c. 1997 Religion News Service

UNDATED _ A middle-class mother watches from the sidelines each weekend as the lessons her children learn in Sunday School are trampled in the soccer-field turf. Will the cheers of the sports culture drown out the voice of compassion? In an I-win, you-lose world, how can she teach them the importance of being a force for good?

She is not alone:

_ A middle-aged manager warily eyes a younger colleague in the next cubicle; the young man has talent, but also much to learn about the way the professional world works. The pace is intense, paranoia high, and the threat of downsizing ever-present. In a soul-killing corporate culture, where workers’ energies are burned like kindling to satisfy the bottom line, why should the veteran reach out to the rookie when the rookie might be after her job?

_ The elderly residents of a comfortable neighborhood are frightened of the crime and violence emanating from the poorer sections of their city, but they vote down the school bonds that might improve the lives of the idle teens they fear on the street corner. Meanwhile, some residents are installing burglar alarms and slipping handguns in the drawers of their bedside tables. Why take chances in a dangerous world?

Being a force for good has never been easy, for young or old; at home, at work, or in the ‘hood.

But as ethicist Sharon Daloz Parks sees it, contemporary life has become so complex and morally ambiguous that Americans _ as individuals and as a society _ are losing their moral compass, and with it their collective ability to work for the common good.

Parks, a senior research fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, presents a grim vision of a wired society ill-equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century:

Overwhelmed by advancing technology, a changing workplace and a degraded natural and cultural environment, people put on the armor of cynicism and self-interest, retreating into personal concerns. Society is divided by race, class and tribe; public discourse has degenerated into sound-bite arguments and single-issue politics. Rich and poor alike suffer from a poverty of time, afflicted with compulsive”busyness”on the job and at play.

That bleak vision is articulated in a new book,”Common Fire: Lives of Commitment in a Complex World”(Beacon Press). Written by Parks and three other scholars, it is at once a devastating analysis of the moral poverty of modern life, and a prescription for what families, educators, employers, religious leaders and others can do about it.”We wanted to know who are the people living the kind of citizenship that is now needed … what are the things that are important to be caring about,”Parks said in an interview, describing the book as the study of”the spirituality of leadership in the 21st century.” She casts the book as a response to the landmark 1985 study,”Habits of the Heart,”by sociologist Robert Bellah and others examining the growing individualism of American life and the challenges it presents for a new kind of citizenship.

In”Common Fire,”Parks and her husband, Laurent A. Parks Daloz, an education professor at Lesley College, Cambridge, Mass., worked with Cheryl and James Keen, spouses who share administrative posts at Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio.

The four scholars interviewed 100 anonymous altruists, analyzing their lives and formative experiences. Their subjects came from many walks of life: educators, civil rights leaders, soup kitchen volunteers, a housewife who established educational programs in prisons, an international aid worker, a business leader with an interest in the young. They varied in age, race and gender; all had spent more than 20 years working for the common good.

How did each of these people develop the capacity for compassion, which the scholars describe as”the taproot of the moral imagination?”What first moved them to be a force for good? What sustained their efforts over time?

It was no surprise to the scholars that when the data was compiled, they had discovered no”Gandhi pill”to guarantee a child would grow up compassionate.

But there were a few predictors that sometimes _ not always _ paid off: a loving home; a parent who provides a living example by working actively for the public good. Opportunities for public service in adolescence also helped foster awareness of issues in the world beyond the personal.

A key element in the soul and psyche of an altruist, the scholars found, was a willingness to reach out across”the boundaries of otherness,”to venture into alien territory, and do what needed to be done.

In fact, a defining experience for many of the altruists Parks and her colleagues studied was sparked by exactly that kind of reaching out: An elder of some sort _ a pastor or rabbi, someone in the workplace, a fellow volunteer _ who was willing to be a moral and ethical guide to a neophyte.”Someone needs to see you in the promise of your life _ someone in the workplace who cares not just about the corporation, but about your soul, the potential of your whole life,”she said. One of the book’s recommendations is that corporations work to overcome some of the paranoia of the workplace and develop some authentic mentoring programs.

Parks, who has served on the faculty of the Jesuit School of Theology in Weston, Mass., is an expert on the moral development of young adults. She is particularly interested in how an altruist discerns his or her vocation, which Parks describes as”the place where the heart’s deep gladness meets the world’s deep hunger. It’s the voice that asks, `What does the world need me to do?'” And though the scholars found religion played an important role in the moral formation of more than 80 percent of the altruists studied, it was religion of a particular kind.”If you (were raised in a) `fortress’ religion that offered a judgmental, us-against-them mentality, an escape from the world, religion was not a predictor,”Parks said.”But if you were part of a religion that had as its center concepts … hospitality for others, care for the world, then that really was a predictor.”Religion at its best is constantly putting the big questions in your face: asking the great moral questions, providing an imagination to live by, a big story with a past, a present and a future.” The making of an altruist is not limited to the formative years of childhood, Parks noted, adding that for many people the altruistic vocation does not manifest itself until the 20s or 30s _ and often decades later. And despite all of the cultural forces arrayed against moral awareness, Parks is convinced that now, on the cusp of the 21st century, the possibility exists to drop the armor of cynicism and self-involvement and respond to the moral challenge.”There is a fresh capacity for transcendence and a quest for belonging,”she said.”I have no question that it’s possible. But I do have questions about how willing we are to educate, to take the time to help each other.”Parents, educators, people in religious life, seniors in corporations: All have to ask, `Am I going to take the time to invest in the next generation? Do I have time to spend with my own children? Am I willing to observe someone else’s work and offer them both confirmation and challenge?'”

MJP END CONNELL