduation, it wasn't all that different than the ones I attend for my children. Someone steps up and gives a stirring speech in which he or she tells us that great things are to come, that we have the power to do whatever we want to do. We can, we are told, accomplish great things.

For me, the great thing was to write the books that would support me or play the music that would make me well known and, well, financially comfortable. That didn't happen. Whenever I saw or heard someone who had "made it" saying, "Well, this kind of success really is not that important ..." I automatically thought, "Yeah, well, you can say that because you're successful!"

Yet John Lennon's comment rings true - "Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." Add to that some wise person who once noted, "If you want to make God laugh, tell God your plans."

In addition, it becomes more obvious that great things aren't done as much as they happen -- sometimes not because of people, but in spite of them. Few people set out to do a "great thing" and accomplish it because the truly great things happen without the ego. People on the brink of physical tragedy are rescued by others who completely overturn the "law of survival" that we are allegedly saddled with. Why does that happen?

It is, I think, because in moments of great stress and trouble these heroes have a breakthrough -- they sense that underneath it all we are interdependent, not independent, that we are all part of, shall we say, the same kingdom.

Great things may or may not be possible, but the bucket can fill drop by drop. In Jesus' teachings, he sat near the treasury and saw a widow follow a group of wealthy people who had poured quite a bit of money in, probably making a large, clanking racket designed to catch everyone's attention. But we must ask, however, how did the widow's two coins sound to God, the sounds of perhaps what we could consider a penny? Jesus answers by saying, "This woman has given more."

The kingdom of heaven has rules (or qualities, if you prefer), but they are rules so completely foreign to our normal way of doing business that they seem like they were written by the Marx Brothers rather than a sober, somber judge who knows law. To Jesus, a penny is more than a sack of money because it is the intent, not the action; the proportion we give rather than the size and flashiness of the deed itself.

We cannot decide to get up this morning and go do a great deed. In the face of it, the hunger of the poor, the hopelessness of the ill and the great journey we still feel incomplete within ourselves will overwhelm and defeat us. Mother Theresa's solution is simple. You don't go out with the thought that today you will cure all the lepers of our society -- those who, through no fault of their own -- are outcasts living on the very margins of the world's awareness.

Given that bleak picture, I suspect that even Mother Theresa would have opted to stay in bed. But her powerful testimony is captured in the simplicity -- It wasn't a question of ALL of the people who needed help, but of the one who stood in front of her at that moment.

Jesus did not say, "All the poor are like me." Instead, he said over and over again that whatever you do to that one person, you do to him. His examples were specific: "If someone asks you to walk a mile, then walk two with that person. If someone asks for a shirt, give that person your coat as well." There are no blanket rules to apply to faceless categories of tragic characters, but rather one directive to deal one-on-one with whomever has crossed into our life at that particular moment. It is, to make a practical thing of it, the difference between writing a check for charity and handing the food to the hungry person from your place behind a soup kitchen counter.

This is the heart of the quote -- we are not required to do a great thing in life, but many, many small things, each done with love. This doesn't just apply to what we might think of as the obviously humanitarian work of someone like a Mother Theresa or an Albert Schweitzer. Just as deeply, it is a call to pay attention in our day-to-day existence and our encounters with other people.

After all, if there is the secret of a good relationship it is not that one should only do something large now and then -- buying a new car as a gift, making certain one's house will cause great envy among friends. The secret is the small things -- the special meal that he likes. Her favorite author's new book that you just happened to see today. A child's need to have a kind word -- just a word -- at a certain moment.

We are presented with a hundred opportunities a day to act -- the question is, do we? Is the best we can hope for, as the classic physician's directive, "at least do no harm?"

We all dreamed of having accomplished something lasting, something tangible that we could point to. But they don't happen like that -- "It was at THAT moment when I wrote THAT check for THAT donation that I was great."

I remember a very successful architect who served on the Board of Directors of a nonprofit organization where I was Director. Now and then when he saw something about me in the newspaper, he'd take time to clip it and send it with a short note. My favorite, however, was the birthday note I received one year -- and how did he know it was my birthday? Some small bit of research, perhaps, not quite the same thing as researching a cure for the cold. But in one card he wrote, "If you didn't get everything you wanted, think of all the things you didn't want that you didn't get."