September 5, 2010
The Tale of the Naïve, Uninvited Nuns
Back in my Fortune 100 days, my office afforded a view of the visitors' entrance to facility where I worked. One day, I happened to look up and see a quite peculiar sight – two nuns, in white flowing habits, strolling along the walkway toward the security lobby.
What possible business could they have with the company? I wondered. Who were they coming to see? Did they even have an appointment, or were they simply dropping by?
I got my answer a moment later, when a phone outside my office began to ring. Security was calling us because my group handled philanthropy, among other tasks, and they wanted to know how to handle the sisters’ request to speak with someone about a donation.
A woman who was a temp for my group took the call. My door was open, and I could hear her quite clearly. “Tell them no one can see them,” she said. “Tell them to send us a letter or an email like everyone else.” Then she put down the phone, turned to the woman one cubicle over, and sneered, “If they want stuff for free, let them pray for it.”
In a strict, legalistic sense – and sneering aside – the temp was correct. We did not encourage unscheduled visits to a site only slightly less secure than Fort Knox, and moreover, we needed an orderly way to process the heaps of donation requests we received. But the thought of those two sisters departing without so much as a kind word really bothered me. I raced downstairs to catch them before they left.
Five minutes later, the three of us were sitting in my office. The sisters were young, as was the order they represented. Many of them were studying education at a community college to prepare them to serve as teachers in Catholic grade schools. Their problem was that the convent lacked the computers their studies required. Did my company have some older, unwanted computers we could donate?
Negative PR Value
I sympathized, but explained that I didn’t have the authority to grant their request. Computer hardware was a corporate asset (as opposed to a divisional asset), and only HQ was empowered to give it away. But I promised to sponsor a request for them, and see what would come of it. They thanked me for my help, and I saw them out.
While I put in a request , I strongly doubted that it would be granted. HQ liked to reserve computers for corporate public relations programs, and a convent of traditional nuns in the hinterlands had zero PR value. In fact, the sisters had negative PR value because the Church was “controversial,” meaning it held beliefs at odds with the views of “affinity groups” the company sponsored. But at least I’d done what I could.
Two weeks later my phone rang, and I noticed the incoming number was from HQ. A manager who handled computer donations was calling to say my request had been granted, and the sisters would soon receive 25 computers. I was stunned but tried not to show it for fear my amazement would raise a few issues he hadn’t considered. We chatted briefly about the details of the transaction, and before hanging up, he made one personal comment: “I saw Pope John Paul when he came to New York,” he informed me. “It’s one of the greatest memories of my life.”
Confirmation of the shipment arrived in the form of a handmade thank-you card, which featured a sister, complete with rosary beads, sitting at a computer doing her homework. I framed the card and gave it a place of honor in my home, where it has served to remind me many times of the sisters’ lovely outlook on life. It’s an outlook I understand better in light of Fr. Robert Spitzer’s Four Levels of Happiness.®
Naïveté Versus Trust
My first impression was that the sisters were terribly naïve. What on earth made them think they could come to a huge corporation uninvited and expect that their request for roughly $25,000 in hardware would be granted?
Yes, I’m aware that’s precisely what occurred, but the odds that it would happen were quite remote. If I hadn’t been in my office when they arrived … if I hadn’t looked out the window at the right moment … if the person in my position had not been someone unusually sympathetic to nuns … if my request hadn’t landed on the desk of a guy at HQ who had the same sympathies … the sisters would have received a polite rejection note.
But looking back now, I don’t see them as naïve so much as trusting. There’s a huge distinction. They were working to educate themselves in order to educate children. They knew this was a noble pursuit, and trusted others would look on their work the same way. They trusted that people and organizations with means might contribute some of those means to assist them. Most of all, they trusted in Him, and believed that so long as they served Him by serving others, He would ensure they weren’t lacking what they required to accomplish the work before them.
The good sisters wear this trust on their sleeves (and everywhere else, come to think of it), but trust is a habit anyone can adopt. In fact, it’s one of Fr. Spitzer’s Five Commitments for living a more Level 3 life: “Trust people unless they give you ample reason to do otherwise.” When trust is a default instead of a status slowly earned and warily bestowed, it changes the way you deal with people and how they respond to you.
I rushed down to see the nuns the day they showed up because I wished to protect them. I didn’t want them to realize how naïve they were in thinking they’d get a hearing. I didn’t want them to think my company was bureaucratic, or that we had people who disliked religious sisters and sneered at them. I wanted to shield them from reality.
As it turned out, the sisters had a grasp of reality more astute than my own. By seeing the good news in others, they brought that good news to the fore, and they left in their wake a world that more closely resembled the one their Lord desires for us.
– By John Keenan, Editor
Return to the Home
Last changed: Jun 21 2010 at 8:38 AM