14th Sunday in Ordinary Time
(B - cycle)  July  5,  2009

St. Paul in the second reading writes about his physical condition. He had some kind of illness---we’re not sure what---which he calls “a thorn in my flesh.” But this has a good effect. It makes him realize his dependence on God. “I am content,’ he says, “with weaknesses for the sake of Christ; for when I am weak, then I am strong.”

I was mulling this over last week when a story appeared on the news. It was about a woman named Linda Carneiro, a language teacher at Griswold Middle School in Rocky Hill, who died in April of cancer at the age of 48. Linda and St. Paul were soul mates. He gloried in his weakness; she was glorious in hers. She returned to teaching after a debilitating round of chemotherapy that, among other things, cost her her hair. For a few days, she wore a wig. “It was a very attractive wig,” a fellow teacher told me, “but she only wore it a couple of days. “This isn’t who I am”, she said, and thereafter entered the class room with her head as gloriously naked as on the day she was born.

“The kids were great,” the teacher said. “No one made fun of her. They had such respect for her courage.”

After her funeral at the Church of the Incarnation in Wethersfield, some of her family, her friends, and her fellow workers wanted to establish a fund for her son's education. The night of the Relay for Life in Newington, a race in which Linda had run, they held a midnight bingo, which raised a few hundred dollars, still leaving them far short of their goal of $6,000.

Then someone had a great idea. They had an auction attended by the school kids and their parents in which in which you could bid for certain teachers to have their heads shaved. “I didn’t mind losing my hair” the teacher told me, “because the kids had dyed it pink beforehand. And it keeps m a little cooler in the hot weather. But when I put a t-shirt on, instead of sliding over my hair, sometimes it sticks to my scalp.”

The head shaving raised a few thousands, but still threatened to leave them short of goal. Into the breach stepped a teacher who had worn a pony tail since his high school graduation in 1985. He would do it, he said, but not for less than $3,000. He’s now a skinhead, and the educational fund went over the top.

Only in America was my first thought. My second was no, this sort of thing could happen anyplace  where people really care about each other. But there does seem to be an especially American flavor about this story, appropriate for this weekend when we celebrate our country’s birthday, our country whose symbol is an eagle, brave, determined---and bald.