The other day I re-watched one of my favorite movies: "A Beautiful Mind." The movie is based on the biography of John Nash, a Nobel prize winner in the field of mathematics. He was a genius but fought the disease of paranoid schizophrenia. Since the drugs for his condition would not allow him to use his brain, he decided to fight the disease only with his own mind. He eventually learns to ignore his delusions. He goes back to work at Princeton University, but it takes him a while to be accepted by students and colleagues. Near the end are some very touching scenes showing students beginning to seek him out as a teacher and mentor and his colleagues showing acceptance and respect.
In his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize, John Nash says:
I've always believed in numbers and the equations and logics that lead to reason. But after a lifetime of these pursuits I ask, what truly is logic? Who decides reason? My quest has taken me through the physical, the metaphysical, the delusional, and back. And I have made the most important discovery of my career; the most important discovery of my life: it is only in the mysterious equations of love that any logical reasons can be found. I’m only here tonight because of you. You are the reason I am. You are all my reasons. Thank you.St. Paul said it best when he said that without love we are only clanging symbols. Our lives, our work, our words mean absolutely nothing if we don't both give and receive love. Not just the kind of love we have for our family, but the love that gives us respect and admiration for other people no matter how different or "strange" they might appear to us. We don't know the battles others are fighting. We don't know the baggage they carry.
If we had met a crazy old person like John Nash on the street, most of us would never believe that he had anything of value to share with the world. But his mathematical theories are used in a wide range of areas from accounting to artificial intelligence to military theory.
How many gifts has the world missed because we were not willing to love enough to listen? How much better might our lives be today if we loved and respected those who seemed a little "too" different? What if we all took the risk to love the seemingly unlovable? The social outcasts of the world might just be our greatest untapped resource.
Yes, we need to have faith and we need to have hope. But St. Paul was right... the greatest of these is love.
Father,
It is easy for us to say that we should love one another, but so much harder to do, especially when we meet someone who very different and we don't understand. Help us to look beneath the surface and love because you love and love as we are loved. Amen.
Joys: Listening to a couple different people reflect on their recent spiritual retreats; homemade soup; good movies
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