Honor, Courage, Commitment

            I found myself choking up a bit during our recent Veteran’s Day Assembly; which was odd, for me, as this “Army Brat” was raised to have a stiff upper lip and a mandate to conceal one’s emotions at all times. There were three distinct moments in the Assembly where I realized that even cynical New Yorkers can discover that they are proud of their country and their fellow citizens. The first moment - believe it or not - occurred when our Advanced Band and Chorus performed a magnificent rendition of the National Anthem. An over sized American Flag was projected on two 20 foot screens as 800 Lasallians stood and tacitly acknowledged the patriotic values that are enshrined in our Constitution and the Bill of Rights; as well as the importance of their protection, which was symbolized by the presence of nearly 20 Alumni Veterans standing at attention in the Duffy Lewis Gymnasium.

La Salle alums & staff who serve/have served in the Nation's Armed Forces

The second emotional moment occurred during that portion of the ceremony in which photographs of every alum who had ever served in the Armed Forces were being projected on the two giant screens facing the assembled students and which ended with a tribute to deceased Lasallian vets and the introduction of those alum vets who were in attendance that morning. Not surprisingly, our students were wonderfully appreciative of their presence that morning and spontaneously gave them a standing ovation. My emotion emerged out of two dynamics which were subtly present during this part of the ceremony.  The first was a function of the substantial number of alumni from the Sixties whose photographs flashed across the screens - reminding me - as is only possible for adults belonging to a certain age demographic - how much unintended havoc the Vietnam War imposed upon one generation of adults, - and which lingers even to this day. The second dynamic was the spontaneous - and supportive - reaction of our students to the service of their alumni forebears. The “received wisdom” of media pundits and commentators is that today’s adolescents are more or less self-absorbed, unconcerned about wider social issues and focused almost exclusively on material advancement. And yet, here were 700 teenagers leaping to their feet to acknowledge the service of those Lasallians who had gone before them, and who had dutifully accepted the possibility of paying the ultimate price to defend our shared freedoms. In that emotional moment, I realized how profoundly transformative is La Salle’s Mission to Nurture - Inspire - Challenge - Motivate the students entrusted to our care. In ways that we adults can only dimly appreciate, they get the significance of the contribution their alumni forebears gave to serve, protect and defend their country. They may not appreciate the emotional consequences of that service; but the spontaneity of their standing ovation persuades me that they are internalizing the School’s motto to Learn - Serve - Lead.

            My final emotional moment was in response to the background music that was being provided by our Advanced Band as the photographs of La Salle alums who had served in the Armed Forces were being displayed on the giant screens facing the assembled students. Megan Foley, faculty member in charge of the Instrumental Music Program, had arranged a medley of patriotic songs which the Advanced Band (and, at particular moments, the newly formed String Ensemble) executed with a seamless effort one would ordinarily associate with professional musicians.  As I marveled at their successful negotiation of a variety of key and tempo shifts, it suddenly occurred to me that these are teenagers who are executing this enormously challenging arrangement of patriotic music. And, it was at that moment that I realized this is why, fifteen years after arriving at La Salle, I am fortunate enough to be the School’s “Salesman-in-Chief.” The “magic” our faculty perform on a daily basis in support of the students entrusted to our care is not just phenomenal, it is real and transformative. 

And, it was on display at our Veterans Day Assembly - but not just there. Back-to-back League championships in Varsity Football and four consecutive League championships in Varsity Girls Volleyball, not to mention a national recognition for the Cheer Program and increasingly higher rankings for Mock Trial demonstrates that not only is the Mission of La Salle High School alive and well, it is thriving, in no small part, because of your commitment to the values of nurturing, inspiring, challenging and motivating the students entrusted to our care.

A Pay It Forward Twist...

            You may remember the 2000 release of the film Pay It Forward. It featured an “A-List” cast that included Kevin Spacey, Helen Hunt, Jon Bon Jovi, Angie Dickinson and child actor (and Flintridge Prep student) Haley Joel Osment. The reviews of the film were mixed - primarily due to its emotionally manipulative plot and the untimely death (at the end of the film) of Osment’s character, Middle School student Trevor McKinney (sorry, “Spoiler Alert”).  Nevertheless, it had a respectable Box Office performance (#4 on its opening weekend) and has achieved an impressive DVD following - especially among Religion teachers (myself included) - who recognized its inherent reinforcement of Gospel values.

The pay it forward principle has percolated at the edges of the American literary scene at least since 1916 when the phrase may have been coined by Lily Hardy Hammond in her 1916 book, In the Garden of Delight, as a term for describing the beneficiary of a good deed repaying it to others instead of to the original benefactor. According to some sources, the concept is old, dating at least to Benjamin Franklin who, in 1784, used the concept to explain to an acquaintance why he should not repay the loan Franklin had given him, but to offer a similar loan to someone who would need similar assistance. The pay it forward concept has since evolved into a national foundation of the same name whose mission is to promote the notion that the one who is the recipient of a charitable act should be motivated to offer a similar act of charity to unknown persons in need of a similar benefit.

I recently had occasion to reflect on the pay it forward principle as I was stuck in traffic on the 110, having just returned from a visit to Transfiguration Catholic School, on the edge of Exposition Park, where La Salle’s Director of Bands Megan Foley and I had just delivered a supply of drums as well as a Vibraphone and an electric keyboard. The struggling, inner-city school had come to my attention last summer when I read an article in the Archdiocesan newspaper, The Tidings, which reported that the School had recently developed an instrumental music program as a way to attract students from the public sector who were experiencing a rapidly shrinking set of opportunities to pursue their passion in the visual and performing arts.

Having just concluded a highly successful Regents Campaign for the Arts, that, among other goals, had enabled the School to replace a variety of aging musical instruments used in our well-regarded concert band, jazz band and drum line programs; it occurred to me that Transfiguration School might have a use for these gently used instruments. I contacted the principal, who was pleased to receive this unexpected largesse and off to Exposition Park, we went.

I must admit there was a bit of an ulterior motive to my decision to reach out to Transfiguration School.  As an institution sponsored by the Christian Brothers, La Salle actively seeks out Mission-appropriate students who attend inner-city Catholic elementary schools and who require substantial tuition assistance in order to take advantage of our college preparatory program. It occurred to me that an inner-city Catholic elementary school, with an emerging focus on instrumental music, would be a great fit for us. It did not, however, occur to me that my effort to pay it forward would be utterly transformed by my visit to this amazing sanctuary of safety, Catholic ideals and robust commitment to the transformation of lives in a blighted neighborhood. When Megan and I arrived at Transfiguration School the principal had arranged for us to visit their band room where the Music teacher presented a sample of the School’s instrumental curriculum. We experienced third through eighth graders performing Christmas Carols on a variety of instruments, an amazingly talented sixth grader on piano, a rousing drum line (memo to the file: these aspiring musicians would make great candidates for La Salle’s drum line) and an African instrumental group that stunned me in their discipline and  commitment to musical excellence.

On our departure, the principal, music teacher and coordinator of the School’s marketing and development effort profusely thanked us for our generosity to their instrumental program.  The music teacher, an enormously talented young man, noted that he was probably going to cry after we departed, as he tried to find room for the instruments that we had left behind.

Here’s the kicker: when I arrived at Transfiguration School, I thought La Salle was paying it forward by donating our excess musical instruments to a worthy Catholic inner-city elementary school. By the time I left, a little over two hours later, I realized they had paid it backward by teaching me that it doesn’t matter how many or few resources you have, a commitment to the Mission and an unshakeable conviction that belief in the students entrusted to your care can produce miracles - in Pasadena and in the inner-city - is far more powerful than the resources we take for granted, or are suddenly, and unexpectedly, provided by someone we never met before.

I left the adults of Transfiguration School that day humbled by their amazing commitment to children - who don’t know what they can achieve on their own - and encouraged by their unassuming belief that music can create possibilities we take for granted. Not a bad lesson on paying it forward for this comfortable middle aged adult to reflect on during this season of gift giving.

 

 

Put not your trust in princes...

One World Trade Center is almost complete. Current projections indicate that the building will be ready for occupancy in the Spring of 2014. Slightly more than half of its three million square feet of office space has already been leased, with the magazine publishing giant, Condé Nast, accounting for 1.2 million square feet of occupancy. The building will support 104 stories (the original, 1973 Twin Towers supported 110 stories) and top out at a symbolic 1,776 vertical feet.

            I remember when the original Twin Towers opened for business in 1973.  I was a freshman at Fordham University, in the Bronx, where, on a clear day, you could see the World Trade Center from the roof of Keating Hall, the tallest building (at that time) on the campus.  I also remember the mix of excitement and criticism the Twin Towers generated.  At the time, they were the tallest buildings in the world (and would continue to hold the distinction of being the tallest buildings in New York - New Yorkers never cared about what was going on in Chicago - until their destruction in 2011).  And while their architectural and engineering advances inspired universal admiration (there wasn’t a single interior column - excepting elevator shafts - anywhere in their slightly more than 40,000 square feet per story floor plan), New Yorkers dismissed the Towers’ nod to the brutal modernism of Le Corbusier as “boxy” and uninspiring. Over time, we grew used to the Twin Towers and, while they never generated the same kind of warm appreciation New Yorkers had for the Empire State Building as an iconic example of the New York skyline, they nevertheless became part of the City’s taken-for-granted landscape as generators of tourists’ interest (and dollars).  That is, of course, until September 11, 2001.  In the ninety minutes it took both towers to collapse in on themselves, creating a mountain of debris and a new moniker (“Ground Zero”), they were transformed into beloved icons of New Yorkers resident within the city limits and among its Diaspora (I am a member of the latter category).

            As a New York expat, I am particularly amenable to this revisionist characterization of the World Trade Center because of three poignant connections I have to the Twin Towers.  The first connection took place on February 25, 1993, the day before the first terrorist bombing of the World Trade Center.  At just about the time the bomb-laden van exploded in the underground parking structure on February 26^th (the next day), I was passing through the World Trade Center as I transferred from a New Jersey PATH train to a NYC bound “A” Subway train. When I awoke the day of the bombing to learn that “timing is everything,” I realized that - like it or not - the Twin Towers loomed large in my personal corner of the world.  The next two connections are irrevocably linked to the 9/11 tragedy. Two of my former students - one a stock broker working in the North Tower - the other an FDNY firefighter - lost their lives in the collapse of the towers. The third connection to the tragedy is my brother who still works in the Office of Management and Budget at New York City Hall - a mere three blocks from Ground Zero - and who I could not get in touch with until late in the evening (PST) on 9/11.

            So, it should not be surprising that 9/11 is a moment in time for me that is as familiar as my own birthday. Like most current and former New Yorkers, the anticipation of 9/11 is a complicated matter. New Yorkers view themselves as invincible. 9/11 puts the lie to that conceit. Yet, the almost magical appearance at Ground Zero of twin beams of bluish light piercing the stratosphere on the evening of 9/11 for each of the last 12 years inspires a certain respect for the hand of God that is hard to explain to anyone not of New York. I have only seen the twin beams of light in pictures.  The New Yorker in me yearns to return on this awful anniversary to the City that formed me in order to share in the lights’ symbolic message that we can never know what will happen next, other than to trust in a God who knows what the endgame looks like and who gently invites us to trust in this ethereal vision. Not an easy proposition for New Yorkers - even expats - to embrace.

            I am writing this column on 9/11/2013, so forgive me for these New York-centric ruminations. However, I think they have merit, if you flip through the Summer issue of Lancer Magazine.  It's our annual issue in which we celebrate the accomplishments of our recently launched alums of the Class of 2013. The one cliché that is always true for them (and for every high school graduate) is that they have the whole world in front of them.  At 18 they see themselves as invincible as the most cynical New Yorker of any age.  They will learn, over time, as we all have, that invincibility is as fragile as the morning fog.  We can neither alert them to this reality nor cushion their hard landing when they refuse to accept its inevitability. What we can do - and what 9/11 teaches us - is that, in the face of inexplicable - and unpredictable - life shattering events we must turn to a higher power - for Lasallians, that is God - who will assure us that we must not put “our trust in princes,” but in a Lord whose comfort is unconditional and available the moment we ask for it.

What do you do when the Government shuts down?

On Friday, October 11^th, I was flying into Oakland Airport to attend the inauguration of the first lay president of Saint Mary’s College (Saint Mary’s is one of five Lasallian colleges and universities in the United States). I had forgotten to take my belt off as I passed through Security (don’t you just hate that?) and was flagged aside for a “pat down.” I don’t remember how the conversation with the TSA Agent started, but the gist of the encounter centered on this exchange:

Security:          “We’re taking it on the chin for the government shutdown.”
RG:                     How so, aren’t you an ‘essential service’ of the Federal Government?Security:          “Yes, but that doesn’t mean they have to pay us.”

That brief exchange caused me to spend the hour flight back to Burbank pondering the significance of what that Federal employee had said.  Consequently, when I got home, I Googled “TSA” salaries and discovered that the young man I had been speaking to earned somewhere between $22,800 and $35,600. At that point - Day 11 of the Shutdown -- no one knew when - or if - the shutdown would end. That’s when it dawned on me that this 20-something Federal employee had a real problem.  If the shutdown lasted longer than one pay period, there was the real possibility that he couldn’t pay many - if not most - of the monthly bills waiting for him in tomorrow’s mailbox.  Then, I thought, well, maybe he’s married. Assuming that his wife earned a salary at the upper end of his pay scale, what if she added another $35,000 to the household income? Then, I asked myself, what if they had children?  Well, according to the California Department of Health Care Services, a family of four, earning a household income of $70,000 puts them at 300% of the Federal Poverty level. By way of comparison: if their household income was $58,000 (or 250% of the Federal Poverty level), their children would be eligible for Medi-Cal (California’s version of Medicaid, the Federal Government’s poverty-level health insurance program).

His situation is one many of our families face on a regular basis.  Between the trailing effects of the Great Recession and the “Sequester,” more than a few of our two-income families have faced the awful question of sacrificing tuition for the monthly bills that won’t go away simply because household financial circumstances have changed.  This is why La Salle’s financial aid budget has practically doubled in the five years since the Great Recession has worked its way through the Nation’s economy.

I’m particularly sensitive to the plight of this particular TSA Agent because I think his predicament mirrors the challenges many two-income households face in this bizarre era of government paralysis, economic stagnation and punitive fiscal decisions masquerading themselves as public policy. Robert Packard, our CFO, can attest to the fact that a steady stream of middle-income families, stung by the effects of the Great Recession (and now by the Sequester and the Government Shutdown), have come to him seeking relief from the economic forces they can’t control - all for the simple purpose of keeping their children enrolled at La Salle. I am sad to note that their plight isn’t a function of a federal government that willed a shutdown into existence, ignoring the plight of the hapless TSA Agent I encountered on October 11^th; rather, their situation is a function of decades-long policies which have ignored the cumulative impact on Middle Class households who live pay check to pay check and don’t know how to respond to cataclysmic events which, through no fault of their own, threaten their homes, their families and their livelihoods.

For me, this is the great tragedy of the Sequester and the Government Shutdown: politicians so intent on proving they’re right ignore the very real effects their political strategy has on working households. Thankfully, La Salle is in a position to provide the additional financial aid necessary (so far) to support our middle income families who require both spouses to be employed in order to afford some portion of our tuition. But, I have to ask: what about that TSA Agent who barely makes ends meet - what hope does he have to ensure that his children will inherit a better life than the one he received? More importantly, in this - unnecessary - political imbroglio, is anyone asking these questions?  It doesn’t matter whether one agrees or disagrees with how our government spends our hard-earned tax dollars; I ask one simple question: should hard working people - like us - who, through no fault of their own, suffer because our politicians can’t - or won’t - compromise?

I’d like to think the answer is obvious.  I’m not sure my TSA Agent would agree.

Are books the wave of the future?

           

The City of San Diego opened it’s new, nine-story, $189 million dollar library last weekend. It took them over thirty years to bring the project into existence.  Some wags note, rather cynically, that San Diegans had more pressing priorities - like building a light-rail line and a downtown Baseball stadium.  Regardless of motivation, the magnificent structure, complete with a three-story atrium offering spectacular views of San Diego Bay, is open for business and, apparently, well worth the wait.

            In addition to state-of-the-art technology, San Diego’s new library will accommodate 1.2 million books. Wait a minute…haven’t we been barraged by the (mis)perception that books are a thing of the past in the 21^st Century?  In fact, are libraries even necessary? La Salle Librarian, Delia Swanner answers the latter question with a resounding yes! She quotes the American Association of School Librarians 2009 position statement: "Empowering Learners: Guidelines for School Library Programs":

1. Mission
The mission of the school library program is to ensure that students and staff are effective users of ideas and information; students are empowered to be critical thinkers, enthusiastic readers, skillful researchers, and ethical users of information.

2. Collaboration
The school library program promotes collaboration among members of the learning community, and encourages learners to be independent lifelong users and producers of ideas and information.

3. Reading
The school library program promotes reading as a foundational skill for learning, personal growth, and enjoyment.

4. Multiple Literacies
The school library program provides instruction that addresses multiple literacies, including information literacy, media literacy, visual literacy, and technology literacy.

One only has to walk through the Blakeslee Library at lunch (especially around Finals week) to encounter a room filled with students using the space for what it was intended: to study, to work on a project, to do research, to get a leg up on tomorrow’s assignments, and, most important of all - to ask for help.  But that’s not all.  While it should not be a surprise to learn that the student presence in the Blakeslee Library after school plummets (although never to zero), the monthly after-school Café Biblioteque (a “coffee house” featuring guest speakers/entertainers and/or original student work such as poetry) tends to draw better than three dozen students from every grade level. Interestingly enough, the single largest attendance at Café Biblioteque was last December when 70 students helped create Christmas greeting cards for teenagers who were spending the holidays in Juvenile Hall.

Even so, traditional uses of a library like La Salle’s continue to frustrate the predictions of 21^st Century prognosticators. The Blakeslee Library witnessed an annual door count of 18,420 (this is an increase of 23% over the prior year) and an average of 18 class visits per month. 728 books were checked out for research purposes.  This represents a 34% increase over the prior year.  In support of this, more proactive view of libraries, Luis Herrera, the City Librarian of San Francisco, offers a compelling argument for the continued need for libraries:

Libraries are more relevant than ever. They are a place for personal growth and reinvention, a place for help in navigating the information age, a gathering place for civic and cultural engagement and a trusted place for preserving culture.

So, while libraries will undoubtedly survive the “Age of Technology,” it is not at all clear that books in print will survive the duration of the 21^st Century. According to one study, however, less than 10% of the world’s books in print have been digitized, suggesting that they will be around for the duration of our lifetime and the lifetime of the so-called “Millennials.”  And, as the inevitable shift to electronic media drives current library users to a computer portal, books in print must be preserved, no longer because they are the primary source of research information, but because they represent an essential component of intellectual inquiry that won’t be electronically replaced anytime soon.

            Meanwhile, magnificent buildings like San Diego’s new Central Library, remind us of our aspirations to know more about our world and its story through the fundamental task of sitting quietly with a book in our hands.

 

 

 

We are prophets of a future not our own

Recently, I was asked to deliver the eulogy for a very dear friend and colleague whose life was cut short by pancreatic cancer.  It’s only the second time that I have been asked to perform this service, but it was the first time where the task of saying good-bye cut to the quick. This was a friend, slightly older than me, but light years ahead of me in his understanding of how to deal with a world that grows increasingly more nonsensical as we age. He had one of those irrepressible personalities which draw you in through humor and grace, only to remind you that high expectations for perfection in others will only lead to tears (yours).  The stereotypical phrase “so-and-so is larger than life” actually applied to him (though he would never have accepted that mantle of responsibility).  He is the second of two close friends (my colleague Annie Johnston was the first) to leave a gaping hole in my heart. Unfortunately for me, I was raised by a stereotypical Irish-American family who assumed that men don’t cry (unless, that is, your 13 year old son inadvertently knocks his father's 20 year old bottle of Jameson's Irish Whiskey  off the coffee table onto a slate floor at Christmas, 1968). So, when his wife asked me to do the eulogy, I knew that it was pointless to dodge that bullet.

            The task of writing a eulogy is never an easy one. One frequent writer of eulogies eloquently observed that “The writing and reading of a eulogy is, above all, the simple and elegant search for small truths.” But, whose truths? The deceased? The immediate family? The friends who have been gathered together, each with a different characterization of the friendship? The writing of a eulogy doesn’t seem intimidating until one is asked to be the author.

Having buried both parents, I have been known to observe that, if there is a choice between a fast death and a slow death, fast is much easier to handle. My friend’s death was fast - less than twelve months from the time of diagnosis. In retrospect, I now realize that, when one is asked to write a eulogy, it doesn’t matter if the death is fast or slow, the charge generally comes in the final days; leaving the author with precious little time to craft the perfect good-bye. It took me a week to write his eulogy.  What I learned in that week is remarkably simple: pay attention. The death of a friend or a loved one forces us to pay attention…to the gap left in one’s heart; to the loss of comfort generated by the assumption that the deceased will always be there; to the fraternal correction that is easier to take from someone who has earned our trust.

Thomas Merton, the Catholic convert, Trappist monk and memoirist, had this to say about the premature death of the great Southern Catholic writer, Flannery O’Connor:

“But respect had to be maintained.  Flannery maintained it ironically and relentlessly with a kind of innocent passion long after it had died of contempt - as if she were the only one left who took this thing seriously.”

The last line - “as if she were the only one left who took this thing seriously” - strikes me as the epitome of what we want from those who have left us too soon. We want the deceased to take us, our lives, the lives of intimate others, seriously - only we have no way of knowing whether that was ever true. So, we search the “small truths” for glimmers of what we now know, retrospectively, we didn’t realize we wanted all along - to rest secure in the knowledge that at least one person understood us in ways that defy conscious description.  Oscar Wilde got that dynamic right when he penned, two generations ago,

 

  “the truth is never pure and never simple.”

It is this dynamic which confounds us - we want truth to be pure and simple - and. of course, death continually reminds us that neither is true. The American poet, Emily Dickinson, once described what the living have after the death of a loved one as “an awful leisure.”  The living are left with “an awful leisure” that is too much with us when the sorrow is as fresh and painful as a paper cut.  And yet, grief has its purpose. It’s the bridge between the pain and anger of the premature loss of one whose footprints are all over the lives of family and friends and the recognition that, in the words of NY Times columnist, Anna Quindlen, “we are defined by whom we have lost.”

Readers of this column may find it odd that I have chosen to focus on the eulogy of a friend to launch the 2013-2014 school year; and yet, I think school is always about the end-game. The present moment is merely a tool to prepare the students entrusted to our care for a future they (and we) can only dimly perceive. I can’t think of a better way to start a new school year than to consider the proposition that others will have the final say on the life we lived.

I don’t expect teenagers to acquire an appreciation for the legacy they leave behind; but I think it’s useful for the adults who surround them with a web of personal and professional support to consider what needs to be in place now, so that when the endgame is played out, those who have the last word will say: “This was a life well lived.”

One of my favorite American plays, one that is annually tricked out for every high school speech tournament in America, is Robert Anderson’s I never sang for my father. During both the opening and closing monologues of the play, Gene, the protagonist, tries to describe his complicated relationship with his father:

“Death ends a life, but it does not end a relationship, which struggles on in the survivor’s mind...towards some resolution it never finds.”

 Isn’t that the challenge we all face, albeit, often too late, when it comes to our responsibility for the children entrusted to our care? Shouldn’t we take the opportunity, now, to cement the message of love and hope that we assume these young people take for granted so that we can emulate the words attributed to Oscar Romero the martyred Archbishop of El Salvador:

 

“We are prophets of a future not our own.”

Who is my neighbor?

Who is my neighbor? This question, posed to Jesus by what we would identify in today’s nomenclature as a lawyer, can be found in Luke 10:25-37; the Gospel reading we heard on Sunday, July 14^th.  Over the years I’ve heard priests take a variety of perspectives on the significance of Jesus’ message in this Gospel passage.  What I haven’t heard - at least not yet - is a commentary on how Jesus upended the definition of the word “neighbor.” The Webster Dictionary, for example, is quite clear - and simple - in its definition of the term:

one living or located near another

Those who are familiar with what has come to be called the “Good Samaritan” parable know that the injured man at the center of the story was nowhere near a population center, but on the desolate road connecting Jerusalem to Jericho. So the notion that a “neighbor” would be nearby is, for all practical purposes, irrelevant.  Yet, Jesus, in the penultimate moment of his encounter with the lawyer, asks him:

Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man

who fell into the hands of robbers?

And the lawyer answers this self-evident question correctly:

The one who showed him mercy

The lawyer’s question is an important one. Hebrew - and later - Christian Scriptures call believers to “love our neighbor” as ourselves. Hidden within the multiple layers of meaning of this magnificent parable is Jesus’ broadening of the concept of neighbor to embrace Gospel values that redefine Webster’s simple - and simplistic - definition of someone in close proximity to someone else. In other words, Jesus tells us that everyone is our neighbor. And, while I prefer the biblical translation that favors the word compassion over the word mercy; still Jesus’ message that everyone is my neighbor - and therefore worthy of my concern - represents one of the single most challenging imperatives of the Gospel.

            Ironically, the tragedy of the Trayvon Martin case highlights an understanding of the term “neighbor” that is rarely appreciated through the lens of Sunday’s Gospel: is it possible for someone to not be my neighbor? George Zimmerman certainly thought so as he patrolled his neighborhood that fateful night.  Neighborhood watch programs, like the one George Zimmerman supported, argue in favor of the notion that not everyone is my neighbor. And, in a simplistic way, it is easy to agree to that proposition.  All of us have experienced the fear that accompanies a late night walk through unfamiliar surroundings.  In those settings each of us has assumed that the person walking towards us is filled with ill intentions. Is it possible, then, that the person on the other side of the street is not my neighbor?

            Jesus would say “no.”  This is a hard proposition to support - and the Trayvon Martin case is an excellent example why. Lost in the screaming headlines of who did what to whom is the fact that a boy with a shady past was confronted by an adult who assumed he was up to no good.  What if George Zimmerman had assumed that Trayvon Martin was his neighbor? Would the conversation between the two individuals have led to a different ending? Would Trayvon Martin still be alive? Would George Zimmerman have avoided having his head slammed on the ground? Regardless of who initiated the confrontation, the end game was all but predictable, given the presence of a gun in Zimmerman’s pocket. That gun affirmed the notion that Trayvon Martin was not George Zimmerman’s neighbor. Left unanswered by the tragedy is the question: could the outcome have been different?

            Of course we’ll never know; but the encounter between Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman provides an opportunity for each of us to ask the same question the lawyer asked of Jesus: who is my neighbor? At La Salle, we are constantly asking ourselves that question. Our motto:

Learn ­ - Serve ­ - Lead

assumes that everyone is our neighbor - even when we find it inconvenient or intimidating.  This isn’t to suggest that we frown on graduates who join neighborhood watch programs - the world is often a frightening place. Rather, we want our graduates to cultivate the Gospel notion that everyone is our neighbor; that each person deserves the benefit of the doubt. And, when suspicious circumstances cloud that notion, we want our students to meet those moments with a perspective that is balanced between alarm with respect to the present situation and concern for the other.

            There are no easy answers to the Zimmerman-Martin case; but there are plenty of questions - and the most important one is:

Who is my neighbor?