At the Giraffe Heroes Project, spiritually speaking, we see ourselves like an onion. At the outer layers, our message is very secular: stick your neck out for the common good and you’ll help solve the problem you’re concerned about, and you'll feel better about yourself in the process.

But as you peel the “Giraffe onion,” we get more interesting. At the core is the inspiration of Ann Medlock, who founded the Giraffe Heroes Project just about the time she’d met Joseph Campbell, the late expert and author on mythology.Ann got intrigued with Campbell’s study of heroes, especially Parsifal and Myth of Holy Grail. Parsifal, as some of you know, was a gawky young man—a kid, really—living with his mother in a land blighted by a terrible curse on its king. Because of this curse, there was pestilence and hunger and the people were despondent. The curse on the king could be lifted only if he drank from the Holy Grail—the chalice used by Christ at the Last Supper. But nobody could find the Grail. Every great knight in the land had tried and failed. Parsifal weeps with grief at the suffering he sees. Driven by his compassion, he resolves to find the Grail by himself. His mother tells him to stay home.

“How can you, an ignorant boy,” she said to him, “hope to succeed where great knights have failed.” Parsifal ignores his mother’s wishes and sets out on his quest, going through great dangers and obstacles until he does find the Grail and the curse on the land is lifted.

Parsifal is only one example of The Holy Fool—the archetypal hero. In many incarnations, over millennia, the Holy Fool takes risks for the common good, ignoring the odds and breaking the rules if he has to. In Campbell’s words: “The hero goes into the dark forest alone, at a place where there is no path.” The Holy Fool is often shown as a blithe spirit, walking off a cliff, dogs yapping at his heels. The court jester is a cultural descendent of the Holy Fool as is, for that matter, the joker in a modern deck of cards.

Ann saw from Joseph Campbell that her search for Giraffes was a search for Holy Fools, and that she was walking on a path that was thousands of years old. When she told Campbell that shortly before he died, he cried.

That was almost 20 years ago. Ann, and the Giraffe Heroes Project, have been finding Giraffes—Holy Fools—and learning from them, ever since.

We often ask them why they do what they do, despite the obstacles, despite the risks. Their most common response is quizzical. “The problem was right in front of me,” they might say. “Nobody else was acting. What else was I supposed to do? ”A few Giraffes use spiritual language to make this point—as in “I was guided to do it”—but most don’t. But either way it’s clear that their decision to act, just as Parsifal’s, goes beyond rational analysis, straight to their own deepest values and priorities. Their actions are meaningful to them in the most profound and personal sense of that word. And isn’t that meaning, and the search for it, at the core of a spiritual life?So the connection between service and spirit— between service and the search for meaning (especially service that can be hard or risky) has been clear to us at the Giraffe Heroes Project for a long time.There’s a direct connection between the degree of meaning a challenge has for anyone and her ability and willingness to take risks and face obstacles in tackling it. Sticking your neck out for the common good and doing what you know is right despite the costs—is tough. There's no way you—or your kids—are going to generate the courage and commitment they need to succeed unless they’re very clear why they’re doing what they’re doing. Unless it has personal meaning.

Think about it. If you’re walking a path you know is meaningful to you, and there are risks and obstacles along that path, you can see them in the context of that larger meaning. The risk and obstacles don’t go away, but you become more willing and able to take them on because you see that the bigger picture is worth the effort and risk.