I have a friend, let’s call her Mary. She’s a tad older than I am so she enjoys all the aspects of an older person in retired life.
Mary fills her day by playing with her dog, watching her shows, offering rides to friends without cars for shopping and doctor’s appointments. Mary has had a number of medical misadventures and moves around poorly, using a walker or electric cart most of the time.
Despite her less than excellent health, Mary is as active as possible. Not only does she offer her intimate volunteerism, but Mary also has been a long-term volunteer at the McMinnville Cooperative Ministries’ Saturday morning breakfast. If you ate eggs, Mary cracked it!
Mary has lived this kind of life of service for DECADES and does not self-promote on social media.
Like many others I was hoping, but not expecting, the Electoral College to act in an unprecedented but authorized way to negate the Trump presidency. Had that happened, however, it would have opened other doors of unknown outcome, so maybe this is the best way.
This way, we can hold the incoming President to his Constitutional duties and responsibilities. We do have guidelines for that and will know when he inappropriately strays. I expect he will stray, as his prior comments indicate he is not clear on much of what is ahead of him.
Meanwhile, enough angst. Each of us either feels distress now or will soon. Each one of us. The efforts of a Republican Congress backed up by this President will mean we have big changes ahead. It is the anticipation of some of those changes that have people already upset. However, the rest will join the fray when program cuts begin to affect them. When campaign promises go by the wayside. When life does not get better for the many many people who expect the Federal government to fix things for them.
So, onward.
I have said often on my Facebook feed that I will stay vigilant and be as active as I can to help retain the rights won by all of us to give equal access and protection of the law to all our citizens. I will stay vigilant and be as active as I can to make sure the least of us continue to be helped regardless of any political stance. I will stay vigilant and be as active as I can to make a positive difference.
Back in 1970 when Earth Day was initiated I heard a slogan that resonated. “Think globally but act locally.” We know the earth has overwhelming issues, not only environmental but in every aspect of life.
We have a choice, each one of us.
We can ignore and carry on, dong what we do that may help or hinder any situation, self-centered and choosing to stay apart from the community of the world.
We can get stirred by all the need in the world and affected so deeply we can’t deal with it, so we freeze, stuck in despair.
We can opt to get involved in one or two issues that deeply resonate. We may send money or sign petitions or write letters or emails or even show up at our state capitol to join a protest.
We can chose to get active in our own communities, making our voice and action count where it will show a difference.
I’ve done each of these. Earlier in my life I was focused on my own young adulthood and all that involved including building a career and raising a family. I had a nodding relationship with a few issues but not much money and not much time, so not much involvement.
I’ve been on listservs that overwhelm me with need. It seems that I receive more than 20 a day with hands outstretched asking for $1, $5, $25 or more. It was with extreme pleasure that I unsubscribed from almost all recently.
I sign petitions and sometimes post them on Facebook urging others to take the minute to add their support. It seems to be the LEAST anyone can do.
Mostly, I am active here in my town. I have chosen three main areas and participate as much as I can. I do what I can, offer my skills to forward the mission of the group. I self impose a limit on what I feel I can do and ask for the group to respect that. (If the group doesn’t, as some have in the past, I moved my energy elsewhere.)
I hope by this example you can see how you might work through the coming years when so many of us feel what we have known about the United States of America will be changing. I plan to keep on keeping on. Joining with other like minded people empowers all of us.
I just finished helping make phone calls for a local candidate running for state office. It’s early in the campaign season so I only had one rude person on the other end of the phone. Based on my experience when this candidate ran two years ago, it will get worse the closer we get to November’s election day. People get pretty sick and tired of all the campaigning that goes on, especially this year with a Presidential election.
So why do I bother to put myself in a position for potential abuse? First, I don’t take any of it personally. I’ve had enough sales training in prior chapters of my life to know an upbeat voice (have a smile on your face) can make a big difference in how you sound to the other person. But still, calling at supper time, in the middle of a family crisis, following someone’s bad day means many won’t answer the call and if they do, they may be short tempered. Not a big deal.
I do it because I like the candidate. I think he is a good person making a tremendous effort to reach out and really listen to the constituents. When he lost by a narrow margin against the incumbent 18 months ago he said he would run again, and essentially he has never stopped. He got even more involved in the community and people on all sides of the issues know him better now. They know him to be someone who will listen and search for the commonalities. THAT is a huge reason why I support him.
I do it because I agree with the candidate. Before I felt comfortable to work on his campaign I actually spoke with him and heard him speak at a small group meeting. I saw how he listened and interacted. I learned how he did additional research and how his position on that issue matured based on what the person had brought to his attention. I liked his viewpoint but I also liked the way he never assumed he knew the answer right off the bat.
I do it because good candidates are hard to identify. Certainly you can’t tell from the advertising on tv or what you get in the mail. Everyone sounds pretty similar, all promising to fix problems. But whose problems? How will they fix them? Many candidates seem to run on generalities or flip flop depending on their audience. It is amazingly wonderful to find someone who has a good moral compass and is genuinely interested in what people have to say, and be willing to learn from that person’s experience.
I do it because in a local contest my action makes a tremendous impact. Sure, I have a favorite Presidential candidate but any effort I could make would be a drop in that national bucket. Here, in our state representative district, I can really have an influence on sharing my feelings about this candidate to others AND sharing my opinions with him.
So, if you live in this state house district and I call you about Ken Moore, please feel comfortable to chat with me. Even if you are angry about issues, please share. We have someone who wants to do what he can to help.
People who chose to not get involved, to never really learn about their elected representatives in any level of government, who may not even vote, are losing out on a tremendous freedom. It is our responsibility to be involved. We The People means each one of us.
Just home from helping at the McMinnville Cooperative Ministries Saturday morning breakfast where we served about 300 people this morning. It feels good to sit down but this is a good kind of tired.
The hungry are are our neighbors, as I wrote yesterday for Yamhill Valley Grown after visiting Heart 2 Heart Farms where farmer Tyler Boggs distributes free produce to anyone who wants it. Some of the produce is a bit tired and best fed to his animals, but Tyler realized much of the food was in great condition and several hundred people show up each Friday to gather what they want.
I went yesterday to see the activity and took advantage of the offering to bring 4 huge totes of fruit to the church. At 7:00am my first duty, assigned by this week’s head chef and pastor Mark Pederson, was to prepare a fruit salad.
About 8 volunteers arrived at 7 to help with the prep. They chopped potatoes and onions, broke and beat the eggs, shredded the cheese, prepared the pancake mix, formed sausage patties and all the things that needed to be prepped for the meal.
Others arrived around 7:30 to prepare the dining room and for some quick training to newbie volunteers. Then it was 8:00a.m. and the doors were open and I joined the serving line. Other volunteers arrived to help with the dish washing and others would arrive later to help with the overall cleanup.
At the Coop the people come in and sit at tables covered with cloth and chose their breakfast from the menu. The servers then bring the orders up to the window where several of us load the plates or take-out boxes. As we dished up the plates the servers would bring them to the appropriate person for their eating pleasure.
The people who come to eat are treated with respect, no questions asked, no prayer service requirement. Take-out boxes are offered for those at home who could not make it in for the meal.
Today we had a big bang for a start. It seemed, when I looked out at 8:00 that all the seats at all the tables were full, and sure enough the orders came in fast and furious and we soon fell behind. Dishing as quickly as we could, the last of those 8:00 a.m. eaters finally got their plates around 8:20. And the orders kept coming in pretty steadily but at a more manageable pace.
Things slowed down about 9:30, a half hour before the official end of serving at 10. By then the fruit salad was gone, the hash browns were all eaten, but there were plenty of scrambled eggs, sausages, pancakes and a delicious peach and blueberry cobbler Mark had prepared.
I know I enjoyed my breakfast very much!
Helping at the Coop or another soup kitchen is a way to return appreciation to the community. People who enjoy meals can also volunteer, as can people who are not even members of the church. We get volunteers during the school year from Linfield College but during the vacation breaks everyone who shows up has to work a bit harder because we don’t have enough hands. If you can help, you are very welcome to join in. Contact Lauri Muller at compassionfund@gmail.com or call 435-890-4214.
The people here in McMinnville, Oregon, our new home since September, do an amazing job feeding the hungry. Four evenings a week the Episcopal Church, St. Barnabus, serves dinner. Other days are covered by other churches in town. Typically, each meal serves about 300-350 people, including take-out meals. The annual total at St. Barnabus is very close to the population of this city, 33,000. The need is high, even here in Oregon where the economy seems to be so much healthier than West Virginia where we had been living.
Imagine my reaction when our tour in India included a Sikh Temple. After receiving head coverings and removing our shoes,we wandered around admiring the architecture, bathing pool, and listening to the chanting, which had tonations that reminded me of Torah chanting. (Something to look into, as the Sikh religion is about 500 years old and when the Second Temple was destroyed in 70 CE the people moved west into Europe and east into Asia…would be an interesting study to understand the influences of how the Sikh religion started.)
Then Arvind lead us into the soup kitchen and we learned they feed the hungry three meals a day, a total of 22,000 people each and every day.
We saw volunteers chopping vegetables
baking the chapati to serve with the vegetable curry simmering in huge vats.
Don’t get hung up on the fact that this work is done on the floor; yesterday’s blog should have brought you up to speed that the concept of sanitation is very different in India. Focus, instead, on the service being done. Pretty amazing.
Today we had a big bang for a start. It seemed, when I looked out at 8:00 that all the seats at all the tables were full, and sure enough the orders came in fast and furious and we soon fell behind. Dishing as quickly as we could, the last of those 8:00 a.m. eaters finally got their plates around 8:20. And the orders kept coming in pretty steadily but at a more manageable pace.
goingplaceslivinglife 