Common Good? - More Good Than Harm Anyway

I note this week a most pleasant trip to the library. I found the tattered out-of-date tomes (Kesey, Twain, a New Yorker collection, Lewis (CS) and Vonnegut) I so love that haven't likely been checked out in decades (I miss seeing the proof of date stamps, the historical records in the life of a book, that have vanished in this too electronic age). A Friends of the Library lady offered lemonade to us thirsty patrons on the hot summer day. A congenial stranger made a gentle crack about how it looked I'd be busy over the weekend as I exited clumisly with all my stack, and there it was: pure happiness.

There's another fella in Denver, though, who appparently doesn't see things the same way. He used seven different names to obtain seven library cards, checked out 300 books, tapes and DVD's, per card, and tried to sell them for $35,000.

Yet I still marvel at the concept of a library; all those tempting books that you're trusted to take away and bring back. I've read about a library for tools, like rakes and chain saws, in Berkeley, and a bike library in Seattle where they're left unlocked on racks, available for everyone, to ride from Point A to Point B. I'm not convinced these programs would work everywhere. Perhaps in deference to Oregon-dweller Kesey's quote, "we never claimed to know precisely when the birth of the New Consciousness would take place...but as to the birthplace, we had always taken it for granted that the shining nativity would happen here, out of the ache of American labor," the new consciousness grew to full maturity, as always has been the dream of this manifestly destined country, out West (except for Denver).

We have a controversy down here in the Eastern Mid-Atlantic sticks where I live; about 800 of us take a commuter train to the big city. Other counties farther north up the line impose a two-cent gas tax to subsidize rail costs keeping any excess of their share to improve local roads. Even though the line terminates in our southernmost county, our politico's refuse to join the system; the letters to our local rag run highly against since 'why should taxpayers who don't commute help those that do.' These folks probably don't use the library either.

Common-good definitions aren't easy. I note an article in the Sun this week where a fella described as a "prominent defense attorney used to representing Baltimore thugs," has decided to moved to the suburbs after his 18-year old son was robbed at gunpoint near his Northwest Baltimore home, and a man who'd been shot, drove his SUV into his back-yard pool. He's quoted as saying even though "things are out of control, it doesn't deter me from my task, which is to make sure everybody, good and bad, reprehensible and sympathetic, are all protected by the Constitution. I got to represent some bad people sometimes who really are getting a windfall benefit from my zeal as it relates to people's constitutional rights."

He's saying he can just as passionately represent the hardest-to-defend from the 'burbs where his family is safe from his clientele. I had a similar ephiphany when I moved from a crime-ridden neighborhood to one of the safest communities whilst managing a shelter for folks too dangerous to be admitted to other shelters. Like our lawyer, I moved, but felt guilty enough to need to justify it. It always helped the guests to relate, if in their minds, they thought I had once, or presently lived in a bad neighborhood. I didn't disabuse them of the false notion, since it aided the work, and continued to lead them through their wilderness from a suspect position of false prophet. Why was this story in the Baltimore paper? Why is it news? Does it carry universal interest; a solidarity behind which liberals can feel better about themselves despite the hypocrisy?

I note other news this week, according to CBS, that Mother Teresa "was so doubtful of her own faith that she feared being a hypocrite. Where is my faith? Even deep down there is nothing but emptiness and darkness. If there be God -- please forgive me. If there be no God, there can be no soul. If there be no soul then, Jesus, You also are not true." There's that nagging notion of hypocrisy again.

I'm dying to see Christopher Hitchen's reaction. If you're not aware, he's criticized Mother Teresa in several ways. First, for fronting an institution, the Catholic Church, that prohibits birth control, meaning she was comforting dying babies whose tragedy need not have happened. If she did not really believe in God, I wonder if that takes her off Hitchen's hook, in a weird sort of way, or make it worse, as if she too was a false prophet?

Hitchens also criticized her for taking money from tinpot Third World dictators. I can relate. After the 2003 General Convention in the Episcopal Church, and the consecration of Bishop Robinson, one of the early 'Anglican' tactics was to admonish by withholding Diocesan contributions; their leader offered to divert parish funds to my shelter. At the time, devoted as I was to the welfare of my guests, I said yes. I'm not totally sure I would today after fully absorbing their tactics over the past four years, but is the greater good served by taking desperatly needed funds for the poor from a less than desirable source? (This is not a new dilemma; Pat O'Brien refused such funds from gangster Jimmy Cagney in the classic '30's movie morality tale, 'Angels with Dirty Faces.')

One of the greatest lessons from shelter world is it's hard to pin down absolutes. If a man freezes to death in the woods while he has a family of six brothers and sisters living in the area, it is not they who are the cause, if he rejected them, as much as the other way around. Should we have accepted the donation of a refrigerator from one of the sisters after his death? I have no qualms about saying yes.

In questions of the common good, there's no sure way to tell if it is, or if it isn't; no absolutes. Whether you're commuter, a taxpayer, a lawyer, Mother Teresa, or just a fella who takes great pleasure in losing himself in the stacks of the library, the most I can do to assure a common good, is to endeavor to do more good than harm, and leave it at that.