Ordinary People
Posted by Rebecca Teti in Faith on Tuesday, May 25, 2010 10:30 AM
I wonder what you think of this short essay on everyday people.
It began as a comment on a blog post, but left such an impression on the blogger that he separated it into its own post.
In it, a manager reflects on his work force, and finds that he admires the people around him deeply, though each lives with a serious cross or dysfunction.
One example:
“I have one Moslem woman who is the sole support of her family because her husband suffers from a heart condition. He had a transplant done a few years ago but experiences reoccurring problems with it and is in and out of the hospital at least 3 times a year. She works a lot of overtime and is trustworthy, loyal and does excellent work. She never complains about anything.”
And another:
“I have another lady whose family has among its members a couple of inmates in a maximum security prison in this state. She divorced a husband who used to beat her up when the mood (and booze/drugs) suited him. She has raised two children into their late teens. Neither one is a problem child and both aspire to college. She is not highly educated and used to be something of a goof off but has come, in recent years, to make herself into a very competent individual who is asked, often, to unravel complex issues with our customers.”
There are several other examples, and they lead him to this conclusion:
What I find far more often than not is that people, ordinary people, are in fact often rather heroic. They face problems and situations that are damned tough and they cope as well as they can and they try to do their best. And often they succeed. They make bad decisions and deal with the consequences and go on with their lives. Just like the rest of us. So when someone has interests or hobbies that I think of as odd or even a bit crazy I don’t much mind it. I am now old enough to recognize that I am just as much a goofball as anyone else on this benighted planet and I find that, except for extreme cases of depravity or idiocy, I am not prepared to dismiss my fellows as loons or cases of demonic possession.
I’ve been thinking about this fellow’s reflections and am attracted to the kindness, good will and respect he has for the people he comes in contact with. It’s striking because it’s so much in contrast with the contempt for others that characterizes so much of our discourse today, even when people are calling for civility—and not only in secular arenas. Christian and Catholic communities are not lacking for condescension.
Nor are we lacking for people whose harshest judgments are on themselves. Even though practicing orthodox Catholics are the most likely to understand and promote the theology of the body and the dignity of the human person, it seems to me as I’ve written previously, that few of us truly and humbly accept what it is to be human: the weakness that entails.
We are not angels, and thus even after conversion we are going to be blinded by our passions and fall into sin again. We are going to make mistakes and errors in judgment that aren’t sinful, just foolish or blind. Even after conversion, we are going to have to live with the consequences of past choices that are humanly impossible to repair. Trials and tragic situations will come. In all of this we are no different than anyone else around us: we divorce, we battle addictions, we have sad sexual histories, we come from dysfunctional families, we’re in dysfunctional families, we realize too late we have acted like jerks; but we have God.
God is the one who makes the difference. He turns even the most heinous crimes into the matter of the sacrament of Confession. (I love to contemplate his mercy in that respect—he does not simply “forgive and forget.” When we turn from our sins, he makes them into sources of grace for us in the confessional!) He turns stupidity and ignorance into graced moments of self-knowledge and humility, turning us into wiser and more compassionate vessels for witnessing to his mercy. He makes our burdens salvific.
In the theological classic The Lord, Romano Guardini criticizes what he calls “Either-Or” people, who don’t understand
what the Sermon on the Mount demands is not everything or nothing, but a beginning and a continuing, a rising again and plodding on after every fall. What then is the main thing? That we accept the Sermon on the Mount not as a fixed, inflexible decree to be carried out to the letter, but as a living challenge and activating force. It aims at establishing a contact between the believer and his God that is gradually to be come effective; an instigating action geared to continual progress.
To be human, in other words, even if we are Christian, is to be a work in progress. If we understand that, we are more realistic, peaceful and merciful with ourselves and others.
Someone left this comment on the original piece:
I was struck by the thought that the person who wrote it is a thoughtful and compassionate leader. How many managers know the details of their workers lives like this and instead of puffing themselves up with contempt, see them as heroic? I’ll bet they’d do just about anything for this person. That’s the essence of true leadership, to inspire that yearning in people.
In a Christian context, that reminded me of nothing so much as the message Pope Benedict keeps preaching to any Christian who will listen: that the world is not won so much by speeches as by the quiet everyday witness of Christians working side by side with others and pointing by their kindness, respect for others and hope to better things. He said it most recently in a speech to bishops in Fatima:
The courageous and integral appeal to principles is essential and indispensable; yet simply proclaiming the message does not penetrate to the depths of people’s hearts, it does not touch their freedom, it does not change their lives. What attracts is, above all, the encounter with believing persons who, through their faith, draw others to the grace of Christ by bearing witness to him. The words of Pope John Paul II come to mind: “The Church needs above all great currents, movements and witnesses of holiness among the ‘Christifideles’ because it is from holiness that is born every authentic renewal of the Church, all intelligent enrichment of the faith and of the Christian life,
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