The Hidden Power of the Gospels

Hidden Power of Gospels



The Story of Quadratos

W H E N I W A S S E V E N years old, racists burned my grandmother’s house to the ground. They waited until nightfall so they could slip through the shadows. Then they scoured her house, dug in her closets, opened her wooden chest, stripped the mantels of her beloved mementos, and put everything into a big pile in the living room. All the Catholic artifacts, statues, and family pictures from her tiny home were added to the stack. Placing the crucifixes atop the heap, they poured on kerosene, lit matches, and fled.

Fire engulfed the structure in minutes. Summoned from my bed, I rushed to her house with my family and watched the conflagration, despairing, certain that my grandmother was inside, perishing in agony. We all called her “Sitto,” which is Arabic for grandmother, and she was especially beloved to me. Since she walked with a crutch, I was sure there was no way she could have escaped the terrible fire. However, hours later she appeared, having fortuitously been taken to church by a friend that evening. Her restoration to us was joyful, but I will never, ever forget the smell of the charred wood, nor my fear, nor the palpable experience of hate that surrounded me that night. Indelibly imprinted on my seven-year- old heart was the clear understanding that being “outside” meant the risk of pain and terror, and perhaps even the loss of life itself.

Why was Sitto’s home burned? Because in that 1950s southern community, all of us in the Shaia family were outsiders. My grandparents had emigrated from Lebanon, and we were Maronite Catholics. At that time, Birmingham, Alabama, was less than one-half of one percent Catholic, and Maronites were a tiny, obscure minority even among those Catholics. I was truly a minority of a minority within an immigrant minority in a city that was, in those days, not kind to minorities.

Step by Step

When it came time to write this book, I felt that the fire of my past was the perfect image for the beginning of my spiritual journey. You may share some of these feelings if you think of the terrible pain of the last unforgiven argument you had with a loved one and then try to imagine it magnified by dozens, by hundreds, and by thousands outwardÑinto your family, your community, your country, and your world. As simplistic as it sounds, aren’t most of the conflicts in the world unforgiven arguments at their core? The beginnings of change often come from the charred embers of loss or the hard, rocky ground of necessity. Mine did. I vowed to commit myself to: “No more, and never again.”

From the book THE HIDDEN POWER OF THE GOSPELS: Four Questions, Four Paths, One Journey by Alexander J. Shaia with Michelle Gaugy. Copyright î 2010 by Alexander J. Shaia and Michelle L. Gaugy. Reprinted by permission of HarperOne, an Imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.