Celebrating Sixty Years

“Mama, you paid that kid way too much for mowing our lawn!” my oldest sister complained. 

This topic was revisited forty-something years after the event.  On the occasion of our parents’ 60^th Wedding Anniversary, my sisters reminisced about Mom & Dad's parenting techniques.

My sister continued, “Mom answered, ‘How much do you think I should have paid him?’”

“One dollar.”

“‘Alright, you’re hired.  I’ll pay you one dollar for mowing our lawn.’”

“So for the rest of . . . forever, I had to mow our lawn for just a dollar.  Take into consideration that the neighbor kid got to use a power mower and ours was just a push mower.”

“Don’t forget the hill!” my next-oldest-sister chimed in. “It was fine going down but then you had to DRAG it back up.”

“And the grass had no respect for the push mower,” my oldest sister was on a roll.  “For the power mower, the grass stood stiff at attention to get its buzz-cut.  But for ME, the lawn was like an unruly mob doing the wave, bowing down before the blades and thumbing its nose as it sprung back up behind me.”

We all laughed at my sister’s imitation of the rebellious laugh the grass seemingly bellowed as it taunted her efforts to tame it.

The value of the shaggy-trimmed-lawn-job was way more than a dollar. 

There were a lot of lessons we learned from our parents over the years—some of which we even valued at the time we learned them.

Warren & Arlene

May 1951

A few of the lessons we learned from our parents:

“Do the duty that lies nearest to you and already the rest will seem clear. ”

“Let’s fight the war from here.”

“Don’t shame the family.”

Responsibility—if you sign up to take cookies to an event, you take the cookies even if something comes up that prevents you from attending the event.

Respect others—no matter how young or how different, whether people or pets

Keep in touch through letters

Cultural heritage: listening to folk songs; attending cultural events and then talking about it over ice cream.

The value of well-prepared and presented talks

Watching and listening to, and then discussing movies, plays and books

Appreciation of the arts, music and theater

Creativity—turning a squiggly line into a picture, drawing, writing, painting

Loving life-long learning—the kind of education that feeds your soul

Colorful meals with table topics

Hard work

Principle of the pentagonal man who firmly maintains the five strengths: emotional, social, intellectual, physical, & spiritual

Autumn colors and fallen leaves

Enjoying the outdoors and instilling a love of nature

Teaching how to wash dishes— if the dishes weren’t washed properly, the child who had done a sloppy job found the soiled dishes at her place setting—and next time she did a better job 

Projects—even after things fall apart, they can be pieced back together again

Examples of selflessness,  love, courage, resourcefulness, and perspective

Being there

The value of family heritage through telling our own and our ancestors’ stories

Creating beautiful and useful things with material:  wood, cloth, yarn

No matter how overwhelming life feels, we can pull through to the end

Thanks Dad & Mom.  I love you.

"Cultivate Our Garden"

My mother’s cure-all for her children’s complaints of boredom was to tell us to go out and weed the garden.  Suddenly we were always able to discover a way to occupy ourselves without resorting to such drastic measures.  Though we weren’t too fond of the hoe, we loved going out to harvest my grandpa’s raspberry patch. 

We spent our summers on our grandfather’s farm.  He had an apple orchard, a barn with cows to milk, a chicken coop, rows of neatly tended garden produce, 

And a raspberry patch.

It was so satisfying to slide the red, ripe raspberries off their stems and plop them into the large can that hung from a string around our necks.  Of course, a lot of the berries never made it to the can.  We’d stand in the tall bushes for what seemed like hours, the prickly limbs scratched our arms as we reached for the berries.  The patch was big enough that we could stake out our territory, moving from one rich clump of fruit to the next without running into anyone else’s claim. As the sun settled into the west,  we’d emerge from the patch, hot and sticky. With our pink-stained fingers, we’d dump out our can of berries and look forward to seeing them again at the end of the day.  Our dessert was always raspberries and cream, sprinkled with a little sugar.

                A generation later, I can hear myself telling my kids to weed the yard when they’re bored.  Though they don’t relish the work any more than I did in my youth, my kids and their cousins take great pleasure in harvesting raspberries.  The problem is we don’t go to my grandpa’s little farm nearly often enough. I have a tiny raspberry patch in my own garden that we greatly enjoy.  It takes us all of ten minutes to pick the berries, but that—and the strawberry patch—is the one place my kids volunteer to work in the yard.

Now I enjoy going out to weed my flower beds. It is my reward for when I get all my household chores and community responsibilities completed.  Hey, I just realized—I finally learned to cure my own boredom with working in my yard (although I haven’t thought to call those rare moments without a pressing need boredom for quite some time).  My mom was right all along.

Voltaire’s Candide

1759

Voltaire’s protagonist, Candide, was raised in the “best of all possible worlds.”  He was blessed with both a gentle disposition and sound judgment.  He loved a lovely young lady named Cunegonde.

Then Candide came of age in tragic circumstances.  He was severed from his loved ones and seized as a soldier.  There follows a long train of outrageously unlikely predicaments:  shipwreck, earthquake, inquisition, murder in self-defense, and a visit to the utopian city of Eldorado (where the streets are paved with gold) which he abandons to seek his beloved Cunegonde.  

Along the way he meets a philosopher who insists that no one can be truly happy.  To validate his claim, this philosopher introduces Candide to not only victims of abuse, but a man who has everything but values nothing, great kings in exile, and even his long-lost Cunegonde who by then had lost her lovely bloom of youth and transformed into a complainer.

Candide married Cunegonde and their troublesome travels were replaced by tedium.  Cunegonde grew shrewish.  Her lady-companion speculated that her life may have been better as a slave on a pirate’s ship.  The philosopher friend observed, “that man was born to spend his life alternately a prey to the throes of anxiety and the lethargy of boredom.”  Though Candide disagreed, he could not assert otherwise, lacking sufficient evidence. 

Then they met the farmer and everything changed for the better.

Candide and company marveled at the wealth and good-will of the farmer, assuming he must be in possession of a huge fortune.  The farmer replied, “I have but twenty acres, . . . I cultivate them with my children.  Work keeps us from three great evils:  boredom, vice, and need.”

As Candide and his friends returned home, they realized that Adam and Eve were placed in the garden of Eden to work.  They resolved to cultivate a garden of their own, which they did.  They developed talents and enjoyed the satisfaction that comes from harvesting the fruits of their own labors. One of Candide’s friends gratefully reflected on the painful road they traveled to reach their “garden of Eden.” 

“‘That is well put,’ replied Candid, ‘but we must cultivate our garden.’”

There is more than one type of seed and more than one way to plant it.  I planted the seed of this story a couple of days ago, yet managed to wake up feeling depleted this morning.  I was determined to post this blog entry so I got to work, tending the seed, and now that it has blossomed into a blog post, I feel energized and ready to take on the day’s challenges.

Cultivate your garden, whether it is in the soil or in your soul.

This Too Shall Pass

It had been a long day and we were getting a little edgy.  I had to laugh, though, when I saw my ten-year-old son had taped a sign on his shirt that read: 

“Danger, Tired Kid!!!”

I thought that was a pretty good idea, to broadcast a warning when you’re feeling irritable.  Such a caution could work both ways:  to advise others to tread lightly, and to counsel yourself to think before you act.  Then again, humor goes a long way in easing tension.

The danger sign disappeared from my son’s T-shirt by the next morning.  Storms eventually pass, often leaving behind an overarching rainbow.  This heavenly light appears after the air is cleared by a storm.  If, however, violent winds stir up more debris than the rain washes away, then the iridescent colors cannot follow—not in the air, not in the soul.  This tempering of the tempest is aided by thinking before you act.

Often, allowing passions to cool resolves the issue that created the squall. The storm blows over.  [For reasons I won’t mention, I wish I would have thought of this last week.] 

A year before Abraham Lincoln was elected President, he gave a speech which he concluded with the following story:

It is said an Eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent him a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations.  They presented him the words: “And this, too, shall pass away.”  How much it expresses!  How chastening in the hour of pride!  How consoling in the depths of affliction!

When life has you in turmoil, let it pass.  And if it helps, tape a sign to your shirt cautioning people to beware your stormy mood.

Abraham Lincoln

(1809 – 1865)

Lincoln is famous for his speeches, his humor, his magnanimity and his diplomacy. 

·         Through his speeches, he gave people a vision—“That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

·         Through his humor he created a bond of trust and broke down walls.

·         Through his magnanimity, he used commendation (attributing the best motives to his opponents) rather than confrontation, to point out the similarities between his aims and those of his detractors.

·         Through his diplomacy he emancipated the slaves and held the United States together.

I’d like to take a closer look at the last point: diplomacy.  In 1860, Abraham Lincoln won his party’s convention—but not until the third round of voting.  He recognized both the strength of his Republican opponents and his personal lack of experience in the White House, so he filled his cabinet with strong leaders within his party.  These men were highly experienced—enough experienced, in fact, to think they could run things better than he could.  Lincoln used diplomacy to earn their respect and keep them all working together during our nation’s most fiery crisis.

Lincoln achieved similar diplomatic success in keeping the slave states bordering the Union from seceding.  These border states were critical to the Union’s  success.  Washington D.C. would have been in the middle of hostile territory without Maryland; the South would have owned the crucial artery of the Ohio River if Kentucky were on its side.  All during the war, Lincoln had to find a delicate balance between appeasing the abolitionists of the North and the slaveholders of the border states. 

One of Lincoln's most frustrating challenges was finding a general for the Union Army who could fight a winning campaign.  His first choice, McClellan, had everything going for him with one drawback.  He didn’t want to fight.  Lincoln studied war strategy and gave McClellan, and his other generals, a lot of good advice.  Often his advice was ignored and then Lincoln would have to take the heat.  Lincoln wrote many letters with rebukes, none of which were sent to their intended recipients.  Writing the letters was enough to vent his frustrations so he didn’t have to harm his working relationships.  What he did send were letters that diplomatically expressed his concerns and requests.

As the Civil War drew to a close, instead of self-congratulations, Lincoln asked for an honest self-analysis of both sides.  He issued a call for healing and reconciliation "With malice toward none, with charity for all."  

Lincoln closed his “This too shall pass” speech with this wish:

               

Let us hope . . . that by the best cultivation of the physical world,
beneath and around us;

and the intellectual and moral world within us,

we shall secure . . . happiness, whose course shall be onward and upward,

and which, while the earth endures, shall not pass away.

Sources:

Abraham Lincoln, Speech before the Wisconsin State Agricultural Society, September 30, 1859. http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/fair.htm

A. Lincoln by Ronald C. White, 2010.
The following works by James McPherson:  Abraham Lincoln; Tried by War:  Abraham Lincoln as Commander-in-Chief;
                 Battle Cry of Freedom.
Abraham Lincoln by Wilbur F. Gordy, 1917.
If you can tell, I have a passion for learning about Lincoln and the Civil War.

Creating Systems of Order

There is a significant percentage of people who wake up eager to face the new day.  They throw back their covers and bounce out of bed, excited to welcome the adventures the day holds for them.  It is estimated that something like 90% of this segment of the population is under the age of four.

As a nurse, I used to voluntarily work the night shift because I’d rather work all night than get up at 5:00 in the morning for the day shift.  I had such an aversion to starting a new day in the early morning hours, that I could only face hauling myself out of bed if I could “return from whence I came” and take a nap right after my morning shower (which accounts for why I needed two hours to get ready for work).

               

                Then a few years back I experienced a paradigm shift when I realized that “early birds” don’t necessarily HAVE to be born—they can be made.  It created a dramatic change in my life to evolve from a night owl to an early bird.  I used to think the hours from 11 p.m. to 1 a.m. were my most productive hours of the day, but I realized it was not a good thing for my family so I decided to go to bed earlier.  To make up for losing those “productive hours” I was determined to get up at 5 a.m. so I could work uninterrupted from 5 – 7 in the morning.  Then I made a profound discovery: all those years I spent as a “productive” night owl, I’d been missing out on something even better.  The early morning hours are inspirational.  I learned that with a prayer and paper & pen I could receive answers that hugely affected my life in very positive ways. 

                In my last blog entry I wrote about the power of environments and relationships.  I want to follow that up with thoughts on creating effective systems to add structure to our environment. 

The way I begin my day is one of the most important systems I’ve developed. It starts with going to bed at a reasonable hour.  My system involves the use of a little alarm clock and a lot of motivation to get up so I can have those precious inspirational hours to work on my projects.  It includes exercising and envisioning how my day will unfold.

That’s just one example of a system. We use systems for everything we do whether by plan or default.  If something isn’t working, take a look at the system behind it and adjust it. What are the systems you use to arrive on time, interact well with others, nourish your family, clean your home, find joy? Creating systems that work for you can be a very powerful concept when you use it.

Marla Cilley

a.k.a. FlyLady

                Marla Cilley allowed her perfectionism to paralyze her efforts to keep an orderly home.  (When a person feels like they don’t have the time to get the job done right, it can be overwhelming to face the job at all.)  She found the “Slob Sisters” book, Side-tracked Home Executive and was inspired to create systems of order in her home.  Along the way, she learned a few things and offered tips to anyone interested. Her handle “Fly” originated from her love of flyfishing, but it was suggested by one of the women who follows her system that FLY really stands for “Finally Loving Yourself.”

                Marla mentors through Flylady.net where she posts resources (and daily reminders) on building effective and do-able systems.  She starts with daily tasks that can be completed in fifteen minutes.  Then she adds on weekly routines and monthly zones.  She encourages people to overcome procrastination, de-clutter, and fix finances. She is an advocate of healthy hearts through active play and nutritious meals. She understands that all this energy needs to come from somewhere so teaches to take time out to pamper yourself, enjoy family fun and renew your spirit.  Check her out at http://www.flylady.net/

                In an article called “Why Flylady is great for actors,” Karen Kohlhaas wrote:

Meret Oppenheim, a mother of two teenagers . . . told me about a website that was changing her life.  She said something like: “I think you’ll like this.  It seems to be about housecleaning but it’s much more than that.  I’m taking care of my daily life in ways I’ve never done before and I can’t believe it.”  . . .  Flylady's principles can work brilliantly for artists of all kinds because they are about handling unstructured time.

In other words, what works brilliantly is to create systems of order.

Sources:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FlyLady

Act As If

I was dismayed to find my (then) four-year-old daughter’s lovely dresses piled in a heap on the floor of her closet.  This was not the result of carelessness but a pointed demonstration of where her priorities lay. Just a few feet above the dresses, she had carefully hung her assortment of swimming suits, evenly spaced to fully occupy the prime real estate of her closet. 

Had she been left to her own resources, I can guess how she would have preferred to spend her Sunday afternoons.  Down came the swimsuits and back went the dresses. Thanks to our family culture of weekly church attendance and the welcoming friends and teachers we meet there, now there’s nowhere else she’d rather be.  My daughter came to love going to church so much that when she happens to feel sick on Saturday nights, she prays hard to feel well enough to go to church the next day.  It seems her prayers are always answered.

Our relationships and environment have a huge influence on how we live our lives.  Our success in reaching our goals has everything to do with how effectively we arrange our environment and recruit people to support us in our efforts.

I am very inspired by a woman I learned about while reading Influencer:  The Power to Change Anything by Kerry Patterson et al.  Her story follows:

Mimi Silbert

(1942 –      )

“My job is to be the chief believer, to believe in them when they don’t believe in themselves,” says Mimi Silbert about the 1,500 ex-convicts who currently reside at one of her Delancey Street communities.  Over the past forty years, she has transformed 18,000 felons into upstanding contributors to society.

There are only two requirements for becoming a resident (slash-employee-in-training) of Mimi’s Delancey Street Foundation: to have hit bottom and to be willing to change. 

Mimi sees the people (commonly labeled as thieves, addicts, even murderers) she brings to her Delancey Street Foundation not as a “menace to society” but people who only need an opportunity to learn how to care about something besides themselves.  She teaches them to care by giving them real responsibilities, not only for themselves but for the success of other people.

Mimi creates a highly structured environment that holds people accountable for their actions.  As soon as her residents learn personal accountability, they are given responsibility to train someone else.  They become “team players” and build something bigger than themselves.

Delancey Street accepts no government funding and seeks no philanthropic aid.  Mimi has no staff other than her residents.   Though almost none of them had previously held a skilled job for longer than three months, they learn to be self-supporting and live off the profits of the businesses operated by the Delancey Street Foundation.

Half the people who dine at the Delancey Street Restaurant don’t realize it is fully staffed by ex-convicts until they read the back of their menu.  By then they’ve been so favorably impressed by the dignified maitre d’ and their gracious waiter, that they are sure their servers are exceptions. 

They aren’t. 

Mimi’s environment and the coaching relationships it fosters create a place where people who have been labeled “human garbage” can find their talents and soul.

We’re lucky in the fact that our people have hit bottom.

We ‘act as if’ we are all the things we want to become.

We ‘act as if’ we’re decent and caring and bright and talented.

And we eventually become those thing.

Mimi Silbert

Her story can influence everyone’s story when we learn to ‘act as if’ and build environments and relationships that help us find the “Gem in the Geode” of our lives.

Sources:

"The Mimi Silbert Story:  Re-cycling ex-cons, addicts and prostitutes,"  by Jerr Boschee & Syl Jones (http://www.socialent.org/pdfs/MimiSilbertStory.pdf)
See also http://www.delanceystreetfoundation.org/president.php to find several more links to televised spotlights and articles about Mimi Silbert.

Emerald Gems

Kitchen chairs turned upside down, cereal in the fridge and milk in the cupboard, a remnant of green fabric caught in a crack, a trail of glitter leading to a pot o’ gold.  Have you ever spotted any of these tell-tale signs of a leprechaun intrusion?  They’ve been known to drop into households in the wee hours of St. Patrick’s Day.

Though I’ve never had a leprechaun come to my house, I’m quite familiar with their distant cousins, the brownies.  When I was a young child, I loved brownie visits because I’d wake up to find a nice clean house.  When I was in second grade, I joined the Girl Scout Brownies and learned the secret of WHOO the brownies were.  I delighted in taking my turn to play “brownie.” I got up in the night, crept around as stealthily as a bulldozer and picked up the house.  It was the only time cleaning was any fun.  Happily, the tradition carries on with my daughter.

The magical thinking of childhood creates a magic all its own.  The willingness to believe that good things will happen is more than just charming.  It casts a vision for little miracles to occur.  My dad grew up in the depression and he noticed that as soon as his older brothers stopped believing in Santa, Santa stopped leaving presents for them.  So he was determined to keep believing and he kept receiving.  The irony of children believing in the magic of holidays is their belief creates the magic.

Too bad my kids didn’t have the expectation of delightful leprechaun pranks pulled on St. Patty’s day.  Maybe it’s not too late. J

Maewyn Succat

(385 – 461 A.D.)

Maewyn was born and raised on a windswept British Isle.  When he was 16 years old, he was kidnapped by pirates and carried away to a distant island where he was sold as a slave.  He worked night and day as a shepherd.  His long hours tending the sheep gave him lots of time to think.  He found comfort in contemplating the life of the Good Shepherd, Jesus Christ. 

After six years of slavery, he found an opportunity to escape and he took it. He traveled by ship to Gaul (now France).  There he devoted himself to the ministry of the Roman Catholic Church and eventually became a Priest.

And then the dreams came.

Maewyn dreamed that the people of the island where he had been enslaved were reaching out to him for help.  He knew in his heart what help they needed and he knew that he must return and teach them about Jesus.  So he found himself en route to the island where he would, once again, be a servant.  Only this time his master was One he felt privileged to serve. 

Although Maewyn wasn’t the first Christian missionary on the emerald isle, he was the most successful.  He converted nobles who were influential in spreading the gospel message to all the people. 

Many years later, Maewyn Succat was sainted, becoming Saint Patrick.  Irish people still celebrate his gift to the Emerald Isle—the Christian faith. 

Source: familyfunshop.com/saintpatricksday.htm

Joy in the Journey

One afternoon, I got a phone call that launched me on a life-changing quest.  A publisher called to tell me he wanted to publish the book I was writing about my great-great-grandmother’s journey with the Willie Handcart Company.  I had sent his company a query letter not two days before so I calculated he must have called me the minute he got my submission.  He asked how long it would take me to finish writing my novelized biography.  My head was spinning; judging by my progress, I might be able to complete it in six months. Before I gave my answer he asked me, “Can you have it done by the end of the month?”

I heard myself say “Yes.”

That was the moment I joined my great-great-grandmother on her journey to the Promised Land. 

For three weeks, I was on the trail with the family of Margery Bain Smith.  My initial excitement mirrored their joyful beginning.  Midway through, my plodding progress reminded me of their tedious trek across the plains.  When I reached their life-and-death moments, I struggled to create the passion and power those episodes warranted.   

I learned the pioneer journey was both a physical and a spiritual one.  Their physical journey planted their descendants’ roots west of the Rockies.  Their spiritual journey showed us how highly to value our faith.  I saw how faith still works miracles, sensing angelic help: some seen (my husband and sisters) and some unseen.
          I made the deadline and submitted my book in June of 2006.  I reached the border of the Promised Land, but like the Children of Israel, I wouldn’t be entering the “land of milk and honey” to enjoy the fruits of my labors—at least not yet.  The publisher’s financial backer decided not to fund my book, but it didn’t really bother me.  I had made the trek and learned lessons that enriched my life. 

People kept asking me about my book and, after four years of “wandering in the wilderness,” I felt it was time to pursue publishing it again.  I received so much inspiration writing it; I know it wasn't just for my personal benefit.  It is a powerful, true story that needs to be told.  I’m completing a final revision and love the story now more than ever. 
           Through telling their story, I hope to link my generation to theirs.  No story could have more heartache. Yet no journey could be more joyful.
          

Margery Bain Smith

(1804 – 1889)

Margery Smith faced a difficult choice. She was a widowed mother of six; one daughter was recovering from tuberculosis, another from Scarlet Fever, her youngest child was crippled and she, herself, was suffering from dysentery.  The Rocky Mountains loomed before her and her only adult son was on the other side of them.  She had to make a decision that would be a matter of life and death for herself and her children.

Three months earlier, Margery and her family left their Scottish homeland to journey to the seat of their newfound religion.  Now she found herself in the Nebraska Territory with no easy options.  She and her traveling companions, the Willie Handcart Company, were warned that if they pushed west so late in the season, they would surely face winter storms crossing the Rockies.  Yet if they stayed in Nebraska, there was no way the five-hundred people in their group could be provided food and shelter.  The Company as a whole had to head west, but some of the individual families were choosing to stay behind. What would Margery do?

She lived by the motto, “God helps those who help themselves,” and she knew she had done everything in her power to go where God had called her to go.  She decided to trust in the Lord and she left the last refuge of civilization behind her, pulling all her worldly belongings in a hastily-made-handcart.

Their trail was plagued by trials:

·         A buffalo stampede scattered their draft oxen, never to be recovered.

·         The food they expected to find at Fort Laramie was not there.

·         They were on quarter rations when an early winter storm blasted the region.

·         They endured a forced march over Rocky Ridge which many of their company never recovered from.

But Margery lived by another motto, also:

I will not dwell upon the hardships we endured,

Nor the hunger and cold,

But I like to tell of the goodness of God unto us.

The moment Brigham Young received word there were Mormon immigrants on the plains, he organized a relief effort.  Hundreds of teams were mustered to carry food and supplies to the beleaguered pioneers.  But for many of them, the help came too late.

Margery's physical reserve was utterly depleted after carrying her six-year-old son over Rocky Ridge. A few days later, she was trodding in the deep snow and knew she would not make it to camp that night.  She sent her children on ahead of her so they would not have to witness her demise.  But her middle daughter, Mary, would not leave her side. 

Ahead on the trail, her children were fascinated by the approach of a rescue wagon.  It was the first one they’d seen with a single yoke of oxen.  In their pitiful plight they made a game of it, wishing that the man in the wagon would be their older brother, Robert.  As the wagon drew closer, the driver stared at them and then called, “Whoa!” to his team.  The voice brought home the impossibly perfect fact that they were standing in the presence of their brother!  They tearfully greeted each other and soon tied the handcart to the wagon. But where, Robert wanted to know, were Mother and Mary?  They headed east to find them. 

From a distance, they saw Mary kneeling by a body stretched out on the snow.  “Too late?” the family asked themselves, “was help coming too late to save our dear Mother?”

Robert pulled the wagon to a halt beside his weary mother.  He found Mary trying to convince Margery that Robert had come to rescue them.  Margery couldn’t believe it until she was swept up into his arms.  Margery said that she couldn’t have been happier to be welcomed into the Kingdom of Heaven.

Margery promised God that if she survived the trek she would never complain again.  She lived to keep that promise, even though she later became blind.

Rather than becoming bitter and losing faith in the God they were counting on to make the winter mild, these pioneers focused on the goodness of the Lord.  Instead of teaching their children that God didn’t answer their prayers to protect them from harm, they told the story of how greatly they were blessed to be rescued.  They showed us how to do hard things and be grateful for the blessings received through the challenge.  The way they pulled through their trials on the trail over 150 years ago still affects us today. 

This picture of Margery Bain Smith and her children was taken around twenty years after their trek.  (Her youngest son was deceased.)

Source:  "The Tired Mother," Improvement Era, July 1919 by Betsey Smith Goodwin.

Rule of Spirit

I was a wild filly.  I can see it in my childhood photos--my long, lanky limbs, my dark mane that flung wildly when I tossed my head, my untamed energy and my unbridled passion.

“This is too hard for you,” my mother tried to reason with me.  My little hands had barely shed their baby fat, yet I was determined to learn how to knit.  My mom worked and worked with me but I could not create the right tension on the yarn.  Before long, the knitting needles went flying in opposite directions.  *Click* and there you have a snapshot of one of my youthful tantrums.

Some ten years later, I smugly congratulated myself on how easily I had overcome my childhood fits of temper. I no longer was tempted to hurl the object of my frustration across the room.  I even learned how to knit.  For my first project since sending my tools flying at age four, I chose a sweater with a lovely lacework design in the bodice. When the clerk told me my chosen knitting project was too hard for me, I thanked her and left the store.  Later I snuck back when she wasn’t working, hid my beginner’s status from the clerk on duty, and confidently walked out of the store with my challenging pattern in hand.  With mentoring, I produced a beautiful sweater.  Life was good.

Another ten years passed and I discovered the temper that had plagued my early years had not been cured but had only lain dormant awaiting the proper provocation:  having another four-year-old in the house. Happily, once my kids outgrew their toddlerhood I was no longer tempted to display fits of temper, but I knew enough not to take pride in the fact.  By then I was convinced that my milder outlook had more to do with my kids’ personal growth than my own.

Now the cycle begins again as our household hits the teen years.

He that is slow to anger is better than the mighty;

And he that ruleth his spirit than he that taketh a city.

Proverbs 16:32

Acquiring the ability to "rule my spirit" has been a lifelong quest.  Only recently have I begun to rule my spirit through being Ruled by the Spirit. I’ve learned that to “Bridle your passions,” one must allow the Lord to take the reins to guide through life’s difficulties.  Accepting the bridle means submitting my will to His.  The trouble is that pride gets in the way so sometimes that's a very hard task. But little by ever-so-little, the harnessed energy moves me towards greater happiness.

Helen Keller & Anne Sullivan

1886 – 1936

(From the date Anne entered Helen’s life until Anne’s death,

they remained constant companions.)

Helen Keller was a frustrated child trapped in her private world without words.  Helen didn’t have the ability to communicate, other than the hand signals she devised as a desperate attempt to let her wants be known.   Often she would throw tantrums so her family caved to her demands in an effort to prevent her from falling into fits of rage.

Enter the mentor.

When Anne Sullivan arrived at Ivy Green, she recognized the root of Helen’s frustrations lay not in her blindness but in her isolation.  She immediately began to teach Helen by signing letters in her hands, but since the seven-year-old girl had no concept of words, they meant nothing to her.  Helen became angry and locked Anne in her room. 

 Anne quickly saw that Helen’s lack of discipline made her unreachable, essentially putting a lock on her private prison.  Anne insisted on taming the wild child.  What looked to Helen’s parents like restriction of her freedom to express her needs was really the key to unlock her prison.  Before Anne could teach Helen the power of communication, she had to teach her discipline.  The young Helen bristled at the call to obedience, but in time she submitted to her instructor and her prison of isolation was unlocked.

Once Helen was open to being lead by her mentor, she experienced her landmark epiphany:  connecting the letters w-a-t-e-r to the flowing of water.  Her life would never be the same.  Now she had vision and aim, beginning with the insatiable drive to learn the word for everything in her life.  Through words, her life’s horizons expanded to take in the whole world. 

Anne tried to begin instructing Helen through words, but the key to freeing Helen was not signing letters.  It was in taming her spirit through discipline.  A profound expression of how deeply Helen valued Anne’s key to opening the door to her world is found in her answer to a simple question.  When asked what her favorite word was, Helen spelled out, “t-e-a-c-h-e-r.” 

The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched.

They must be felt with the heart.

Helen Keller

Gifts

We had been at it for months.  What started out as an exciting quest had grown to become a tedious search.  One evening as my family was leaving for another hunt for a new home, my then-seven-year-old-son drew a picture of a stick figure family standing in front of a house. His commentary of our home search came across loud and clear:  there was a big, fat X over the picture with the words “NO NO NO” written underneath.  It seemed we had exhausted more than just the MLS listings.

About that time, my sister-in-law came to our rescue.  She went for a walk in our neighborhood and found the house that would soon become our home.  It was only two blocks away from where we'd been living.  This wasn’t the first time she'd helped us make the perfect match.  She was also instrumental in getting my husband and I together in the first place.

I did a little exercise for the fun of it, contemplating how I came to find the things I value most in life.  So many times, I’m given precisely what I need exactly when I need it by means of another person.  These gifts have come in many forms:  besides my home and my husband, I’ve been given words of comfort, encouraging smiles, inspiring examples, and opportunities to serve that have helped me find a whole new facet of my life. 

God often works through people to inspire and bless His children—a touch of the Divine clothed in humanity’s hands and hearts.

Another way of putting that is found in the lyrics of a song my sister sent me (yes, another gift). 
Click on the link to hear it performed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UqL2MZaor4k

Geodes by Carrie Newcomer

No, you can’t always tell one from another.

And it’s best not to judge a book by it’s tattered cover.

I have found when I tried or looked deeper inside.

What appears unadorned might be wondrously formed.

You can’t always tell but sometimes you just know.

Around here we throw geodes in our gardens.

They’re as common as the rain or corn silk in July.

Unpretentious browns and grays the stain of Indiana clay.

They’re what’s left of shallow seas, glacial rock and mystery,

And inside there shines a secret bright as promise.

All these things that we call familiar

Are just miracles clothed in the commonplace.

And you’ll see if you try in the next stranger’s eyes,

That God walks 'round in muddy boots, sometimes rags and that’s the truth,

You can’t always tell but sometimes you just know.

Some say geodes were made from pockets of tears,

Trapped away in small places for years upon years.

Pressed down and transformed, 'til the true self was born, . . .  

We have come to believe there’s hidden good in common things.

You can’t always tell but sometimes you just know.

Carrie Newcomer

(1958 -      )

Carrie Newcomer is deep.  She has a rich, deep alto voice. She is deeply rooted in her Quaker faith.  And she reaches deep into the soul.

An article written about her by Megan Quinn in the Daily Camera begins, “Each day, singer Carrie Newcomer tries to see the sacred in the ordinary.”  Judging by the lyrics she writes, she is accomplishing this effort.  A fan commented on that article that she is very giving, donating a portion of her proceeds to soup kitchens, thus feeding not only the soul but the bodies of people in need.

Newcomer has released a dozen albums since her first solo came out in 1991.  Before that, she sang with the group Stone Soup and has two albums with them.  She was invited by the cultural outreach division of the American Embassy in India to represent the U.S. in 2009, touring India for a month.  While there, she saw that love and hope bridge cultural differences.

Quoting from the biography on her website,

About her impressions of India, Newcomer says, “Music can be a language deeper than words.  I love our differences.  Cultures are rich and what makes each culture unique is to be celebrated, but I was powerfully moved by what we share as a human family.”

Carrie Newcomer is a folk artist who combines her faith with her music. She makes universal truths meaningful by attaching them to personal stories. 

Concluding, again quoting from the bio on her website,

The Minneapolis City Pages wrote, “Newcomer’s musing is deeply introspective, but she offers it with a poet’s sense of nuance and a folkie’s common touch, turning philosophical theory into the stuff of people’s daily lives.”

Source: http://www.carrienewcomer.com/