May 22, 2021
Global vaccinations, "Never caught" and Radical Generosity
Today is the 142nd day of the year. 200 million Americans, half a billion Chinese and 170 million Indians have received at least one dose of a vaccine. Not bad. In percentage terms, America is ahead with 60% of citizens vaccinated, and India lags at 12%. The Indian government has, so far, met only 10% of the target they set in January 2021. Yet, they insist that the entire country will have been inoculated by the end of the year. Wishful thinking? I pray they get their act right. Anything is possible. Stranger things have happened.
Truth be told, India is still very much a poor country. Its federal budget is $500 billion annually, about $420 per citizen. Contrast that with America, which spends well over $6,000 per citizen in a normal year. Last year, America spent twice that. India’s health budget is $10B, a mere $8 per capita. Even the most efficient administrator can only do so much when the finances are so meager. When you have incompetence AND a pandemic, the results can unfortunately be all too predictable and tragic. There really isn’t much to be gained from blame games. In the last 30 years, India has no doubt made enormous strides economically. Decades of progress have lulled us into a belief that India is doing fine when it’s really not. There is so much that remains to be done. As a start, Indians can start by paying their fair share of personal income taxes. Just 4% of them file tax returns.
Have you heard of Ona Judge Staines? Hers is a remarkable story of the one who was “never caught.” Frankly, I’m surprised that they haven’t already made a full length motion picture on her life. Ona was born in 1773 to enslaved parents. At the age of 9, she was brought to live with the Washingtons and eventually became Martha Washington’s personal maid. When George became President, Ona followed the first family to New York and then Philadelphia. The free Blacks of Philadelphia helped her escape, after she learned that she was to be given to Washington’s ill-tempered granddaughter, Eliza. She made her way to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, where she married, had three children and lived a life in stark poverty. In the two interviews she gave to abolitionist journals before her death, she gave two reasons for her escape. First, she wanted to be free. Second, she was determined to never serve Eliza.
With its 1780 gradual abolition law, Pennsylvania became the first state to begin the process of emancipation of slaves. Governing the nation from Philadelphia, Washington quietly maneuvered around the state’s laws by rotating his slaves in and out of the state every six months, thus not allowing them to establish residency. He claimed exemption from Pennsylvania’s laws on the grounds that he was forced to live in Philadelphia only because he was the President. Washington made several attempts to capture Judge, and is said to have been shocked at her “ingratitude.” Once, when Judge agreed to return on the condition that she be freed on Martha’s death, the President flatly dismissed her offer.
Washington retired from the Presidency in 1797. In 1799, he asked his nephew, Burwell Bassett Jr, for help in capturing Ona Judge Staines. Bassett traveled to New Hampshire at first to convince Judge. When she refused, Bassett made plans to kidnap her. He revealed the plan to Senator Langdon, in whose house he stayed as a guest. This time, the good Senator came to Judge’s help by alerting her to the nefarious plan. Bassett returned to Virginia without her.
In freedom, Ona learned to read and became a Christian. She died in poverty but she lived free for the rest of her life. On February 25, 2008, Philadelphia honored the 160th anniversary of her death. In 2010, the White House celebrated the 214th anniversary of her escape to freedom. Ona Judge Staines was born free like all beings in creation. It is the world that made her a slave.
Around forty years after Ona Judge Staines’ death, Jacques Maritain was born in Paris on November 18, 1882 and raised on the lukewarm Protestantism of his mother. He possessed no religious convictions when he entered the Sorbonne in 1901. One day, as Jacques walked hand in hand through a park with his Jewish girlfriend, the two made a pact to kill themselves if they failed to find meaning to their lives within a year. Luckily, the years at Sorbonne dissolved the despair. Soon, Jacques began studying the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, who became a lifelong influence. In one of his early works, Maritain wrote, “The disease afflicting the world is above all a disease of the intellect.” The fifty odd books he wrote over fifty years earned him the distinction of being “the greatest living Catholic philosopher.” Maritain repeatedly called upon the Church to bring its theology and philosophy into contact with modern day problems. He once referred to himself as “a man God has turned inside out like a glove.”
Maritain argued that the material self is but the shadow of the true self and tends to draw things to itself. The spiritual self, the true personality, is the source of generosity and happiness. There is a radical generosity that underlies Maritain’s world view. He believed such a generosity to be inscribed within the very being of a person, as the quality which defines the spirit. Jacques Maritain was buried in a little French village in Alsace in 1973. Maritain’s notion of personality has profound implications for religion, economics and society itself. Decades later, his words and philosophy have come to influence an American President. Joe Biden has said on more than one occasion that his life has been guided by the teachings of Maritain. If you’re rooted in Maritain, like Biden is, you’re bound to believe that we bear serious responsibility for each other’s well being. As for me, I’m just happy and proud that we have a President who can read.
Last night, we watched “The Dry,” an Aussie whodunnit, starring Eric Bana as Aaron Falk, a federal agent returning to his hometown after a 20 year absence for the funeral of his childhood mate. “324 days till the last rain,” announces a title as Aaron drives down the dusty road to Kiewarra. He investigates the murder-suicide of his friend and family even as a cloud hangs over his own head, a grim reminder of the mysterious death of another friend during childhood. The movie is filled with such an overwhelming sense of grief, regret and dread that we may forget its central mystery at times. It’s rare for a mystery to mourn the dead. The more Aaron investigates, the more sorrow he uncovers. The emphasis of the movie lies in the grief of its characters, and well beyond the mechanics of who did what, where and to whom. When it dutifully reveals, we don’t get closure. Rather we’re left with a sense of profound loss. It reminded me at times of another great tragic whodunnit, “Mystic River.” It is well worth watching.
Stay safe. Have a wonderful week ahead.