“Disarming the Wrong That Has Been Done” by John Salveson, an elder from Pennsylvania

"These are the windows I look at when seated at the organ console"

There are days when despair feels like a neighbor.  At a time when world leaders exchange childish epithets while holding threatening nuclear options, it can be terrifying.  The number of sexual abuse announcements has skyrocketed amid a time when mass shootings leave me numb.  The news of mass killings in schools, churches, and mosques reduces me to sadness so deep I can’t find words to express it.  There are moments I want to scream, “The world has gone mad, let me off!”

But this morning, as I prepare to go to my particular house of worship, I’m wondering, have we lost the art of confession?  Perhaps as a world, we need more than confession with a move to repentance.  These are words that have become quite unpopular in recent years.  Perhaps the church I am part of has been too keen to tell us we need to do this because we were somehow designed as flawed people.  But as I write this, that’s not what I mean.  To repent is to turn.  Am I personally capable of turning? 

Perhaps the energy in all this is that repentance, turning, confession, within our religious traditions are always coupled with forgiveness.  Deep within this paradigm is a spiritual energy that is profound.  In my repentance, I turn.  I see the world at a different angle.  I begin to identify with those affected by my greed, gluttony, and disregard for creation and the people around me.  When I forgive I acknowledge that I have been wronged, but I also disarm the wrong that has been done.  No longer do I allow the offense to continue violence to my psyche. 

In my tradition, there are long lists of people who have repented and forgiven, repeatedly.    St. Francis,  Mother Theresa, Oscar Romero, St. Hild of Whitby, St. Bridgid of Ireland, and a list that goes on and on, beginning with Jesus of Nazareth who, amidst horrible torture, was able to say “forgive them.”

So, today, I will go to worship, I will once again make confession, and pray that I have the grace to turn from the things I do that harm my planet, my neighbor, and myself.  I will hear the words of forgiveness, and then, just maybe, I will have the grace to forgive those who have harmed me.  Perhaps in doing so, I can look at the scars others have left in a new way.  Yes, they will be with me, reminders of damage done, but perhaps I will be able to look on the scars with compassion too. 

Will it change the world?  I’m not sure, but maybe, just maybe it will change me in some small way.

--John Salveson

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"An Elder's 2018 Resolution: Turn off Cable News & Compliment a Stranger" by Grandmother Windsong

Chris works at a local grocery store

“The greatest challenge of the day is: How to bring about a revolution of the heart, a revolution that has to start with each one of us.”  Dorothy Day

Near the end of 2017, I took inventory of my health and decided I was way too irritable every day, especially after watching cable news for a couple of hours.  I was hooked as I watched pundits spin political topics around and around the table, interrupting one another, over and over, while I cooked, dusted, or exercised.  It didn’t matter WHICH cable news I watched, I got angry at “the crazies” who were “ruining our country.”  

I was developed an “us-vs-them” mentality.  I could, and can still, see rage in others too – family, friends, and patients in a doctor’s waiting room.   Many Conservative Republicans become red-faced and scowl at the words “Liberals, Democrats or Obama”; the same is true with a lot of Progressive Democrats when the conversation leans toward “Conservatives, Republicans, and Trump.”   Anger, it seems, was thriving in 2017 and I caught the disease. 

I have come to believe politically motivated cable news, talk-show radio with goals of agitating their viewers and extreme left-right web sites are mainly responsible for pounding a wedge into our relationships.   Investigators have found that Russia is behind a lot of this discord, especially posting erroneous information on social media.  This divisiveness does not harmonize with my Christian teachings of “loving my neighbor,” and besides, I asked myself, "where does my true loyalty lie?  With a political party? Or with the Golden-Rule teachings of Jesus?"    I decided that I had two choices – I could contribute to the ripples of anger and discord or extend waves of kindness and peace.   

Before New Year’s Eve—actually a few days after Thanksgiving--I turned off cable news and refused to read political posts on Facebook for a week and began looking at each person I encountered as individuals.    I thought of  Mother Theresa's words:

I see Christ in every person I touch; it is as simple as that.”

Instead of trying to guess if strangers were of the “enemy” political party, I began presenting a pleasant smile and making eye contact with people of all ages and ethnicities--acknowledgements like the friendly waves people of my hometown give as they drive by.  If the person who checked my groceries wore a name tag, I mentioned her name and expressed appreciation.  I began tipping more generously in restaurants.  I looked for ways to compliment strangers.  The rewards were instantaneous and joyful as people smiled back.    

Most of my past resolutions faded by February 1, but this one seems stronger today than when I implemented it in late November.  In the past three months, I have kept up with news by reading  my local newspaper and by watching 5:30 PM network newscasts that end with a positive, inspirational story.  Sometimes, I listen to the music of my youth while I “dance” through household chores.  I read more, visit with friends more, notice sunsets more.  Even on days when the news is infuriating, I think of that smile I received when I complimented the young man, Chris, who bags my groceries, and I am at peace.  

--Grandmother Windsong

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"Our Last Goodbye," A Story of Unending Love by Widower and Elder--RiverSoul

       Most goodbyes are ephemeral, followed after a period of time with some form of hello.  Couples in a relationship experience countless separations and comings together, but always, at some distance on the horizon, lurks that last goodbye.  Young people give little thought to this reality.  But the well-known poet, Maxine Kumin, said it all in a poem that celebrates the conception, gestation, and birth of her daughter:  “Death blew up my skirt the day I signed for you.” 

       My beloved late wife, Imogene, seven Earth-years now in the Spirit World, but in this life a widely-published poet, once told me that for poets only three topics exist—birth, love, and death.  She wrote of all three.  She remarks in one poem, in which she described all of the rocks in her life that she had hauled up from here or down from there, that she has handled all of them “except the one I will own forever.” 

       Our last time out together is a treasured memory.  Although very ill and weak, she still liked to go on afternoon drives, even during her last days in hospice.  As usual, I picked her up in early afternoon and drove, at her request, to the hilltop parking lot overlooking Tuttle Creek Dam a few miles north of town.  This second day of December was sunny, 50 degrees, with a soft breeze from the SW.  She lowered her window halfway and asked me to recline the back of her seat.  Soon, warmed by sun and caressed by breeze, she moved into a beautifully calm two-hour nap, the most relaxed I had seen her in weeks.   Knowing the time was near, I gazed long at her and wondered when.

       Back at hospice, as nurses were pushing her wheelchair into the dining room for dinner, seemingly out of nowhere came my exclamation “Even if we never have another time together outside, today was a super good one!”  I kissed her goodnight and left for the day. 

       The next morning, she was non-responsive but gasping, and in early evening of the next day she took her last breath.  It so happened that, earlier in the evening of that second day, while I was massaging her neck and chest, I took her hand in my other and slowly recited the famous poem by the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore:

                                  Death is not

                                      Extinguishing the light,

                                  It is putting out the lamp

                                      Because the dawn has come.

     

      Then I kissed her—and she kissed me back, much to my amazement and to that of family members gathered around!  Two hours later, still totally non-responsive, she passed. 

     Greetings and farewells come in many flavors and are not always appropriately timed.  And I, learning to live the life of a widower, have given thought to just when our last goodbye occurred.  I now strongly feel that it was when she sensed something very familiar and kissed me back.  And I also harbor the notion that she, as much as saying goodbye, was sending a promise of things to come.  From the place she stood that moment along her Cosmic Arc, perhaps her reply to my kiss was as much "hello" as "goodbye!" 

                                                                                                      --Elder RiverSoul

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"The Day My Uncle Decided to Leave Western Kansas" by Aldwyn

Progress is man's ability to complicate simplicity.  Thor Heyerdahl

       The Dust Bowl tested the ability of the Western Kansas farmer to survive and rise above adversity.  I remember those days vividly as we put wet sheets over windows attempting to bring relief from heat and dirt.  I didn’t give it much thought at the time; it was just something everyone did. 

       From 1930 until 1936 my uncle moved his family to western Kansas and rented a farm about eleven miles south of Horace.  They had their first wheat harvest in 1931 which averaged twenty bushel per acre, but he only received 36 cents per bushel for the first load.  The price then dropped to 25 cents and stayed there until the harvest was over.

       The next year they increased the acreage, but the wheat was so poor they just cut patches in the fields.  The wheat was then loaded into a box car at Horace and shipped to Cardwell in Wichita.  At the time the price in Horace was only 19 cents per bushel.  That was slim pickens!

       On April 14, 1935, a storm hit just as my cousin was about halfway around the field he was plowing.  He was driving a caterpillar tractor and pulling two one-way plows over a section.  It took him from 2 pm until 6 pm to cover one round and get back where he had started.  The storm would let up once and awhile so he could see the furrow he had been following.  He could only move a few yards at a time then stop and wait for the next lull.  His father and younger brother finally came to pick him up.  After driving around the field twice they grew terribly frustrated.  You couldn’t see the tractor although it was only 100 feet from the road.   

       His father finally stopped and got out of the car.  Well, uncle always wore a hat and the storm blew it right off.  That hat just kept spiraling around and going higher until it disappeared from sight.  The brother remembered his father saying “I will not stay where a man’s hat does not come back to the ground.”  He then added “both my brothers said “Amen” to that!!  I was also told that he “would not give a nickel for the whole of Greeley County” that day.  

       After they left, the family heard the one hundred and sixty acres where they lived sold for $125.00 the next summer.  I could never understand why they were out plowing up the ground in the middle of a dust storm.  It makes no sense.  My uncle once told me that the reason for purchasing a farm lay in the fact that: “with so many boys, you better find something to keep them busy.”  And so he did!

And earth moves on!!  Aldwyn

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