Woman Around Town’s Editor Charlene Giannetti and writers for the website talk with the women and men making news in New York, Washington, D.C., and other cities around the world. Thanks to Ian Herman for his wonderful piano introduction.
In a week when the phrase “alternative facts” slithered into the public discourse in the land of my birth, imagine my gratitude to know that Ireland, the land of my ancestry, is committed to building an “alternative wall.”
This wall has a name: “Creative Ireland.” And, like any good wall, it is built upon solid pillars that mark its strength.
The difference is that this structure is designed to embrace and include and inspire. Ireland’s ambitious five-year initiative will support, encourage and empower the worlds of the arts, education and commerce. It will be for all Ireland’s children, on the island and in all its vast global diaspora. And listen to this: Ireland has pledged to invest its own taxpayers’ Euros into achieving its success. Putting its money where its mouth is, so to speak, the country tells its friends across the globe that it believes that Ireland has always been great and that its people’s gifts of creativity are the key to make it even more so.
Creative Ireland kick-off event
The first outlines of Creative Ireland became known in December. It was at the culmination of a remarkable centennial celebration year that inspired members of Ireland’s global diaspora to mount more than 3000 commemorations and celebrations across the globe.
By the time Barbara Jones, Ireland’s dynamic Consul General gathered a broad cross section of Ireland’s friends and extended family in her New York constituency to announce details of Creative Ireland, the concept of wall-building had begun to dominate conversations. So, it was with a touch of gallows humor that they learned that Ireland’s “alternative wall” would be built upon five solid “pillars.” An Taoiseach (the Irish for Prime Minister) had put forward this description of what was announced here in midtown New York. This is how its inclusive architecture was described.
Investing in our Creative and Cultural Infrastructure
Ireland as a Center of Excellence in Media Production
Unifying our Global Reputation
At the January 13 event, Consul General Jones welcomed Ireland’s Minster for Arts, Heritage, Regional, Rural and Gaeltacht Affairs Heather Humphreys who addressed a gathering that included pioneers whose daring has been responsible for an increasingly varied, honored and ambitious outpouring of cultural and commercial enterprises in this New York Consular area (and indeed across the US). These super-achievers and their audiences symbolized the values that have come to our country via immigration.
They “got it” when Minister Humphreys said, “Creative Ireland, as an Ireland 2016 legacy project, is inspired by the extraordinary public response to the Centenary Program. During the year. thousands of cultural events were held around the country, bringing people together in shared reflections on identity, culture and citizenship that combined history, arts, heritage and language. We now want to build on the success of the commemorations and plan ambitiously for our arts and culture sectors for the years ahead.”
Minister Heather Humphreys
Consul General Jones stated that Creative Ireland was simply the best thing that had come from Ireland’s diaspora in the US in a very long time.
The Irish Times coverage of the new program noted that the Irish government has allocated some one million Euros to promoting Ireland’s arts and culture in the US. These are broadly defined as including the creative infrastructure and its industries, including media, architecture, design, digital technology, fashion, food and crafts.
Audience members included luminaries of the much-honored Irish Repertory Theater, the expanding Irish Arts Center, NYU’s Glucksman Ireland House, American Irish Historical Society and voices of Ireland’s film, music and graphic arts enterprises. The rest of the launch event included statements and performances by champions of creativity and culture from Aidan Connelly of the Irish Arts Center who reminded the audience that Shelley honored creatives as “the unacknowledged legislators of the world”; and Garry Hynes, the founder of the Druid Theater whose production of a 20th Anniversary revival of Martin McDonagh’s Tony Award winning The Beauty Queen of Leenane is currently running in New York at BAM. She called culture and creativity “nothing less and nothing more than the weather of our souls.” Ireland has issued an invitation to the country and its friends to “make an important statement to ourselves and to the world about the interdependency of culture, identity and citizenship.”
The mission statement of Creative Ireland defines creativity as a set of innate abilities and learned skills: the capacity of individuals and organizations to transcend accepted ideas and norms and by drawing on imagination to create new ideas that bring additional value to human activity. Those are the building blocks for an “alternative wall.”
Noting that, “Creative Ireland puts culture and creativity at the center of public policy,” the country’s leader lends encouragement to all who are considering walls, to seek ones that expand to match the scope of people’s dreams. Now that sounds like a wall worth building.
Jurisprudence and crime detection suffered a great loss when the young Theodore Tyberg chose to follow his roots to Belgium and the study of medicine.
I learned that early last week when we met to speak in his corner office at New York Cardiology Associates and I asked what had led him to become a board-certified internist and cardiologist (which he insists on underplaying by describing it simply as “Doctoring.”) As he responded to the question “what led you to this profession?” I edited my notes, crossing out the word profession and substituted the word vocation. That word seemed much more to the point, since it summons up the act of hearing a call and responding to it.
“I suppose I always wanted to be a Doctor, except of course for wanting possibly to be a judge or a police inspector,” he replied, with a slightly mischievous smile.
And there it was: a career explained as his passion for asking, and listening and following the clues to solve a mystery. By early last week I saw a great deal of evidence of the choice he had made.
We will never know the Poirot or Holmes or Benjamin Cardozo that may have been lost to the world; but a certificate announcing his election to Alpha Omega Alpha upon completion of his studies at Chicago’s Rush Medical College testifies to the quality of the doctor he chose to be. The prestigious medical honor society’s members include more than fifty Nobel Prize winners in Physiology, Medicine, and in Chemistry, all elected to Alpha Omega Alpha as students. It is described as being the Phi Beta Kappa of medical schools.
In the end, it was that instinctive respect for the gift of listening and hearing that led me to request last week’s interview. It began some years ago when I came to his office seeking his opinion in the absence of my amazing primary care physician/cardiologist Allison Spatz who was away on a rare vacation.
As I looked around his examining room, I noted a framed Playbill cover of a Gala Tribute to the legendary Josh Logan held shortly after his death in 1988. It carried this handwritten note: “To Dear Ted, with our deepest gratitude for your compassionate, tender loving care of our parents in their hour of need.” Signed at River House on November 7 1989, by the children of Josh and Nedda Harrigan Logan. It seems that the passion for asking and listening is contagious. So, I asked this person I had never met, if he might tell me the back story of that cover. But to keep you in a bit of the suspense appropriate to the stage, let me say “more about that later” and go instead to the book cover I noted during last week’s visit. Hospital Smarts: The Insider’s Survival Guide to Your Hospital, Your Doctor, the Nursing Staff – and Your Bill, was co-authored by Dr. Tyberg and his colleague Dr. Kenneth Rothaus and was published in November 1995. It became an instant winner when it was published by Hearst Books and has gone on to have a continuing and continuously growing life as a website. Oprah saw the idea and its execution as the sort of practical and responsible service she was delighted to bring to her audiences. Dr. Tyberg expressed his own obvious delight with the remembered experience of appearing on a three-person panel of experts committed to de-mystifying hospitals and hospitalization for patients.
But he was quick to say that he harbored no hidden desire to become another Dr. Oz. Worldwide web to the rescue! The richness of the book survives and flourishes at Hospital Smarts. On these cyber pages, the visitor can see the photos and the credentials of the original authors and a team of medical contributors who work together to gather and post the most up to date information on each of the subjects addressed in the 1995 book. They can log on to read favorite passages of the currently out of print paper book (though I attest that I got one from Amazon overnight and for the proverbial song.)
And speaking of a song, let me end the “suspense” mentioned above. It was in fact a very specific song and its entirely unique performers that inspired last week’s conversation with the multifaceted Dr. Tyberg. His answer to my question about the Playbill cover for “A Tribute to Josh Logan” presented at Broadway’s Imperial Theater shortly after the legendary producer’s death, began with a story of one of our modern world’s greatest rarities. A doctor paid a house call! Albeit to two very fragile longtime patients.
There in the storied River House he entered their room and found a husband and wife lying in adjoining beds. I can hazard a guess that this physician did not lead with queries about the negatives that might have been the reason for seeking his help. So, he asked Josh and Nedda Logan about what they wanted to tell him about the good things: what delighted them, about what they wanted to share with him, about their lives. And that was when the dearest and most memorable account settlement happened. Wanting to give a gift to the man who continued to want to be as much about their wellness as their illnesses, they announced that they had something they wanted to give him. And so began a duet performance of “I Remember it Well.”
With all due respect to Maurice Chevalier and Hermione Gingold who immortalized the song in Vincente Minnelli’s 1958 Oscar-winning film Gigi, it would be hard not to see how they might just have been upstaged by these two aging lovers reporting to their visiting healer. The tenderness, the playful sparring as memories were recalled and corrected, must have been unforgettable. I know they have been for me, or to put it as they might have done, “Ah yes, I remember it well.”
In the week just ended, some old adages came home to roost – to mixed memories.
-Some seniors among us will recall the wartime admonition, “Loose lips sink ships!”
-And the other widely quoted admonition “Don’t shoot the messenger” who brings bad news.
Both were revisited last week against a visual backdrop of hundreds of thousands of handwritten placards held aloft by hands across the globe.
The Science and Security Board of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, keepers of what is called the “doomsday clock,” advanced the Armageddon trigger to its most ominous level since the 1950s and the nadir of the Cold War. The good news is that it has, within the ensuing decades, been both advanced and retreated. It is, apparently, responsive to changing emphases and insights.
The symbolic instrument was introduced on the Bulletin’s cover in 1947. The scientists who are its custodians note that it is not a scientific instrument, nor even a physical one. Their announcements are based on its import for encouraging dialogue and awareness and, in layman’s terms, to face the fact that words matter. Especially when invoking nuclear warfare initiatives or a cavalier disregard for the negative potential of climate changes.
It seems encouraging that the group openly acknowledges past errors of judgment, as when the clock was not advanced at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis of the 1960s. That sort of realism and humility comes down on the side of hope, signaling that truth- seeking holds as much weight with the scientists as punditry or pronouncements.
The message is clear: while words matter, the willingness to use them for fact-seeking is the group’s goal. The “clock” ticks on relentlessly only so long as words are not respected for the vast power they have. But when that power is acknowledged and respected, there is the hope that they will awaken the respectful awe they deserve. I think of it in relation to the timeless observation that truth is accessible and that, when known, it can set both speakers and hearers free.
The second adage and its implications may not be so fluid. Willingness to identify message and messenger is, after all an arbitrary decision. So, once the judgment is made that the messenger is not open to broadening of horizons, or better, to using the current impasse to discover how things can be made better and more inclusive, the prospects for dialogue are limited.
In the case of last week’s events, it does not appear that there is room for the growing awareness that bubbles that happen can also be burst. They can fade in the honest effort to move beyond the borders of “beats” that allow truth seekers to listen and to sympathize. At their best, the members of the press whose freedom is enshrined in our glorious Constitution, go in search of the face to face encounters that are recognized as an expense worth undertaking. The purse keepers need to be partners in the search to know the truth of real people’s lives.
It remains an invariably bad idea to identify and so vilify the messenger based on the message he/she delivers and to rule out the possibility that he/she wants and needs that truth. It would appear that when a consensus of response bubbles up from a broad constituency, it takes on an import that transcends propaganda or partisanism.
So, it appears that tightening the loosened lips can have a salutary effect. Realism demands that we: both speakers and listeners, take note of the fact that the volume of a message increases in proportion to the size of the megaphone. That in turn, indicates that the holder of the megaphone can influence the impact that message can have for the better, by recognizing that the megaphone comes with increased responsibility. That happens if and when the speaker, seeing the potentially negative impact of words, comes down on the side of “walking back” the original message to reflect what is reasonable versus rabble-rousing.
This is no time for pessimism. If a system seems broken, we cannot afford to assume that it cannot be mended. Grown-ups can’t afford to imitate the children who greet a snow storm as an opportunity to build separate forts from which to shape snowballs to fling at one another across a field of mutual silence. We had chances last week to observe that words matter, and so to be inspired to use them wisely.
One of my most memorable “lightbulb moments” came the first time I was reminded that the greatest discoveries were often made by people who started from the answer and then worked back through the steps to get there.
Although I would not have thought to put it that way, the logic of this explanation is the sort of idea that moves a person to say, “Of course, of course.” For example, after generations of flat wooden tracks someone acted on a hunch that round might be better, and the wheel and generations of progress were born. Of course, simple mechanics is a much easier to illustrate my point than say, astrophysics.
What got me thinking about the issue was a conversation with a budding computer network engineer. He observed that he hoped he’d one day be as good as his boss at solving clients’ problems. But better still, he discovered that the boss’s ability was a matter of recognizing what’s causing the problem as being a lot more important than finding the trendiest new tools that just might be able to fix it. That’s what I mean by starting with the “answer” and working back to discover the path that will get you to that answer.
That brought me back to the history of philosophy course that first moved me to think about how discoveries frequently begin with an “answer.” But before I could explore that side of the subject, an intuition and an invitation intervened.
Speaking of intuitions, I remember the time when all the fans of Macs told me, when I was an unreconstructed PC user, that I would love the Apple systems because they are so intuitive. (At this writing I’m still waiting. But don’t tell!) The invitation turned out to be more to the point.
The amazing independent book store Book Culture circulated an invitation to one of the events for which they are justifiably famous as book sellers and community builders. Thursday night’s event was provocatively entitled, “What We Do Now.” It shares that title with the Melville House publication that debuted January 3 and is subtitled, “Standing up for your Values in Trump’s America.” I couldn’t resist. And surprisingly, the two+ hours of dialogue and conversation sent me away with the perfect illustration of how starting with the answer is the best way to charting the right course to reach it. As it happens, the book evolved in the astoundingly short period from election day, the second Tuesday of November 2016 and the first Tuesday of 2017. It features a remarkable collection of contributors one can imagine taking months and even years to recruit, assemble and edit.
As I listened, I concluded that it was the respect the principals of Melville House had and have for their young staff and for the writers who trust them with their words and ideas, that was “the answer” that led to the creation of this book. A roster of well-known names, respected as economists, environmentalists, activists, artists, politicians and novelists, brought long and carefully-considered ideas to the pages of the slim book in record time. And in line with the “start with the answer” perspective I brought along to the event they all shared the conviction that constitutionally protected practices are the bedrock of response to the many unprecedented experiences that await this electorate starting January 20.
In the vibes of the room at Book Culture and in the pages of the book as thoughtfully as it was rapidly collected, the best discoveries were the ones that started with this “answer”: that the only productive responses to perplexing questions are based on the hard and rewarding work of identifying the common ground on which both the asker and the answerer stand. That of course, is commonly called communication and it stands in stark contrast to diatribe, name-calling, and innuendo.
The panelist that set the tone for the evening included Dennis Johnson, founder/publisher of Melville Books; Rabbi Sharon Kleinbaum, spiritual leader of Congregation Beit Simchat Torah in New York City, who has been recruited to serve on eminent State and Federal bodies exploring the intersection of religion, public policy and human rights; and John. R. McArthur, author and President of Harper’s Magazine. Rabbi Kleinbaum’s description of her congregation’s instant response to the immediate post-election apprehension they sensed in their Muslim neighbors was to go as a body to join them for their Friday prayer. They came bearing white roses to put into the hands of the worshippers they visited. The visit was returned and now both sets of worshippers and a growing number of others now move more freely across boundaries that might once have separated them.
Communication was similarly the “answer” the group gathered at Book Culture this week identified as the path that could lead back to discovery of bettered relationships between disenchanted voters and their legislators. “Ask don’t just accuse” could be the mantra.
The answer to bursting the various “bubbles” that trap media reporters in a circumscribed beat that centers on midtown Manhattan or the D.C. Beltway is the active voicing of interest in “the rest of the story” that occurs where the real disappointed voters actually live. If a major network can admit that what is easy and good for its bottom line is the standard for its reporting, then the answer had better include voting with the remote or the radio dial. To ignore that will be to harden into a two-coast electorate versus one that asks about and listens to what is really in the hearts and minds of fellow Americans.
One young woman summed it up eloquently when she identified voters of her native Midwest and their concerns about the dwindling of the manufacturing sector and its related jobs, by saying, “These people are not stupid but many of them are desperate.” She summed it up by observing that instead of listening to the cry to make America great again (as if that were something that happens magically and in general) we all need each, in our deep diversity, to be great Americans.”
Now that, it seems to me, is an “answer” that can lead to a healing discovery.
Who was it that said, “a verbal agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s written on?” I think it might have been attributed to Samuel Goldwyn. But in any case, whoever said it uttered a classic oxymoron. The late President Gerald Ford rivalled him in the observation that If Abraham Lincoln were alive today, he’d be spinning in his grave.
The formal definition is a conjunction of apparently contradictory words joined to achieve an effect. The Greek roots of the word combine two words that mean sharp and dull or keen and stupid. Those roots provide fertile soil for the satirist. Some of the most notable ones of those is the first person to nominate these two: Civil Servant and Great Britain.
Should you suspect that that individual was a native of the Emerald Isle you may be forgiven. Starting with an 18th Century Parliamentarian named Sir Boyle Roche who rose to address an issue of spending money for a project that would only begin delivering benefits to a future generation is reported to have said, “Why should we put ourselves out of our way to do anything for posterity, for what has posterity ever done for us?”
There is one school of literary criticism that conjectures that Sir Boyle was an inspiration for the playwright Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s Mrs. Malaprop in his play The Rivals. But that may underestimate him. Consider how deftly he used the construction when he was quoted as saying that anyone opposing freedom of speech should be silenced. (Shades of some recent news reports.) And thus was born the sometimes innocent, often sly verbal construction known as The Irish Bull. And I’m here to testify that the pattern of speech is alive and well. (And I’m not referring to any recent, contentious confrontations of press and politician.) I favor a definition that classifies the Irish Bull as an apparent contradiction used for emphasis.
As the “token American” recruited to the New York staff of the Irish Government’s Export Board (as marketing communication’s liaison), I knew I’d better get myself up to speed when I heard the following exchange between a phone caller and the Director’s highly professional assistant. “This is the phone number you can use to contact Mr. Mulcahy, but he is rarely there.” And I don’t think she was trying to be ironic. My great source of enlightenment was a delightful paperback title called The Irish Book of Bull: Better than all the Udders. (And No, it doesn’t suggest what you may assume it does.) I acquired the slim volume and can testify that I have done so over and over (even now when it is technically out of print) since it remains to this day the most “purloined” volume in my library. But be assured it is worth the search.
Sir Boyle Roche’s worthy contemporary descendants include the mourner said to have gazed into the coffin of the deceased and lamented, “Ah, he’s not the man he used to be, and never was.” And the comedian who got great laughs with the observation, “So I went out to get on my motorcycle, and there it was, gone.” Or the apparently innocent inquirer who asked, “Are you reading that newspaper you’re sitting on?”
If you are drawn to such word play you may also mount a search for Willard R. Espy’s An Almanac of Words at Play. This is a feast for the fun-seeker, copyrighted in 1975 and introduced by the late, great Alistair Cooke who said it was to language what a football was to Joe Namath, a golf ball to Arnold Palmer or a male of the species to Zsa Zsa Gabor. To tempt the palate of those who savor words as fun, here are some appetizers from a section focusing on headlines that linger and which uses the headline “Nudists Take Off.” It includes “Papa Passes”, the headline of an Ernest Hemingway obituary, and the obituary of Abdul Ahzis as “Abdul Ahzis as Was.” Espy opined that he doubted the New York Times was trying to be funny when it described an imminent widening of a strike by hotel workers in these words, “Maids all to go out with Hotel Waiters.” By 1981, Espy had added the title Have a Word on Me: a Celebration of Language.
In an era when words too often seem used as weapons, the likes of McHale and Espy are worth the search. What price insight that leads to laughter? And while you’re at it you may want to search for a copy of James Lipton’s An Exaltation of Larks. It’s a collection of examples of venery, the use of a collective noun to describe a group. A gaggle of geese, for example; or a pride of lions. I can predict that people who sample this book together will be moved to turn the practice into a game or contest. One such event I enjoyed with good friends competing for a good laugh came up with such classifications as “an inventory of archivists”; and “a scuffle of little boys,” “a ledger of CPAs.”
With all due respect for the power of 140 characters, it may be more important than ever to let the words, and the laughter flow. And that’s no Bull, Irish or otherwise.
It all started near Grand Central when I dodged a bullet because of a turf war between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs designed by an Archangel. That left me stranded 750-plus miles from our 10065 urban village, with only a geriatric piece of equipment as my electronic lifeline. I knew I was in trouble. But along came Good St. Nicholas and a rescue that left me celebrating the fact that 24-carat Customer Service is alive and well in an area code far, far away.
Now, before even the kindliest followers of Woman Around Town and Street Seens begin to wonder if the aforementioned challenges have left me quite unhinged, let me invoke the old truism, “You can’t make this stuff up.” I didn’t. There’s an explanation for these unlikely scenarios. And if you come along I’d love to tell you about each and all. And I promise that in the course of the stories you’ll meet some great people and have renewed hope in America’s service industries and retailers. No kidding!
Let’s start with dodging the bullet and Grand Central. The first was a metaphor; the second an iconic New York site. On my return to the terminal after Metro North returned me there from a long day on the banks of the Hudson, I fell victim to the frequent fallacy that I had time to tick off one more task on my “Urgent To Do” list. So, I went to the Verizon Wireless store en route to the Third Avenue Uptown bus stop to choose the replacement for the Android phone dating back some three and one half years.
I browsed the various options and concluded that one was “just right.” It had the stylus I had come to like; not so many features as to make me feel like a deer in headlights. In all externals, it seemed the winning choice. That’s when the reality of the clock and of the brewing turf war brought me back to reality. Over years in which he and his team have guided me (sometimes kicking and screaming) from PCs to the recent and current MAC, a brilliant network engineer has earned my designation as Michael the Archangel, a patron known as warrior and message deliverer supreme. Somehow he and his staff have created a system that allowed me and my colleagues to have the best of both worlds, perhaps even three. Contacts were kept, files were portable, for better or worse we didn’t need to miss a phone call or a text.
But don’t ask me how that was able to happen so seamlessly. And don’t take it that the Messrs. Jobs and Gates always approved. Remembering that, I had to say to the helpful Grand Central Verizon Wireless associate, “I’m so sorry but I will have to put off closing our deal until Michael the Archangel engineers the transition.” AND THAT IS HOW I MISSED PURCHASING THE SAMSUNG NOTE 7! (How do you spell Whew?) just before it began exploding (literally!) in the media and aboard trains, planes and clothing pockets. While I was breathing a sigh of relief, the original connector cord wore through and I acquired an emergency stand-in from my local CVS.
Fast forward to a 5-day trip to Illinois that has so far lasted for some 35. Very near Christmas Eve, the cell phone and connector of this story decided to divorce for irreconcilable differences. Enter Good Saint Nick. As manager of the Verizon Wireless Store across from the Macy’s at the Louis Joliet Mall, he stepped in to be my Knight in Wireless Armor. Sight unseen, he took my phone call and came to the rescue. Only after the fact did I learn that he was “the boss.” He personally conducted the search for a hard-to-find double connector; called a nearby sister store that had the replacement and told them to save the unit for me to pick up that very day.
Forgive me for being astonished! When I asked his name and found it was Nick, I thought immediately of the Good Saint Nicholas of Dutch legend who personifies the giver of gifts at the Christmas season. Truth to tell, Nick Vlachos was not the first and is not the only amazing Verizon Wireless miracle worker I have encountered. There was the young woman who insisted on staying with me on a landline until she “found” the missing and muted phone I had packed into an under-bed box of stored winter clothing. And the Long Island executive who said, “take my cell phone number in case you have a problem.”
I opted out of the FIOS option because of the yards of plaster that would have had to be drilled through. But let’s raise a toast to the likes of Good St. Nick of Joliet, Illinois who restores our faith as he preserves the life of antiquated cell phones. And of course inspires us to eradicate all memories of the phrase “Beware of Greeks who come bearing gifts.” Perhaps he should sign on to find the safe solution for Samsung’s burning issue of the Note 7.
Conscience is hard work. So, don’t blame Jiminy Cricket, or Pinocchio, or even Walt Disney if you haven’t heard a small voice telling you exactly the choice to make in a situation where there is likely more than one answer. Turns out it’s up to you.
The good news is that you have everything you need to recognize and make the right choice when confronted with sometimes competing options. And when that happens, conscience gets the last word.
Popular culture recently gave us a couple of reminders of that truth in the just-ended year. The 2016 Mel Gibson film Hacksaw Ridge told of a soldier who, for reasons of his faith, refused to carry or use firearms, and went on to become the first conscientious objector to be awarded the U.S. Medal of Honor for service above and beyond the call of duty. In another example occurring on December 19, 2016, a member of the U.S. Electoral College departed from his predictable script and chose not to vote for the candidate he was expected to name. Presumably the judgment of conscience occurred because of information observed, discovered, or revealed after being named an elector, but before having to act by casting a vote. Both examples show us what is meant by the phrase “a resolved conscience.”
The road begins with recognizing that conscience is a judgment. It’s the decision you come to when you’ve looked at the various sides of a question, weighed the evidence, consulted the experts whose opinions carry weight, including your own beliefs and principles. It comes about as the result of a process not unlike what happens in a court room. Depositions are gathered. People tell of what they have seen or experienced, or read or studied, of how it looks or looked to them. Analyzing all that varied input, all the parties of the trial go to work to make a case for what they are presenting, what at that point they believe is the truth of a situation. How it really is, versus how it looks on the surface.
That’s not as easy or automatic as it sounds. It takes some courage, maybe a jot or two of humility. I’m hoping I’m not the only one who tends to listen most carefully to the people, the media, the preachers, the pundits who agree with my current or favorite point of view. A piece of advice I read at the time or our recent (interminable) campaign and elections came as a happy illumination. Make sure not to isolate yourself from “the other point of view.” Listen respectfully and let it add a dose of honesty to your own. You don’t have to adopt it as your own, but it will help you resolve your own conscience so that it includes respect for those who come down on a different side of an issue. So in those battlefield scenes or in that gathering at a state’s designated voting place, we can take it that there were serious differences of opinion that made individuals take different paths, both or all choices made in “good faith.” Individuals weighed similar evidence and reached different resolutions.
That process of resolving is a key ingredient of a judgment of conscience you can trust. Unless and until you come to that key point of “resolution” you’ll be standing on shaky ground. An unresolved or doubtful conscience can’t support a good, ethical or moral decision. Or think of it this way: you want to get to the top shelf of the bookcase or the highest shelf in the closet. As you plan your path, would you want to count on a one-legged ladder? You tell me. That’s why the experts on ethics warn that a doubtful or unresolved conscience can never lead to a morally acceptable path to action. If the process of an honest look at the evidence leaves you with a “maybe,” you proceed at your own risk.
Two other bits of wisdom about conscience are the “two Cs.” If you want to be guided by your conscience, don’t copy and don’t condemn. Nobody else’s conclusions or resolutions can provide you the support you need. And don’t be quick to conclude that another person’s or group’s honestly resolved conscience should be discounted or disrespected.
With all due respect for Jiminy Cricket, each one of us is equipped to be a much more successful, supporting actor in our own life stories. No charming insect on our shoulders. But a really authoritative voice. So, farewell, Jiminy. Hello, the voice of conscience we are prepared to tune up by a lot of hard, rewarding work that delivers peace of mind and the courage of our own well considered convictions.
Like most New Yorkers, I live in a village. No matter that the village is called an apartment building. The numbers are similar, and sometimes when one has lived in the village for a number of years, or in times when crises hit one of its residents, the sense of community flourishes.
This Christmas will be more real to me because of what happened on my street (no matter that it is called a floor) in one such village…..
“Once upon a time”……In the simplest possible terms: a child was born. But it didn’t happen in the simplest possible terms. Instead it happened in the context of a brilliant, complex bachelor.
Because he is a very private person and because he tends to wrap his kindnesses in understatement, if not complete anonymity, I’ll call him Joseph, after another good man who also, at great cost to himself, became the parent of an often-misunderstood little boy.
The Joseph of my story had for years found time in his life as the senior editor at a prestigious publishing house to give the most valuable donation of all to a well-known program to help the city’s helpless. He gave his time, generously and personally, to encourage and to counsel young people at odds with the law and with themselves.
It was through one of these contacts that he first came to know the little boy. A mutual friend tells of how a special bond was recognizable from the moment Joseph first saw the child. While the boy’s mother fought an often-losing battle with drugs and the sometime companion of the two drifted away, Joseph kept watch and never gave up on either of them. He was quietly determined that the little boy would not be pulled into a cycle of hopelessness without knowing that there can be choices in life.
So, the little boy first began to visit the village on weekends. It was a chance for his mother to get a brief respite from the demands of two tiny children growing up, first in a shelter and then in a cramped apartment. And mostly it was a chance for the little boy to do what is largely missing from the lives of the city’s poorest children: to play.
In Joseph’s company, he visited the local firehouse and the firefighters let him sit on the big, red truck. He ran and tumbled and tired himself and Joseph in Central Park. Neighbors saw him go from grasping to giving as the reassurance of Joseph’s presence taught him that a boy needn’t grab for things in the constant fear that they will be taken away.
Then one day the boy’s mother left him with Joseph and didn’t return. But instead of becoming swallowed up in the system, ricocheting from foster home to foster home, the boy came to live in the village full time. Joseph battled the dragon of bureaucracy for him and made it possible for the boy to have the one bit of continuity and stability his young life has had.
Joseph never tells the boy placating lies when the child asks why his mother went away, or if she will come back. But neither does he tell him truths which are designed to frighten. Mostly, I suspect, he simply stands by this little boy.
Joseph tells of how he arranges for the little boy to spend Sundays at the home of one of his teachers so the boy can have positive experiences of a mother and a loving family. He does not seem to take it for granted that the little boy can stay with him in the long term.
Joseph’s dream would be for the boy to become a part of a family that is full of warmth and support and nurturing. As he describes the scenario, he adds that he would hope that the family might allow him to continue to have “some role” in the boy’s life.
And so it began, “Once upon a time……”
Perhaps you who read these words today have been, or have known “Joseph” or “the Boy.” And even if you have not, may you hear in this story new reasons for hope. Happy Christmas.
Creative Ireland kick-off event
Minister Heather Humphreys
