Month: June 2018

Rites of Passage

This past weekend I jetted my way to San Diego to witness a rite of passage for my youngest granddaughter…high school graduation. Last week I enjoyed a similar experience with my oldest grandson as he too began a new journey into college. Rites of passage are launching pads for young people. Whether they are being pitched into the work environment, academic advancement through college studies, entering the military or taking a gap year to explore the world and all its wonders, it is a new beginning.

New beginnings give us second chances. A second chance to be better, to change attitudes, to become acquainted with the “real” world and all of its problems, speed bumps, rewards and excesses requiring the use of judgement and intelligent thinking to navigate the pitfalls along the way. In their journey, they will have successes and failures and the best we can hope for is that each of these will be learning experiences that will benefit them when they arrive at the next “new beginning”.

Some of us take the long road to reach an ultimate goal and some of us are more goal oriented and driven to pursue those dreams in the shortest period of time. And then some of us make mistakes that slow our journey. Whatever our path, reaching the end of each journey is a joyous occasion and cause for celebration. Balloons, flowers, leis, graduation cards stuffed with cash and filled with encouraging expressions for the future, celebratory food and drink, elaborately decorated sugary cakes, the clicking of many cameras recording the momentous occasion are planned and implemented as a reward for a job well done and an enticement to forge onward to the next life goal.

Goals may change for that is the fluidity of life. A child’s dreams build castles in the air only to become more focused when life itself may force the adjustment of life’s dreams. Most of my dreams have passed now. Many have been realized but a host of others remain unfulfilled. I am learning to accept that many of my dreams, wants, gotta haves may never be, but that really doesn’t matter anymore. I have sweet memories of the many rites of passages of my life and feel blessed to have had the plethora of my dreams reach fruition.

Dream on !!!!

 

 

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Precious Cargo

Children are precious cargo. From conception to birth through years of learning and life shaping experiences, they are a great responsibility as well as the source of much joy. A poignant memory for me was my arrival home from the hospital with my first-born daughter. Everyone has Kodak moments in their lives. I vividly remember laying her gently on my bed to change her diaper and being overwhelmed with the enormity of the responsibility of it all. At that moment the thought that raced through my mind was …what I did would determine whether she lived or died. That was a heart stopping, brain exploding moment. I was young, barely eighteen, and the weight of that thought catapulted me into dedicating my every waking moment to giving her everything she would need to grow into the beautiful person she has become.  She was my world, my everything and from the moment she was born I could not envision my life without her, separated from her in any way.

So I find myself quite distraught, heartbroken and tearful imagining the suffering and pain that the parents must feel when they are separated from their children not knowing where they are, who might be comforting them or even if their basic needs are being met. What has America become when we are engaging in practices such as this, practices employed by Nazi Germany when families were torn apart and endured unspeakable atrocities and millions were gassed and burned in ovens, disposed of as trash. This didn’t happen over night. The steps to death, destruction, loss of freedoms are small ones. But cumulatively, they are earth shattering, life altering cataclysmic events.

Germany to give Holocaust victims pensions

Photographs taken by British troops on their arrival at Belsen concentration camp Photo: The Holocaust Centre
History will not be kind to the people who support this diabolical plan. Just as there were no excuses for following orders in Nazi Germany, if one doesn’t protest this inhumane practice, then you are part of the problem and as such will bear the same guilt when history comes calling. Silence is complicity! And there is a special place in Hell for the creators and enforcers of this horrible tRump policy.
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What is Faith?

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Science or God’s palette?

Faith is a difficult entity to define. According to Webster, faith is “a belief and trust in and loyalty to God” or “a firm belief even in the absence of proof” or “complete confidence”. But how do we believe in something we can’t see? I have heard and thought that we can’t see the wind yet it exists as evidenced by the trees that sway as it passes or the feel of it on my face or skin. There are many things that I can’t see yet accept their existence. I have faith that the bridges I cross with my automobile will stand firm and erect without collapsing. I have faith when I board an airplane that it will get me to my destination. I had faith with every seed I ever sowed that it would spring forth from the earth and grow into a beautiful larkspur, zinnia or poppy.

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I want to have faith that the political nightmare America has been enduring will eventually come to an end. I want to have faith that laws apply equally to everyone and that the guilty will be punished for their transgressions. I want to have faith that America will survive this assault on our democracy, our Constitution and the Rule of Law. But as each day passes I find it more difficult. Perhaps I am just weary from worry.

Evidence of faith may be in the birth of a baby which in my entire nursing career never failed to move me to tears. Every single nanosecond of cell development has to go exactly right for a baby to be born with all working parts.  I have seen the miraculous disappearance of a cancerous tumor accepted as a result of fervent prayer when the actual scientific explanation may be misdiagnosis or an immune system that simply won a territorial battle.

A newborn baby wrapped in a hospital blanket crying in MiddletownPhoto by Tim Bish on Unsplash

Each of us may have experienced diminished faith at some point in our lives. I know I have had moments when I have questioned the presence of a higher power yet revert to prayer when I am seeking solace or help from an entity that many times seems capricious in his or her governance of our lives. I call these times a “crisis in faith”. I don’t want to think it, feel it, and I truly want to believe, but the pragmatist in me jumps up and down screaming the impossibility of a higher power. Yet I still cling to a hope that there is more than this.

But my brain will not comprehend nor accept a world where there are people who would deny healthcare or food to the poor, the elderly or children. A world where the color of your skin defines you. A world where men and women who give their all to protect and defend our country end up living homeless on the streets of what is supposed to be the greatest nation on our planet. A world where the top one percent own ninety-nine percent of the wealth and through that wealth, lobby elected officials to do their bidding rather than the will of the people they have sworn to protect, defend and serve. A world where bigotry and racism are allowed to flourish. A world where our children are no longer safe in their schools. A world where owning an assault rifle has more value than a human life. A world where children are ripped from their parents and placed in warehouses or in cages in processing centers.

But faith  leaps up in the form of high school students who refuse to accept that things can’t change and be better. With a small voice that has become a shout that will not be silenced, they have begun a movement that makes me believe that there may be hope for the return of sanity and decency to our world. And only history and time will tell us if America survives. Their road to change begins with one small step.

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Believe or not. The choice is yours.

 

 

 

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