A NEW YEAR

Eric's Blog

A New Year

 

 

Another year

Has come and gone

 

Another year

Is coming

 

This year

I hope to cherish

The moments

 

Embracing and Accepting

Each opportunity

And life experience
 

 

 

Sometimes when I am at my best I truly embrace my present experience, without looking forward ... to what I might be doing ... or backward ... to what I did or might have done. Experiencing what I am doing right now seems to bring a level of satisfaction that I cannot experience otherwise.

 

The other day in the dentist's chair I found myself wishing the ordeal was over. It seemed to make it worse. I instead concentrated on the healing the periodontist was doing. It seemed to help.

 

I think it is nice to look forward to something but sometimes that may actually reduce the enjoyment of our current situation if we do not accept and embrace the present.

 

Sometimes when our brain starts buzzing we spend more time thinking about what happened in the past or what may happen ... and miss what is happening. 

A Time of New Birth

We live in a country of many different faiths intermingled with people who do not have spiritual beliefs. For most faiths every day is sacred but all faiths have times of special celebrations. For Christians December 25th is one of those times. It is the day that the birth of Jesus the Christ is honored and celebrated.



The crypt (1078 A.D.) beneath the church in Lastingham, England.

 



Raised as a Christian I read as a child about the coming of the wise men and it seemed like a lovely exotic fairy tale. It was many years later that I read the poem "Journey of the Magi" by T.S. Eliot and was astonished by the opening lines, "A hard time we had of it, just the worst time of the year for a journey and such a long journey". The fairy tale image flew out of my brain in a big hurry and I began to try to get my mind around a very different way of looking at the whole thing. The journey towards the new birth as a Christian is a very difficult one, full of hardships, challenging lessons to learn and many failures along the way. Wisdom is hard earned and not easily put into practice. But, as the wise men experienced, when we commit to the journey and keep going, in spite of all the set backs, we know that new birth is possible because we have seen it. With faith and joy they offered precious gifts to honor the birth.

                              

                               Our Christmas freezing rain.

                                                                              

In America, Christmas is often experienced as just one big commercial enterprise and time with family can be challenging and not always the joyful experience that we would like. Making internal and external space to remember and honor the sacredness of this special time takes a thoughtful plan and can be as simple as lighting a candle or saying grace before the meal. For some the spiritual preparation for Christmas is much more extensive and culminates in the joy of being with a community of faith for the midnight service on Christmas Eve. Whatever you choose allow yourself to consider that the external New Birth can reflect and assist in the internal New Birth. So open your heart and mind to embrace the new life that this special sacred time invites us to welcome.             

REAR VIEW MIRROR

ERIC'S BLOG

 

Rear View Mirror

 

Sometimes healing is slow

We focus on what is not healed

 

Sometimes we see only those task before us

Not what we have accomplished

 

Looking back

Helps see the progress

 

And experience the

Joy of the moment.

 

A friend of mine, Ken Kaminsky, gave me this image of the rear view mirror. My wife has suffered from a broken ankle (hardware and pins galore) and then broken ribs. Progress was slow especially what was still missing in recovery. Looking back on casts, crutches and commode was beneficial.

 

Furthermore, sometimes we only see the tasks that face us and ignore those that we have accomplished.

 

Looking back in that rear view mirror can help all of us see progress in healing and progress in achieving. 

Coming to America

Lesley's Blog

On 7/7/77 I left my homeland of Britain and emigrated to the United States of America. Unlike other immigrants, I was moving to a country where I could speak the language and would be welcomed by a loving, supportive community. Although money was tight initially, we certainly did not have to be concerned about how we were going to put a roof over our heads and food on the table. I did have some things to learn, like driving on the "wrong" side of the road, but the learning curve was not steep and the adjustment did not take long. At first making regular phone calls and returning to Britain for a visit were not possible but it was not many years before that changed and I was able to talk to and see my family regulary, diminishing some of the pain of separation.

I often reflect, even after so many years, on how difficult it must be for immigrants who arrive with little of no knowledge of the language and who come from cultures very different from here. The bravery that it takes to survive and hopefully eventually thrive under such circumstances is to me unimaginable. For those people who come as refugees, fleeing from war or persecution and the threat of death, often leaving everything behind and arriving with massive posttraumatic stress and little else, my admiration is even greater.

Whatever the circumstances, the promise of a new life is tempered by a deep sense of loss. There is the loss of country, the land that was our home and is embedded deep on our heart, the loss of culture, the loss of family and friends and a familiar way of life with all its complexities.

Much as my life in the United States has been very positive, I still miss my homeland. I miss family and ways of daily living that are different from my life here and I miss the land itself. It is not that I feel it is better, just different and I miss it.

Humans have always moved beginning with their origins in Africa from where our ancestors slowly but relentlessly moved to all areas of the globe. Eventually there was no more "empty space" that was habitable and inevitably this ongoing movement resulted sadly in conflict. We all know the rhetoric that "America is built on immigrants" and part of that is true but only because the indigenous population (whose ancestors had also emigrated from somewhere else at some unknown time) had not grown sufficiently in numbers that the immigrants (who were from many countries) were not considered by the immigrants themselves to be an equivalent of an invading nation. And of course, the Native American nations fought amongst each other so that groups were forced to move depending on their relative strengths.

For many immigrants, especially in past centuries, coming to America required an amazing amount of courage, strength and perseverence as hardship was rampant and "success" did not come easily. Often it was only the next generation who benefited from the hard work and suffering of the initial immigrants.

In the United Kingdom, the Irish potato famine resulted in thousands of starving and poverty stricken individuals leaving Ireland to arrive in America without resources or job skills. Equally as devastating were the clearances in Scotland. Just like in America when settlers wanted the land and cleared the local populations of Native tribes, sending them to designated areas by such means as "The Trail of Tears", so the English landlords cleared the land of families who had farmed there for generations. Emigration was one of the few options available to those destitute souls but the price for many was their lives. Some of the boats became known as "coffin" ships, overloaded with immigrants and with limited supplies, so that disease and death were rampant. Even if you survived the journey you might be refused entry because of illness or robbed of what little you had either on the boat or when you landed. And so it continues today, people suffering hardship and risking death to come to America to make a better life for themselves and their loved ones.  

Eric's grandparents emigrated from Poland and like many sons and daughters of immigrants in those days, his father was determined to learn the new ways and forget the old. Although that is understandable, it resulted for Eric in a loss of much of his cultural heritage and a complete disconnection from any family who remained in the "old country".

Fortunately, things are changing and now there is an increased acceptance and interest in cultural history which continues to enrich our society, adding to the riches already bestowed on this country  by millions of immigrants from every corner of the globe. 

I know that there is now a lot of controversy about immigration, fears that it is out of control and something needs to be done. It is a difficult, complex and thorny issue and of course everyone has different views. I certainly am not suggesting that I have the corner on rightness or truth. But my dearest wish, as an immigrant, is that whatever is done is based on decisions from the heart and not from a stance of fear or scarsity.