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December 2006
Hello, Friends!
It seems odd to still be telling stories from
our summer vacation now that Christmas is almost here, but there
are a couple of experiences from back in July that I (Bruce) would
like to share with you.
While in Billings, Montana, we helped my parents
move out of the house where they had lived for 52 years. They
are not in crisis; they didn’t really have to move to a
retirement home yet. They said they had seen too many of their
friends wait too long, and that this is one more adventure that
they would like to share. So they announced to the whole family
that this would be their last summer in the house where we grew
up, and we all gathered from various corners of the country, kids
and grandkids and great-grandkids, and a time that could have
been full of mourning was transformed into a celebration. My folks
invited us all to pick things that we would like to have, so we
inherited not only the keepsake but its heritage, too.
“Just where did this fork come
from?”
“Why, that was made by Great Grandpa Albertus
in his blacksmith shop. It was a gift for his wife, Lydia.”
And the little kitchen fork, blackened, with one tine worn shorter
than the others, becomes a cherished link to the past, reaching
across the generations.
On the way home, we drove south through Wyoming
and then followed the Platte across Nebraska. Tracing the Oregon
Trail backwards, we stopped at every historical marker along the
way. We admired Chimney Rock and Scott’s Bluff, and took
several short hikes where the tracks from the wagon trains are
still visible, sometimes just as long swales across the prairie
grass, sometimes as deep ruts engraved on sandstone hillsides.
Emily and Kinsey, who used to play “Prairie Girls”
out in the sagebrush of Montana and even had bonnets that Lora
had made for them, were intrigued to visit the landmarks from
their social studies books and to feel the impact of that adventure
in a deeper way. I remember a line from a poem in the Childcraft
books that we had as kids: “The cowards never started and
the weak died on the road.” How brave those early pioneers
were, leaving behind the comforts of the east! Our trip, with
the benefit of air conditioning and interstate highways, finished
off with a visit to the old Whearty homestead in Westmoreland,
Kansas, and an afternoon in the small Presbyterian Church in Topeka
where my mother was baptized, grew up singing in the choir, and
married my father.
One of the other striking experiences about
this trip was that as we followed the state maps, and changed
from one to another as we traveled, we also paid attention to
the eco-regions. From our current home in the central U.S. hardwood
forest, through the central forest-grassland transition zone,
and on out into the various grasslands of the west, we read about
each eco-region we visited and learned at least a little bit about
each one. The girls would roll their eyes as I took out another
photocopied page and read about mollisols or sage grouse, but
we were fascinated as we started looking at the landscape with
new eyes. What about those trees over there? Are they a remnant
stand of native timber, or just an overgrown windbreak from some
forgotten homesteader? What about this pasture: How much of the
grass is native? We visited twelve of the 867 terrestrial eco-regions
of the world, and were amazed at how little intact habitat there
is of each one. All of them have less than 10 percent of the original
cover left. Even the huge northern short grasslands, almost the
size of Texas, is 95 percent overgrazed or farmed and is considered
an endangered habitat. In one sense, this was a journey from island
to island. Like early sailors, we kept an eye out for signs of
home, looking eagerly for the harbors shown on our maps.
I think that it is time for all of us to start
new journeys. Even though we are not yet in real crisis, at least
personally, we need to recognize the signs of the times and accept
this new adventure. We need to divest ourselves of the vast majority
of the possessions that possess us, and that includes our addictions
to comfort and entertainment. Share the stories and give the goods
away! We need to pioneer a new trail, a pathway toward sustainability,
toward creating new communities where we care for each other and
for the earth that nourishes us. I don’t think we have to
worry about dying on the road; we need to worry about whether
we are really living. Let’s not be cowards. Let’s
start.
I’m not sure that “Merry Christmas” is the right
greeting for this season. It reeks of too much tinsel and too
much stress and just plain too much. How about “Joyful Christmas?”
A little deeper, a little more challenging, a truer, braver way
to celebrate the creation that encompasses our lives. Somewhere
there’s a manger, and a refugee infant, and the promise
of a new way of life. If we’re going to follow the star,
we need to travel light.
Love and peace,
Bruce and Lora Whearty
The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer &
Study, p. 261 |
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