having to be shown the proof because the proof is manifest.
“It is the evidence of things we cannot yet see.” Hebrews 11:1
In what do you have faith?
You and I have a journey. In this book, we share a journey that goes deep within ourselves and explores what motivates us, what we feel, hear, see and think as we manage the workday.
We have another important journey. This is our personal journey through life. While this journey is uniquely our own, we share it with everyone else – each of us taking that unique personal journey, though we are never truly alone. This is our greatest task, to live a life that is rich and textured, long and rewarding, and, in the end meaningful.
So much of that journey is traveled at work, that how we each live our work life accounts for a significant portion of our life’s meaning and reward. The director and choreographer (and granddaughter of Duke Ellington) Mercedes Ellington stated,
“We take many journeys in life. Some are pleasant and some are painful and some take us back to where we began.”
I started life in the borough of Queens in New York City in 1955. My mom was unwed when I was born and she already had a six-year old son, my older brother Lee. She was a twenty-six year old nurse’s aide when I entered the picture and she was responsible for raising two sons, by herself. I know that she lived on her own, although my maternal grandmother, a large and imposing woman of Native- and African-American descent, also lived in New York City, in Brooklyn. When I was five, my mother met and married the love of her life, my stepfather Carleton Shaw, who was 29 years her senior.
To this day I’ve never met my biological father and I have only meager clues to his name. But my stepfather, along with my mother, raised me from age five until his death when I was twenty-one. I gained two beloved younger brothers in the interim, Carl, Jr. and John.
We were four boys with our mom and dad in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn during the hectic 1960s and 70s. As a family we weren’t poor but we were often broke! There wasn’t a lot of money in our household. There was, however, more than enough love, nurturing, respect, dignity and encouragement for learning.
Both of our parents revered learning. Our home was filled with books. Our parents expected us to know about politics and art. We knew to always say “thank you” and “please.” We took family outings to museums and libraries and public gardens. During the election night of 1972, my stepfather returned home from work late in the evening and announced, “I’m going out to vote for the loser,” because he believed in the candidate’s message and to demonstrate that even in the face of sure defeat, it was important to do what he felt was the right thing to do.
I attended New York City public schools, as did all of my brothers, and was graduated from the business school of the City University system, Bernard M. Baruch College. I commuted to classes in Manhattan by subway. My first years of college were free because at that time, City University didn’t charge tuition for New York City high school graduates. This is now ancient history!
My stepfather died while I was attending college (the same college he attended for adult ed courses), so for my junior and senior years I took over his last job doing maintenance and repair work for a landlord in the Brooklyn Heights neighborhood. Eventually I was hired by Dun & Bradstreet and then by the landlord agency of the U.S. government, the General Services Administration, as an Urban Planner. I subsequently worked for the New York City Department of Investigation; the nation’s largest animal welfare charity; the Mayor of the City of Yonkers, New York; the largest air freight company in North America; and several other private and not-for-profit organizations. I have helped investigate the biggest scandal in New York City history, worked to clean up one of the most corrupt municipal governments in the U.S., managed the acquisition and merger of the only animal poison control center in the U.S., and counseled managers on everything from harassment in the workplace to failed marriages.
Along the way I’ve traveled the world, from walking on the Great Wall of China to jogging in the Alps. My salary in one year was more than my parents had been paid in salaries in their entire lives. As a young man I avoided eye contact with police officers because I feared being noticed by them as a Black male in an urban ghetto. Years later I would be sworn in as the City of Yonkers’ first Deputy Mayor of African-American descent, with management responsibility for the Police Commissioner, among others.
At a certain point later in my life, I suddenly stopped and realized what a miracle of faith my life had been. I recall my mother, a chronic asthmatic whose trying life was ended by cancer at age 49, repeating one phrase whenever she dipped into her reserve of faith for strength; “God is good.”
Jump forward to the present.
Riding home one afternoon in my car, my first son and I began talking about miracles. I don’t remember how we came to that topic but I recall it was preceded by us talking about his feelings about inviting a friend to his birthday party. Gabriel asked me, “Have any miracles happened?” Of course, when I quickly replied “Yes,” he wanted details! I had to think for a moment before I could answer truthfully.
I told him he was a miracle. Our doctor informed my then wife and me that after the birth of our first child Emma, the odds weren’t on our side for another pregnancy. The birth of our daughter had followed a long and anxious road. The gift of Gabriel came unexpectedly almost two years after Emma’s birth.
Indeed, he is living, breathing miracle.
“What other miracles have happened?”
I told him about Nachum Sasonkin. I’m looking at a photograph of Nachum as I write. He is a handsome, bright-eyed young man of the Lubavitcher sect in Brooklyn. In March 2004, he was graduated from the Rabbinical College of America and ordained a rabbi. He carried with him to his ordination a bullet lodged in his brain. Ten years before his ordination, Nachum was an 18 year old student, riding in a van with his school friends, approaching the Brooklyn Bridge. A deranged hate-filled man, blinded by anti-Semitism, fired a gun into the van, killing another passenger, Ari Halberstam, and severely wounding Nachum.
“For months, (Nachum) lived on a respirator, communicating by blinking once for ‘yes’ and twice for ‘no,’ and being fed by a tube through his stomach.”
While his doctors doubted he would ever walk or talk again, Nachum’s family and friends, and the faith-filled community to which he belonged, stayed by his side. They took shifts sitting at his bedside, talking to him, singing to him, praying with the faith that a miracle would occur.
Listen to how Rabbi Sasonkin describes his personal miracle:
“I thank God for allowing me to recognize the preciousness of each breath and step I take. I pray that I continue to lead my life on a deeper level than I did before, never taking anything for granted, always recognizing His blessings.”
I told Gabriel about Gabrielle Acevedo. I’m also looking at a photograph of her. Gabrielle had leukemia. She was in the second grade in the Bronx. In the photograph little Gabrielle is asleep in a hospital bed with numerous tubes attached to her. She was born with heart disease and was diagnosed in 2003 with an acute leukemia strain.
Before you feel sorry for her, listen to what her teacher Rochelle Moche, another extraordinary person, says she learned when Gabrielle insisted upon receiving her school assignments on the day of her bone marrow transplant:
“(Gabrielle) wipes off her nose, finishes throwing up and does the assignment. I learned
