A Grain of Wheat

by Joseph Jacobson

  “I see clearly, therefore—and I trust that you do too—that there is a point up to which the gifts of science can be a blessing and beyond which they are an incalculable curse. For who can attach a price tag to the unique properties of the human soul, forged through eons of meeting and overcoming the challenges which life on earth has placed in its path? Who will dare to assess the extent of our loss if these properties should wither and die because science has rendered them useless? This very day Katherine and I have seen with our own eyes the rusting away of human resourcefulness, and with it we have heard the death rattle of human inventiveness. On top of that, we have observed that the most elemental human expressions of generosity and mercy are being trivialized, if not entirely lost, by our next generation of leaders, driven as they are by their insatiable demands for stuff, stuff, and more stuff, for fun, fun, and more fun. And—I must be frank—this loss terrifies me….”

  His voice broke. The audience was dead silent.

  “You see, eradicating all evil is indeed man’s greatest problem, but eradicating all problems is turning out to be one of his greatest evils. Left with no basic needs to be met by their own constructive efforts and energies, what will people do with those energies? Will they turn to crime, to cheap thrills at the expense of others, to unimaginable behavioral perversions to relieve the tedium of their life, to aphrodisiacs of all kinds to fill the emptiness of a life without love, to attachment to fanatical ideologies to vent their frustration, to pure sloth as the summum bonum of the nouveaux riches? I do not want to believe that this generation is becoming a monstrosity created in large measure by a few men and women of science who ‘know not what they do’!

  “Yet, this outcome is virtually inevitable unless we all understand what is at stake here and take decisive action to ensure that we constantly aim only at overcoming man’s oppressive problems without robbing him of his stimulating problems. If we can’t achieve this, we face an unenviable future in which the immense power for good or evil created by today’s highly motivated scientists is left by default in the hands of the unmotivated—of our youth—who seem to have lost all capacity to distinguish good from evil. Have we created a monster we can’t control and turned it over to those who are even less able to control it than we are? This is the grim prospect we face in the near future.

  “This then is the first obstacle we stumble over in chasing the mirage: life without trials is not bliss. It turns out to be the greatest of trials.

  “The second obstacle preventing us from reaching the mirage which has spellbound our youth, and some of us as well, is that chasing the mirage excludes by definition all concern for the well-being of anyone whose well-being does not directly affect ours. Seeking a worry-free life automatically excludes worrying about others. As logical as this may be, it is also extremely perilous. Creating a large island of unspeakable luxury in the heart of a much larger world of unspeakable poverty, and believing that it is possible to protect the former while ignoring the latter, is a formula for disaster. How?

  “Here we are, perhaps five hundred of us congregated in this one auditorium. For most of us, science has long ago alleviated most of our oppressive problems, the ones that are not spiritual in essence, but it has also deprived us of many of the stimulating problems we actually require to stay healthy in mind, body and spirit. The results are obvious—a great increase in the nervous tension of a society in which far too many people know of nothing they really must do. It’s not that there are no stimulating problems left in the world to motivate us: God knows there are! Herein lies the baffling paradox. While we are chasing one mirage after another to relieve our boredom with a life that lacks stimulating problems, two out three persons in the world are struggling under the burden of their oppressive problems, untouched by the science that once fed us, then satisfied us, and now is overstuffing us and killing us. Our virulent superfluity which we are tempted to hang onto for dear life is the answer to their desperate necessity! What is killing us by degrees could be saving them!

  “Thank you, my friends. Until today, I myself refused to see this clearly enough. I must have thought that any peaceful use to which developments in science are put is automatically a good use. How little I understood its potential to corrode the human soul…. It must have been,” he said as if to himself, “that I was too insulated in my own satisfying little world to notice the effect our achievements were having on real people. I thought people would be inspired by them to help others. But just look at what we are facing instead. I did not know Man. And I think I may also have greatly underrated the hold which the evil one has on our race.

  “Now I see that if the great strides in science are to count for good, they must be diverted not only from the suicidal armaments race (and there seems to be little prospect for this), but even more from the suicidal demands of the gluttony that rots the human soul from within (and there seems to be even less prospect for this).

  “Is there any way forward?

  “There is but it requires a conversion, a conversion we may or may not be capable of making as a nation. We must commit ourselves to work, to work hard and single-mindedly, to bring relief, immediate as well as permanent, to our brothers and sisters worldwide who lack adequate food, medical care, gainful employment, personal shelter, and security. We whom gluttony imperils must share generously with those whom starvation threatens if there is to be healing, both for us in our need and for them in theirs. The glutton who refuses to be converted is consigning himself, not just the neglected poor, to a life of prolonged misery. The misery of the poor is largely physical and easy to relieve with a little effort, whereas the misery of the wealthy, of many of us, is spiritual and impossible to relieve despite recourse to alcohol, drugs, unfettered gluttony, pleasure-seeking, easy sex, a life of luxury, psychiatric care, and on and on and on. Without a deep conversion, our misery will go with us all the way to the grave.

  “The indolent wealthy unusually don’t even notice the poor, but you can be certain that most of the poor are well aware of the wealthy. I know next to nothing about the world of international business, but I do know that it is easy for the wealthy to toss a few crumbs at the poor and make off with huge profits. I do know that international businessmen who are truly concerned about working conditions, worker safety, fair wages, reasonable hours, and product quality control in the foreign countries where they do business are few and far between. Most businessmen pay attention only to the bottom line, the ease with which they and their stockholders can make bigger profits where workers are so helpless that they are forced to take what’s given them, even if it is shamefully less than they need and deserve. We have a friend who has bucked the tide. It has not been easy, but he can point to three notable successes in India, Ethiopia, and Malawi, along with several failures elsewhere. Could we survive the tide of ill-will aimed at us from all sides if the rest of the world were to see us only as exploiters lacking a conscience, not as partners in eradicating the evils of destitution? We need to remember Our Lord’s reminder that greed always turns back on the miser, ravaging him first from within and then from without.

  “Thus it should be plain to all here this evening that our only hope lies in cultivating in ourselves and in our youth a deep commitment to what I will call having a ‘toiling plenty,’ an attitude toward our wealth in which we retain only what we actually need, and we find effective ways, perhaps through our churches and other well-placed organizations, of using the rest of our resources to lift unbearable burdens from the shoulders of our fellowmen wherever they may be found. For if mankind, that is, if you and I, with our strong Judeo-Christian heritage, are not moved by the freedom which the bounty of science has given us to a truly effective charity and a truly loving regard for the bitter needs of so much of the rest of the world, no nation on earth will ever be so moved, and our doom is sealed. If you and I are not so moved,”—his voice faltered—”you force me, you force me to conclude that our achievements in science have been a colossal
disaster for the human soul, both yours and mine. If these achievements serve only to inspire in us a greed that knows no bounds even when we are already satiated beyond sensitivity, if these achievements cannot evoke in you and me a love for the needy and a passion to use our plenty to address their poverty, then you could not make me give our glorious ‘achievements’ away to the poor for fear that surfeit might do to them and their societies what it has done to us and ours. Better by far for the human soul to be faced with grinding poverty than with runaway prosperity. The soul can survive poverty but, in the words of Our Lord Himself, few souls can survive the ravages of wealth.”

  He paused, stunned by his own words.

  Then he gathered his thoughts together and concluded his address with painful slowness and intense passion.

  “Now go home, all of you. Make today your tomorrow. Figure out tangible ways to share your abundance with our brothers and sisters where the need is greatest. Be the beginning of the conversion of our nation from a community of grabbers to a community of givers, remembering always that if we fail in this, far from eradicating evil through the advancements of science, we will be entrenching it. We can’t let this happen!

  “God help us.”

  Dr. Pearson nodded his head. He was done. A pervasive hush descended on the auditorium. Then someone from the balcony began to clap, detonating an explosion of long swelling applause.

  Kay was standing in the wing waiting for him as he left the stage. She threw her arms around him.

  “O Steve,” she whispered, brushing back a tear, “you were wonderful.”

  XIV

  Queen’s Crest Subdivision where the Leif Landgren estate was located had been a less choice farm a mere decade earlier, owing to the tortuous wooded ravines that carved it up. But the expansion of greater Minneapolis proved to be a bonanza for the elderly couple who had spent nearly half a century wresting a living from that piece of land. Its secluded valleys and rolling hills were ideal raw material for a land developer to turn into an exclusive gated community. The couple took the money he gave them and retired to Arizona, free of financial worries for the rest of their lives. The lots carved from the farm never did go “on the market.” They were parceled out by “insiders” passing on a hot tip to wealthy industrialists. The only nonindustrialist in Queen’s Crest was the noted brain surgeon, Dr. Emmanuel Kaufmann.

  The homes in this exclusive maze of glens were worth five to ten times the value of a new home in any other district in Reedville, sprawling insects of glass and stone hugging the hillsides. The Pearsons, following Mr. Pfister’s new Chrysler in their repaired DeSoto, were privileged to behold these dwellings in their full splendor as many of them were ingeniously floodlighted to highlight their most flattering attributes.

  “Do they keep those lights on all the time, or are they doing that just for us?” Kay wondered out loud. “Makes me appreciate our cozy little house. I wonder what floodlights would do for our place….”

  “You sweetheart,” Steve responded, reaching over and squeezing her hand.

  Merry Rose Lane wound through several gorges before it brought you to the Landgren home. Their broad driveway was lined with prestigious cars, but a widening in the road just below their house was obviously intended to accommodate an overflow of the parked cars of visitors. So the Pfisters and the Pearsons turned their cars in on an angle next to a few vehicles that were already parked there. It was just after 10:00 p.m. The Pfisters escorted Steve and Kay along the one hundred yards or so up the sloped driveway to the front door of the Landgren home.

  “Why, if it isn’t our guest of honor and his charming wife, and our beloved principal and his dear wife!” exclaimed Mrs. Landgren. “Do come in. We’ve all been waiting for you.”

  She was a stately woman of about forty-five years of age. She had tastefully applied makeup to her eyes that gave them the merest hint of Oriental mystery, perfectly matching her tight silk evening gown and the fluidity of her mannerisms. With grace she showed them into the foyer and helped them off with their coats, handing them to their Finnish maid whom she didn’t bother to introduce to them. Then, taking Steve by one arm and Kay by the other, she led them toward the spacious living room in which about forty people were already comfortably seated. As they appeared under the hallway arch, the men all rose to their feet and the women all smiled politely at the persons of their guest of honor and his wife.

  “Friends, friends,” announced Mrs. Landgren. “May I have the honor and pleasure of presenting to you our guests, Dr. Stephan and Mrs. Katherine Pearson.”

  Then she released their arms, turned to face the self-conscious scientist, and said on behalf of everyone present, “Sir, we are indebted to you for your address this evening and welcome you into our home.”

  Turning back to the main body, she took Steve and Kay by the arms around the entire room, introducing each couple by name and position. The only couple who rang a bell with the Pearsons was “Dr. and Mrs. Rolph Eriksson. The good doctor is everyone’s favorite general practitioner in Reedville and a valued member of our school board.”

  The introductions completed, she conducted Steve and Kay to an elegant love seat behind a coffee table and invited them to be seated, adding with a touch of finesse, “Don’t worry, my friends. You won’t be lonesome. Many of us are eager to spend a few moments with you. I’ll leave you right here where we can all reach you,” she said, pulling two chairs around to the other side of the coffee table.

  “Ingrid will see to it that you are offered plenty of hors d’oeuvres. Can I offer you something to drink?”

  Stephan looked straight up at their hostess for the first time.

  “Would you have a gin and tonic for me and a glass of sherry for my wife?”

  “Certainly,” she replied.

  Kay looked at Steve. The strain of the day had heavily sapped his strength. She could see that he was already bending under the weight of the challenge he had urged on everyone else that evening, the challenge he would now be obliged to face himself. The pallor in his face, the trembling of his hands, and the retreat into himself that she sensed was happening already frightened her. She was all too aware that something was crumbling inside him, that he was in the early stages of caving in.

  “Yes, thank you,” she said. “A gin and tonic and a glass of sherry would be just right.”

  Mrs. Landgren vanished to fetch their drinks. Another woman immediately took her place. Her perfectly coiffed hair was purple-white. Her suit was haute couture. Her cheeks showed the flush of the three or four martinis she had already consumed. She was at no loss for words.

  “Dr. Pearson! It is such a pleasure to meet you and your wife. I’m Lucille Maaker. My husband is the superintendent of schools. I so admired your address tonight, your composure, your self-possessing assurance, your oracular confidence in the truth of what you were conveying to us. You must have great faith in what you believe.”

  “I’m glad if you found my words beneficial,” he returned.

  “Beneficial? Inspiring, I should say. What particularly, shall I say, ‘invited’ my keen attention to the rest of the insights you shared with us was the allusions to the Deity you made early on in your address, and several times thereafter. Am I right in concluding that much of your assurance comes from your faith in the Almighty?”

  “Yes,” he answered. “That is true. To carry on from where we are now, we need hope. And that hope can come only from Him. Only He can bring about the conversion of our society. We can’t do it. It has to come from Him.”

  “O Doctor, just to have faith that something is true behind it all. It must be wonderful! Do you mind if I ask you a rather personal question?”

  She was working herself into quite a fit of excitement.

  He nodded his head.

  “What is your religious persuasion? That is, what spiritual collectivity do you affiliate with? For years I’ve been looking for one that really meets my needs, but I can’t seem to find the right one. I nee
d a spiritual connection that can give me your kind of faith. What form of spirituality do you practice? To whose belief system do you subscribe with confidence as a man of science and culture?”

  “Actually, I have found at various times in my life great strength in the Lutheran and the Catholic….”

  “Lutheran?” she broke in. “Why, every second church here is either Lutheran or Catholic! I was raised Lutheran. O doctor, NO!”

  She staggered back.

  “I can’t believe it. Lutherans and Catholics are so … I just can’t believe it….”

  “I find a depth and a truth and a timelessness in it that….”

  “O Doctor, NO! Don’t let me hear it again. If they had anything to offer me, I’d have found it long ago. O Doctor, I’m so disappointed!”

  The poor disillusioned woman took a long draught of the martini she was holding and collapsed into a nearby chair, a glassy look in her eyes.

  For the next two minutes nobody else ventured over to the sofa except Mrs. Landgren with their drinks. Gratefully Kay took them and gave the gin and tonic to her husband who had yet to regain his balance after his encounter with Mrs. Maaker. She almost had to fold his fingers around the glass to make him realize what it was. In so doing, she noticed that her own hand was unsteady and her own heart was fluttering. The room was abuzz with conversations, but directly across from them the voices of two impeccably dressed middle-aged men stood out.

  “But is it good business? That’s all I ask.”