Do You Feel Forgotten?
Yesterday I had the opportunity to play Santa Claus. It was not only extremely enjoyable and enriching but educational. Our, elected, church government, called the Session, in the First Presbyterian Church, has the tradition of collecting donations for our staff and then giving them a Christmas gift at the conclusion of the year. One of our staff told me that she had not received a gift, recently, and that this year’s gift meant so much to her! She asked me if she could give me a hug…and I replied that she certainly could. Her joy at being included and not forgotten…was palpable and it made my day!
How many of us feel forgotten? Whether it is in the workplace where our opinion is never sought, or in our community, where we feel invisible…or in the church….Where we seem to be unseen?
Our country applauds financial success and the perks that it brings. We see the fine home or the stellar resume…or the smooth and dulcet tones that the leaders of the community or the church…communicate with. We know our friends….Our social circle and our colleagues. But, do we see those who do not fit the paradigm?
I have the distinct life-story of experiencing both the abased and abound components of a 62 year old life experience. I lived poverty! I understood, clearly, what it was for the CIPS gas worker to knock on my front door and tell me that he had been instructed to shut my gas off, for the heating in my home, if I could not pay him…immediately!
I know what it is like to be hungry. I do not mean enjoying a McDonalds cheeseburger at lunch and awaiting a steak at dinner. I am talking about nothing to eat other than potatoes and Cremora, at work, which I consumed by the spoon full!
I understand what it was like to walk…while all of my friends were driving their new automobiles. I know how it felt to live on one sandwich a day…from a vendor at the church that I was helping to build. I know what it was like to be the goat at the garden party!
God blessed me and helped me…and I became a success at SIUC. I began as a Building Service Worker I and was promoted to the Superintendent of Building Services. I was able to obtain an upper middle class lifestyle and the blessings that are associated with the moniker.
I did not forget where I came from… nor where I am going. I am headed to Jerusalem…along with the broken and the beaten and the besmirched!
I recall walking in Elkville, Illinois while, it seemed, everyone passed me by. I, vividly, remember my teenage friends telling me about enjoying steak and ribs and pork chops…while I had potatoes to eat! I know what it is like to believe the no one sees me!
Also, I know what it is like to be called Mr. Brooks. I understand how it feels for my opinion to not only matter but be the construct for my department’s operational policy!
I have had university chancellors and presidents as my personal friends. The encouragement and mentoring of the university community was an immeasurable gift!
When I see the poor…I remember my mother not having enough money to purchase milk…and saving my pennies until I had a dime to walk to the local restaurant and buy a glass.
When I see the hungry…I remember not having the 20 cents a day for the grade schools hot lunch…and being the only student in the first grade to bring my lunch in a brown bag.
I have been honored and humbled to have the title of elder or trustee in almost every church that I have been a member of. I think titles have an insidious affect of separating work and faith communities. When someone asks me what I did at the university…I respond that I worked in housekeeping.
‘I know both how to be abased, and I know how to abound: every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. Philippians 4:12 KJV
And Keep Spinning Joyfully
A great Christmas Blog from Jonathon Brooks!
This season I’ve begun to send out Christmas cards and buy presents and spin holiday vinyl records. I gave thanks on Thanksgiving like I do every other day of the year. It was tremendous fun to catch up with family recently. And four day weekends are always a great time. This afternoon I have relaxed at home after breakfast out with a friend and then church following breakfast. I am in love with life and the true spirit of the Christmas season.
Christmas cards and presents are best when given out of a joyful spirit. I give them out because I want to do so. I’ve been giving out pop-up Christmas cards since Christmas 2008. These pop-ups are by Robert Sabuda who also creates pop-up books. One of my favorite elements of this season is passing out the pop-ups. Honestly, I give out more cards than presents around Christmastime. Friends…
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And Keep Spinning Joyfully
A great Christmas Blog from Jonathon Brooks!
This season I’ve begun to send out Christmas cards and buy presents and spin holiday vinyl records. I gave thanks on Thanksgiving like I do every other day of the year. It was tremendous fun to catch up with family recently. And four day weekends are always a great time. This afternoon I have relaxed at home after breakfast out with a friend and then church following breakfast. I am in love with life and the true spirit of the Christmas season.
Christmas cards and presents are best when given out of a joyful spirit. I give them out because I want to do so. I’ve been giving out pop-up Christmas cards since Christmas 2008. These pop-ups are by Robert Sabuda who also creates pop-up books. One of my favorite elements of this season is passing out the pop-ups. Honestly, I give out more cards than presents around Christmastime. Friends…
View original post 195 more words
The Christmas Pipe
After a lovely Thanksgiving diner with our family from Salem, Illinois, we set out for our annual journey to St. Charles, Missouri to experience Christmas…from many years ago.
Rain was in the forecast for the later afternoon, therefore we left early to get ahead of mother nature. When we arrived we found the usual, Black Friday, Christmas revelers. I soon noticed characters representing the USO from World War II.
Aaron was in search of a flat-cap and we searched, on both sides of the cobblestone street, to find the Irish Store that I had purchased my Irish hat at many years ago. Sadly, we did not find it and fear that it may have closed.
Suddenly, there was the Tobacco Store…and I entered before MJ could dissuade me. When what did I see…but gift boxes, already made up, of a corn cob pipe and all of the accoutrements to facilitate a Christmas Pipe!
Our favorite restaurant, Braddentons, was full to the brim! When we entered and made our way, slowly, out of the entrance of the establishment…my friend and excellent Grand Mariner pourer, asked how many…to which an angry woman retorted…’We Are Next!’ My friend replied, ‘ ok..ok..ok!’
We had been told to expect and 30-40 minute wait…we were seated in 10. I tried the pork tenderloin and asked the waitress to have it prepared the way that she liked hers prepared! It was delicious! The Grand Mariner was excellent…and a Manhattan was even better!
There were chestnuts roasting on an open fire.
Finally the rain began to fall…and I was sitting outside a Christmas Store…in the rain. Mrs. Claus walked up to me and asked if my family was in a restaurant or shopping. I replied that they were shopping and she looked concerned that that the old man in front of her was getting wet. I would have been concerned, as well, but I had on my REI raincoat that MJ had suggested that I purchase prior to our Maine vacation this past spring.
Back to Thanksgiving Day…it was such a pleasure to have Ron and Ira Kaye along with Tara and Mike and Paige and Tyler! They had the distinct opportunity to observe my valiant and messy efforts to carve the turkey and ham…and spill some glaze from the ham and subsequently mop it up!
I so enjoyed watching the wonderful adults that Tyler and Paige have become! I remember them when they were babies…but then again I recall their mother when she was very young.
St. Charles Is Coming!
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and MJ has been preparing for days! Jonathon and Aaron and I have been her little helpers, I would say elves…but that is more appropriate for the day after tomorrow.
Black Friday will mark our annual trek to St. Charles, Missouri to revel in the, Dickens, Christmas celebration. Last year MJ was in such pain from her mis-aligned spine that we had already chosen to forgo our St. Charles visit, and had chosen a comedy show called ‘Martin and Martin’ with, Steve Martin and Martin Short,…and we were unable to attend that as well due to the debilitating pain that she was suffering. Fortunately Aaron and Jonathon along with Jonathon’s good friend, Dawn and a friend of hers, were able to attend, and according to reports they throughly enjoyed the performance!
When I am in St. Charles…I suspend disbelief and subsequently I am swept away in time to the land of the famous Charles Dickens story, ‘A Christmas Carol,’ where, before my eyes there are, Tiny Tim and, his father, Bob Cratchit, along with Mr. Scrooge and the ghosts of Christmas, past, present, and future.
There is such a variety of Santa Claus and his ancestors that the mystique is mesmerizing! Little children collect a card from each of the Christmas characters…and so do I!
Through the years I have had the tradition of purchasing, one, handmade Latvian miniature building, with a candle inside of it. This is from a Polish shop where an elderly lady, probably my age, and her granddaughters work. I fear that there will be no more houses or schools or barns or churches to buy this year, as she told us the year before last that the manufacturers were going our of their family business.
As you will recall, I love the, generous pour, of the Grand Mariner at the restaurant that we have our Reuben Sandwich at each year. Aaron and Jonathon love the Trailhead Brewery, and have invited MJ and me to join them…but we are afraid that we might not be able to keep up.
I enjoyed a quality cigar, one year, from the cigar store…I may again?
St. Charles has Chestnuts roasting on an open fire!
I have observed for over 20 years that the feeling of holiday and family and friends that I receive from our visits to St. Charles, exceed, by a lot, the feeling of being rushed and crushed by our former Black Friday visits to the Malls of St. Louis!
It dawned on me, many years ago, that the, allusive, search for happiness is found, at your own front door!’
The same could be said for working your fingers to the bone…once you retire from your employment and the well wishers are gone and the retirement cake is eaten…your name will soon be forgotten!
I heard a wonderful illustration that described the void that will be left by your retirement. Fill a paid full of water…and place your hand in it and then withdraw your hand….Observe the hole that remains in the water?
Work is insidious and a fickle companion! You may feel that it demands the lion’s share of your time and efforts and strength. You may know that so many people are counting on you and your efforts and that they cannot make it without you. But, at the end of the day, as my colleague John Hill told me many years ago, it is just a job! The real purpose of life is to enjoy your family and loved ones and friends!
‘We don’t read and write poetry because it’s cute. We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.’ Dead Poets Society
Thanksgivings….Past
The day after tomorrow is MJ’s favorite holiday of the year! From our first Thanksgiving together, in 1978, until this weeks model, I have understood the importance of the celebration!
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Over the past 30 + years we have been hosting the event in our home. For many of those years we celebrated in our four room house in Elkville. There were years that we had upwards of 25 people…we were close…both in fellowship and physical space!
I vividly recall getting a new camcorder in the late 80’s and recording video of the events for posterity. Now, I need to have the tapes transferred to DVD in order to watch them.
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I remember our niece, Tara, riding with Aaron, Jonathon, and me to the theatre, after dinner, to see, Father Of The Bride, and Tara talking about how excited that she was to be, soon, turning 16. She was so happy and jubilant that it made my holiday complete!
On another Thanksgiving, Berl, MJ’s father came to enjoy dinner with us in our new house in Carbondale. As he was walking to his car to go home…he fell and gashed his head. The blood flowed! We were all frightened! We rushed him to the hospital and they quickly put him into a hospital bed. A few minutes later Jonathon and Aaron and I went in to see him. There he sat, upright in bed, with a big grin on his face and talking a mile a minute! When the, young, nurse entered to check up on him…he told her that she was beautiful and that it was a shame that he had a ring on his finger! He then reared up to peer at her hands and noted that it appeared that she had a ring on her finger, as well! Soon, Fernie, Berl’s wife entered the room and Berl became much more sedate and circumspect!
As the nurse exited the hospital room she commented, ‘he is a ;pistol!’
We have had turkey for most of the 30 + years of our annual feast. Our first year in Carbondale, 18 years ago, we had a massive bone to discard when the picking was concluded. I had the bright idea to place the bone with a little meat hanging on it…by our pond…and let the numerous animals, that cross our yard, have a turkey feast! I thought that the bone would be taken away by a grateful four legged diner? After some time, I had to retrieve the, gross and neglected, remains…and dispose of them.
When we moved to Carbondale and the’ big house’…we vowed to purchase a live Christmas Tree. Thus, the day after Thanksgiving…we visited the local nursery. We purchased a lovely fir tree and the special stand to sit it in. We also bought holiday regalia to make the upcoming Christmas special and had the tree delivered the next day. The first thing that we found out was that we had obtained our live tree about two weeks earlier than appropriate….Because it is…live! And so, we bought a wash tub to place the tree in and watered and waited…until 10 days before Christmas.
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After Christmas was the coup de gras when we took the, live, tree into our front yard and planted it…into the very hard soil! MJ watched from the window as I placed the new member into the natural wonder of our yard…and she said…it is a little cooked…don’t you think? I responded that it was not the planting that was crooked, but the tree.
‘A. Tree Grew In Carbondale,’ and it was more crooked each year!
Mrs. Moore attended almost all of our Thanksgivings. Her face radiated her enjoyment and pleasure! When I think of Thanksgiving…I think of Mrs. Moore!
One Thanksgiving Eve, it came a serious ice and snow storm. It was early in the last decade, not long after we had moved from our four room house to our 10 room house. As I slipped and slid home, not able to distinguish where the road ended and the massive ditches began, I thought of the many times that I had braved the elements in pursuit of holiday cheer! My foreman called me not long after I had arrived home to ensure that I was safe. They had heard that a Toyota, Camry, which I drove at that time, had been involved in an accident and the passenger rushed to the hospital. I was grateful to be home and I was moved that they were concerned about me!
This Thursday the food will be delicious and the feast sumptuous…but it is the people that sit next to us….That make the difference!
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We All Need Love
I was involved in a performance review, recently, where the person being evaluated commented, that it was so nice to hear that she was appreciated. Indeed, I have never experienced a person that I, sincerely, complimented, become angry or not joyfully receive recognition of their efforts.
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So often we feel that we are living in a vacuum. We are working diligently and foregoing vacation time and working when we are ill…or donating time to the job…and no one seems to notice or care.
Often we sit on the sidelines while others are applauded, perhaps rightfully so, and our worry and labor and striving…appears to not create a ripple in the placid sea?
A plant will die from lack of attention. If we cease to water it and neglect it…and trust that it will be all right, we may find that it has withered and passed away. The same can be said of we humans. When no one seems to care about us or what we are doing…or what we are thinking…our world may take on a distorted view.
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I wonder if the many individuals who have resorted to gun violence, in our nation, could have been dissuaded and set upon another path…if they were not been bullied or marginalized or had they not become members of a hidden society!
I watched the movie, ‘Us,’ over the weekend. The flick illustrates a society of humans who live in unground tunnels and unused facilities. Those living underground and not having the benefit of the sun to shine on them and the opportunities of their identical counterparts in the above ground world are stilted and stymied and stunted in their growth as human beings.
I have often told Southern Illinois University @ Carbondale chancellors and presidents that they should seek input from their civil service staff as the remedies for the on-going problem of recruitment and retention of students. When a church or work-place or society pigeonholes individuals…that organization is in the midst of it’s decline.
And, so, Thanksgiving is this Thursday. We will eat hearty and rejoice in the blessings of capitalism and opportunity and being in the right place at the right time…and having the right friends and a quality education from the right schools…
Others, a lot of others, will huddle in their makeshift tent or scrounge some discarded food from a dumpster or warm their ill-clad bodies over a heating register that is outside a Macy’s Department Store window…as they look, longingly, at the Christmas Display….
5 Days Until ‘T’ Day!
I was out and about today and it dawned on me that the holiday season is upon us! I have been saying, for weeks, that Thanksgiving and Christmas are getting close…now the revelerie is here! I purchased a book, The Golden Compass, earlier this week and the Barnes and Noble Bookseller’s attendant, asked me if I was purchasing a Christmas gift. I replied, joyfully, that I was…for myself.
Winter is less than a month away. The first day of the season of snow and ice is, December 21.
The Brooks Christmas Tree goes up tomorrow. We will plug in the lights and seldom turn them off, accept when we leave the house, as we enjoy their festive and warm glow.
MJ and I enjoyed a lovely dinner with several members of our church, last evening. I marvel at how much more I appreciate my fellow congregants, when I break bread with them!
A group of us were discussing what draws people to church. Our pastor, wisely observed, that since Watergate, there has been a significant distrust in institutions. I pondered what he had said, and agreed. I know what brought MJ and our family to First Presbyterian Church in Carbondale, and that was because her co-workers invited us to a Sunday morning service. When we arrived we discovered a friendly and welcoming group of people. Many people greeted us and the minister, at that time, seemed very happy to see us. Aaron was 17 and Jonathon was 14. MJ and I were younger as well. Later that Sunday afternoon, two, sweet, people, Evelyn and Harold Engilking, drove to our little village of Elkville, Illinois…to bring us homemade cookies and tell us how happy that they were that we had visited their church. I was both touched and impressed!
We attended First Presbyterian for nearly a year prior to joining it. We are noted for thinking about decisions for a long time. Yet, we joined because we loved the worship service and the preaching…and the, non-judgmental, family atmosphere that we felt each Sunday.
We were amazed at the missionary outreach that the little Presbyterian Church was engaged in. Everyone seemed to be doing something to demonstrate their faith by action!
President Kennedy was assassinated 56 years ago today. I was in the first grade at Hillcrest School in Eldorado, Illinois. We had recently moved from Chicago. In those days each of the classrooms had a large intercom speaker hung on he wall. Suddenly, our principal announced, over the intercom that our President had bad been shot in Dallas, Texas…and that school would be dismissed. I walked home to find my mother watching the news coverage of the assassination on television and she was weeping! When I asked her why she was sad…she said the President Kennedy was dead! I thought that he must have been part of our family?
President Kennedy said:
‘Our most basic common link is that we all inhabit this planet. We all breathe the same air. We all cherish our children’s future. And we are all mortal.
‘There Is A Crack In Everything…That Is How The Light Gets In’
‘Ring the bells (ring the bells) that still can ring’
‘Forget your perfect offering’
‘There is a crack in everything (there is a crack in everything)’
‘That’s how the light gets in…’
Leonard Cohen – The Anthem
I watched a tribute to Leonard Cohen, the other night, where several Cohen songs were sung by the Wainwrights and others. I was particularly moved by the lyrics above.
Indeed, in our world, we are obsessed with what our neighbor or colleague or friend or family has done wrong. In our righteous indignation we are supremely self-satisfied that if others would simply see life and politics and religion as we do…all would be well.
My family and I visited Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in the 1990s and we saw the Liberty Bell. It has a, famous, crack!
I reflect on the indisputable fact that all of us are members of the same human family. Why are we so judgmental of our brothers and our sisters and our mothers and our fathers?
Thanksgiving is a week from today, in the United States. Many of us will enjoy a wonderful feast! The feast, probably, will contain the traditional turkey and dressing…and cranberry sauce. There will be the televised Macy’s Day Parade, with Santa Claus concluding the event. Many will relish football games and, turkey, naps. While others will plan their black-Friday shopping extravaganzas! I wonder if we could first love and accept the family that will sit down with us around the holiday table….And then love and respect those who are different from us or who have an alternate lifestyle from ours?
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Will we do more than think, briefly, about the homeless? Will we pass the Salvation Army Kettles…and throw in some loose change and have our conscience mollified…and know that we have done God’s work?
Our church has a, new, mission to provide quarters and soap for anyone in need at our local laundromat. Jane, told our board that there had been an overwhelming response to our outreach. She went on to describe a, homeless, young man who had one change of clothes and subsequently stripped down to his shorts and washed his clothes and his sleeping bag. Tears welled up in my eyes! There is a vast amount of humanity that live in another world of poverty and want and degradation and they are seeking another, cracked human vessel…that has experienced the light coming in!
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Integrity…Or…Be Willing To Walk Away!
George Schultz was the Secretary of State in the Regan administration. During those years, in the 1980s, I had just become the assistant superintendent of Building Services at Southern Illinois University @ Carbondale. This was my first exposure to management and I was 29 years old. I watched Secretary Schultz, in a television interview, state that he would never accept a job that he was not willing to walk away from, if he were asked to compromise his integrity.
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Secretary Schultz’s words were a lodestone for me and a compass. During my 25 years in management/administration…I encountered numerous occasions that I had to choose my sense of right and wrong rather than the expediency of what the boss wanted me to do.
I watched as others chose to compromise their values or to ignore their conscience…many times due to being afraid of loosing their employment. There is, indeed a dynamic of doing what the boss wants done…often when it is ethical…and sliding into continuing to do what the boss wants done….When it is not ethical.
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The most egregious violation of integrity or an ethical compass is the abuse of people. This comes in many forms which includes; listening to staff’s concerns but not addressing them, assuring staff that you will assist them and subsequently failing to do so, toying with people or moving them about…as if on a chessboard…with no clear managerial need.
Dishonesty or lying to members of your staff are some of the most devastating of lapses in doing what is right. I have walked out of numerous management meetings where others disparaged and demeaned those that they perceived were beneath us!
For years I worked for a leader who felt that the best way to demonstrate that our organization needed more help…was to stage a slow-down of the housekeeping that we produced. I refused to do so! It was my belief then…and to this day that it was our job to clean the campus as well as we possibly could.
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Former chancellor Argersinger was terminated in less than a year on the job. Jo Ann was not only a breath of fresh air but an inspiration to the university community. I stood up for her, as did many of my colleagues, but it was scary! I not only had my job threatened but the jobs of my colleagues in Building Services!
It occurs to me that it sounds like that I am bragging on myself…but on the contray…I often felt like the ‘skunk at the garden party!’ I wondered if I was not only a bit to altruistic…or a simple minded oaf…or lacking in understanding on how to get ahead!
Mind you, I was not the only one, but rather I worked with hundreds of stelar colleagues that were examples to me in the art of, ‘To thine own self be true!’
So, you may find yourself in a position that, to your dismay, you are misplaced in! Perhaps your best efforts are misunderstood and met with retaliation or disdain. I have lived my 62 years being a believer that if your efforts are not appreciated…find somewhere that they will be.
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The Happy Traveler 