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Thank you, and good morning, ladies and gentlemen, volunteers and supports
of the United Way of Laredo. As I look back over the names of persons who have
in the past decade spoken at the annual kick-off breakfast, I am both humbled
and honored to have been invited to speak. My own vivid memory of United Way
reaches back to the early and middle ‘70's when my father was United Way
president. I well remember those little family discussions about United Way,
and most of all, his anxiety about whether or not the goal could ever be reached?
Would it be possible to raise as much as $150,000? We were all truly worried.
And now, today, Jorge, you will succeed in bringing in almost 1.5 million dollars.
The horrendous
tragedy of this week pounds our hearts, our minds, and our conscience with the
age-old question: Why are our resources, our talents, our opportunities, and
even our chances at life itself so unevenly divided, so whimsically offered to
some, cruelly denied to others? Why were some Americans suddenly thrust into
a valley of pain and death? Why wer none of us among those unexpectedly caught
and required to render up their lives? These events only illustrate once again
that the world is for some a glorious blessing, for others a daily struggle to
rescue human dignity from beneath a crushing load of privation and pain. For
some, one terrible moment awaits in wich without warning life is finished.
Our holy
books take on this dilemma without resolving it. The Jewish answer, articulated
in the Book of Job, comes as God responds to Job’s demand to know. God
answers his creature: Who are you to ask me? Where were you when I created the
heavens? My ways are higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.
The Christian answer to the question of Why? also comes in the form of a response,
not a solution. Several years ago, Pope John Paul II, while visiting in this
country, during a stay in San Francisco, asked to meet with victims of AIDS.
A friends of ours, of Patricia’s and of mine, was with his party and she
related how all were in suspense as they Holy Father approached these striken
men. Would he remind them that the Church condemns the lifestyle that in all
probability caused their suffering? His words were simple and direct: “I
have but one message for you: God loves you absolutely and forever.”
But
it should not be necessary for us Laredoans to hear of national tragedies to
remember that life can be unfair and unkind. No more than a 10-minute drive from
this comfortable ballroom and this warm food, we know live people who will struggle
today to satisfy basic human needs. The beginning of the United Way’s annual
campaign is a fine time to reflect for a moment on the oldest of all human dilemmas:
how can we understand and then how can we respond to the vast inequities, the
uneven distribution of resources among the human family? What part, if any, of
life’s bounty rightfully belongs to any of us?
The great
teacher-scholar, Mortimer J. Adler, in a discussion of how to approach this ethical
dilemma, distinguishes between our needs and our wants. I NEED oxygen, food,
clothing, shelter, rest, relief from pain, love. And I think we would all agree
that among the many advances of modern society, we, for the first time in human
history, would another need: a university experience, for every child. At the
same time as I work to secure those needs, I want any number of other things.
I want to live a long life, or to have ample material blessings, or be admired
by those who know me, or to enjoy successful children. But those are wants, not
needs. No one would dispute that these are very good wants, but they are not
needs. What we want may or may not even be good for us or for our fellow human
beings.
A friend
of mine recently made me understand about needs and wants. Having seen an announcement
of his only daughter’s upcoming marriage, I congratulated him. “Yes,” he
said. “She’s going to get married.” “What about the boy?” I
asked. “What is he like? What are his plans?” “Oh,” my
friend replied, “he’s not too interested in schooling and doesn’t
have any clear career goals in mind. What he really likes is his little ole pickup.” Sensing
that this wasn’t going quite as I had expected, I tried to raise the conversation
to a higher and more significant plane. “Well,” I asked, “does
he love your daughter?” “Oh, my, yes, he love her more than anything
else in this world,” my friend replied. “Well, then,” I said, “you
couldn’t ask for more than that.” “Oh, yes, I could,” my
friend shot back. “I could ask for a whole lot more, in every direction!”
Adler
demonstrates his point very clearly: every human being, without exception, is
entitled to have his or her needs met. To separate needs from wants in the history
of human relationships, what is necessary for life, and what is desired but certainly
not required—this is the central preoccupation of philosophers and social
historians. What do we need to live, and what do we want to live? How much of
what we pursue is truly necessary, and how much is simply something we want?
And finally, the ultimate morale question: are we responsible to help our fellow
humans secure either their needs or their wants?
The United
Way of Laredo exists because the citizens of this city believe that it is the
responsibility of us all to help every human being secure his or her needs. If
we look over the list of organizations included among this year’s beneficiaries,
the list of human needs those organizations satisfy is a rather short one: food,
health care, rehabilitation after disease or accident, shelter for children,
educational opportunities, clothing, a safe environment for young people to develop
social and physical skills, responsible parenting.
To fulfill
United Way’s mission, we must make gifts—our time, our resources,
our energy. But the full meaning of our work for United Way goes far beyond assuring
ourselves that we “Choose to Care,” that we strive to satisfy the
needs of our fellow human beings. Two of life’s greatest mysteries concern
the act of giving: first, we can never know the full power or reach of a human
gift. Second, we can never be sure to whom it is we give the gift. To illustrate
the unexpected power of even a meager gift, Dostoyevsky in his great novel, “The
Brothers Karamazov” tells the following tale: “Once upon a time there
was a peasant woman and a very wicked woman she was. And she died and did not
leave a single good deed behind. The devils caught her and plunged her into a
lake of fire. So her guardian angel stood and wondered what good deed of hers
he could remember to tell to God: ‘she once pulled up an onion in her garden,’,
said he, ‘and gave it to a beggar woman.’ And God answered: ‘You
take that onion the, hold it out to her in the lake, and let her take hold and
be pulled out. And if you can pull her out of the lake, let her come to Paradise,
but if the onion breaks, then the woman must stay where she is.’ The angel
ran to the woman and held out the onion to her: ‘Come,’ he said, ‘catch
hold and I’ll pull you out.’ And he began cautiously pulling her
out. He had just pulled her free of the fire when the other sinners in the lake,
seeing how she was being drawn out, began catching hold of her so as to be pulled
out with her. But she was a very wicked woman and she began kicking them. ‘I’m
to be pulled out, not you. It’s my onion, not yours.’ And soon as
she said that, the onion broke. And the woman fell into the lake and she is burning
there to this day.” The onion would have saved the old woman had the gift
been genuine. But she tried to take it back, to assert violently where the onion
had come from , and the power of the gift was broken.
Second,
we never know to whom we are giving our gifts, or what opportunity a gift given
to another might offer us, the giver. In the Middle Ages, people believed that
angels went about, disguised, checking up on their human charges, offering opportunities
for us to show or to deny our humanity as we extend or withhold a warm hand,
an embrace, a gift. Emily Dickinson immortalized this mystery, the possibility
that when we least expect it, the needy person who suddenly enters our lives
offers us the opportunity to become fully human as we reach out to help. Emily
Dickinson wonders if God’s angels, “shining courtiers,” she
calls them, might not walk about among us, asking for our help, knowing that
our response will reveal who and what we are. They smile now when they ask, and
later will smile when we stand, not on our floor, but on theirs.
In
rags mysterious as these
The
shining Courtiers go—
Veiling
the purple and the plumes—
Veiling
the ermine so.
Smiling,
as they ask an alms—
At
some imposing door!
Smiling
when we walk barefoot
Upon
their golden floor!
The face of each human being is our own, the face of all humanity.
We in
America are living out what may be history’s most spectacular experiment.
Can diverse people, from every culture, race, ethnic group, and language under
the sun come together to form one durable, humane society? During the sad events
of the last week, I am sure many of you have thought of previous moments in our
collective experience, moments that have shaken our sense of who we are or of
what life should be: Pearl Harbor, the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Or of
Robert Kennedy. Or of Martin Luther King, Jr. And further back, the sinking of
the Lusitania, a ceremony on a battle field at Gettysburg. If the great leaders
of our nation’s past were with us today, would they tell us that the American
experiment is an easy one: George Washington, James Madison, Abraham Lincoln,
Clara Barton, Frederick Douglass, Juan Seguín, Jane Addams, Woodrow Wilson,
Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, Lyndon Johnson.
This
American experiment has always been a precarious one, and I am sure each of you
can remember a moment in our history when the city set on a hill seemed destined
to fall. Today, I leave you recalling another frightful scene in our history,
another moment of uncertainty and violence, of resistence and of strength. A
young man stands upon the deck of an enemy vessel, watching as that enemy pounds
his homeland, wondering if this bombardment might not end his way of life. The
poem he composed as he watches asks a frightening question: What has happened
in the night? When the light comes, will my country still be visible? Is the
flag still there?
The story
comes to us in a poem of four stanzas. We sing only the first, perhaps not noticing
that this first verse ends with uncertainty, fear, a question. Will we survive?
The fourth stanza answers with a loud “Yes!” We have and we will.
Listen as I read for the question, and then the answer:
Oh,
say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light,
What
so proudly we hailed at the twilights’s last gleaming?
Whose
broad stripes and bright stars, thro’ the perilous fight,
O’er
the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming?
And
the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave
proof thro’ the night that our flag was still there.
Oh,
say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er
the land of the free, and the home of the brave?
Oh,
thus be it ever when free men shall stand
Between
their loved homes and war’s desolation;
Blest
with victory and peace, may the Heav’n rescued land
Praise
the Pow’r that hath made and preserves us a nation!
Then
conquer we must, when our cause it is just;
And
this be our motto: “In God is our trust.”
And
the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er
the land of the free, and the home of the brave.
We in
American will bind up the wounded, comforted the bereaved, honor the dead, and
live up to our calling. And today, in Laredo, we will, through the United Way,
ensure that the American dream includes the basic, human needs of all our people.
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