The Way of Oz: A Guide to Wisdom, Heart, and Courage

13: Serving Others

In Matthew 20, the mother of two of Jesus’ twelve disciples basically pulls an “end run.” She goes behind the backs of the other disciples and goes to Jesus with a little request. She wants her two sons to be able to sit at Jesus’ right and left when he comes into His Kingdom. . . . She wants the best seats in the house for her boys for eternity. After all, it’s just a small favor. . . . Jesus doesn’t say yes or no. He basically tells her: you’ve got the wrong perspective. That’s not the way to look at things. “Whoever wishes to be great among you, must be a servant.” Karen Hughes (1948–), global vice chair at Burson-Marsteller, former undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and public affairs in the US Department of State Altruism. It’s a word for a profound idea, an ethic promoted in most if not all of the world’s religions and a principle many people embrace, including the traditionally religious and humanists alike. The great French philosopher Auguste Compte (1798–1857) coined the word and defined it as the deliberate and morally compelling pursuit of the welfare of others. People who meet Compte’s criterion are said to be altruistic. The notion of altruism permeates the Oz tales, from the original 1900 story through nearly every sequel, and is exemplified in many of the characters —the Cowardly Lion, Dorothy, Princess Ozma, and Glinda. In the context of the Way of Oz, altruism is tied to service to others. 13 Serving Others 151.........................Serving Other< Serving Others—One at a Time For the adult, the path to the Way of Oz may be service, but adolescents are more likely to enter the Way of Oz through the love they receive from their parents and other relatives and friends—love that, as adolescents grow older, is reciprocally exchanged. Ambassador Karen Hughes has said, “Many of us act and work as if fame or power or money and all the stuff we collect are our true loves, yet if we drag ourselves away from that list that keeps us busy and focus on what is truly important, most of us would say that our family and friends and the people we care about are what we truly love.” Adolescents should move on with a “loving heart” through high school and college, pursuing at minimum a baccalaureate degree, which is vital for success in the twenty-first century. Many budding professionals will need to go on to graduate or professional school to qualify for entrance into their chosen profession, and along the way there will be opportunities for service through volunteer efforts, internships, and service-learning courses. The combination of loving and learning, with its companions, competence, and courage, puts you in a powerful position to serve. If you develop an ethical framework within a beneficent milieu, altruism is likely to emerge. You will begin to see that the loving-learning-competence triad joined with courage bolsters your ability to discern and deliver genuine service. Without such an understanding, a shallow “do-goodism” may result, in which good intentions can do more harm than good. With the loving-learning-competence triad in place and motivation through altruism or a passion for service, remarkable things can happen that help change the world—one person at a time. Scott Pelley, a correspondent for CBS’s 60 Minutes, offers an interesting perspective on serving others. He recently challenged a group of college graduates to think about taking a test sixty years hence. The test, on the worth of your life, poses questions with no easy answers and is timed but may come to fruition at any time given the differences in our personal life clocks. Pelley cites two examples of those who will pass his sixty years test with flying colors. The first is Paulette Schank, a US Air Force nurse who served in battle zones in Iraq. Pelley describes Schank’s behavior during an incident in a tent The Way of Oz and Serving.........................152 hospital at Balad Air Force Base, about forty miles north of Baghdad. She was on duty in a trauma center when a badly wounded marine arrived who needed a lot of blood while surgeons attempted to repair his three arterial lacerations. At a critical moment, the blood supply ran out, and Schank volunteered to get more. She ran to the blood blank to donate her own blood. Word spread of the young marine’s plight, and many fellow service personnel heeded the call. The marine’s life was saved, and Schank reveled in the altruistic joy of the young man’s extended life. Paulette Schank answered her sixty-year test question—“how to serve”—with compassion, daring, and courage. The second of Pelley’s examples is Marcy Van Dyke, whom he met when Van Dyke was the public health program manager for the International Rescue Committee Refugee Camp in Chad. Pelley describes Van Dyke’s tireless efforts to take care of the nutritional needs of thousands of undernourished children, many of whom are from other developing countries that are all too commonly seen on television news programs. For Van Dyke’s life test, the question was about intolerance and injustice, and she answered with compassion and mercy. There are countless other examples of the unselfish service Americans provide. As a people, Americans are among the most caring, compassionate, and service-oriented in the world. If you couple these laudable characteristics with the tenets of the Way of Oz (service as critical to converting learning into wisdom; intermingling of heart and mind to reinforce loving; linking courage to service) and a commitment to lifelong learning, you should be poised to make significant contributions to our national and world communities . ...