Sabbath Messages > Sabbath Message: February 19, 2005
Good Sabbath
February 19, 2005
Walked between cloudbursts with heavy droplets hitting my hood and spirit; I love the stuff that nourishes humanity; I thank God for the rain which keeps us all alive even tough we complain about the few inches that blesses Southern California, enough to keep it from becoming a desert. We call it rain when it comes up to our heels-the bottoms that is. On Monday I start my spring classes on ethics and leadership, along with critical thinking. One of the textbooks will be my book on making the spirit soar; that's pretty fabulous for me.
I'll also quote from a fine book: "How to Change the World, social entrepreneurs and the power of new ideas". While capitalism gets all the headlines and credit, it is the social entrepreneurs who nurture the forgotten and the neighborhoods to which politicians give little time. One chapter is all about Florence Nightingale, a name that seems fictional, but no fiction could possible have invented her.
This lady of the lamp, whose 1860 book ,"Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not." is still well-read. Instead of playing with dolls, she repaired them, put wounded dogs' paws into elaborate splints. Nurses were considered "coarse old women, always ignorant, usually dirty, often brutal." This was the time of the cruel Crimean War, where wounded soldiers lay in filth along miles of cots, where survival was in the hands of fate, for once wounded or struck by disease, you were a goner. The bureaucrats and officers in charge were insulted by a female's presence. However, soldiers stopped cursing when she was within earshot; the death rate in the British army hospital in Scutari was 43% and dropped to two percent between February and May 1855.
She also pioneered graphical tools, like pie charts, to present her arguments to the stubborn medical department. After the war, sorely tried by Crimean fever, from which she never recovered, she remained bed-ridden most of the rest of her life, always willing to give advice, greet visitors and mentor her young devotees. She taught the beauocrats there and in India about sunlight, pure water and clean kitchens and cut the mortality rate by one half in 2 1/2 years and in India by 75%! She died in 1910, refusing to be buried in a place of honor, dedicated to nursing as a professional in medicine.
This book is filled with less-dramatic examples of people who changed the globe, who made little money, whose births were blessed by a kind God. There are more social entrepreneurs who lead their neighborhoods; it is my joy to mentor some who have helped change my own life and whom I feel are more heroic than any wealthy, powerful client I've ever had. Ego and vanity work against human progress when they are combined in one person, for vanity punishes as it pursues its own goals and power. As one who has worked the poor neighborhoods and the valiant, ignored leaders who ignore frustration as they make it better for the families they lead, I subscribe to Machiavelli's observation: "there is nothing more difficult to carry out, nor more doubtful of success, nor more dangerous to handle, than to initiate a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new order."
O Lord, thank You for creating the Nightingales
Who give their lives and lend their souls
To assist Your demands for kindness
To neighbors and strangers
United by our devotion and Your commandments
Requiring no new inventions
Just our attention
While ignoring the cynics
Who have no power over goodness.
Have a great holiday weekend in America and remember to celebrate each Sabbath so that the soul can soar.
sandy
