Every night I read a few pages from volume one of Thurston and Atwater’s four-volume set of Lives of the Saints. Writing before World War II, the authors brought together the best evidence about the lives of the many thousands whom the Catholic Church has declared saints. Many references are but a few sentences while for others contemporary documents, eyewitnesses, and historical research flesh out a detailed picture of what made them unique and how they affected their time.

My tastes in evening reading have shifted over the years with a premise barely conscious. At times it was, “I’ll be able to use this,” or “This is interesting,” or “I should know this.” What’s grown upon me recently seems more like an attraction of kinship. Regardless their beliefs that I might not hold, the saints are the people who, if I were in their time and vicinity, I would seek out. They manifest a sort of gold standard of human excellence as others around them, recognizing their qualities, concluded, “This is as good as it gets.” I don’t limit this just to Catholic saints because remarkably parallel experiences follow those of the east as well.

There’s a clue here for our efforts at changing education and addressing social problems. I recall hearing back in high school that to change society, you needed to change people; that society could be no better than the people in it—an obvious implication for self-examination. I thought then that changing people or self would be a long, hard task, if not impossible, and that in the meantime one had to work at what was available in the forms of society. Probably 95% of us would agree with this, but an unfortunate effect is that lesser human traits govern everything.

So now we barely skirt a shutdown of half the government. A current TV documentary is titled “American Greed,” spending beyond its means has brought even the government to face potential disaster, we support two and a half wars, patterns of consumption are unsustainable, entrenched educational practices are unsatisfactory, and our leaders barely talk to each other politely.

Yet all these conditions were invented by people. We peer into their minds and ask, “What were you thinking?” Often we find presumption and hubris—“I do this because I can.” Or selfishness and self-interest—“I take this because it benefits me.” Or disdain and rejection—“I discard you and your needs because I’ve written you out of my world.”

Here a glance at the saints might offer an alternate perspective. What enabled their impact on others to persist often for centuries? Let me thread together a few key qualities. They believed in an ideal that became consciously present to them, enabling them to be utterly selfless. Their ideal was a living force, touching everything about them. Because of the strength of their adherence to it, they could sacrifice not only the advantages of their station in life, but also expend daily effort even to the willing gift of their lives in service of their ideal. Three aspects stand out:

1. A fix on an ideal. We need to separate the force of an idea from the force of a presence. While they adhered resolutely to and obeyed their religious beliefs, a different aspect operates in an active sense of exchange with an invisible reality. By means of their practice of prayer they fixed themselves to what their beliefs described, and were continually sustained at this by internal experience, guidance for their actions, and—by innumerable accounts—knowing even future events entirely unavailable to ordinary thought and—again by the testimony of countless eyewitnesses—were channels for the miraculous. By prayer they communicated with God, and in return received guidance, wisdom, and a different quality of knowing. 

2. Unselfishness. Upon identifying the spiritual reality that mattered to them, a basic choice on their part was to turn their lives over to its service. In her examination of the lives of mystics, Evelyn Underhill noted a common thread. They devoted their lives to the highest they knew. In more ordinary terms we note a parallel in people’s choice of an occupation that ”helps people.” You choose to be a teacher, doctor, or social worker to be of service? Excellent! Yet you might do that and still “have a life” and possess many interests. Helping others in one phase of your life need not prevent you from “doing well by doing good.” Self-interest and self-benefit remain in play.

With the saints, however, their single dominant choice governs even these interstices of life. They choose to relate all moments, all thought, all benefit, all effort to the single service, extension, and cooperation with the spiritual reality they apprehend in their prayer life.

3. Endurance. The result of the inner work noted in the two qualities above shows up in what people around them can see: unremitting effort in service of their ideal. They’re asked to walk over mountains in mid-winter? No problem. They’re falsely accused and driven to exile? No problem. They’re tortured, and die being roasted or torn apart? No problem. They’re given responsibilities far beyond their resources to manage? No problem. In each case they do what they can with a willing and joyful spirit, and take whatever step is possible—maintaining their unshakeable belief in their spiritual connection. Those regarded as heroes today like Cesar Chavez and Nelson Mandela typically manifest such all-out endurance and devotion to others’ needs, whatever their beliefs may have been.

Many watching such a life can’t help but be affected by it. Certainly no idea nor example pleases everyone. Some are hard-headed, and their own unmanaged tendencies enable them to perpetrate horrendous acts toward others. But many ultimately recognize selflessness when they see it, they recognize love when it’s present to them, and often are moved to compare it to their own unmanaged heart.

So what has this train of thought to contribute to the issue of educational change?

It’s really about the aspect of yourself you draw upon as you attempt to affect others. Call it my belief about you if you wish, but there is something in you that’s beyond you as you are now. You possess a capacity to be selflessly committed to an ideal, can at root endure anything life throws at you and persist beyond it, and can remain in spiritual and emotional balance.

Maybe you edge away from the spiritual references because early church experiences burned you, so let’s express the point differently. Not long ago in a fifth grade class, a student inquired about goals to set for oneself. I suggested two anyone can adopt: 1) To be imperturbable. This is never to allow our emotional nature to be seized by conditions outside us, but rather to remain serene and balanced in relation to our highest ideals. We choose to look to our ideals to govern our emotions and life instead of to outer circumstances. The latter never fail to jerk us this way and that, so that we may, if we choose, blame our unhappiness on conditions around us. The lesson from the saints is the opposite: You are happy if you choose to be and if you affix yourself to your highest good that persists beyond where circumstances can touch you. 2) The second principle I suggested is to be impeccable. Grasp your highest judgment, utilize the best thinking you know, and align your behavior to it. The word derives from the Latin peccare, meaning “to sin.” Do everything right, allow no flaw in your thoughts, feelings, and behavior.

When you’ve assimilated this viewpoint into your habitual thinking, look again at how you approach the mundane issue of improving education. Something in your accustomed thinking may loosen, may unfix itself, allowing you to recognize an avenue of action available but not yet taken. Pursuing it with unselfishness and endurance, you may realize a part of yourself hidden to you until now.  

John Jensen is a licensed clinical psychologist and author of Experiences with Spiritual Reality (Xlibris, 2003). He welcomes comments sent to him directly at jjensen@gci.net.