A 2nd Helping of Chicken Soup for the Soul Read online

  "It's weird, but just making that decision seemed to lift a heavy load off my chest.

  "When I got home, I rushed into the house to tell my wife what I was going to do. She was already in bed, but I woke her up anyway. When I told her, she didn't just get out of bed, she catapulted out and hugged me, and for the first time in our married life she saw me cry. We stayed up half the night drinking coffee and talking. It was great!

  "The next morning I was up bright and early. I was so excited I could hardly sleep. I got to the office early and accomplished more in two hours than I had the whole day before.

  "At 9:00 I called my dad to see if I could come over after work. When he answered the phone, I just said, 'Dad, can I come over after work tonight? I have something to tell you.' My dad responded with a grumpy, 'Now what?' I assured him it wouldn't take long, so he finally agreed.

  "At 5:30, I was at my parents' house ringing the

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  doorbell, praying that Dad would answer the door. I was afraid if Mom answered that I would chicken out and tell her instead. But as luck would have it, Dad did answer the door.

  "I didn't waste any timeI took one step in the door and said, 'Dad, I just came over to tell you that I love you.'

  "It was as if a transformation came over my dad. Before my eyes his face softened, the wrinkles seemed to disappear and he began to cry. He reached out and hugged me and said, 'I love you too, son, but I've never been able to say it.'

  "It was such a precious moment I didn't want to move. Mom walked by with tears in her eyes. I just waved and blew her a kiss. Dad and I hugged for a moment longer and then I left. I hadn't felt that great in a long time.

  "But that's not even my point. Two days after that visit, my dad, who had heart problems but didn't tell me, had an attack and ended up in the hospital, unconscious. I don't know if he'll make it.

  "So my message to all of you in this class is this: Don't wait to do the things you know need to be done. What if I had waited to tell my dadmaybe I will never get the chance again! Take the time to do what you need to do and do it now!"

  Dennis E. Mannering

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  The Martyrdom of Andy

  Andy was a sweet, amusing little guy whom everyone liked but harassed, just because that was the way one treated Andy Drake. He took the kidding well. He always smiled back with those great big eyes that seemed to say, "Thank you, thank you, thank you," with each sweeping blink.

  For us fifth-graders, Andy was our outlet; he was our whipping boy. He even seemed grateful to pay this special price for membership in our group.

  Andy Drake don't eat no cake,

  And his sister don't eat no pie.

  If it wasn't for the welfare dole,

  All the Drakes would die.

  Andy even appeared to like this sing-song parody of Jack Spratt. The rest of us really enjoyed it, bad grammar and all.

  I don't know why Andy had to endure this special treatment to deserve our friendship and membership in the group. It just evolved naturallyno vote or discussion.

  I don't recall that it was ever mentioned that Andy's father was in prison or that his mother took in washing and men. Or that Andy's ankles, elbows and fingernails were always dirty and his old coat was

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  way too big. We soon wore all the fun out of that. Andy never fought back.

  Snobbery blossoms in the very young, I guess. It's clear now the group attitude was that it was our right to belong to the group but that Andy was a member by our sufferance.

  Despite that, we all liked Andy until that dayuntil that very moment.

  "He's different!" "We don't want him, do we?"

  Which one of us said it? I've wanted to blame Randolph all these years, but I can't honestly say who spoke those trigger words that brought out the savagery lying dormant but so near the surface in all of us. It doesn't matter who, for the fervor with which we took up the cry revealed us all.

  "I didn't want to do what we did."

  For years I tried to console myself with that. Then one day, I stumbled on those unwelcome but irrefutable words that convicted me forever:

  The hottest comers of hell are reserved for those who, during a moment of crisis, maintain their neutrality.

  The weekend was to be like others the group had enjoyed together. After school on a Friday we would meet at the home of one of the membersmine this timefor a camp-out in the nearby woods. Our mothers, who did most of the preparation for these "safaris," fixed an extra pack for Andy who was to join us after chores.

  We quickly made camp, mothers' apron strings forgotten. With individual courage amplified by the group, we were now "men" against the jungle.

  The others told me that since it was my party, I should be the one to give Andy the news!

  Me? I who had long believed that Andy secretly thought a little more of me than he did the others

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  because of the puppy-like way he looked at me? I who often felt him revealing his love and appreciation with those huge, wide-open eyes?

  I can still plainly see Andy as he came toward me down the long, dark tunnel of trees that leaked only enough of the late afternoon light to kaleidoscope changing patterns on his soiled old sweatshirt. Andy was on his rusty, one-of-a-kind bikea girl's model with sections of garden hose wired to the rims for tires. He appeared excited and happier than I had ever seen him, this frail little guy who had been an adult all his life. I knew he was savoring the acceptance by the group, this first chance to belong, to have "boy fun," to do "boy things."

  Andy waved to me as I stood in the camp clearing awaiting him. I ignored his happy greeting. He vaulted off the funny old bike and trotted over toward me, full of joy and conversation. The others, concealed within the tent, were quiet but I felt their support.

  Why won't he get serious? Can't he see that I am not returning his gaiety? Can't he see by now that his babblings aren't reaching me?

  Then suddenly he did see! His innocent countenance opened even more, leaving him totally vulnerable. His whole demeanor said, "It's going to be very bad, isn't it, Ben? Let's have it." Undoubtedly well-practiced in facing disappointment, he didn't even brace for the blow. Andy never fought back.

  Incredulously, I heard myself say, "Andy, we don't want you."

  Hauntingly vivid still is the stunning quickness with which two huge tears sprang into Andy's eyes and just stayed there. Vivid because of a million maddening reruns of that scene in my mind. The way Andy looked at mefrozen for an eternal moment

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  what was it? It wasn't hate. Was it shock? Was it disbelief? Or, was it pityfor me?

  Or forgiveness?

  Finally, a fleet little tremor broke across Andy's lips and he turned without appeal, or even a question, to make the long, lonely trip home in the dark.

  As I entered the tent, someonethe last one of us to feel the full weight of the momentstarted the old doggerel:

  Andy Drake don't eat no cake,

  And his sister don't . . .

  Then it was unanimous! No vote taken, no word spoken, but we all knew. We knew that we had done something horribly, cruelly wrong. We were swept over by the delayed impact of dozens of lessons and sermons. We heard for the first time, "Inasmuch as ye do it unto the least of these . . ."

  In that hushed, heavy moment, we gained an understanding new to us but indelibly fixed in our minds: We had destroyed an individual made in the image of God with the only weapon for which he had no defense and we had no excuserejection.

  Andy's poor attendance in school made it difficult to tell when he actually withdrew, but one day it dawned on me that he was gone forever. I had spent too many days struggling within myself to find and polish a proper way of telling Andy how totally, consummately ashamed and sorry I was, and am. I now know that to have hugged Andy and to have cried with him and even to have joined with him in a long silence would have been enough. It may have healed us
both.

  I never saw Andy Drake again. I have no idea where he went or where he is, if he is.

  But to say I haven't seen Andy is not entirely accurate. In the decades since that autumn day in the

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  Arkansas woods, I have encountered thousands of Andy Drakes. My conscience places Andy's mask over the face of every disadvantaged person with whom I come in contact. Each one stares back at me with that same haunting, expectant look that became fixed in my mind that day long ago.

  Dear Andy Drake:

  The chance you will ever see these words is quite remote, but I must try. It's much too late for this confession to purge my conscience of guilt. I neither expect it to nor want it to.

  What I do pray for, my little friend of long ago, is that you might somehow learn of and be lifted by the continuing force of your sacrifice. What you suffered at my hands that day and the loving courage you showed, God has twisted, turned and molded into a blessing. This knowledge might ease the memory of that terrible day for you.

  I've been no saint, Andy, nor have I done all the things I could and should have done with my life. But what I want you to know is that I have never again knowingly betrayed an Andy Drake. Nor, I pray, shall I ever.

  Ben Burton

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  Heaven and HellThe Real Difference

  A man spoke with the Lord about heaven and hell. The Lord said to the man, "Come, I will show you hell." They entered a room where a group of people sat around a huge pot of stew. Everyone was famished, desperate and starving. Each held a spoon that reached the pot, but each spoon had a handle so much longer than their own arm that it could not be used to get the stew into their own mouths. The suffering was terrible.

  "Come, now I will show you heaven," the Lord said after a while. They entered another room, identical to the firstthe pot of stew, the group of people, the same long-handled spoons. But there everyone was happy and well-nourished.

  I don't understand," said the man. "Why are they happy here when they were miserable in the other room and everything was the same?"

  The Lord smiled. "Ah, it is simple," he said. "Here they have learned to feed each other."

  Ann Landers

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  The Rabbi's Gift

  There is a story, perhaps a myth. Typical of mythic stories, it has many versions. Also typical, the source of the version I am about to tell is obscure. I cannot remember whether I heard it or read it, or where or when. Furthermore, I do not even know the distortions I myself have made in it. All I know for certain is that this version came to me with a title. It is called "The Rabbi's Gift."

  The story concerns a monastery that had fallen upon hard times. Once a great order, as a result of waves of antimonastic persecution in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the rise of secularism in the nineteenth, all its branch houses were lost and it had become decimated to the extent that there were only five monks left in the decaying mother house: the abbot and four others, all over 70 in age. Clearly it was a dying order.

  In the deep woods surrounding the monastery there was a little hut that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used for a hermitage. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the old monks had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was in his hermitage. "The rabbi is in the woods, the rabbi is in the woods again," they would whisper to each other. As he agonized over the

  The Different Drum, COPYRIGHT © 1987 by M. Scott Peck, M.D., P.C. Reprinted by permission of Simon & Schustor, Inc.

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  imminent death of his order, it occurred to the abbot at one such time to visit the hermitage and ask the rabbi if by some possible chance he could offer any advice that might save the monastery.

  The rabbi welcomed the abbot at his hut. But when the abbot explained the purpose of his visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. ''I know how it is," he exclaimed. "The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore." So the old abbot and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah and quietly spoke of deep things. The time came when the abbot had to leave. They embraced each other. "It has been a wonderful thing that we should meet after all these years," the abbot said, "but I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying order?"

  "No, I am sorry," the rabbi responded, "I have no advice to give. The only thing I can tell you is that the Messiah is one of you."

  When the abbot returned to the monastery, his fellow monks gathered around him to ask, "Well, what did the rabbi say?"

  "He couldn't help," the abbot answered. "We just wept and read the Torah together. The only thing he did say, just as I was leavingit was something crypticwas that the Messiah is one of us. I don't know what he meant."

  In the days and weeks and months that followed, the old monks pondered this and wondered whether there was any possible significance to the rabbi's words. The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us monks here at the monastery? If that's the case, which one? Do you suppose he

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  meant the abbot? Yes, if he meant anyone, he probably meant Father Abbot. He has been our leader for more than a generation. On the other hand, he might have meant Brother Thomas. Certainly Brother Thomas is a holy man. Everyone knows that Thomas is a man of light. Certainly he could not have meant Brother Elred! Elred gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people's sides, when you look back on it, Elred is virtually always right. Often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Brother Elred. But surely not Brother Phillip. Phillip is so passive, a real nobody. But then, almost mysteriously, he has a gift for somehow always being there when you need him. He just magically appears by your side. Maybe Phillip is the Messiah. Of course the rabbi didn't mean me. He couldn't possibly have meant me. I'm just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? O God, not me. I couldn't be that much for You, could I?

  As they contemplated in this manner, the old monks began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off-chance that one among them might be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each monk himself might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.

  Because the forest in which it was situated was beautiful, it so happened that people still occasionally came to visit the monastery to picnic on its tiny lawn, to wander along some of its paths, even now and then to go into the dilapidated chapel to meditate. As they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the five old monks and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it.

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  Hardly knowing why, they began to come back to the monastery more frequently to picnic, to play, to pray. They began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.

  Then it happened that some of the younger men who came to visit the monastery started to talk more and more with the old monks. After a while one asked if he could join them. Then another. And another. So within a few years the monastery had once again become a thriving order and, thanks to the rabbi's gift, a vibrant center of light and spirituality in the realm.