In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity, as reported in Jeremiah 31:31-34, every human being can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
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Real Stars - the True Heroes
Ben Stein's Last Column...
For
many years Ben Stein has written a biweekly column called "Monday Night At
Morton's." (Morton's is a famous chain of Steakhouses known to be
frequented by movie stars and famous people from around the globe.) Now, Ben is
terminating the column to move on to other things in his life. Reading his final column is worth
a few minutes of your time.
How Can Someone Who Lives in Insane Luxury Be a
Star in Today's World?
As I begin to write this, I "slug" it, as we writers say, which means
I put a heading on top of the document to identify it. This heading is
"eonlineFINAL," and it gives me a shiver to write it. I have been
doing this column for so long that I cannot even recall when I started. I loved
writing this column so much for so long I came to believe it would never end.
It worked well for a long time, but gradually, my changing as a person and the
world's change have overtaken it. On a small scale, Morton's, while better than
ever, no longer attracts as many stars as it used to. It still brings in the
rich people in droves and definitely some stars. I saw Samuel L. Jackson there
a few days ago, and we had a nice visit, and right before that, I saw and had a
splendid talk with Warren Beatty in an elevator, in which we agreed that
Splendor in the Grass was a super movie. But Morton's is not the star galaxy it
once was, though it probably will be again.
Beyond that, a bigger change has happened. I no longer think Hollywood stars
are terribly important. They are uniformly pleasant, friendly people, and they
treat me better than I deserve to be treated. But a man or woman who makes a
huge wage for memorizing lines and reciting them in front of a camera is no longer
my idea of a shining star we should all look up to.
How can a man or woman who makes an eight-figure wage and lives in insane
luxury really be a star in today's world, if by a "star" we mean
someone bright and powerful and attractive as a role model? Real stars are not
riding around in the backs of limousines or in Porsches or getting trained in
yoga or Pilates and eating only raw fruit while they have Vietnamese girls do
their nails.
They can be interesting, nice people, but they are not heroes to me any longer.
A real star is the soldier of the 4th Infantry Division who poked his head into
a hole on a farm near Tikrit, Iraq. He could have been met by a bomb or a hail
of AK-47 bullets. Instead, he faced an abject Saddam Hussein and the gratitude
of all of the decent people of the world.
A real star is the U.S. soldier who was sent to disarm a bomb next to a road
north of Baghdad. He approached it, and the bomb went off and killed him.
A real star, the kind who haunts my memory night and day, is the U.S. soldier
in Baghdad who saw a little girl playing with a piece of unexploded ordnance on
a street near where he was guarding a station. He pushed her aside and threw
himself on it just as it exploded. He left a family desolate in California and
a little girl alive in Baghdad.
The stars who deserve media attention are not the ones who have lavish weddings
on TV but the ones who patrol the streets of Mosul even after two of their
buddies were murdered and their bodies battered and stripped for the sin of trying
to protect Iraqis from terrorists.
We put couples with incomes of $100 million a year on the covers of our
magazines. The noncoms and officers who barely scrape by on military pay but
stand on guard in Afghanistan and Iraq and on ships and in submarines and near
the Arctic Circle are anonymous as they live and die.
I am no longer comfortable being a part of the system that has such poor
values, and I do not want to perpetuate those values by pretending that who is
eating at Morton's is a big subject.
There are plenty of other stars
in the American firmament...the policemen and women who go off on patrol in
South Central and have no idea if they will return alive; the orderlies and
paramedics who bring in people who have been in terrible accidents and prepare
them for surgery; the teachers and nurses who throw their whole spirits into
caring for autistic children; the kind men and women who work in hospices and
in cancer wards.
Think of each and every fireman who was running up the stairs at the World
Trade Center as the towers began to collapse. Now you have my idea of a real
hero.
I came to realize that life lived to help others is the only one that matters.
This is my highest and best use as a human. I can put it another way. Years
ago, I realized I could never be as great an actor as Olivier or as good a
comic as Steve Martin...or Martin Mull or Fred Willard--or as good an economist
as Samuelson or Friedman or as good a writer as Fitzgerald. Or even remotely
close to any of them.
But I could be a devoted father to my son, husband to my wife and, above all, a
good son to the parents who had done so much for me. This came to be my main
task in life. I did it moderately well with my son, pretty well with my wife
and well indeed with my parents (with my sister's help). I cared for and paid
attention to them in their declining years. I stayed with my father as he got
sick, went into extremis and then into a coma and then entered immortality with
my sister and me reading him the Psalms.
This was the only point at which my life touched the lives of the soldiers in
Iraq or the firefighters in New York. I came to realize that life lived to help
others is the only one that matters and that it is my duty, in return for the
lavish life God has devolved upon me, to help others He has placed in my path.
This is my highest and best use as a human.
Faith is not believing that God can. It is knowing that God will.
By Ben Stein
We truly take a lot for granted.
Forget the Hollywood "stars" and the sports "heroes"... please share this!
In the "New Covenant" made by our Creator God with humanity, as reported in Jeremiah 31:31-34, every human being can know God from within - because the Holy Spirit is revealing our Creator to all who are willing to know the Lord and trust in Him. We can still help each other along the way; so may you be pleased to find here a variety of helps to the life of faith in God through Jesus Christ. G.S.
© 2006-2021 All rights reserved Fr. Gilles Surprenant, Associate Priest of Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montreal QC
© 2006-2021 Tous droits réservés Abbé Gilles Surprenant, Prêtre Associé de Madonna House Apostolate & Poustinik, Montréal QC
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