MY FOUR NEW YEARS GOALS

                                               

 What do I want for my friends, family and myself for New Years? And is what I want even possible or am I somewhere in fantasyland just wishing things were different? To me there are so many good things I value in life but yet if I think about them and had to categorize them in some kind of order of importance, where would I draw the lines. First and foremost I need to go back to the prayer of serenity and realize that much that is wrong out there, or at least what I perceive as being wrong, is beyond my control but I need to pay attention to the things that I can change.

I think happiness would be the thing I would aspire to be the most. I guess when you think about it, it’s all-inclusive with things we value in life. Faith, health, wealth, companionship all become a part of it. But then as I dissect it farther I find that it’s not just my happiness that is so important to me, but also the happiness of a large group of people that I know and love. For their happiness is tied to mine. What makes them happy refines and completes my happiness and vice versa. It’s like sugar in a recipe. It’s good all by itself but put it into a desert full of fruits, nuts and delicate creams and it’s the best it can be. That’s what life really is and should be. A living recipe for happiness. Even though we don’t have all the ingredients ourselves, others will chip in if we let them, to make the finished product. My resolution #1 is to try and be happy.

I need to be more of a doer and less of an advisor. But wait, I’m a writer and my forte is to inspire people to bigger and better things with my writings. It’s one of my daily prayers. “Lord, help me find the words to help people be inspired, like I am.” But in his infinite wisdom he is saying to me “That’s all good and proper Mike but show them what you mean by your example.” Even St. Francis prayed “Lord make me an instrument of your peace.” He knew that to be a living example would be the way to go. Do as I do, is always so much better then do as I say. It’s like the directions to accomplish something great, all done up in a video orchestrated by you, instead of a pamphlet that tells you a step by step process. My resolution # 2. Try to change the things you can. Remember every trip starts with a single step.

 I need to see the world through the eyes of my friends and loved ones as well as through my own. We are all so different; we all bring to the table something special. Let’s go back to that happiness thing I talked about. Thing’s that make no sense to me, may make perfect sense to someone else. I’m old but if I lived to be a thousand I could never experience all the things that have make people happy or sad. I only know what I have come in contact with. I need to expand my horizons and be more understanding of those around me. My resolution #3. Be more understanding.

I looked up the meaning of the word resolution. It means to make a firm decision. Resolution #4. Be serious about what you have resolved to do.

                                                                                                                       

                                                                                    HAPPY NEW YEARS ---MIKE

MAGICAL CHRISTMAS

Each year at Christmas, I take this magical journey through time. It’s a trip I have made possible, by being old, blessed with the wisdom of life. A trip I take because I lived through so many Christmas’s, loving, touching and knowing so many people.

So today, I vision a tree decorated only with tinsel and clear class bulbs and from each of them, shines a face that I knew so well when they were here on earth. They all look so happy now, but then that was how they were when I knew them at a different moment and place in time. A time when they were here sharing life with me and it’s how I choose to remember them now. Our lives have always been a picture puzzle of sorts but these were the pieces that completed me and made my world what it was, now helping my picture come to fruition.

There is no special order to the bulbs on my sacred memory tree, they’re all significant to me or they wouldn’t be there. Softly and silently they glow in the somewhat celestial darkness, hiding in the boughs. Illuminated by some unseen mystery power source I believe in, but don’t fully understand. The faces in the bulbs are somewhat blurry when seen in mass but when I approach them and touch them individually with my fingertips, they light up brightly and magically come to life. Then as if I have opened a long forgotten file in my computer and created a path from the tree to my memory, our lives become real again and I remember so many things long since forgotten about them. It’s a quiet meeting of sorts, no talking, just happy thoughts and recollections of a place and a time we shared so many years ago. All of these thoughts seem to flow softly back and forth on some telepathic connection that seems to defy all earthly logic.

There are no tears to cry tonight in this magical moment, just happy peaceful thoughts that seem almost melodious in nature. No pain or worries or grudges and sadness to bring back. It’s as if those things never existed in my past. I find my way moving quietly around the tree, intrepid yes, but softly touching each and every bulb, as if opening and closing tiny doors, one at a time. Our lives’ stories that once existed in harmony together seem for the moment to be bursting at the seams of my memory. There are no hellos or good byes to be said in this moment in time. In fact time is not of any essence to me and doesn’t seem to exist at all. Something tells me that it’s not only my Christmas’s past in these fleeting sacred moments that I am experiencing but a prevue of Christmas’s future for me someday. God willing I will take my place on that tree of life when my turn comes and somebody else will take my place on the outside looking in.

As cliché, as it seems Christmas is a “ways to the means” for so many of us. The means I talk about are peace, love and good will. We weren’t born with it. It’s a learned behavior brought on through our circle of life with those we love. Since the day we learned it, it’s always been there in our lives but it gets buried in the hustle and bustle of everyday life but then along comes Christmas to bring it all back.

CHRISTMAS IN ALEPPO

                                                 

In a bombed out building, in Aleppo Syria, a family of five hunkers down for another day of not knowing if they will see the end of the day or not. They are a Christian family but only in the privacy of their home. They would be killed if the enemy knew their faith. Christmas may be coming soon but for them it’s just another day fighting for survival. There is a mom and three kids and a crippled father badly wounded in the fighting. He lies on a cold damp, cot, shivering and moaning. Infection has taken over his body from his undressed wounds. His wife tries to comfort him but it only adds to her despair for she has no medicine or bandages. The boy, about thirteen, goes out each day to see what he can beg, borrow or steal for food and water. One little girl about six sits in the corner wrapped in rags for warmth trying to keep her toddler brother happy. He cries incessantly because he is so cold, wet and hungry. There is no food, no water, no heat and seemingly no hope.

This Christmas in Minnesota I will gather with my family and loved ones once more. We’ve cut back on the gift giving but only because there is little anyone needs. Our warm homes are brightly decorated and on Christmas Eve we will go worship freely the birth of Christ. Then we will gather for a Christmas feast of roast beef, and all the trimmings. Crawl into our warm beds and sleep, seemingly without a care in the world. After Christmas we will go back to our routines, richer for having spent another Christmas in this great country and looking forward to even better things.

I think of Syria and I can’t fathom how the leader of that country can destroy his own country and its people to stay in power. What is it that he wants, to go to such extremes? What is wrong with the people who supply this mad man with bombs and missiles? What is wrong with the rest of the world that could stop all this suffering tomorrow, with one huge collective effort?

I mentioned that this family in Aleppo was Christian and Christmas is coming. Somewhere in the Bible between Genesis and Revelations there is story of the reason for Christmas and a code of ethics, Jesus brought for all of us to live by. It tells us to care for others and be tolerant of others and love our neighbors and if we do this, the world will be a far better place for all of us. But for that to happen someone has to care and the way things are now-- caring is being called into question.

Back in Aleppo it’s Christmas Eve and the man has died. His wife sits on the floor and sobs into his still warm body. She has no way to even give him a burial service. She gathers her family around her and they all take what they can carry. It’s time to flee their home now. There is no star to guide them like the Shepherd’s had that night so long ago, Just piles of rubble to crawl over and around. If they are lucky they will get to Turkey and maybe-- just maybe, they will get something to eat and drink.

My wish this Christmas is for a realization in this world and this country of what is important and what isn’t. An end to this kind of greed and power struggles that goes on at the expense of so many innocents. -----For peace on earth and good will to all.

FALL THOUGHTS

                                                            

A while back, as I drove home from a trip to Hackensack I saw more and more trees, now looking like skeletal remains of themselves, after shedding their summer foliage. Fall can be a nice time with its cooler temperatures, fewer bugs and all the colors. But its like going to a good movie you waited ages to see and knowing that with each frame the story is being revealed to the point where soon there is no more to tell. You leave the theater happy you were allowed to see and hear the film but sad it had to end. That’s what autumn is-- the ending to another summer-- and yes there will be more, but not for a while and sometimes it’s that “while,” we find so hard to take.

I received a phone call yesterday from a friend, who told me that a mutual friend and neighbor, was going into Hospice care. I know none of us can pick our time to leave and if that were true we simply won’t leave would we? But notice the similarity between leaves and leave and in a twisted sort of way I guess when my time comes, if it could be in the fall, I would think it a most appropriate time to leave. The end of summer and the end of life, at least for me, have something in common. I hear in the back of my mind right now, the lyrics of Nat King Cole when he sang so beautiful-- and just for today, so very fitting. “Those falling leaves drift by the window. Those autumn leaves of red and gold. I see your lips, the summer kisses. The sunburned hands I used to hold. Since you went away the days grow long and soon I’ll hear old winters song.”

Okay, lets lighten it up. There were days when I welcomed fall. The hunt was on for birds and deer. Fresh squash and kitchens sounding off with the pinging of can lids, as the garden went from fresh to canned. Football and kids back in school. You could see through the woods again at a whole new world that you had walked by so many times that summer. The smell of leaves burning in the driveway brought the neighbors out, as is if it was a miniature homecoming event. But then inevitably the days grew shorter and colder and the bird’s left and the animals hunkered down and it was strangely quiet in our little corner of the world. So quiet you could almost hear the snowflakes fall as they blanketed the earth in a covering cloak of white. All the color seemed to go out of the land and suddenly it was just black and white, dark cold. Even the lake was silenced under an icy canopy that enhanced the biting cold ebbing ashore and eeking through our clothing, when the winds blew across it.

I grew up in a house heated by wood. My father cut wood for several months, after work each day and us boys helped. He said it warmed you twice-- once when you cut and hauled it-- and once when you burned it. We had a gravity fed furnace and whatever you burned you smelled. The smell of red oak and birch still bring a sense of warming to me. There was much more family time to be had back then as we were clustered together to stay out of the weather. As siblings we played games and read books. Supper was much more leisurely then summer time because you weren’t all rushing off to go some place. And at night when you climbed those stairs, to that cold bedroom, to crawl under those thick blankets and cuddle with your brothers for warmth--- Well I guess what I’m trying to say is it gave you a whole new appreciation of family and togetherness.

LONELINESS

                                             

“This is for all the lonely people. Thinking that life has passed them by. Don’t give up until you drink from the silver cup and ride that highway in the sky.” Yes, not my words but the words of the songwriters Daniel and Catherine Peek. It says so well what I want to talk about. There is a segment of our population that has always touched my heart and that is the lonely people. Maybe it’s because for a short while, after my wife died, I seemed to be one of them but then in retrospect I’m not sure if I was lonely, as much as I was feeling sorry for myself because in reality my support group was active. The people I really feel sorry for are those who seem to have none.

My father-in-law, in his later years, lived in the Old Soldiers Home in South Minneapolis. At least once a week my wife, or I, would make the trip out there to see him or bring him to our place for a visit. I remember one such trip at Christmas time and as I went into get him I walked by an old man sitting in wheelchair by the entrance. He was crying and I stopped for a moment to ask him if I should go get someone to help him. He said, “There is no one to help me.” I said I was sure I could find someone, that this was a nice place with lots of attendants. He said what he meant was, “It was Christmas and all day families’ had come to take loved ones home for the Holidays,” but he had no one to do that. I was at a loss for words and to this day, I wished I had done, what I didn’t do, and that was not to walk away from him. To make matters worse I remember picking up my father-in-law and going out another door because I was ashamed to go by this man again. When I think about it today, I had options there but they all involved a little work-- I didn’t want to do. I could have talked about him with the staff. Maybe they knew of someone who would have helped him. To be sure I could have asked him to come to Christmas dinner at our house. I could have at the very least taken him to the commissary and bought him a cup of coffee and had a conversation with him. But I didn’t and I regret it. You see I had never really been lonely and didn’t know what he was going through but with his tears he had reached out to me and yet I never took the time to listen.

Last year my brother passed away. Ken was a hopeless alcoholic who lived alone. Hopeless in the fact that he rebuffed any and all attempts to help him. God knows we as his siblings and family tried. I would call him maybe once a week but there would be times when there would be no answer and I knew he was too drunk to talk. Then one day his daughter called from Mesa and said she couldn’t get a hold of him. I told her to call one of his neighbors, that I knew she talked with and have them check on him. She did and Ken was dead. Today the thing that bothers me the most was he died alone, in squalor. Helping Ken was not much of an option because he didn’t want help but no one should have to die alone and that is what bothers me the most.

I’m not a lonely man, even though I live alone. My kids call often and I have Pat and although we both keep our separate households we care a lot for each other. We talk every day and maybe sometimes it’s nothing more then, “what did you had for supper” but it’s a sense of sharing and caring that feels so darn good.