We are smack dab in the middle of December, which for most of us is a time of holidays, slowing down, family, reflection, making memories, and remembering the past. I cannot tell you the number of people who have come in and out of my life by now who have had some kind of impact, even in passing, whether from a timely decision, a chance encounter, or over many years. I would like to think wisdom is one of the benefits of all this, that inner voice that grows with you and knows, you were built by the help of many.

Sometimes we say by the Grace of God go I, or other times we give moments of success up to pure luck, or being in the right place at the right time. It could be good parenting, one teacher who took extra time, one professor who suggested something different, the officer who cuts you a break, or even a penalty that changes certain behaviors. Sometimes it's being close to the bad decisions that someone we know makes, and we get the benefit of learning from it. Other times it's being injured, or close to death, and recovering. Whatever it is, whatever the mystery that propels us forward, the only concept that seems to hold through it all is to try to recognize our lives for moments like these, and to be grateful. 

I can’t find it now, but I remember years ago reading about a minister whose wife had passed after a long illness. When he was asked to reflect on it, he said being grateful for the time that he had with her was the only thing that kept him going. I also read some thoughts by Father Richard Rohr, who reflected on his battle with cancer and a little dog that he had taken in. Through the trials of the illness, instead of thinking about his pain and the disease, he pondered on the long-time connection between dog and man and was grateful to have this tiny presence of never-ending love with him. 

If we consider the bounty of life we have, being grateful should be the norm. It makes sense, but is it easy? I still struggle with a lot of things that happen in life because they have little reason or logic to them. They don’t make sense. Despite all of our efforts to build safety nets, controls, equality, and procedures, there is one inescapable truth. 

Shit just happens.

Bad things happen to good people. People get rewarded for dumb stuff. The drunk driver survives, the shooter lives, and the innocent perish. 

This is all the more reason, as hard as it is, to cultivate being grateful, no matter what occurs, no matter how much we try for the right thing to happen. To be grateful for anything of the good that occurs. 

By no means does it mean settling. I think we can strive to do better while being grateful. It allows us to recognize more than we are, it allows us to remember more of what we take for granted. A moment to remember the ones that make the world go around, that keep the lights on, that inspire others.

I had the privilege of attending worship and meetings with Father William Meninger before he passed. One thing he suggested in his teachings was to spend some time in mindfulness and to think back on a fleeting face in your life. It could be someone you passed by on a routine basis that you never knew, the postman who delivered the mail, a driver in a car next to you, then spend just a few minutes thinking of that person and expressing gratitude for their presence. It helps the centering of your own mind, and it takes the focus from the self to others. 

With all the issues we face and the forces that feed on dividing us, I encourage you to add a little time of being grateful to your day. I truly think it can make a difference.

I hope you’ll enjoy this really good next article. 

The entire video coming up next is great, but right about the seven-minute mark are some excellent tips on how to deal with the daily stress of life. What I like here is that the author gives specific measures, such as limiting your social media to 30 minutes a day, and limiting your news intake to 30 minutes a day. These companies such as Facebook and TikTok are ingenious at taking up your time. I urge you to take it back. Our ability to connect to anything anywhere at any time has ironically and unfortunately left us much more disconnected, discontent, and yes, unhappy. As you go into the new year, especially parents, I urge you to be mindful of this.

It would make me happy to see some of these gathering places of my youth make a comeback. My earliest memory of being in a store was in a Sears near Muskogee, Oklahoma. They were standalone back then before the onset of malls, but they were a main go-to for my parents and for most others of that generation. My 5-year-old brain remembers a room full of Winnie the Pooh dolls and how much I wanted one. In any case, I have long been anguished at the loss of these types of stores. They used to be known for quality goods and good jobs until corporate management took their eye off the ball. Those thousands of jobs, salaried and pensioned, are all gone or transferred to new corporate merchants like Amazon. Lest anyone think the Amazon model is an original work of genius, Sears had the catalog for anything you wanted to buy. They did not have the vision to embrace the internet and build that catalog online.

I think in today’s economy, these stores will have a hard time, though Target stores, which are the closest to what a Sears was like, seems to be holding on and doing well.  Recent news that Macy’s could be bought will leave it to be seen whether Macy’s will survive or whether a new owner is more interested in its physical properties. There is also a trend that shows the old big box store models are starting to include stores with smaller footprints.

It is not that I think we need more stores for shopping, but I do think we need numerous public places to gather. We have lost a great amount of public space, which is a real threatening trend. Whether libraries, stores, ball fields, malls, or schools, places we used to gather freely have either been defunded, downsized, merged, or locked up.

In the spirit of being grateful, I have followed the efforts of Alexei Navalny ever since my time in Russia. Most of Russia’s democrats, dissidents, and real journalists, have been killed, disappeared, or silenced. The country has returned to the old Soviet days where freedom could only be expressed through literature, art, and music, and the rest of public life was tightly orchestrated and controlled.

I was very much hoping that someone like Navalny would be able to lead an uprising against Putin and get Russia back or close to an open form of government. This is a man who has given up everything to pursue real freedom for his country.

There are some similarities in Russia with what other countries are experiencing around the world. The United States is getting very old, and we are struggling ourselves with differing values between older Americans and the young. In the Middle East, these countries have youthful populations that are booming, and some of the unsettling you see in places like Iran is from a young population that does not want to be under a religious dictatorship of old men.

How goes the metropolitan youth of Russia will tell the future of their country. They have had a taste of freedom. They know the differences. They know what has been lost.

Keep freedom fighters like Navalny in your thoughts and prayers. Millions of Russians are just like Americans. They want good things for their family, they want opportunity for their children. They want freedom to move up, to converse with whom they want, to reside with whom they wish, and a government FOR the people. Even if you don’t know him or never heard of him, be grateful for Navalny. He is a lone voice of freedom. He may be the one to inspire the people and break the system.

And Now….

My Uncle Richard passed away last month. He kept working and busy until he was in his 80’s. When his work took him to Florida, I would meet him in various places from Jacksonville to the Panhandle. Uncle Rich was one of four boys that grew up in the depression era. My father was the oldest and Uncle Rich was next and they told me stories of working at an early age in a hotel in St. Louis as waiters. This was when jobs were hard to come by. Sometimes they would make more money on tips than my grandfather made and it helped to keep the family afloat.

Uncle Rich was something like an architect and designer. I never was sure, though he traveled everywhere. He had been involved in designing some places around the St. Louis area such as restaurants, banks, and so on. Once when I flew into St. Louis, he picked me up at the airport and took me to dinner before driving me to my parent’s house. The owner he completed work for liked him so much, that he told the crew to never charge my Uncle Rich for his meals. But to Uncle Rich, that wasn’t the big deal. The big deal to him was a compliment he received from the owner. The owner was so happy with the work Uncle Rich provided that he told my uncle, “I would’ve liked to have met your parents.” My uncle had a work ethic that the owner was impressed with, and the owner found a way to compliment my uncle with a compliment to my grandparents. Uncle Rich never forgot that, and neither did I.

Thank you, Uncle Rich. Hope you, dad, and Uncle Jimmy are somewhere together in the great mystery.

For you readers, may your life be lived that people want to know where you came from and the quality of people that helped to make you.

 Hope to see you next time. Keep reading, practice your gratefulness, and remember: Be a good human.