Last, but by no means least,
courage –
moral courage,
the courage of one’s convictions,
the courage to see things through.
The world is in a constant
conspiracy against the brave.
It’s the age-old struggle –
the roar of the crowd on one side
and the voice of your conscience on the other.
~ Douglas MacArthur ~
The world has no room for cowards.
We must all be ready somehow
to toil, to suffer, to die.
And yours is not the less noble
because no drum beats before you
when you go out to your daily battlefields,
and no crowds shout your coming
when you return
from your daily victory and defeat.
~ Robert Louis Stevenson ~
Sun Up Till Sun Down
O Great Spirit, whose voice I hear in the winds,
and whose breath gives life to all the world, hear me.
I am small and weak.
I need Your strength and wisdom.
Let me walk in beauty and make my eyes
ever hold the red and purple sunset.
Make my hands respect the things You have made.
Make my ears sharp to hear Your voice.
Make me wise so that I may understand the things
You have taught Your people.
Let me learn the lessons You have hidden
in every leaf and rock.
I seek strength, not to be greater than another,
but to fight my greatest enemy – myself.
Make me always ready to come to You
with clean hands and straight eyes.
So when life fades, as the fading sunset,
my spirit may come to You without shame.
I can see how it might be possible
for a man to look down upon the earth
and be an atheist,
but I cannot conceive
how he can look up into the heavens
and say there is no God.
~ Abraham Lincoln ~
No man is an island entire of itself.
Every man is a piece of the continent,
a part of the main…
Any man’s death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
Therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls.
It tolls for thee.
~ John Donne ~
A wonderful story reblogged from Coach at goodtimestories…
There is something special who has the care and concern for other people…even if the other person is a stranger. In my opinion, when an individual can demonstrate kindness and compassion to someone in need, that is a rare trait that few people seem to possess. I read the following story on truthbook.com which is one of my favorite stories of someone showing a wonderful level of empathy and sympathy to a fellow human being.
———————–
A nurse took the tired, anxious serviceman to the bedside. “Your son is here,” she said to the old man. She had to repeat the words several times before the patient’s eyes opened.
Heavily sedated because of the pain of his heart attack, he dimly saw the young uniformed Marine standing outside the oxygen tent. He reached out his hand. The Marine wrapped his toughened fingers around the old man’s limp ones, squeezing a…
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If civilization is to survive,
we must cultivate the science of
human relationships –
the ability of all peoples,
of all kinds,
to live together,
in the same world at peace.
~ Franklin D. Roosevelt ~
Dad as a little boy
He was baptized by monks.
When you spoke with my Dad, that was one of the things he was most proud of in his life. Oh, he was proud of his wife and 2 daughters (his “girls”), his three grandsons, his four great-grandchildren, too. But he always returned to the monks…
Both his Hungarian parents entered the United Sates (separately – they had not yet met) through Ellis Island in the first decade of the 20th century. His Mother came here all by herself when she was 16 years old, with $28 in her possession. His father had even less. His parents – my grandparents – eventually met, married, and had 4 children. My Dad was the youngest, born almost 10 years after his oldest sibling. And yes, where he grew up in Union, New Jersey, he was baptized by monks.
He grew up on a farm of almost 90 acres, where my grandmother had a beautiful garden, a spring where we used a pail to fetch clean water, cows that Dad used to milk and manage to have fun at the same time by squirting near-by cats, and an outhouse that had rhubarb growing at the back. Things were a lot simpler then.
Dad played high school football when they wore leather helmets and decided differing opinions mid-field. In his senior year, World War II raging, he joined the Navy on September 16, 1943, a day before his 18th birthday. His school gave him his diploma even though he only finished 2 weeks of his senior year. He was an A student, anyway.
Basic training was in Great Lakes, Michigan, which must have been interesting for a farm boy who had always walked to school and had never been away from home. In addition, he joined the Navy not knowing how to swim. But there was a war on, and that was unimportant in the bigger scheme of things. After Basic, Dad was one of three sailors out of 500 chosen to go on to Texas A & M for training in what would become the nuclear submarine program, but he refused. Why refuse what was such a golden opportunity? Because this 18 year old man has recently met the 15 year old girl who was to become his wife.
Before leaving for the war, this sailor in his dress blues went to a small park in Pennsylvania with a friend, where he saw a pretty young girl with black hair and dark eyes across the gazebo. When he asked his friend who the girl was and said he was going to marry her, his friend laughed and told him he’d never get past her mother – the protective, unsmiling woman beside her.
We know how that turned out. Dad did get introduced, the now 16 year old girl wrote to him during the war, and they got married (Mom was 18, Dad was 21) when he returned home after the war was over. They were married in a beautiful church ceremony with money Dad had saved by selling his cigarette consignments while in the Navy, at a reception with beer, root beer, and sandwiches wrapped in waxed paper. Dad promised Mom he would buy her a new dress every week. Romantic – yes. Did he manage to keep his promise? No – which Mom never let him forget, but he did give her so much more.
Mom & Dad
Dad apprenticed as a furrier, then worked at a company that manufactured tools such as scissors, tweezers and nail cutters. Then, this young couple decided to venture out on their own by opening their own business. First, they bought an old house in a small town that didn’t like outsiders. In fact, they had to retain an outside attorney (this was almost 60 years ago) to close the sale because my parents’ ethnic background and religion weren’t easily accepted (sound familiar?). After the purchase, they found white sheets and hoods in the attic, which they hurriedly threw out. You get the picture…
They knocked on doors in the garment district in New York City until, after mocking laughter and countless doors slammed in their faces, one Jewish jobber (Bless him…) took a chance on them and offered to send them work. Their business – manufacturing women’s’ and children’s’ blouses, had begun. With a stranger and a handshake. No contract, just their word. In a business relationship that lasted for more than 2 decades.
We lived in a small apartment over the blouse mill. My parents employed almost 30 women and one man for 23 years. Many were single mothers who needed to put food on the table; others were disabled in some way (epileptic, partially sighted, learning disabled). The hardest workers made enough money that some of the men in their lives came to “have a talk with” my father, angrily asking why Dad allowed them to make more money than the man of the house. Dad simply explained that their women earned it. Enough said!
Earlier than most men, Dad treated women as his equal and respected anyone’s hard work and desire to get ahead. By the time my older sister and I were born, Dad was surrounded by women at work and home, so it’s a good thing he could survive in the midst of those hormone shifts!
Memories of Mom and Dad getting up by 6 am and Dad still being downstairs at midnight, doing book work… He made smart investments and saved money, but we still managed to drive almost an hour away once or twice a month to try out the hamburgers at some new type of restaurant known as McDonald’s. When he’d fill up the station wagon’s tank with gas, sometimes we’d get a few ice cream squares, cut them in half, then share them between the four of us. Plus, Dad found that he could save a lot of money by repairing all of the machines in our factory by himself, so the smell of soldering and polishing wafting upstairs was common.
As things settled down and he knew the factory was going to “make it,” Dad started to take us on actual family vacations to Atlantic City, New Jersey and Williamsburg, Virginia. Wow – that was the height of luxury to stay at a motel near-by. And to actually eat out every day??? Heaven. By the time my parents retired from their business, their travel had evolved into Spain, Italy and Greece. They always taught us that we needed to broaden our horizons and meet other people to better understand the world.
They weren’t perfect parents – I’ve never met a perfect human being – but they were very good parents. Mom taught us that “ladies don’t drink, smoke or swear,” (those childhood messages stick with you, don’t they?) and to always wear clean underwear in case we were in a car accident. My sister and I couldn’t date until the magic age of 17, and I worried that no one would ask me out. (A few brave souls did). We were taught that if God gave us more (of anything – intelligence, money, opportunity, etc.), then we were obligated to give more back (to society) in return. Dad had a temper (yelling, never physical) and could be stubborn, while Mom had a tough time forgetting if someone did her or anyone in her family wrong. But they were smart, hard-working, compassionate, generous people who believed in God and their country.
The blouse factory was a family business, one that saw my sister and me working every summer, as well as in the evenings after we did our homework. We were a family unit, and my parents always gave good advice, with no agenda other than our best interests. I asked my parents’ advice until the day each of them died. They never led me astray.
Family
They would also throw high school graduation parties for nieces or nephews if relatives didn’t have the money, buy someone a washer and dryer to make that person’s life easier, or loan money to those in need. Education was very important to both of them; they always said that education was something that no one could take away from you.
My sister went to beauty school and obtained her real estate license; I went to undergrad, optometry school, then grad school (wow – that’s almost 12 years of higher education; one could question my sanity!). All 3 of their grandsons graduated from college. Their 4 great-grandchildren (another one is almost here) already have college funds started.
The American Dream.
From grandparents who came through Ellis Island (Moms’ parents also came through Ellis Island, from Italy) to a man who quit his senior year in high school to fight in WW II and a woman who had to drop out of high school after her sophomore year in order to earn money for her parents and siblings during the war…
What a wonderful legacy Mom and Dad left behind… And I miss them terribly. Next week, another family will take possession of Mom and Dad’s house, another chapter closed.
But I was able to give one last gift to Dad, after I held his hand in the driveway where he fell (see “Remembrance II”).
One of the priests at the college where I worked – a member of the Congregation of Holy Cross – traveled almost 2 hours to say his funeral Mass. He never met Dad, but he knew him from almost 4 years of working with me, and he had the entire church crying about how important Dad’s wife, “girls,” grandsons and great-children were to him. And he allowed my sister and me to dress Dad’s casket with the pall and bless it with holy water as well. Three times – Dad’s favorite number, representing the Trinity.
So for this man of faith who was so honored to have been baptized by monks – add to that a funeral mass celebrated by an ordered priest. A fitting validation of a good and decent man…
By the time the veterans played Taps at the cemetery and we were given the flag, our time together was done. He was finally with Mom…their bodies together in the mausoleum, their spirits together in another plane, at long last.
Rest well. You did good. The world is a better place for having had you in it. And at the end of life, that’s all we can hope for.
Thank you for all of the sacrifices, the guidance and the love. I hope to make you and Mom proud.
____________________________________________________________________
TAPS
Daniel Butterfield – music
Horace Lorenzo Trim – lyricsDay is done, gone the sun
From the lakes, from the hills, from the sky
All is well, safely rest
God is nigh.
Fading light dims the sight
And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright
From afar, drawing near
Falls the night.
Thanks and praise for our days
Neath the sun, neath the stars, neath the sky
As we go, this we know
God is nigh.
______________________________________________________________
Making the decision to have a child –
it’s momentous.
It is to decide forever
to have your heart
walking outside your body.
~ Elizabeth Stone ~
A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.
Never will a time come
when the most marvelous recent invention
is as marvelous as a newborn baby.
The finest of our precision watches,
the most supercolossal of our supercargo planes,
don’t compare with a newborn baby
in the number and ingenuity of coils and springs,
in the flow and change of chemical solutions,
in timing devices and interrelated parts
that are irreplaceable.
~ Carl Sandburg ~
I am closer to you than yourself,
than your soul,
than your own breath.
Why do you not see me?
Why do you not hear me?
~ Ibn Al Arabi ~
mystic, philosopher, poet
“Memories” by
Adrian Art
Who will remember us after we are gone?
Really – who will remember each one of us, past perhaps our grandchildren? Or, if we started a family young enough (I didn’t), perhaps our great-grandchildren? If we have not achieved the notoriety that a Lincoln or a Gandhi or a Mother Teresa has, then who will remember us?
These thoughts came about during the past year when my sister and I were charged with cleaning out our Dad’s house after he died (see “Remembrance II“). This is the house that he purchased for Mom in the town where she was born – her “homecoming,” so-to-speak. She loved it, even though she died after only a few years of living there.
After Mom died, it took Dad 24 more years to die (at least physically; emotionally, I believe he died when Mom did). And in that 24 years of living alone and missing Mom, Dad accumulated three 30-yard dumpsters full of “stuff” that we threw out, and that didn’t include lots of furniture, food, clothing, etc., that we donated.
That’s a lot of stuff. More than a third of a lifetime of stuff.
What my sister and I sorted through over the course of months (yes – months) meant something to Mom and Dad. Sometimes we understood why it meant so much, and it meant a lot to each of us as well. Did those things mean something to his grandchildren? Only a few, markedly recognizable things. To his great-grandchildren? No – they only remembered that Poppy used to bring them a treat whenever he came to visit.
Some things we found:
– Mom’s old eyeglasses
– Thousands of rubber bands
– Hundreds of plastic bags (wrapped inside of paper bags, wrapped inside of…)
– Piles of empty boxes
– Coins
– A compilation (at least 10 years worth) of mpg for Dad’s Saturn
– Laminated, hand-written, detailed instructions on how to correctly pull the handles on slot machines in Atlantic City in order to win money (we’re talking coins here)
– Black lab calendars for at least the past 10 years (Dad loved our black lab, Misty) with important dates and events listed
– Christmas gifts that Dad had specifically asked for, opened in front of us, then placed in piles, never to be taken out of the boxes
– Packages of white tube socks, unopened
– Bottles of rubbing alcohol
– Thousands of band-aids and cotton balls
– Hundreds of clipped coupons
– Thousands of personalized mailing labels from every charity imaginable (Dad always was a soft touch for sending in donations)
– Hundreds of comic strips clipped from newspapers, held together with rubber bands or paper clips
– Trousers in Dad’s size from Haband, still with tags on
– Several boxes of new sneakers in Dad’s size
– Boxes of tissues and toilet bowl cleaner from the days when Mom & Dad had their own business (they retired in 1981)
– About 15 digital wrist watches in their original boxes, never opened
– Packages of sugar and artificial sweeteners from fast-food restaurants
– Styrofoam coffee cups from McDonald’s (used but washed clean)
The list goes on and on…
But please don’t get the wrong opinion about my Dad… He was not a “hoarder,” as showcased by the reality show of the same name. He was simply a man for whom time stopped when Mom died, and who couldn’t bear to part with anything that reminded him of their 41 years together in marriage. Being born in 1925, he was also a child of the depression, where doing without was “normal;” where he ate what his mother grew in her garden on the farm, and he drank what he milked from the cows (that is, whatever was left after he finished squirting all the cats who lived on the farm) and had breakfast each morning with the fresh eggs he grabbed from the chicken coop.
You never knew when you might need something, so you’d better not throw it out…
Every available resource was used, then reused. Clothes were patched and handed down, foods canned and “put up” in the basement, vegetables stored in root cellars. You were poor, and in order to survive, you kept just about everything.
Old habits die hard.
But we also found:
– a bank envelope with 5s, 10s, 20s and 1s laying on the top rack of the dishwasher
– two paper clippings (one for each of his daughters) with the name and number for a business that specializes in estate junk removal with a comment in Dad’s handwriting: “for after…”
– detailed instructions on the location of life insurance policies, bank accounts, keys, important papers
– a note from the parish priest who married my parents authorizing their double room reservation in a NYC hotel for their honeymoon (my, how times have changed!)
– The NYC train schedule that Mom & Dad used when they first started their business – when they walked through the garment district, door-to-door (and having many of the doors slammed in their faces) – trying to find work
– three copies of a prayer for those living alone
– Dad’s rosary
– Dad’s American Legion membership cards all the way back to 1945, when he was honorably discharged from the Navy
– All of the sympathy cards sent to Dad when Mom died 25 years ago
– laminated copies of years of the “In Memorium” notice Dad put in the local newspaper each year on the date Mom died
And so on and so on and so on…
How much stuff do you throw out until you no longer have anything tangible to touch, to hold onto, from your loved one?
I remember when I traded in my car a few years after Mom died; before leaving it at the dealership, I ran my hand along the worn leather of the passenger seat, knowing that Mom had once sat there when we went shopping together. I cried while I was shredding Dad’s old tax returns and cancelled checks, running the tips of my fingers over his handwriting, always heavily indented into the paper. And when I drove Dad’s 20+ year-old car to the salvage yard to have it scrapped for parts, I could barely see for the tears, knowing my hand was touching the steering wheel with his DNA still on it, interspersed with laughter at the sound of its jet-engine whine. Not to mention the sound of the muffler that a teen-ager would do almost anything to own…
Now I know I’m the author of Soul Gatherings, with daily quotations that touch upon the importance of relationship and interconnectedness, rather than the material. And I truly believe all of that. I know that my parents live on in my memory, in me, in their grandchildren and great-grandchildren.
But I’m human, and it takes a lot longer for our heart to catch up with our head where strong feelings are concerned. And throwing out so much of the “stuff” of my Dad’s life was exhausting, liberating and draining, along with a deep sadness accompanied by a profound sense of loss.
Who will remember us after we are gone?
Tell me – who will remember???
______________________________________________________
“En ma Fin gît mon Commencement…
In my End is my Beginning…”
~ Mary, Queen of Scots (1542 – 1587) ~
____________________________________________________________
We are not separate from Being,
we are in it…
~ Plotinus ~
Ennead V, i, 3
Your own self-realization
is the greatest service
you can render the world.
~ Sri Ramana Maharshi ~
O Spirit of Light
Who art both infinite and eternal,
Illumine our lives
And the lives of those
We love and have loved
With the healing power
Of thy divine radiance.
In this dark night of the soul
Be present with us in our suffering.
Help us to find solace in nature’s constancy.
Help us to learn from our fear.
Help us to seek and rest in thy truth.
May our suffering enable
Our souls to grow
Until we live in the light
At one
And at peace
With all.
~ Kate Strasburg ~
The Earth, its life am I,
The Earth, its feet are my feet,
The Earth, its legs are my legs,
The Earth, its body is my body,
The Earth, its thoughts are my thoughts,
The Earth, its speech is my speech.
~ Navajo Chant ~
There is one common flow,
one common breathing,
all things in sympathy.
~ Hippocrates ~
Transformation begins on an individual level and moves out into the world. The more I’m learning to trust my intuition and act on it, and the more I’m willing to experience and accept all my feelings, the more the energy of the universe can move through me. As it comes through, it heals and transforms me and everyone and everything around me.
This is true for each one of us. The more you are willing to trust and be yourself, the more you will live in the light. Everyone around you will benefit from your energy and being to trust and be more themselves. In turn, they become powerful channels for everyone in their sphere of influence. And so transformation spreads rapidly throughout the world.
~ Shakti Gawain ~
Old men ought to be explorers;
here and there does not matter.
We must be still and still moving
into another intensity
for another union, a deeper communion.
~ T.S. Eliot ~
imgur.com
Blessed are you, summer,
season of long days and short nights,
you pour forth light from your golden orb,
energizing the earth and calling forth growth.
Blessed are you summer,
with your generous gift of heat.
Your warm breath animates creation,
encouraging all growing things to stretch toward the sun.
Blessed are you, summer,
you call us into playfulness,
encouraging us to pause from work.
You renew our spirits.
Blessed are you, gracious season of summer,
you surprise us with a variety of gifts from the earth.
We, too, gaze into the earth of ourselves,
beholding gifts waiting to be honored.
Blessed are you, nurturing season of summer,
your fruits and vegetables appear on our tables,
changing them into altars.
Tasting of your life, we are made strong.
Blessed are you, summer,
host of a star that shines with passion.
Sun-soaked, we reach for your energy
that drives us upward and onward.
Blessed are you, sacrament of summer,
nature’s green season, sweet echo of spring.
You speak to us in living color as you renew the earth
with symbols of life for our bodies and souls.
Blessed are you, summer,
season of roots that reach for water.
Even through the cracks in the sidewalk
the song of your seed can be heard.
Blessed are you, summer,
season rooted in reality.
Even as the perspiration collects on our brow,
we experience your earthly joy.
Blessed are you, summer,
and your firefly evenings
you minister to the child in us.
You feed our hunger for beauty.
~ Joyce Rupp ~
~ Macrina Wiederkehr ~
Soul Gatherings 