Hands Across the Planet

[image from cleveland.com]

Hands Across the Planet – Love Abounds!

Wasn't that freaking scary, when Blogger was out of commission? I worried about my entire year's writing, which I do not have backed up, a situation I must rectify very soon. Scared me to death. This has been my most prolific year ever. Losing all that writing is not an option!


But now we're back to normal. And today, kids, I am going to pass along to you a cool little story I’ve come across recently. It is just one small thing that happened on this big old planet, among people who choose to remain nameless, that shows the hearts of most people are basically good, and that it is in small acts of kindness that we can each, if we choose, profoundly impact the world or, at least, someone else.

So, out in blogger-space, one aging woman connected with one young student in Africa, who writes passionately about social justice. Drawn by his poetry and his passion for righting the social ills of the world he inhabits, they make a connection, form a friendship. Within mere weeks, he becomes another grandson.

He was once a little boy sleeping on the ground under a blanket of stars by the village campfire, with the other nomads. But he dreamed big dreams, under those stars and, in time, someone arrived in his life to help put him through school.

Now he is on the last legs of a long push towards completing some post graduate work, some time yet to cross the finish line. He is doing it on his own. His sponsor, who first recognized his brightness and gave it a chance to blossom, told him some time back the rest is up to him. He has been trying to hang on, to make this last push to the finish line. And now, at this very moment that he is scrabbling desperately to complete his objective, the universe sends him a grandmother in the West. The West is wealthy, but she is not. By Western standards, she is at the bottom of the heap. But by African standards, she is certainly far more comfortable than anyone this young lad knows.

First, she thinks small: she will send him a gift.

Then, she has an apparently “random” conversation, in town, one day, in the course of running her errands. But nothing, in this life, is random. She was actually leaving the store when she decided to turn back and tell the storekeeper the story of this young man. Over the years, they have recognized each other as folks who love humanity. They have big hearts for the suffering of the world, and a wish to contribute something good. So she simply thinks, “This man will enjoy hearing about my young friend in Africa.”

Only partway through her story, the storekeeper says, without qualification, and wholeheartedly, (which is the way he does everything): Tell him I will send a hundred dollars a month, if he can find a child to put through school.

At first, she doesn’t understand. He repeats his offer.

In that single moment, in a “random” conversation between two tiny beings on this big but interconnected planet, the lives of children on the other side of the world begins to change.

She recognizes, with the open-hearted and selfless manner in which the young man is thrilled at the chance to help other children as he once was helped, that she has within her means enough to help him in his final push towards his goal, small amounts of western money being able to do great things across the world. Thus, it all comes full circle.

The young man is flabbergasted, humbled and also empowered with the joy of being able to do for other small children what was once done for him. He tells her that the amount of money the man proposes to send is enough to send TEN children through school. Ten children, five little boys and five little girls, who are bright and needy, whose smiles will shine brighter at this unexpected act of kindness from across the world.

This is one amazing world, both the cyber world, and the real, green and blue planet we are making this sojourn on, together.

Never forget: People are capable of great kindness, enormous hope. And life is very good.

Uniforms

[image from google]

for Poets United Thursday Think Tank prompt: Uniforms

Their black and white robes
inspired fear, and awe.
Stern faces
peered out
from wimpled headdresses,
fierce, scolding.
Our consciences
boiled hotly
with our millions
of real or perceived
transgressions.
Even thoughts were
"occasions of sin".
Even dreams.
Especially our dreams.

"Your bodies are good,"
one lectured us,
which made us feel
hotly ashamed
that we even had bodies,
too uncomfortable
to think about
in a room full
of adolescent
boys and girls.

We wore uniforms too.
Hated pleated ones
with no style.
When we knelt on the ground,
our skirts must cover our knees
or we were suspected
of being "fast".
When I grew taller,
I couldnt say
I had no money
to buy a new skirt
and could not ask
my mother.
We were poor,
a shameful secret,
to be kept from my friends,
though the four
small cold rooms
we lived in
likely was a clue.

Once the fierce
angry little nun
who taught us music
fell off her stool,
so vigorously
was she conducting
the choir.
There was one
collective
indrawn gasp
of horror.
It was as if
Jesus had fallen
off His cross.
We were so obedient,
so in awe,
we did not move,
did not break ranks.
Her eyes flashed fire
and moral outrage.

No one would
have dreamed
of tittering.
She got up,
straightened
her tilting wimple,
climbed back up
onto her stool and,
shakily,
we continued
with our song.

Once at midnight Mass,
one of the Knights of Columbus,
a short rotund bald little man
with a shiny face,
self-important
in his Knights outfit,
dashingly and theatrically,
with a flourish,
aimed his sword at its sheath, 
and missed;
he had to try again,
somewhat chastened,
while the shoulders
of  the other Knights
shook gently and
some hands went up
to cover their mouths.

We saw
what nuns wore
at night
when their habits
came off:
on the clothesline
hung white
full-length
voluminous nightgowns,
and caps for their
shorn fuzzy heads.
Just seeing them
made us
uncomfortable.
They seemed
not to have bodies.
And, if they did,
we couldnt bear
to think about it.

At Mass, they sat
in contemplative rows,
reverent, but distracted,
their eyes piercing us,
wriggling in the pews.
We were
utterly mortified
if one of them
had to click
her clicker
to admonish
one of us.
Hot lava pouring
over our heads
with shame.

The rulers they carried
in the classroom
were to be feared.
They hurt,
across our knuckles.
There was never
a sound in the classroom.
There was total discipline,
that never, ever
eased.

The young priest
who said early Mass
one winter, caught
a terrible cold
that turned to pneumonia.
He kept on saying
early Mass,
us waiting in the pews
while his thin body was
wracked with
spasms of
exhausted coughing,
me watching
his upturned
radiant face,
so prayerful,
so dedicated,
above his  robe
of green and gold.

A uniformed world
designed to remove
individuality,
squash it,
raise us up
as a faithful
homogeneous flock.

The minute we reached
the exit,
at graduation,
we fled that world
with Godspeed,
and not one clue
about life
in the real world.
Lambs to the slaughter,
but frisky and
feeling our
newfound freedom,
we kicked up our heels
and cavorted,
those few moments
when it was
still and truly
ours.

A Trek Through the Himalayas

[photo by Susan Watt, of Tofino, B.C.]

Remember Chris Lowther, my dreamy-eyed poet friend who lives on a floathouse in Clayoquot Sound? I wrote about her in the fall. She has known and loved Pup since his puppy days and grieved with me at his passing. She came for a visit yesterday, and brought with her a slideshow of amazing photos taken by our friend Susan Watt, also of Tofino, on her trip through Tibet, Nepal and Kashmir.

I sat for a blissful morning, sipping tea and being transported to another time, another land, where perhaps, some other lifetime, I belonged.

I fell in love with this little Tibetan fellow's face, and when Susan offered me my pick of photos, I chose this one. These are the eyes of an Old Soul. I was struck by the scarcity of what the people of that land need to live their lives: it is life stripped down to the essentials. One photo shows a Tibetan kitchen: a two-shelf table with a few aluminum pots, a few aluminum plates. That was it. One woman had a two burner hotplate; she had to connect wires together to ignite it, sparks flying each time. Their stone dwellings perched high atop cliffs, meaning someone had to walk a very long way to  find the day's water and pack it back up the hill.

And, uniformly, on every face, there is a radiance, a deep-welling satisfaction and contentment. Smiling faces, radiating inner joy, faces whose souls have learned what is truly essential in life: the things of the spirit.

Even the sheep in the photos looked radiant. They were smiling, too. Happy to be living in Tibet and Nepal, and not headed for the "factory farms" and cruel slaughterhouses of the West.

[That's Susan in the back, with black shirt and sunglasses.]

Susan is now on a mission. On her travels, she visited an orphanage in Nepal, where she learned that for three thousand North American dollars, its 21 orphans could be put through school for one year, including the cost of uniforms, fees and books. She intends to hold a slide-show and dinner event, to raise funds for this purpose.

I asked her if I might post about it here, as one never knows where or who  these words will reach. At the very least, reading about this is a lift of the heartstrings, a moment of hope, and a reminder to us here in North America, surrounded by and choking in the grip of all of our Stuff, that there are fellow humans in Lhasa, on the cliffsides of Nepal, and all through the Himalayas, who live a stripped-down and scarce material existence, but who are richer in spirit than we can begin to imagine.

And also that one person, seeing a need and addressing it, can make significant changes in this world. Bravo, Susan!!

Anyone wishing to contribute towards the education of these orphans, may contact Susan at susanrwatt@yahoo.ca

Namaste:)