There is no tougher comparison of your life than that to a deceased humanitarian nun. If after reading one of those you can still manage to hold your head at even a light elevation, then your self-esteem is made of granite and you could probably survive solitary confinement for decades.
Take the passing of Sister Janice McLaughlin, 79, who exposed abuse in Africa and was at times imprisoned for her efforts.
Right from the lede you know you're not going to be reading about the nun you might have had in grammar school who was strict wit you. Sister McLaughlin was imprisoned by the white-majority government in war-torn Rhodesia for exposing atrocities against its Black citizens, then returned to help the new country of Zimbabwe establish an education system, died on March 7 in the motherhouse of the Maryknoll Sisters of St. Dominic, near Ossining, New York.
Right there, read no more, and you can be sure your life is not likely to have stacked up against that of Sister McLaughlin, who seems to have done every humanitarian thing there is to do and still not wind on the short-list for the Nobel Peace Prize.
Katherine Q. Seelye's informative NYT obituary of Sister McLaughlin stretches over six columns and is filled with so many notable efforts that any one of them would have likely earned Sister McLaughlin a tribute obituary.
Read the obit for the details, but absorb the summary that tells us:
"Sister McLaughlin spent nearly 40 years ministering in Africa. She lived much of that time in Zimbabwe, starting in 1977, when the country was known as Rhodesia."
"She helped expose human rights abuses across the country that included the systemic torture of Black people in rural areas, the shooting of innocent civilians, including the clergy."
Two years after being thrown out of the country, she returned and worked from the forests of Mozambique, "where she was able to help refugees and exiles from the war in Rhodesia."
After Rhodesia's white leaders ceded power to Black Zimbabweans in 1980, Sister McLaughlin returned to Harare, the capital, where at the urging of the new president Robert Mugabe she established nine schools for former refugees and war veterans.
After returning to the New York and serving a six-year term as president of Maryknoll and writing books, she returned to Zimbabwe in 2015 and devoted "herself to combating human trafficking, environmental destruction, and H.I.V./AIDS. She left Africa for the last time in 2020."
Compare Sister McLaughlin's life to mine, now in its seventh decade, and it is easy to see why I will never rate a tribute obituary. There is nowhere near enough time left in a natural life expectancy for me to catch up. I have however accomplished the following:
I have gotten up early on occasion without being asked to.
I have loaned some people money and not been repaid and didn't resort to physical means to try and collect.
I have changed diapers (not many).
I managed to get through teen-age puberty where it is reported an average male thinks of sex every 14 seconds and still graduate high school "with merit" and go onto college, where the thoughts seemed not to occur as frequently, but even now can still be measured.
I pay my taxes.
I have remained married after 45 years, even after helping to raise two daughters who are now full-fledged adults with husbands and families of their own.
I helped a blind person cross the street (Once. Maybe twice).
I bring the garbage cans in the same day they are emptied, and occasionally bring in the neighbor's. (More than twice.)
Obviously, I have miles to go before I sleep to catch up to Sister McLaughlin. But then again, if we were all like her, she wouldn't have been so special.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment