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Is There Beauty in Darkness?

12/7/2018

Ever find it hard to see anything beautiful during a dark time? I’ve struggled with that since the sudden, unexplained death of our six-year-old granddaughter this year - nothing but pain and sadness. So I’ve held onto a story I learned about Robert, a father scrambling to provide for his family early in the Twentieth Century. He’d attempted various jobs that produced nothing but poverty. At Christmas he tried earning money at a fair to buy presents, but failed. On his way home to his farmhouse late that night, he stopped his horse by the woods. With miles to go before he slept, he could freeze under a blanket of snow on this darkest night of the year.
     Seventeen years later. Robert Frost stepped outside his stone farmhouse into a radiant sunrise in the lightest time of the year. His mind traveled back to that bleak night. But now, Frost recalled the brush of easy wind and downy flake - beauty!
     He hurried inside to his dining room table, and in twenty minutes penned “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening.” It’s perhaps the most famous poem of the Twentieth Century, calling us to search for loveliness in our darkness.
     We all face bitter-cold journeys in life. I’m thinking that, as Frost discovered, I won’t find beauty in my circumstances, but instead in my setting. It’s in the hug of a friend. Or a meal dropped off to sustain us. Or the quiet look from someone who understands. That’s beauty in darkness.
  Frost’s poem is here.

What Color Do You Reflect?

11/30/2018

Can you imagine loving to clean house? Not me, but that describes a friend of mine. Another friend studies something broken and figures out how to fix it, while I stare at it dumbfounded. My friends and I are as different as colors refracting off a prism, and I’ve come to realize that these contrasts are clues to who we are meant to be.
     Exploring who I’m created to be has been one of life’s greatest adventures. I’ve learned to pay attention to how people compliment me. Or to ask close friends what I’m good at and not dismiss it. These are clues to my uniqueness, indicators of the particular colors God created me to cast.
     Sure, I still need to clean house and to tackle fixing things that are broken. But I don’t have to compare myself to my brilliant friends anymore. I can let my light shine with its particular hues.

Join My Campaign?

11/23/2018

When my hairdresser moved away, life as I knew it ended. She didn’t simply style my hair every six weeks, she reshaped my self esteem. She’d served as my confessor and cheerleader. And now that she was gone, I wondered whether I had ever really thanked her.
     For that matter, have I expressed gratitude to all the other service providers who keep me glued together? Like my mechanic: I don’t know the difference between an oil pan and a bedpan, yet he never disses me. Or the food server who cheerfully fills my request for “water, no ice, with lemon.” Or the Kohl’s cashier who makes sure I get every coupon redeemed.
     Appreciation is powerful. One time I told a house painter that he brought beauty to people’s lives. His head spun. “I never thought about it that way.” Another time, I told someone who was struggling in her job, “Don’t ever forget how important you are.” She broke down into tears.
     Two-thirds of the American labor force are not following their dreams, but simply struggling to survive, says Jeff Haanen, CEO and founder of the Denver Institute for Faith & Work. They’re often proud of what they do, yet humiliated “that society doesn’t esteem their work,” he says.
  So this Thanksgiving, I’m on a quiet campaign to give thanks to the pit crew that keeps my life running. I’m wondering what it will do for them when I tell them what a difference they make.

Why Was Anne Frank Denied Entry into America?

11/16/2018

Imagine that Anne Frank had been allowed to immigrate to America. She’d be eighty-nine now, perhaps penning a memoir of her escaping from Nazis, settling in Boston, and fulfilling her dream of becoming a writer.
     Her father tried desperately to relocate his family into the United States, but the gates into our country snapped shut.   Trapped in Amsterdam, the Frank family hid for two years in rooms concealed behind a bookcase. When discovered, they were shipped to concentration camps where Anne died of typhus at the age of fifteen.
     “I don't want to have lived in vain…,” Anne wrote in her diary while in hiding. “I want to go on living even after my death!” Her dream came true after the war when her notes were discovered and published as “The Diary of a Young Girl.” Anne’s wrestlings on paper about life and death have been translated into more than sixty languages and turned into a play and movie.    Why was her family denied entrance into America? The public feared that foreign Jews might be criminals and argued we must look after our own first.
  Anne’s story makes me shiver as we wrestle today with complex immigration solutions. I wonder how many in danger from gang violence or poverty are denied safety because of unfounded fears and an America-first policy. While we bask in prosperity, have we forgotten the value of every soul?

Dr. Seuss, a political cartoonist during World War II, captured the sentiment of the country then - and perhaps now.

Is He a Traitor?

11/9/2018

On the one hundredth anniversary of the end of World War I, I recall this veteran marching quietly in a parade. He received scant applause, while uniformed war re-enactors drew cheers and whistles. Why the difference? Because some Americans view veterans who demonstrate for peace as traitors.
But are they? These vets have tasted more in war than re-enactors ever will. They understand the words of Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander of the World War II Allied Forces. “I hate war as only a soldier who has lived it can, only as one who has seen its brutality, its stupidity.”
I’m grateful for those who have served, including my dad who skippered a submarine chaser in the Pacific in World War II. He’s no longer living, but I’ve studied letters he wrote to my mom during his military service. He didn’t glorify war. He was just doing what needed to be done. And he realized that whatever good that a warship accomplishes, it also leaves a wake of destruction.
That’s patriotism with humility.

My parents, Grace and LeRoy Huether,
who married during World War II
before he shipped off to the Pacific Fleet.

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