An Old Story Ever New
"Today human relations are irregulars and seconds at the closing days of the warehouse sale of life."

From Social Amnesia, by Russell Jacoby

"O little town of Bethlehem."

Traditional Christmas carol

It was late in the afternoon the Saturday after Thanksgiving. My wife, Lisa, and I had established a momentary safe haven in our kitchen free from the usual chaos that comes with the presence of four joyfully rambunctious children. We'd somehow managed to wrest free a few minutes just to read the paper, enjoy a cup of coffee together, and chat. It was nice!

For reasons I did not fully understand at the time, when I read in our local paper that the Salvation Army was experiencing a dramatic shortage in volunteer bell ringers to man its traditional red kettles, I was so shocked I jumped up from the table and searched out the local number.

The gentleman who answered mistakenly thought I was someone calling for a paid position. When I assured him otherwise, he was so pathetically grateful for my willingness to help them help the poor that a wave of shame washed over me.
How many times, I thought guiltily, had I brushed past these magnanimous folks, futilely waiting for some sign from me that my heart was a few degrees warmer than the temperature outside? How many times had I been so self-absorbed that these devoted volunteers simply blended into the facades behind them?

I was mortified when I recall that even though I had occasionally given money, never once had I emerged from my preoccupation with myself long enough to actually "see" them, let alone grasp what their silent vigil stood for. Because I had always looked through them, they never really existed for me. I hastily volunteered for several assignments. (In what was surely a feeble attempt at expiation, I made sure that one of them was on my birthday.)

The moral of this story needn't be belabored to tender-hearted pro-lifers. When our culture "looks" at the vulnerable, all too often there is a failure to recognize and therefore an inability to reach out in love and compassion. This is never more true than our treatment of unborn babies.

However, it wasn't just because of the news account and the subsequent phone call that I saw these kindly souls with new eyes. I was already predisposed, if you will, because Christmas was approaching, to Christians the celebration of the birth of the Messiah.

Even those who do not share our faith honor Jesus for the unconditional expression of his love for the widows and orphans, the sick, and the social outcasts, his loving admonition to care for the least among us. This most assuredly included little children, as Luke poignantly reminds us in his marvelous account.

At this time of the year, pro-lifers are irresistibly drawn to narratives which turn to the birth of Jesus to remind us that the survival of a nation requires that the attitude of adults toward dependent children be one of sacrificial love. For me, few stories more powerfully teach this ageless truth than Oscar Wilde's "The Selfish Giant."

There once was a lovely garden so beautiful and fruitful that children loved to stop and play. But when the owner, a selfish Giant, returned one day he gruffly chased the children away. To keep intruders out, he erected a high wall, and put up a sign which read, "Trespassers will be Prosecuted." When spring came the countryside came alive with the beauty of the new season. Everywhere, that is, except the Giant's garden. Spring never did come, nor did summer nor autumn. It was always winter in his private preserve.

One day the Giant heard lovely music. Catching a waft of a fragrant perfume, he leaped out of bed, thinking spring had arrived at last. But instead of blossoms and birds the Giant found children, who had crawled through a small hole in the wall, sitting in the branches of the trees. The trees were so happy to have them back they were waving their arms above the children's heads.

Curiously, winter still reigned in one section of the garden. When the Giant looked, there sat a small child too tiny to reach the tree. The Giant's heart melted and he realized that he had been very selfish.

When he went down into the garden, all the children ran away in fear - - all, that is, but the little boy whose eyes were filled with tears. The Giant gently lifted him into the tree and it leapt to wondrous life. Birds returned, and the little boy stretched out his arms and kissed the Giant. The remorseful Giant knocked down the wall, and the children happily returned. At the end of the afternoon the children bade the Giant goodbye - - except for the little boy, who had already gone away.

Every afternoon for many years the children played in the Giant's garden. Though delighted they were there, he longed for his first friend. One winter the old Giant awoke, looked out, rubbed his eyes, and to his delight saw the little boy.

He ran to him and as he neared, stopped. Angrily the Giant asked, "Who hath dared to wound thee?" For on the palms of the child's hand and feet were the prints of two nails. The Giant demanded the name of those who had hurt the boy that he might slay them. "Nay," answered the child. "But these are the wounds of Love."

The child smiled on the Giant who then understood and knelt down in awe before Him. "You let me play once in your garden," the Child said. "Today you shall come with me to my garden, which is Paradise."

Jesus taught out of a deep well of compassion. We read that he healed the blind and the lame and others whose bodies and hearts were weighed down with physical and emotional burdens. But the truth, of course, was and is that he was teaching us a timeless lesson: unless we are willing to open our eyes, we, too, will be blind to the hurting around us.

It is not my intention to idealize pro-lifers, but they demonstrate a tremendous capacity to truly "see" where others either can not or choose not to. It is no accident that pro- lifers defend unborn babies. Love and concern for the downtrodden, the dispossessed, and the marginalized is what gives their lives a rich unity of purpose.

As I have been about the business of defending unborn children against stubborn resistance, I have come to appreciate that only the most vivid lessons can reorient our moral imaginations. It is my experience that such moments are few and far between because fundamental turnabouts typically take place only when circumstances conspire to force us to confront the contrast between who we really are with who we think we are, let alone who we ought to be.

But that is the great hope of the Pro-Life Movement. Despite our nation's descents into inhumanity and indifference, the self- image of Americans is (deservedly) of a good people, blessed in a unique way. That is why the significance of the debate over partial-birth abortion cannot be exaggerated.
Witnessing even a simple line drawing of this abomination can turn opinions inside out. A pseudo-serious support for "choice" in the abstract can never coexist for very long with the concrete reality of this brutal assassination of helpless children. Over time, for many, many people, head knowledge will become heart knowledge and ambivalence will mature into empathy.

Our culture has chosen to willfully suppress what it always knew - - that unborn children are children yet to be born - - a classic example of what historian Russell Jacoby once called " social amnesia." But the monstrous evil that is partial-birth abortion - - a procedure that is essentially indistinguishable from infanticide - - is shearing away the excuse people have used from time immemorial to explain away their complicity in evil: "I didn't know."

And because eyes are being opened, ears unstopped, and hearts unshackled, what William McKenna calls our "unforced revulsion" at abortion is finding a wider audience. These telltale signs suggest we are cutting through the static of lies and distortions, establishing a clear channel to convey our message of love and hope.

One day soon, the ethos of discrimination and brutality toward the unborn will prove itself to have been an aberration, an interim ethic. And that glorious day will come because you have proven yourselves to be an antidote to the disease of cruelty and indifference. Let me say, humbly, bless you for all you have done.

dha