Starfish

Starfish

Irena Sendler

          When Irena Sendler died at the age of 98 in May of 2008, she was survived by a daughter, granddaughter, and thousands of men and women who existed because of her fearless beauty. I ran across this article about Sendler a couple of weeks ago and knew immediately that I wanted to write about her. When the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939 and put about 450,000 Jews into the Warsaw ghetto, Sendler was 29 years old. By 1942, she headed the children's section of an underground organization established for the express purpose of saving these Jews. 
 

          As a social worker for the city of Warsaw, Sendler had a pass that allowed her to go in and out of the ghetto. Once inside, she and her network of volunteers set about convincing Jewish parents to let her take their children out of the ghetto. They smuggled the children out in ambulances, coffins, potato sacks, and even hid a sedated baby in a toolbox and took them to safer locations. Sendler often hid the children with non-Jewish families, and she later said that no one refused to take a child from her, despite the fact that harboring a Jew was punishable by death. It is estimated that Sendler and her network saved 2,500 Jewish children from deportation to concentration camps. 

          But she did something else too - something a mother might do. She made a meticulous coded list of the children's names and their hiding places in the hopes they could be reunited with their families after the war. Identical lists were filed neatly in two glass jars buried under an apple tree. In 1943, Sendler was arrested and tortured, but the Nazis never found the jars. She did not consider herself a heroine and regretted that she did not do more. About her achievement, Sendler said, "Every child saved with my help and the help of all my wonderful secret messengers...is the justification of my existence on this earth, and not a title to glory."

          
          When I first read this woman's incredible story, I did not know I would include it in a post that also discussed the U.S. president, Mother Theresa, and starfish. The same week I learned about Irena Sendler, I saw President Obama's speech about race in our country. At the end of that speech, he said, "We need to spend some time in thinking about how do we bolster and reinforce our African-American boys?...There are a lot of kids out there who need help, who are getting a lot of negative reinforcement. And is there more that we can do to give them the sense that their country cares about them, and values them, and is willing to invest in them?"

                                  The portion relevant to this post starts around 12:15

                                      

          Don't worry. This is not going to become a post about politics or race. It is, however, about being a human being (so Vulcans should stop reading now). I was glad to hear Obama make this statement, but I also felt incredibly powerless. I am not a boy or even an African-American woman. I am not a lawmaker, a teacher, or a sociologist. Basically, I could not think of a single way in which I was remotely qualified to give anyone "the sense that their country cares about them."

Then I remembered Irena Sendler and the oft-quoted but still beautiful passage from the Talmud: "He who saves one life saves the world entire." One woman, a baby when she was smuggled out of the Warsaw ghetto, credited Sendler with her own life but also the lives of her children and grandchildren. 

          This reminds me of something my friend Colin (who is not a woman but is beautiful all the same) told me in high school. I affectionately dub it the Starfish Story and it goes something like this: a man walks along a beach where thousands of starfish have washed ashore where they will dry out and die. He encounters another man walking along, picking up starfish, and throwing them into the ocean. The first man says, "What are you doing? There are thousands of starfish and you can't possibly save them all. Your efforts will make no difference." His companion simply picked up another starfish and threw it into the ocean, saying, "It made a difference to that one."

          I hope no one will ever again find themselves in Sendler's position. I believe I can say with certainty, however, that we will all encounter someone in need of remembering their worth to the human race. Because are we not all starfish at some point? Mother Theresa said, "Let no one ever come to you without leaving better and happier. Be the living expression of God's kindness: kindness in your face, kindness in your eyes, kindness in your smile." And this is the point in the journey that has been writing this post that I started to feel full of power. I cannot rid the world of all evil and injustice no matter how much I feel like it every time I reread the Lord of the Rings trilogy. I feel constantly embarrassed by the fact that I cannot even make myself love everyone I encounter. But kindness - that I can do.

Mother Theresa, a beautiful woman with

kindness in her face, her eyes, and her smile

          My mother told me - and I believer her (most beautiful woman I know, remember?) - that often this kindness can merely take the form of openness.  We are so often closed off from others, focused on computer screens, text messages, or simply the task ahead. I work in the library at my university where, literally, hundreds of students walk by me. A lot of them are stressed. Unless they approach me with a question, I rarely look up from what I am doing. I have a job to do, you know. Yet, is my productivity lessened because I look up and smile? In a single smile, anyone can see kindness. I hope that a starfish - someone in need of encouragement or just a conversation - would see an open door through which they might enter. 

          So there's my jumbled mess of a blog post and my goal for the future. It is a simple goal but one essential for promoting the well-being of starfish. 

          Kindness in my smile.