April 23: Your Caring, Saint George, Dragons

Your caring may be the answer to someone's prayer.

Aficionados  of The Catcher in the Rye are probably scratching their heads right now and thinking, "Where the hell did he get that quote from?"  Well, I can tell you I found it in my copy of the book.  It doesn't come from Holden or Phoebe or Ackley.  It isn't a memory of Jane or Holden's brother, Allie.  That phrase came from a little slip of paper I've been using as a bookmark.

Sometimes, I get too wrapped up in myself to care about other people.  I get wrapped up in my little problems.  Money.  Teaching.  Job.  All the things that preoccupy the normal working person.  Of course, it seems like I never make enough money.  Of course, I look at my friends who are full-time professors and get jealous of their teaching loads.  Of course, when I drag my butt out of bed at 4 a.m., I hate my job.  Those are my daily concerns.  Sometimes hourly and minutely and secondly concerns.

Then I run into someone who's living with terminal pancreatic cancer.  Or I see a person rummaging through the garbage at the university, looking for pop cans to return.  Or I see a special news report on the TV about a bombing at the Boston Marathon that kills three people and injures hundreds of others.  That stuff unwraps me, opens my eyes to caring.

It doesn't take much to care.  A smile.  A nod.  A few minutes of time, listening to someone else's worries.  It's that simple.  You don't have to be Mother Teresa or the Dalai Lama.  You don't have to be a saint.

Today is the feast of Saint George, patron of England.  Not much is known about George.  My Lives of the Saints says, "...certain Acts forged by ancient heretics have cast no little obscurity over his life."  We know he was a martyr.  We know people pray to him in battle, most likely because he was a soldier.  And we know that he's usually depicted in combat with a dragon.

Dragons come in all shapes and sizes.  Dragons can be great evils, like Hitler or Stalin.  Dragons can be small pebbles in a shoe, like not having enough change to buy a Diet Coke on an early morning.  We battle dragons all day long.  Saint George probably knew this.  His dragons may have been tiny (a splinter in his thumb) or huge (execution at the hands of Diocletian at Nicomedia).  The difference between being a saint or a son of a bitch is simple.  Caring.

I care for my wife and kids.  I care for my friends and family.  My coworkers.  My students.  Despite all the dragons in my life, I can make a difference.

Saint Marty can be answered prayer.  He can start by smiling.

What does your dragon look like?