WRITEON FOR
SEPTEMBER 14, 2022
As the week passed Queen Elizabeth II, 96, went to God on the 8th, and King Charles III emerged as a compassionate leader. All the pomp and ceremony might be a bit much for us, but the peaceful transfer of power was evident. Though a somber event when any head of State passes, the British have a way of displaying their affection and fealty in one stroke. Having lived and worked in the UK for 20 years, I know the mixed feelings that float about a monarchy vs. a democracy. In most cases, however, feelings of love for the person of Queen Elizabeth II were deep and honorable. May the angels indeed lead her into paradise.
We were also remembering September 11 with anguish as folks, first responders in particular, still suffer the effects of the dust and poison that filled the sky with toxic gasses on that day. I remember it well from my hermitage in the UK (returning to the USA and MS just 6 weeks later). The horror we inflict upon one another never seems to stop as we look around today in so many parts of the world, indeed to our own country where shootings, knifings, and children are terrorized in their own schools continues.
Thus, we remember both the difficult and the beautiful, and September is a wonderful month. I’ve mentioned before a kind of transition time moving from the discomfort of muggy heat…to the breezes turning to that cotton jacket. Weather they say forms us…where we live and how we function has a lot to do with weather, and we can clearly see, and experience, all that as the climate changes worldwide. It gets tougher and tougher to deny the causes of climate change as we know in our own bones what summers were like this or that 20, 50, even 75 years ago! But that is what change is, either in weather or government.
Eve Merriam a U.S. poet reminds us of this: “Isn’t it strange that however I change I still keep on being me?” There are essences and superficial changes. Who I am in God and who I am as a unique individual person, part of a family of human beings…well…that’s me. But the fat I mentioned last week, or the snips of hair (color or lengths) well they are quite arbitrary and can change overnight. Another U.S. author William H. Armstrong says this: “Everything don’t change much…there’s eatin’ and sleepin’ and talkin’ and settin’ that goes on. One day might be different from another, but there ain’t much difference where they’re put together.”
Another way of thinking about change.
Change causes me to think about how we cannot change the past, and so many of us still live there, and how we can only slightly influence the future by how we live today. Anne Lindbergh, U.S. author, reminds us of this: “When people change, old pictures of them don’t change along with them!” Isn’t that the truth, Ugh…where did you get that pic, I always have to wonder…as I’ve deleted all the ones I don’t like! Hahahahaha…
Sometimes though we run up against things that need changing for the common good and listen to Maya Angelou in her ‘I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings’…“The need for change bulldozed a road down the center of my mind.” Some things just do need changing so that others might be welcomed, nourished, helped, and held. Rather than trying to change things to suit us and make our lives so comfortable, perhaps we need to pay attention (or at least I do) to the ways of the people. Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce out in the Northwest, where I was born, reminds us of this: “We were content to let things remain as the Great Spirit made them. They (white folks) were not and would change the rivers and mountains if they did not suit them.” I need to keep learning what to change and what to leave alone.
Sept 15 begins LATINX HERITAGE MONTH. Ole!
BLESSINGS.
