On how greatness is measured...

Lately the news media in the US have been overwhelmed reporting the deaths of notable people.  They’ve covered Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, and Walter Cronkite, just to name a few.   On July 22nd a person notable to me passed away.  She was notable to many other people as well, but her death didn’t make the news and her funeral wasn’t the must-see event of the century.  And yet I’m persuaded that her greatness is at least equal to that of any of those celebrities.  Perhaps it’s even greater.

Her name was Patty Parks.  Just Patty Parks.  There was no title in front of it or degrees at the end of it.  Most of her life was spent being a loving wife and devoted mother, aunt, sister, and daughter.  She died in the same small Iowa town she grew up in.  She believed in God and had faith in Jesus Christ.  She was only forty years old when cancer finally claimed her.

Most would consider Patty’s life woefully ordinary.  Many would think her to be an underachiever.  Less than a thousand will deem her worthy of memory.  But the truth is that Patty was a hero of unrivaled courage, strength, and character.

And she must have been a genius, too, because she figured out very early in her life what philosophers for centuries have failed to grasp, what so many PhDs and scientists and politicians and movie stars seem fundamentally unable to understand.  She figured out nothing less than the true meaning of life.  And she taught it to everyone she knew, including me.

And what she taught us all was simply this:  Family is everything.

Now that might sound a bit tribal to many of you, but if it does then you don’t understand what the term “family” meant to Patty.  Because Patty didn’t define it according to the borders of her home.  She didn’t even define it according to the borders of her community.  Patty defined family according to the borders of her heart.  And when Patty set out to locate the borders of her heart, she never did find them.

What she did find was me.  And many of my friends.  And hundreds of other people.  She treated us all like we were her family.  And to her, being kind to all of us was everything.

That isn’t to say Patty never got angry with folks.  I never knew her to countenance anyone being unkind or unfair.  Few people ever felt the full force of her wrath, though, because she had a glare that would stop most of her opponents in their tracks.  It’s a look that said, “You can keep right on picking on this person if you want, but you’ll have to get through me first.”  And bullies just instinctively knew that they weren’t going to get through her.

Patty’s reputation for compassion and justice didn’t travel beyond the confines of her community, but it didn’t really need to.  The work that she did for others is the kind that’s only possible up close and in person.  Even Jesus was only able to touch a few people personally in His short life.  And what was good enough for Him was good enough for her.

As I’ve pondered the allure of celebrity deaths recently, I’ve become fascinated by the notion that nobody today really remembers Abraham Lincoln.  Oh, certainly they remember specific things that he did and the great human dramas within which he took part.  But none of this is really remembering Abraham Lincoln as a whole person.  The Abraham Lincoln we say we remember is more of a sketch or an outline of an actual human being and not really Abraham Lincoln at all.

This is appropriate, when you think about it, because none of the things that we attribute to Abraham Lincoln were actually done by him.  Oh, certainly he wrote the Gettysburg Address and wrote letters to Union generals, but in the end all of his notable acts were the result of the work of thousands of other folks.  Thousands of soldiers who helped win the Civil War.  Thousands of abolitionists who paved the way for the Emancipation Proclamation.  Thousands of generations that would culminate in the age that shaped him into the thoughtful communicator that he was.

The person Americans love and celebrate is not Lincoln-the-man.  The person Americans love and celebrate is a colossal marble statue that represents the collaboration of millions in creating Lincoln-the-legend.  Lincoln-the-man was remembered by only about as many as will remember Patty.  And none live today who can recount the only accomplishments that truly belonged to Lincoln-the-man, those small but supremely important acts of kindness that define who we really are.

It’s widely believed that one day Abraham Lincoln and Patty Parks will stand before the same God.  And on that day, none of the things written about Lincoln in the history books will matter.  He and Patty will be judged according to the exact same standards and they will be asked the exact same questions.  There will be at last two of them:  “Were you kind to the members of your family?”  and “Did you take into account that your family included EVERYONE?”  And if Abe and Patty are able to call character witnesses, I can assure you that Abe will have no more at his disposal than Patty will have.

At the end of it all, I can’t even guess as to how Abraham Lincoln will fare.  But I’m quite certain that Patty’s testimony will receive a decisive and utterly deserved, “Well done.”