Thursday, March 24, 2016

BUCKET LIST

     


So the last five years and particularly since I have met Pat, I am working on my bucket list. My wife and I seldom talked about such things. She was very content with the status quo. But the older I get, and with time marching on, the more I feel pressed to work on it. Also the more I get behind on the list, because each time I accomplish something on the list, I am introduced to five other things that weren’t on the list because I didn’t even know they existed. In the end, if this keeps up the list will be unmanageable and when someone says to me “turn out the lights the parties over,” I going to look like a miserable failure. So I have revised the ground rules for my bucket list. Nothing is written in stone and the list will be reprioritized from time to time. There is no earthly way that I have the time and money to accomplish everything my gullible mind can conceive of. Again also, and this time because of Pat, things need to be mutually agreed upon, so that might make my #1 into a #8 and vise versa or not at all. It’s something more to complicate the process.

To be fair a true bucket list has to be feasible. Otherwise it’s just a wish list and my wife’s grandma said, “If wishes’ were horse’s beggars would ride.” I always wanted to climb a fourteen thousand foot mountain since I was a kid and although that desire somewhat preceded my bucket list, if I was younger it would still be there and if I were richer I would have done it then. Now, at my advancing age, if I was a multi millionaire and I’m not, I am sure I could find some strapping mountaineer who would push, pull and drag my old butt to the top. I would stand on the peak smiling into the setting sun, with a little frost in my mustache, pull out my list and my grease pencil and cross it off. Then come back down the conquering hero, pay of the people who got me to the top and live the lie. To be fair a true bucket list has to be honestly accomplished.

There are things that were on my bucket list that I have eliminated simply because the allure wore off. I always wanted to canoe down the Church Hill River in Canada until I hit Hudson Bay and see the Belugas and the Polar Bears. Then I read some first hand accounts of those who had did it. Covered in swarms of black flies and mosquitoes. A few of them killed by the bears they came to see. I do admire people that go exploring like that but I’m not sure that I’m cut from the same cloth as they are anymore. I talked to an old Irish Man a while back at an Irish festival and he told me how he and his wife crossed the ocean in a small sailboat mind you, sailed down the eastern coast, around the tip of Florida and parked at Fort Meyers. I have to admire that kind of attitude even though the man was a grouch. He complained to me that Americans are obsessed with dying of various diseases like cancer but the Irish fear only things like dementia. “A fate worse then death,” he said, “ Is losing all of me grudges.”


I think in the end, where you have gone and what you accomplished will not be a defining factor of a successful life. It will be the friends you have made along the way and the lives you have touched and then-- to die peacefully---with no grudges

Monday, March 21, 2016

CHURCH FIRE

                                            
I’m not sure how many of you were ever to St. Mary’s church in Melrose. My wife was born in Melrose and so many of her family members had called that building their religious sanctuary over the years. Entire families were baptized, and raised in their Catholic faith, within that church that was built in 1899. Stearns County has a lot of these old parishes. As you drive around the countryside their steeples are often the first thing you see stretching into the rural Minnesota sky. You have to feel how important their faith was to these German People, who settled the area, and fully realize how important that building was to their lives.

The city of Duluth had a similar situation with a church fire at Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in the downtown area last February. Like St. Mary’s, the church had been around since the eighteen hundreds. Years ago the people who built these churches made them a monument to their faith. Huge stained glass windows and ornate woodwork. Paintings, statues, altars and murals that told a story of how the church evolved through the ages. But then at some point we need to say where does the building leave off and the church began. It’s the house verses the home discussion. Not that the building isn’t important, it is, and the longer the building lives on, in the hearts of the worshipers, the more important it becomes to them.

As a fire fighter I witnessed first hand the grief that comes with the loss of a historic building. You feel just how much of somebody’s life that building represents. Not that we, the firefighters, didn’t try hard to save everybody’s buildings but I think in the times that I am talking about here, there was just an extra special effort, because this was a one of a kind place and you can’t just order up another. I am sure in Melrose, many of the firefighters were very familiar with St. Mary’s Church and this was the one place they never wanted to see burn.

A lot has changed not only in the churches we build but also in the attitude of the people as it pertains to the church buildings. I go to the Cities quite often and pass many churches in the suburbs. A lot of them, if it wasn’t for signage, could be mistaken for any commercial building. No more stained glass windows, no steeples or bells. Just a nice, comfortable place to worship. Not that that’s wrong and maybe it says “Hey it’s the message that is really important here.” But if you’re at all nostalgic you would understand


Some years ago our Church in Crosslake moved to new quarters. I knew at the time there would be some hurt amongst the older parishioners that were leaving the church they had known for so many years. But as time evolved-- and even though there is a picture of the old church in the assembly hall-- we found out we had a new place to make memories that was so much more functional then the old one. The walls changed but look around-- the people are the same. It is my hope; my prayer that St. Mary’s in Melrose can be made whole again. That somewhere down the road the doors will open once more and those same people, who always sit in that special pew, will be back to worship their God, once more in the place they call home.

Thursday, March 17, 2016

OPEN SPACES


I just finished reading a book, “Oregon Trail” by Rinker Buck that a friend bought  me. In it he chronicles his trip, from Missouri to Oregon, in a covered wagon, pulled by a team of mules. I couldn’t help but get swept up in his love for wide-open spaces, and those mules. Open spaces that are fast disappearing in the western United States. One can only imagine the hardships the pioneers went through to fulfill their dreams of owning land in the west. The wagon ruts are still visible in many places, and so are the graves of some of the settlers who succumbed to disease, starvation, and accidental death on that trip to fulfill a dream, some 180 years ago.

Growing up as a kid in the Staples area, I would often wander to the Crow Wing River north of town. I would walk down to the river and fish as I walked along the bank, and then hike back through the woods to where I left my bike, ride the five miles home, and hardly see a soul. I was one and alone with nature and the great outdoors, and that was—and still is—the way I like it. I have been to theme parks all over this great land, but they all pale in comparison in my estimation, to the natural paradise the good Lord gave us.

A few years back, right here in Crosslake, I took my dog, and starting from Big Pine Lake, in a canoe, I followed the river down to where it intersects with County 11. A short trip, for sure, but the river meanders through many miles of wilderness and pristine country. I took my time, and one night we camped on the riverbank, sleeping in an old pup tent. Gus slept with one ear cocked, so I wasn’t afraid of critters. We had a campfire, ate pork and beans, and roasted hot dogs. That night, lying with my head out the tent flap, I had never seen the stars so bright. I enjoyed that total silence that is so hard to find. I didn’t bring a phone.

It’s so hard to get off the beaten path, anymore, because the paths I speak of have been beaten down everywhere. Four wheelers and snowmobiles have crisscrossed the large section of woods across from my house. They leave ruts you could break an ankle on, and stagnant pools of mosquito-infested water. Once they have beaten down the brush enough, the pickup trucks are not far behind. The garbage is everywhere, and the animals retreat deeper and deeper into the woods. Molly and I like to escape to the woods for our nature walks, but many times we have to move off the trail so some vehicle can get by. I know it’s just a matter of time before it won’t be fun anymore.


The early pioneers left their comfortable homes in the east because they were disenfranchised with what had happened to the land and the people out there. They reached a point where all that was left was to escape. They had one thing going for them—an unblemished place to escape to—something that no longer exists unless you have the money to buy a big tract of land. Even then, there is no reassurance that, someday, an oil rig will pull up and show you the papers that let them drill on your land for oil; to feed the enormous appetite of all of those motorized vehicles that are just waiting to chew up that same piece of land.

Monday, March 7, 2016

MY BIRTHDAY

                                                         
So today, March 5th, is my 75 birthday anniversary. I am entering, in all probability, the last quarter of my life. If there is a fifth quarter I will be truly surprised and amazed. As I look back over the first three quarters of my life, I feel so blessed. The good lord has not just graced me with so many good things but life went so well for me because he has been on this journey with me, every step of the way. It was his presence during the bad times that lightened the load and his steady hand on me that made the good times so happy. I felt him rejoicing right there with me. I am sure when this journey is over he will be standing there to welcome me home.

Somewhere in that first quarter of life, with my parents and siblings, I learned what a loving family was all about. They laid the foundation I have built my life on. Somewhere in that first quarter of life I found my own true love and that was the missing piece of the puzzle for me, the essential ingredient for having my own family. It was a time of growing up with each other, through sharing, caring and sacrifice but we made it all happen together.

In the second quarter of my life we built on that love and tried to instill it in our children. This was the time when we really got to know each other. We suffered together as we lost parents. We lamented over an empty nest and watched those kids we loved so much, now going out to show us what they were made of. Wrinkles and gray hair and all kinds of wear showed up. Shakespeare said, “With Mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come” and we did. Life back then was truly a lesson in love and commitment and we looked forward to the next quarter.

In the third quarter life became so much easier. So many responsibilities were being shed with kids finding their own way and jobs winding down. Grandkids were our new passion and although we had little control, the lessons of the past came through as we watched them emulate their parents who had emulated us. Retirement and travel and the house on the lake and then after 10 glorious years in retirement, God took her home and for a while I struggled with that but time and faith, heals souls and hearts everyday and they did for me too. 

Today at the start of that last quarter my loving friend and I are enjoying the Florida sun and taking life one day at a time. We take nothing for granted anymore but the fact that we are here to love and support each other no matter what life brings. That the friends and family we have loved and enjoyed along the way, have been the magic sauce in this time tested recipe for life. For that I am truly grateful. Maya Angelou said and I quote, “Let gratitude be the pillow on which you kneel to say your nightly prayer. And let faith be the bridge you build to overcome evil and welcome good.”           

                                                                        Mike

                                                                                   



Tuesday, March 1, 2016

MY ROOTS



As I look back over my life, I feel so blessed with all the things I have seen and done. Much of what I experienced, and lived through, is not available any longer to those coming into adolescence—and if it was, they probably wouldn’t do it, anyway. I’m talking about the simple things that helped shape me into what I am today. Maybe I should clarify them as “simple experiences in life” and not “things.” Some people would call them hardships, but to those of us who experienced them, we don’t see them that way. We saw them as a way of life that we are enormously proud to have experienced, and although we now have evolved into the simpler, easier way of life of never ending electronics, climate-controlled environments, fancy cars and vacations, we probably wouldn’t go back to our roots if we could—but we do take pride in the fact that it wasn’t always this way, and we can attest to that.

I have told my kids and grandkids that, to really appreciate what you have, first you must relate to what it was like to be without it. I remember a day shortly after I had left home and went back for a visit. My mom wanted to show me something. She took me into the kitchen and showed me her new, used clothes dryer. I still, today, picture her walking outside in the wintertime, with a clothesbasket full of steaming laundry, and hanging those wet clothes on the clotheslines. Her hands would be chapped and red, her face weary, but on this day she was beaming. How many people do you know in your life that rejoiced over a used clothes dryer?

Our house was a shack—but in it was something you don’t find in a lot of houses. Not like we had, anyway. A family that truly loved each other and pulled together. When there was nothing on the table to eat but vegetables, no one complained. When your clothes were all hand-me-downs, no one complained. When you couldn’t play sports after school, because your dad needed you to help him cut wood, you didn’t ask why. And when you graduated from school, and knew it was time to leave, you vowed that you would work hard every day of your life, because that’s what you had been taught to do, and it’s exactly what you did. On the day that I left home, my mom, with tears in her eyes said, “Don’t forget about us, Mike.” Some fifty-seven years later, Mom, I haven’t forgotten and I never will.

I look around me now days and see all kinds of families, most of them rushing from one place to another. Hockey, football, and dance class—almost anything you can think of. But there does seem to be one exception—families in church. I go to church, and all there is, is a lot of old people with a few exceptions. My parents herded all eight of us kids to church every Sunday, no matter the weather or what was going on. When I once asked my dad why church was so important, he told me, “If I tell you now, it won’t make any sense to you, anyway, but there will come a day, son, when you’re going to slap yourself across the side of the head and say, Now I know why.” I see the greed, the lying and fighting in politics. I see the lack of morality in society. Shootings, assaults and killings are commonplace.” Drugs and addictions. “Yes Dad, now I know why.”