Category Archives: Caring

How do we say “thank you?”

28 Friday Nov 2014

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Todah, wado, efxaristo, danke, gracias, thank you, xie xie, salamat, grazie, mahalo, domo arigato, obrigado, spasiba, asante, cam on, medasi, gahm-sah-hahm-ni-da, dhanyavad…all ways to say the same thing among many more peoples and languages.

Usually these words call for an appropriate response. “You’re welcome” used to be the polite response in English. These days we hear an echoing “thank you” often, as if the “first giver” knows that the gift is being passed along in an endless series, popularized in the phrase “pay it forward,” in contrast to “pay it back.” The giver is not only glad to give; he or she finds reward in moving gifts along an endless sequence of giving.

Mrs. Veatch made that point to me in 1973, when she called our home in Iroquois, Illinois, from her home in Thawville and asked if she could come to visit. She had been my high school Latin teacher, but she instilled much more than Latin in all of her students. Latin was her base for sharing the love of learning and people. Her home was a library that became the start of a library for the village of Thawville and a resource for all of the area. She knew that my wife had just given birth to our second child, and with part-time work and graduate school almost finished we didn’t have much. She came bearing gifts.

“Don’t even think about repaying me,” she said. “I’ve already had my reward from seeing your accomplishments as my student. Just pass it on.” That was her consistent attitude, even as she faced the death of three sons in those years, and even as she faced her own illness and death. I have remembered her example as our opportunities to share with others became greater as the years have passed.

“Bitte” is a frequent response in German, “I beg” in English, which seems an odd idiom until we realize that the obligation to give is felt acutely in one who knows how much is owed to the others who have made giving possible.

the old ugly rocking chair

24 Monday Nov 2014

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Many years ago my grandfather, Carl Warfel, entrusted me with an item of great value to him—an old rocking chair. He could not say that he enjoyed sitting in it. I had the impression that no one had sat in it in for many years. It was in several pieces, having come unglued. It was missing its upholstered seat. He could not say that it was good looking either. Black and red casein stain covered its parts in random patches, a stain that came from soot and iron ore mixed with sour milk. The colors had worn to dull hues, bare where hands and other body parts had rubbed them off. Its claim to value lay in the family story that this rocker had sat by the fireplace in a cabin near Charleston, Illinois, in the 1840’s and 50’s. The owner, a cabinetmaker and carpenter, may have fashioned this one-of-a-kind design, and the rare times his lawyer son visited, while riding his court circuit through nearby Charleston, his son would sit in that chair and call it his favorite.

So the rocker came to me, as one entrusted with a pearl of great price. Of his many grandchildren I was the one who had shown some interest in antique furniture and refinishing, therefore the natural choice for its stewardship or rockership. I didn’t have the slightest idea what to do with it. My first inclination was to get rid of that awful black and red color, because the worn places revealed an unidentifiable wood of some quality, and the hand-lathed spools on back and legs and arms had charm. Fortunately no paint stripper or chemical that I had knew about could touch the stain. I say fortunately because those ugly colors date and locate the piece.

Since I did not know what to do with it, I took the remaining pieces apart and kept it in a large box where it sat for forty years. The chair challenged me to glue it back together, tung oil its wood back to a satin luster, and take it to an upholsterer for covering with a period fabric and pattern. No one alive could vouch for the story that came with the chair, but the thing is obviously old enough. Thomas Lincoln’s next door neighbors were my grandmother’s great aunt and uncle, and they may have purchased Lincoln’s household furniture when he died, but I have not been able to verify that family story.

Finally, in the year that I retired, I finished the rocking chair. Do you have any such prizes in your possession? Probably you are a better caretaker than I have been. Do you have a story worth telling, and can you vouch for it better than I? No object can mean that much, but sometimes with certain objects we can bear a testimony to values worth treasuring.

Our treasure should never be consigned to a box, stored out of sight and forgotten. Alas, that is where many people keep their stories and their valuables. The value is not available until you bring it out and put it to use, reassemble and try it out in daily life, and put the story into words and actions that echo the original experience, faint or dim or ugly though they may sometimes be in our rockership.

the welcomers

21 Friday Nov 2014

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“Eldon and I are your neighbors– a block north of your home. We’d be glad for you to stop in anytime. You are always welcome for tea.” What was left unsaid, but became clear later was the rest of the invitation, “We will be glad to adopt you as our own children, and your children as our grandchildren, for as long as you are here, and in our hearts forever.” The Johnsons were like that. They had welcomed the previous ministers at their church, and they would welcome succeeding ones.  

They gave an open invitation, which they always accommodated, with a few understandable exceptions when they were gone on a trip or in the midst of a project, from which they could always take a hospitality break. Retired from managing the local grocery business Eldon made time for fishing trips with the children, along with his other grandchildren, and games of pool in the den of their little house. They taught them to “chicken dance” and pick strawberries and other things that parents may not have remembered to teach. Eldon and Louise also seldom missed a worship service, taking their position in the front under the high pulpit. He had missed enough, he said, in the working years when the grocery required his attention.  

When many others did not invite visits and seemed to resent my effort to make a home appointment as too much of an intrusion on a busy schedule, the Johnsons were always true to their word. The teapot was always on. They had their own opinions about matters being discussed, which they expressed in considerate, thoughtful ways whether they were in disagreement or support. It was clear from the first that their mission was to make loving relationships. They also cooperated with the church’s decisions once made, and were usually available to help, even with hard projects like putting a new acoustical ceiling in the Fellowship Hall, or tearing out the wood floor to lay concrete. If there had not been another person in that community of such character (and there certainly were others), the time there would still have been wonderful. 

Louise gradually lost her vision, and Eldon became her caretaker as other health problems accumulated. She still wrote a note stating that they were enjoying their private “nursing home” and still kept us in their prayers. Eldon died suddenly. Louise lived out her final stage of hospitality in a nearby nursing home.  

As we approach Thanksgiving and Christmas we remember Eldon and Louise putting out the lights around their house, and a constant buffet spread of desserts and delicacies for all their guests. Like their Savior they will live forever, and not only in our “hearts.”

evidence of the multiverse

17 Monday Nov 2014

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Many memorable and, I hope, equally forgettable statements filled the airwaves this past election season (2014). Among them this comment by Joni Ernst stands out, “We have lost a reliance on not only our own families, but so much of what our churches and private organizations used to do. They used to have wonderful food pantries. They used to provide clothing for those that really needed it, but we have gotten away from that.”

In my study of string theory, I have pondered what kind of evidence would provide verification that we exist, not in a universe, as traditional physics has assumed, but in a multiverse in which an infinite number of universes coexist, as string theory posits. The evidence requires some kind of incursion of an anomalous alternative reality into the regularly observable reality of this universe. Soon-to-be-Senator Ernst’s statement provides that kind of incursive evidence, although it may fit better into a theoretical construct known as shoestring theory.

Truth to be told, I have spent more time studying history, and church history particularly, than I have spent on theoretical physics. We now live in an era in which more food and more clothing comes from voluntary and nonprofit organizations than ever before in history. This, today, is the era of wonderful food pantries provided by churches and private organizations, as well as meal services, overnight lodging and shelters, clothing distributions, funding for transportation, medical care, education, rental assistance, and utility payments. Altogether, this total of private assistance to the indigent, the working poor, the elderly and disabled amounts to a fraction of what our own and other governments provide for their citizens, but it still often means survival for many people. If the food pantries do not look wonderful, it is because their shelves empty so quickly.

During seven decades of life, I have seen, assisted, and started several programs of such assistance for people who needed them. I have examined the evidence of such programs in many eras of history from the earliest church through the Great Depression. No era has seen more concerted and voluntary action to provide benefits to others than our own era.

At the same time, the accumulation of wealth has also reached a pinnacle. The odd thing in this universe is that extremes can coexist without mutual recognition. Only when people do live in a different world can they assert that we once had wonderful food pantries and clothing depots and we have gotten away from that, therefore, the government must do less, and voluntary organizations and churches must step up in doing more, like they used to do. There never was a time in which they used to do more. There never was a time in which help for the poor—working or not able to work or not ready to work—was more needed than now, nor more need for governments to step up and assist their populations to secure their livelihoods. Wealth is present, but the wealth and the power that controls it are not distributed fairly. The era of fair and equitable distribution lies ahead of us, not behind us.

Ho’oponopono

31 Friday Oct 2014

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Ho’oponopono is a Hawaiian phrase for “making things right.” While I was serving on the Justice and Witness Board , Lynette and Richard Paglinawan led Ho’oponopono training at one of our meetings. As native Hawaiians they grew up with this practice of family peace-making and reconciliation, and they teach it to social workers and business people as well as families and other interested people from their positions on the faculty of the University of Hawaii.  

From the perspective of living together on a chain of small islands in the middle of a great ocean, the need for Ho’oponopono is obvious. Wood and fiber came from the mountains. Fish and fruit came from the sea and the shorelands. People needed to get along well enough to trade with one another within a small world. They needed to be fair to one another so that they could continue to trade products and skills and survive. They needed to listen to each other and resolve conflicts quickly so that they might thrive. For many generations the people of Hawaii lived together on those islands and their practices of peace-making showed their determination to survive and thrive.  

Even though conflicts did still grow to the point of alienation and separation, how far away could anyone go to stay apart? It was best to work things out so that people could continue to live together respectfully, even when that involved compromises and commitments to “never speak about that problem again” once people had reached a mutually agreeable resolution.  

Their methods include practices I have studied in other forms of family and group therapy, and rituals akin to baptism and communion, to cleanse people’s spirits from those mean attitudes that ruin relationships and to celebrate their roots and achievements in unity. A senior member of the family or a respected member of the community becomes the Kahuna, who serves in the position of a mature and unemotional fact-finder and the center of communication, leading the group through stating problems, one person at a time, times for quiet and reflection, apologies and expressions of forgiveness, releasing anger and resentment, and setting future tasks to accomplish before everything becomes right again.  

Hearing how this process has developed and worked for many generations, and still serves in the modern world of Hawaii, one does not have to think hard to realize that the whole world we live in is becoming the island, with people living in interdependence that require mutual efforts to resolve our differences. Where can we go to separate ourselves from the need to work together and to reconcile differences? Another planet? In the vast ocean of the cosmos this earth is our island as far as the eye can see.

Making mincemeat of it

26 Sunday Oct 2014

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100_5990[1]    Mincemeat was an obsession that my mother developed as she prepared for the holidays. In this she was tutored by a neighbor and fellow church member Myrtle Overstreet. Mrs. Overstreet had the secret recipe for mincemeat that was passed down through several generations, and she kept it in the bank under lock and key. When she saw that her days were numbered, and having no qualified children, she considered all her coworkers at the church for the person to entrust with this precious recipe, and she awarded the responsibility to my mother. In order to qualify she had to be trustworthy, a perfectionist as close to herself as possible, an excellent cook, and attentive to the slightest details of the recipe.

Mincemeat does not please everyone, but no one can argue with the goodness of the ingredients. One begins with the best and rarest beef one can find (neck meat), Jonathan apples, raisins and muscat raisins, cinnamon and cloves, unsweetened pineapple juice and grape juice and apple cider and apple cider vinegar, white and brown sugar, and raw suet. Driving for miles just to find the best ingredients was mandatory. It consumed many hours of my parents’ time, since mother involved father in the project when it came to the regional search for ingredients. Everything had to be coordinated so that the ingredients were as fresh as possible, so that October was the month of search, in between the days of harvest on the farm.

The recipe made 10 gallons of mincemeat, and it stipulates that no more than two batches should be prepared in one day, and those should be mixed in the afternoon. The preparations began the day before in the morning when all sugar, raisins, currants, cider and 1 can of pineapple juice were put to soak, then refrigerated by nightfall. Next morning the suet and two half-gallons of grape juice were added when the whole mixture was set out to reach room temperature by noon. Also in the morning the 16 pounds of beef neck meat was cooked and then ground. Then it was mixed with a gallon of cider, 2 tall cans of unsweetened pineapple juice, 2 to 3 jars of Welch’s grape juice, and 2 ½ gallons of Krafts’ canned grape drink. The apples were peeled and chopped fine, and the spices, and the rest of the juice and vinegar were added and thoroughly mixed. (Since this involved nearly seventy five pounds of ingredients, did anyone require any extra exercise?) The whole mixture was put into as many jars or freezer containers as needed, by pints and quarts, and sealed, either by the usual canning process or by freezing in double-sacked containers. (A more detailed ingredient list is available.)

The mincemeat mixture is added to various recipes or pie shells and baked when people are ready to use it. The shelf life of this mixture is unknown. The last stock that my mother made was twenty years old when we ate the last of it, using one or two quarts a year, and we did not notice any lessening of the quality. You may note that a limited amount of fermentation occurs in the original process.

After Mrs. Overstreet’s death, and a discreet waiting period of a couple of years, mother printed the recipe and instructions for anyone who was interested, and distributed it freely. Whether Mrs. Overstreet turned over in her grave or not has not been determined. Anyway the secret is out, although I’m not certain that anyone can follow it. How many recipes for life experience have such a history?