Be the Change: What Difference can One Person Make?
Introduction
I am often told that a Catholic priest should be more like a shepherd who leads the flock to green pastures not like an administrator who runs a parish, developing plans and doing fundraising events. But, as an economics major before entering the seminary, I was always interested in running business. And then after coming to the United States and learning the strengths and challenges of the church in this country, I have grown to take sides, believing it is the need of the times for a priest to be a capable nonprofit administrator.
For the first reading assignment in Peter Druckers’ book, I was deeply inspired by the mission of nonprofit administration. Drucker talks about a negative meaning of the term “non-profit,” which tells us only what the institutions are not. But at least it shows that they have something in common and they do something very differently from business. The book continues that its main “product” is a changed human being and the non-profit institutions are human-change agents. In other words, the non-profit organization brings about a change in individuals and in society. It was an eye-opening moment.
Having absorbed that, the horizon of my understanding of nonprofit administration has soared high. Anyone who contributes to change people and the society is an apprentice of nonprofit administrators. And the word “entrepreneur,” which I had treasured in college, came alive. It was the time that Dr. Wertheim mentioned a book called “Three Cups of Tea” in the class. The author Greg Mortenson was in town, sharing his mission to build schools in Afghanistan and Pakistan. When I heard that, I immediately knew that he was the one who had changed the world. So I picked up the book and found three more individuals who dared to challenge the world to be changed by their dedication to the abducted children in Uganda, the refugees of East Africa and even the Redwoods in California. Their products are an educated girl, a returned boy, a refugee who finds hope and a saved tree; all is a change.
How to be a change
There is a Korean phrase from a Chinese tale: 우공이산 (愚公移山, Uh-Gong-EE-San). Its literal meaning is that an unwise man moves mountain. The story is about an old man who decided to do something good for the village before his death. He noticed that two big mountains block the village from outside and the villagers were isolated. So he decided to move the mountains with his family. They started digging and moving parts of the mountains to the near sea. People laughed at his stupidity, but he said, “If I could not finish this, my son will follow me. If he couldn’t, my grandson will. I am sure we will move the mountains someday.” His stubborn will was spread out and the Lord of heaven finally heard it. He praised the unwise man’s determination to help others and moved the mountains for him.
Changing the world is like moving mountain. It takes a tremendous time and an astronomical effort because to change hearts is to change the DNA. So the reality is that many have a good will, but quite a few are not strong enough to endure the hardships to experience the change. Greg Mortenson had to spend ten years to see the first educated woman become an independent lady who wants to pursue the medical study; Fr. Donald Dunson visits Uganda every summer since 2001 to bring unconditional love to the thousand children who have been kidnapped from their families and thrown into bloody guerilla warfare; Fr. James Martin SJ had spend two years in Kenya to live with the refugees and bring hope to them; Julia Butterfly Hill had sat for 738 days on a two-hundred-foot-tall Redwood tree called Luna and saved it and created a 200-foot buffer zone into perpetuity. These people are certainly heroes who changed themselves first to ask others to follow them, but they are the most common people as well because their ability is simply to appear, speak and act. They have seen the stars because it was dark enough for them.
Moral responsibility
Pope John Paul II says, “Solidarity is not a feeling of vague compassion or shallow distress at the misfortunes of so many people, both near and far. On the contrary, it is a firm and persevering determination to commit oneself to the common good; that is to say to the good of all and of each individual, because we are all really responsible for all.” Although the fates of entrepreneurs vary, one commonality would be that they are peculiarly led to the different—and somewhat initially uncomfortable—world and find themselves among the vulnerable—children, refugees and trees. Then their moral responsibility is so acute that it guides them to a deep human connection. One day a rabbi asks his pupils how they know the day is coming. One says, “When I am able to figure out a dog from sheep.” The rabbi says no. Another says, “When I am able to distinguish people from trees.” The rabbi says no. He answers, “We know the day is imminent by being able to look at the eyes of people and understand that these are the eyes of my brothers and sisters.” When Mortenson saw eighty-two children kneeling on the frosty ground in the open area of K2, when Fr. Dunson witnessed more than thirty thousand children in northern Uganda have been kidnapped and forced to become children soldiers, when Fr. Martin was asked to help out the refugees of East Africa who struggled with basic human needs, when Julia Butterfly encountered the thousand-year-old trees falling in moments with chain saws, it was impossible for them to turn away from the suffering and remain true to their own best self. They understood the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.
One human family with cultural difference
The book “Three Cups of Tea” attracted me at first because it seemed to be a part of my heritage. I drink tea everyday, appreciating the time in a slow pace with myself or with others. From my culture, I knew what it meant having three cups of tea before going into any business. But most Westerners who value a fast-pace society do not know it. So an indigenous man Haji Ali taught Mortenson, “The first time you share tea with a Balti, you are a stranger. The second time you take tea, you are an honored guest. The third time you share a cup of tea, you become family, and for our family, we are prepared to do anything, even die.” By sharing three cups of tea, Mortenson realized, although Haji Ali was uneducated, the illiterate man was the wisest man he has ever met. Likewise, Fr. Dunson, Fr. Martin and even Julia Butterfly have learned different ways of living in which they are able to move beyond themselves to be a part of one human family. St. Paul the apostle explains this in an eloquent way, “As a body is one though it has many parts, and all the parts of the body, though many, are one body. So there may be no division in the body, but that the parts may have the same concern for one another. If one part suffers, all the parts suffer with it; if the one part is honored, all the parts share its joy” (Cf. 1 Cor. 12:12-26). Thus, these individuals are open to suffer with the vulnerable and to share their joy as one human family.
About the authors
It has been a great fortune for me to get to know Fr. Dunson, a faculty at St. Mary Seminary in Cleveland, who teaches moral theology, ethics and social justice. I have not only been greatly influenced by his teachings, but also by he himself. During the semester, every Wednesday he goes to Westside Catholic Center in Cleveland to serve meals for the homeless. And since 2001 he spends every summer in Africa, extensively writing about the children who were abducted by the insurgent group called LRA—Lord Resistance Army—and forced to be killing machines. When I attended his presentation at the seminary and listened to the stories in the class, my rationality was not able to grasp the horrific evil that has afflicted the most vulnerable: children. So I have joined Fr. Dunson as a donor to St. Kizito Scholarship Fund that he established to help the rescued boys by providing a safe shelter, counseling and education. When I read Fr. Dunson’s second book “Child, Victim, Soldier,” my intimate relationship with Fr. Dunson speaks enough of the credibility of the author.
For Mortenson, my one regret was to miss his talk at Case Western. If I knew earlier, I would have gone. But my reading of his book tells me who he is—a six-foot four and 210 pound man, a one time football player in college and a K2 climber, but more importantly he has a huge heart to embrace the uneducated children, especially the girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is such a human who keeps his promise to build a school in Korphe, an unknown village under K2, despite he had nothing but compassion for them.
I am familiar with Fr. James Martin SJ who writes for the magazine America as an editor that I subscribe. So I know his spiritual journey with the poor is ongoing, which tells me his credibility. For Julia Butterfly Hill, I do not know much about her besides the book. But certainly her book has challenged me to change my perspective that a mere creature like a tree would be a mirror through which we reveal how we value life. In the middle of reading, I found myself praying with her for the person who so viciously attacked Luna the Redwood that was nearly cut through after the agreement settled. She acknowledged the pain and rage of the person and the world. She asked how else could they be so motivated to attack something that cannot defend itself; that cannot run away. She knew that whoever performed this horrid act needed healing as well for he or she must be riddled with profound hatred and anger for the world.
The four authors have a specific intention for the advocacy of education of the girls in Afghanistan and Pakistan, of the children’s rights in Uganda, of the refugees’ needs in Kenya and of the preservation of the monumental trees in California. Their voices are much louder than any experts because they put themselves in the others’ shoes and walk extra miles. They have such compassion to suffer with others. Their messages have been embodied in their words and deeds, which is stronger than any advocacy. They have also shown the examples that concrete action is the best way to respond to the crises in building schools and shelters, serving ideas and skills, and sitting on the tree. In their writings, they have found a way to change the world, provoking “If a picture is worth a thousand words, then an action is worth a thousand pictures.”
These books certainly have inspiring literacy quality by making readers uncomfortable in a way that they are led to ponder if their hearts change and then they take action. At the same time, their goals are unsophisticated because the authors advocate their mission in the same fashion: one school, one child, one refugee and one tree at a time. So their messages are challenging as well as inspiring because if we truly want a legacy of peace for our children, our brothers and sisters, including animals and plants, we need to understand that this is a war that will ultimately be won with books, rice and trees, not with bombs, displacement, and blind development.
Conclusion
Gandhi says, “Be the change you wish to see in the world.” It has been a joy as well as a challenge to read and to find out what the four teachers have brought about in the world by becoming the changes. Their legacies are not only promoting peace and justice, but also bridging the troubled world. When a Jewish boy in New York donated his bar mitzvah money to help Muslim girls in Afghanistan, I see that it is a way we need to work to plant the seeds of peace and hope. We are one human family, whatever our national, racial, ethnic, economic or ideological differences; we are the keepers of our brothers and sisters, wherever we live. And now it is crystal clear to me more than ever after accompanying the four different sojourners with one destination—one human family—that our value as people is not in our stock portfolios and bank accounts, but in the legacies we leave behind as a compassionate neighbor.
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3.26 Copyright (C) 2008 Compojoom.com / Copyright (C) 2007 Alain Georgette / Copyright (C) 2006 Frantisek Hliva. All rights reserved."
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