Author: rkcdlitt

Born Ohiyesa, Charles Alexander Eastman was born in a buffalo hide tipi in 1858. At the age of 15, instead of remaining with the Sioux in Minnesota, he attended four different colleges, eventual graduating from Boston College as a doctor. He was also a great native writer and prophet. The following is a meditation of his that really struck home to me.

“The man who preserves his selfhood, ever calm and unshaken by the storms of existence – not a leaf, as it were, astir on a tree; not a ripple upon the surface of shining pool – his, in the mind of the unlettered sage, is the ideal attitude and conduct of life. If you ask him: ‘What is silence?’ he will answer: ‘It is the Great Mystery! The holy silence is His voice!’ If you ask: ‘What are the fruits of silence?’ he will say: ‘They are self-control, true courage or endurance, patience, dignity, and reverence. Silence is the cornerstone of character.’” 

I cannot compare with this great man, but I also came from humble backgrounds in Newark, New Jersey. I had all the privileges of a white man but failed to recognize them until I entered graduate school at the age of 50 to become a high school history teacher.

Since then I have devoted my life to the improvement of my students, my friends, and those who I casually meet in my everyday life. When I became a teacher, I very quickly realized that to be a truly successful teacher, one had to listen to his students. It is very easy to stand at the head of a class and lecture on American history, getting lost in the fact that what the teacher knows is unimportant; it is what the student can glean from the teacher’s knowledge that is important.

Believe me, I was not perfect, but I will match my 20 years of teaching with anyone, because I listened to what my students were saying. In any classroom situation, there is downtime, when the students will talk amongst themselves. Even though I was sitting at my desk, by antennae were set on high and were all around the room. I was able to filter out the chatter and listen to what the students were saying about history, about me, and about other teachers.

I think it was this listening that encouraged me to begin a military history club that met early, 7:00 AM, where the students selected the curricula. Over the years, this club grew from five or six boys to 20-30 boys and girls. Over my 14-year high school teaching career, seven of my students were selected to attend one of the military academies or received full ROTC scholarships at other schools. One of the young women, I taught attended Annapolis, another received a full Navy ROTC scholarship and became a strong Marine leader.

I return to the idea of silence. If we use our brains to dominate a conversation or to prepare a response to another, we lose what knowledge is placed before us. This is knowledge that we can never reclaim.

Silence in our world is not just for spiritual meditation. It is for us to open our hearts and minds, listening to others, appreciating the vitality of all around us.

Thank you Ohiyesa for such a great reminder of how we can enrich ourselves and those around us.

Surrendering our Egos.

Oswald Chambers writes, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Gal. 2:20). These words mean the breaking of my own independence with my own hand and surrendering to the supremacy of the Lord. No one can do this for me, I must do it myself. We live in a moment of grace. Through the hedges of our divisions we can glimpse again the beauty of life’s oneness. We can hear the essential harmony that lies at the heart of our universe. We are beginning to understand, amidst the suffering of our divisions, that we will can move back into relationship with one another, as individuals, families, nations, and species. We rejoice that we are God’s children, comforted and sheltered in His loving embrace, close to His breast, His heart, His love. By surrendering our ego, we are strengthened that we will be on the correct path in our relations with others.

I have written much about how we relate to our family, friends, neighbors, and those we do not know, but hopefully care for. We are constantly walking through a forest filled with horrors that Grimm brothers could never dream of. The leaders of the world hold the future in the world at their fingertips.

I matured during the birth and initial spread of the atomic and then the nuclear bombs in the early 1905s. I jokingly remember practicing what to do in the case of a nuclear missile hitting Newark, New Jersey. We all filed into the hallway, away from the large classroom windows, squatted against the wall in the corridor, and placed our radiation protection, our 3-ring binders, over our heads, in the hope that if we were attacked, the radiation would not affect us negatively. Oh, how naïve we were back then.

But, you know what, our leaders, both democratic, with a small d, and communistic, with a small c, were smart enough to realize that a nuclear confrontation would destroy life on Earth, as we know it. Calmer heads resisted the temptations, no matter how angry they were at each other. I believe that God softened the hearts of our presidents and the Soviet leaders, bringing peace, if not harmony, between us. Although I was not as strong a Christian as I am now, I did pray that, somehow, we would resist nuclear destruction.

I still pray that cooler heads will prevail, with the nudging by God, to continue the tenuous peace we have in the world. We have our differences; we constantly fight over who is more correct; but so far, we have again resisted total destruction of the human race. I know there are leaders out there that use the Bible, or Koran, or whatever religious doctrine they practice that may justify eliminating mankind and the inherent sin that lives within us all.

I remain assured that God will soften the hearts of our angry leaders to preserve mankind on this, the third planet from the Sun. I do not believe that we are the only intelligent creatures in the entire universe; I do believe that in our tiny, minute, part of this vast universe, no matter how unreasonable and questionable we act, we are intelligent enough to resist destroying what we have.  

With the help of God’s grace, we will survive.

Giving of Ourselves

I really do not have a proper title for this meditation, but here I sit with many thoughts running through my head. I am a part of the stewardship commission at my church; a position of deep concern, deep joy, and extremely difficult work.

This always has me thinking and meditating about what I am, what I am doing, and what can I do for others. Some call this Christian sharing; I call this concern for my brothers and sisters in the one race we have, the human race. I have a former student in New Jersey who carved a special cane for me, simulating a totem from the Watchung Indians in New Jersey. It is a gift I cherish, reminding me of what I am capable of doing for others. (I taught him to read when he was a freshman in high school). I shared my gifts with him, and he shared his gifts with me. I know that I helped to change his life; but he also changed mt life, by giving me the gift of something that is very useful in reminding me that what I can do for others is the most important part of my life. This is why I kept teaching until this past April after turning 75.

My original-American friends remind me that in the tribal councils, when the leaders had to make a life-changing or life-giving decision, they would meditate on how the change would affect the present tribe. But they also were concerned how the change would affect future generations, going out to the seventh generation. If the change was harmful in any respect, they would reject it.

What an intuitive way to conduct change!!!!

Can we do it? Yes, but only if we are willing to sacrifice. And by sacrifice, I mean sacrifice those ideas and practices that we think are so vital to our existence.

Stewardship is not just pledging to give money. Money is, unfortunately, important to keep a church vital. But money is always replaceable. What is not replaceable is giving of ourselves. When we give our time, sharing our talents with others, we are giving gifts that can never be replaced.

At St. George’s church, my wife is an integral part in the founding and leadership of The Table at St. George’s. This is a free, produce-filled market for the less fortunate in our community. Linda and the people who began this keep it functioning are giving valuable gifts to our neighbors; gifts that can never die, because of the love and caring that is behind the whole idea. It takes money to operate this table, but more importantly, it takes the time and love donated by the volunteers to keep it going. This is a change that will affect the shoppers for a lifetime, giving them the opportunity to live, to grow their families for several generations to come, maybe even to the seventh generation.

What this all boils down to is that I believe that stewardship is something far greater that just putting a few dollars into the plate on a Sunday morning. I believe that after carefully considering how much money we can afford to give, we must then meditate on how much of ourselves we can give, how much we can share our talents with others that will affect a positive change for the next seven generations.

God bless you all and keep you safe and joyful.

We Depend on Each Other

I confess that I am not very good at asking others for help. I know this is a crucial survival skill, so I am slowly realizing that I am becoming more dependent upon my family and friends. I am a proud man; although I have been supported throughout my life when life has knocked me down, I am still, at least inside me, the young Marine of the 1960s. I understand the basic truisms of life, even though I sometimes reject them.

We are in this life together and depend on each other for things we cannot imagine. Do we drive to work? Who built our cars, or paved the roads? Who grew the chicken for the eggs we eat in the morning? We cannot survive alone.

We must express appreciation for all that occurs in our lives. I thank a person for holding a door open for me. I praise the young, or old, server who brings me my ordered meal, and I reward them generously. I joke with the caring men and women in the hospital, when I am forced to spend a few hours with them. These people, who serve me in my needs, come in all shapes, sizes, genders, and national origins. I look beyond these “differences” to see the person beneath the masks they wear, how much we are alike.

This next has been difficult for me at times, and that is to hold my inner tension to myself, cultivating a giving, or in some instances, a life-giving way that enhances my experience and the people sharing my experience. When I find myself praying with others, for their needs, I know that when this happens, my prayer partner is enhanced by the support shown. I know this because I have been on the receiving end often.

We must also use our voice to affect changes where we see the need. However, we cannot be so obnoxious with our own voice to crush others’ opinions. I have been privileged to sit on many councils that set priorities for those the council leads. This can be from school teacher boards to chambers of commerce to executive church councils. I am presently a member of the vestry in the church that Linda and I attend. These ruling bodies can be very difficult; with my work and educational experience, my abilities range from being an accountant, to operating my own retail business, to being a teacher in both high school and college. In all these situations, I have been blessed by being on some leadership committees. My voice, my opinion, is vital to these boards, but so are those of others. It is a delicate balance when trying to affect change.

All these elements lead to the most important, building and living in a community. Community is one of the basic needs of life. God created us to live together, to work together, to laugh together, to cry together. I have a very good friend from my high school days who has recently become a friend on Facebook. I post a thought-provoking saying daily, and one day this long-ago friend commented on the saying. I replied saying that we cannot forget that all people living on earth are God’s children, Americans, Italians, Mexicans, and Muslims. God loves all his children and we must do the same. I was hesitant in sending this reply, because I did not want to see offensive to this old friend that I have not seen in years. His response was positive, much to my relief. One thing that I have learned in my 75+ years is that all the people I have known, been to school with, taught, shared a meal with, are all my brothers and sisters under God’s love and living in God’s embrace. I love them all; they are family.

I meditate daily; both formally and informally. My meditations allow me to see that God is present in all of us, regardless of who we are, where we come from, what we look like, what church we attend. No one can be left out of God’s grace; we are dependent collectively for each other’s’ well-being. I must care for all of us, as God does.

Joy

The concept of joy means different things to people. I find joy in many things. We recently were gifted two more cats to share our house (with the one we were gifted last year). Our children are very generous when they gift lives of animals into our care. As much as I would love a pet-free house, I get great joy when one of the cats jumps into my lap. These moments are gifts that only pet lovers can appreciate. I love my pesky cats, and, love is the basis of all great joy. As Mother Teresa says, we must love to the point of folly.

We are thankful that our children and God have entrusted the lives of these family members into our care.

I am a sentimentalist when I think about other ways we are blessed with joy. Thanks to Linda, our back yard is filled with a great variety of birds; we also have squirrels, rabbits, and groundhogs, all sharing the birdfeed she places in the feeders.

When we travel around Virginia, we are overjoyed at the unbelievable scenery that Virginia offers; this scenery is also a gift from God that we can enjoy but only when we take the time to stop and let the beauty of God’s creation flow through our very beings. Unfortunately, mankind is systematically destroying this beauty when man overlooks the long-range necessities of a clean earth to bring forth short term luxuries, luxuries that we call necessities. We give up chances for our own spiritual growth, such as enjoying the beauty of God’s creations, we retard our progress as children of God.

I love being joyful, but I also love being a part of the beauty of God’s creation.

I guess that joy and love go hand in hand; t be joyful, we must love. To paraphrase a poem by Philip Britts, love (and joy) is clear, simple, quick to ease our pain, and slow to leave our sides. Love is gratitude; love is faithful; love is patience and kindness; and, love brings us peace. What I mean by peace is inner peace. I look at the state of our society, and I am fearful; but, because I have peace within me, because I have love and joy within me, my fear is lessened. I know that I am walking on the path that God has laid before me.

This gives me the greatest peace and the greatest joy. It is not how much we love or how much joy we have; what matters is the fact that we practice these. Love and joy sustains our life, every day. We are created by God for God; we experience our greatest joy when we live these truths.

Anger

I have been thinking a great deal about anger lately. Some of it even has to do with the condition our country is in and will be after the Trump presidency. But this is not the issue I want to discuss today.

Anger changes everything. I know; I am angry. I am angry about the fact that I am no longer young; I am angry about not being able to do the things I used to do. I am also angry about the fact that I have been diagnosed with COPD and have trouble breathing; and I am angry about the fact that the doctors are sending me back and forth between my Pulmonologist and Cardiologist and can only prescribe expensive medication that does not seem to alleviate the issue.

But this anger is not doing me or anyone else any good.

So, I return to my standing theme. I return to the message of love that the Bible offers. If we think about this message and try to understand its implications, I am sure that we can reduce our love of material things to a status more important in our lives than we make it. I return to what Jesus says in Matthew. Our first and greatest commandment is to love God. That means we must not only say we love God, but we must show this love by following the second commandment which is to love others as we love ourselves.

But . . .  maybe the problem is that we no longer love ourselves. Maybe, by loving material things so much we have lost our ability to love ourselves. Maybe, just maybe, that deep within us we realize that by placing money and other things above all else, including God, we are embarrassed by this, even if we fail to state this openly.

Maybe in my anger over my age and the limitations created by it, I have placed myself in with the masses who trust something other than God to be my mentor. My father was a devout Christian Scientist. He had accepted the poser of God’s Love to heal him when he was sick or injured; he led a life basically free from physical ailments until he passed just shy of his 85^th birthday. I long to have this kind of love. I long to have this type faith. I meditate daily; I pray daily; I know that God walks with me no matter what I feel or what I do.

I know that I must return to the total acceptance of God’s Love and divine presence in my life and the life of all of my brothers and sisters, know and unknown, near and far. Maybe, just maybe, if I can claim the faith of my father, the one who parented me and the eternal Father, the one who nurtures me daily, maybe, just maybe, I can overcome these physical failings and return to sharing God’s Love with all. I go through the motions now, praying that my faith will carry me into truly sharing the gifts God has given me.

I pray that all who read this and all my friends who do not read this will share the true Love that only God can give.

We have so many problems in our society today, it is a wonder why we choose to fight between ourselves over what color we are, or what or national origin is. I am from British stock on my father’s side and Italian/Sicilian stock on my mother’s side. Having been a history and culture professor before concentrating on teaching writing, I am fully aware that there is a great racial mixture in my background. On my father’s side, I am English, which means that there is some German and French blood running through my veins, and Scottish, which means that I may also have some Viking blood in me, which could be Norwegian, Swedish, or even Russian. On my mother’s side, there is French and Italian, which could also mean some Austrian, or Hungarian blood, but it also could be some norther African blood, which means I could have a mixture of Greek and Black African blood running through me.

I know that I can send for a DNA kit to show where my extended long-dead relatives originated, but I don’t care. I am part of humanity, you know, the one that God made in his image and likeness. I cannot imagine what God looks like; this is far beyond my capabilities as a mere mortal human. What I am certain of is that there is no color for God; He, or She, is beyond and far superior to an image of Him, Her, as a mere mortal. To me, the face of God is Jesus. According to my faith, and the faith of millions of others, Jesus is the Son of God, or at least the most important prophet placed on earth by God.

As I look back on the makeup of Jesus, as the Son of Mary, the granddaughter of David, many generations back.  If that is so, we know from the Bible that David co-habitated with Bathsheba the nubile Queen of Central Africa, which, in all likelihood, means that there is Black African blood in Jesus. The face of Jesus, as I portray Him, is not that of Max Von Sydow, or Jeffrey Hunter, who portrayed him in the movies. If I were to take a realistic stab at it, Jesus was probably a short man, of middle eastern, or east Asia complexion. I know that this next statement will offend many, but I must make it anyway. If I am going to truly think of what Jesus looked like 2000 years ago, he could probably look much like Yassir Arafat did when he lived. Short, but with a dynamic personality that attracted many poor workers to follow him.

I think that God had a plan for this; we cannot know what Jesus truly looked like, which is why, when you enter a Christian church that is not predominantly white, Jesus is portrayed as a man with dark skin.

So, when theologians, and people concerned with racial reconciliation, I truly believe that what they really mean is that as a community, we must re-form our thinking. This is a formation, or a re-formation of God’s society. Any reconciliation must come from within each person. We must reconcile within our own selves how we want to  live and who we want to share this wonder world with.

I apologize if I have offended anyone; my prayer is that I have planted a seed within those who read this. That seed should be to reconcile with yourself and God so that we can reform our society, the entire society of the world into a more open and accepting entity.

God bless you all. I Love you all.

Hate and Judgement

An interesting combination is hate and judgement. Can we avoid the only judgement that matters?

On this July 4^th, the 242^nd anniversary of the birth of our nation, I cannot truly call us the home of the free; there are entirely too many people of color and financial deficiency who are not truly free. Too many people are judging these people on their looks or economic status, using hate to put them down. I do not like or approve of this.

I sometimes become pessimistic about what our society is evolving into; but then I remember that the youth of today will become tomorrow’s leaders, and optimism replaces that feeling of pessimism.

True, at times we appear to be a spiritually impoverished nation, anger and bitterness control the headlines.  But the optimism of the youth of today encourages me to think that the evil that seems to pervade our society will be replaced by something more akin to what God wants of us. What we have created is failing; hopefully, what the youth will create will be more loving and caring, with less hate.

My generation has enlarged the dangerous weaponry that our fathers’ generation began; we perfected a way to kill us all, but something inside of us has prevented us from executing the inevitable. Sorry, Arnold, the world of the robots will not control our lives, causing eternal havoc and war.

Jesus’ last words to his followers was to put your sword back; his followers were not allowed to use violence to protect him. I pray that our future leaders will shun violence and look to love and peace. I see the youth demonstrating against the openness of our gun-enriched society. Prayerfully, I hope that when they take the reins of society, more level heads will prevail.

Love will win in the end; this I am sure of.

Kindness

I wonder why it is that we are not all kinder than we are. We seem to be destined to not view other people as equals. Most religions accept what is said in Genesis, that God created man in His image; that’s all men; not just those who are like us. It appears that a permanent state of class warfare of the rich persecuting and punishing the poor has been with us throughout history, throughout the entire world as we know it; but it is only called class warfare when the poor try to rise against the rich. Being a former history teacher, I accept that history is written by the victors; but, over the last fifty-plus years, more literature has appeared that was written by the repressed classes.

This is rich literature, written by the people of these different cultures. I am thinking of authors such as Louise Erdrich, writing of the Native American culture, and Zora Neale Hurston, writing of the African American culture. When reading this literature, I am not only placed in the stories as an interested observer, I am also engulfed by the beauty and depth of cultures that these stories represent. To truly comprehend this, I decided that I must share this inner light I received with my literature students when I taught in college. Comprehension begs actions, which in turn brings contemplation and understanding.

I have never had the opportunity to live amongst these different cultures in America, but by reading of them I have learned to appreciate the awesome wonder of all life. Our spirituality forms our inner lives and is then lived outwardly in the world, which is to live a life of love and justice for others. True contemplation must become action; so, I take it into my own spiritual being, being grateful that I can share it, taste it, and sense it. This is one way we can learn to Love and appreciate all people. When we Love all people, we appreciate and respect all people. Isn’t this what God wants?

When we Love, we leave our self-centered hearts behind. We share our personal gifts; working together, our sense of community grows, and our selfishness dies, a difficult death, but a worthwhile one. I believe that when we stop living for just ourselves, a culture of brotherhood and sisterhood replaces jealousy and contempt. We are made as individuals, and in that light, we are different; but this differentness does not mean we are not alike in many ways, owning the same dreams, sharing the same pains. By creating these loving communities, we all gain; we all create the heaven within us that Jesus so often spoke.

Be Non-violent

Violence comes in many forms: it is ugly and awful. It is a sadness that permeates our society. We choose to be violent; we also choose to be non-violent. When we choose non-violence, we do so because of our love for all people, regardless of who or what they are. There is no space in our hearts for violence when we love.

Violence rears its head in many forms. It is not only an act of physical aggression; it is also an act of psychological attack, such as what is going on at our borders today. Violence against a family can be as horrific as separating mothers and children. This is not what God wants of us. Jesus preached that we must love our neighbors as we love ourselves. The word must is much more emphatic than the words should or may be. Must is a commandment.

I have to agree that if we love God, if we love our families, we cannot close our love, or keep our love from people we do not know. If we open our hearts to the stranger, God will do the rest. Is this so hard to do? My wife often chastising me because I use terms of endearment to people I have just met, or a server who brings me my breakfast at our local diner. I respond by saying that God knows I mean nothing demeaning by calling her love, or him brother.  

I admit that I am not always diligent in my relations with others; I also believe that we all share in this shortcoming. If I do not live as we are supposed to live, I cannot say that I am a true loving person. If my thoughts begin to revolve around my own pleasures and happiness, I may be excluding others. It is times like these that I do not have “a heart at leisure from itself.” It is times like these that I am ignoring God’s message to me and to all.

I try to be attentive to what God is asking me to be today; even though I am relatively weak to change national events, I can work to change our local position to be in alignment with what God wants from us.

Is it so difficult to love one another? Is it so difficult to respect the humanity of others? If our answers are yes, then we are not the God-loving people we profess to be. As I look back on my life, I recall that for the first thirty-five years, I neglected any participation in anything that reeked of racism; but I also did nothing to combat the racism I grew up with.  My sister was an activist, marching in Washington to protest our country’s violation of human rights; she participated in the demonstrations in D. C. which included the march when MLK gave his I Have a Dream speech. I was proud of her, but I did not join in, maybe due to the fact that I was too involved in my serving and history with the Marines in the early to mid 60s.

Since then, I have been more active, but behind the scenes, non-violently. Presently, I work for social justice, banishment of the death penalty, and economic stability and equality for the less-fortunate members of our community. I also write long, factual letters to our congressmen. Being a former history teacher, I am able to include many historic trends.

I pray the what I now do is pleasing to God. All members of my family, all six billion of them, deserve God’s grace.