Vintage Dilbert
May 4, 1994

He possessed a five-day supply of food, a Bible and Pilgrim’s Progress- his two treasures, a small ax for protection, and a blanket. With these, Legson Kayira eagerly set out on the journey of his life. He was going to walk from his tribal village in Nyasaland, north across the wilderness of East Africa, 3000 miles to Cairo, where he would board a ship to America to get a college education.

It was October 1958. Legson was sixteen or seventeen, his mother wasn’t sure. His parents didn’t know exactly where America was or how far. But they reluctantly gave their blessing to his journey.

To Legson, it was a journey derived from a dream – that fueled his determination to get an education. He wanted to be like his hero, Abraham Lincoln, who had risen from poverty to become an American president, then fought tirelessly…

My heart has been very heavy lately, which is a feeling that I am very unused to. The fact is, as my children age, some into young adulthood, their problems are more real life problems, not just a tantrum in the grocery store. 2 of my younger children, with as many good traits and skills that they do have, do not having the capacity to be fully self-sufficient as adults, including incapacity to maintain a paying job. Yes, SSI is a possibility when they are adults, but even that provides only poverty level income. They are my family and my financial responsibility, which necessitates looking at the ability of our extremely diminishing finances to care for them during their lifetimes.

Although hubby and I both work, often 6 days a week, and are considered solidly middle class, our bank account does not reflect this. Every time Marie has a PTSD…

Old Lady Klutz

Though one of the most positive aspects of reaching retirement age is the opportunity to travel, I wish I had photos of the incredulous expressions on airport security personnel when my husband and I show up. They look like, “Why don’t people like you, just stay home?” Their feelings may be justified since they spend twenty minutes patting down my husband, whose pacemaker can’t go through the x-ray machine, and about fifteen minutes examining my wheelchair as I limp through, at the same time others are dismantling our sleep apnea machines. I’m not sure what terrorist profile we match, but believe me, you are safe from us.
Back in our youthful sixties, we each took only a small rolling suitcase and backpack for eleven days abroad. This meant we could take it all as carry-ons and not risk the trauma of lost luggage. Now, in our seventies…

I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.
I am ashamed to claim faith in Jesus Christ, unworthy as I am
to bear that name and call myself a Christian. For my sake he was
crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered death and was buried.

I love the order and witness of the Christian faith;
the unassuming birth, disarming life, unjustifiable death,
and the deserted tomb that answer prophecy of Scripture.

A burning stick snatched from the fire, I believe I am more sinful
than I could imagine and more loved than I dare hope.*

Yet I worship at the altar of Self, and often insist and want and
worry as though there were no God. As though I were not loved.

I believe in right and wrong, and that I need saving from myself.
I need a God who is wiser than my purposes, deeper than…

At the time when little girls start playing dress-up with their mother’s clothes, I was living in a forest without food or proper clothes. Grenades were falling, people were dying. It was war. Being beautiful was something for princesses in fairy tales. Months later we were sleeping in a park in Austria, dirty, homeless and hungry, refugees from the former Yugoslavia. Our first home was a cellar, without heating or daylight. From two neighbors I received t-shirts that were too big for me.

We moved to the countryside. I started high school and mobbing became a daily routine. I was the only child that wasn’t blond and pale. Girls were proudly wearing their first bra, having boyfriends and experimenting with make-up, while I was “the ugly one”. Trying to dress up made it even worse, so I shaved my head to give them a real reason for their cruelty. The…

We must not,

in trying to think about how we can make a big difference,

ignore the small daily differences we can make which,

over time, add up to big differences

that we often cannot foresee.

….Marian Wright Edelman

there is an envisioning heart that responds to what is needed….beyond ego, beyond fear….directly in tune to grace…..these kinds of truths are intuited and deconstructed from our stories……..

To embrace the future, the dark, you make. Making is a letting go of your own stuff into the world, of the ideas and offspring that the breeze of time takes away as though you were a dry dandelion, a thistle, a milkweed, a poplar whose seeds travel n the winds of time, in this way that wind makes love to flowers and seeds, in this way that time tears them apart and carries them onward. The white ghosts of those seeds travel…

In the silence between
your heartbeat
bides a summons.
…..Rumi

there is a place outside of definition that is conditional and constrained and as we rummage for a safe place to hide our unsteadiness, know that we can trust the infinite battle……no wins, no losses…..only steady hearts and infinite wisdom to outlast the battle….

You might ask yourself: “Can I imagine what it would be like, in this moment, to have a heart that is ready for anything?”

If our hearts are ready for anything, we can open to our inevitable losses and to the depths of our sorrow. We can grieve our lost loves, our lost youth, our lost health, our lost capacities. This is part of our humanness, part of the expression of our love for life. As we bring a courageous presence to the truth of loss, we stay available to the immeasurable ways that love springs forth…

Dying is messy. Most people don’t manage to die with their hair styled or tidily in their best suit and tie. Looking good isn’t what death is about.

Dying is often painful, both emotionally and physically. Even those, who find peace from acceptance or joy from a sense of God’s loving presence, struggle before getting to that point. Dying isn’t comfortable or entertaining.

Dying is not a social event. It sometimes brings feelings of rejection, because some of our family and friends aren’t ready to face the reality of death, so they may get very busy elsewhere.

Dying is scary and lonely. Only a few have lived to tell about it. And though our loved ones may hold our hand, we know we must go alone.

Dying is an experience of total helplessness. No matter how rich or competent or powerful we are in life, dying wipes out the last…

Thirty-five years ago when I taught a combined first and second grade class, it was an unparalleled opportunity to see human beings in an unvarnished state. At that time children weren’t being sent to daycare at birth, and kindergartens were non-existent in small towns and rural areas like ours, so the strongest influence in most of my young students’ lives had been a relatively accepting and affirming mother or grandmother. The children hadn’t been lacquered with social conformity yet and their unique personalities and ways of responding to life hadn’t been labeled or graded.  It was an amazing experience of the delightful, though challenging, diversity in human nature. Seeking different approaches to teaching, so the explosive joy of learning could happen for each child, was a fascinating puzzle.

The effects of prior influences such as family economics were definitely identifiable, but still somewhat malleable.

When Larry, a well scrubbed youngster…