New Year's Resolution 2016

I'll be trying to follow the famous admonition by Mother Jones to striking coal miners:

"Pray for the dead, and fight like hell for the living!"

Legions In the Mud • Santa Cruz, California

It’s been cold on the central coast of California this fall. A couple of days ago I was riding the horse (my bicycle, my only form of transportation) to a market a couple of miles away at 7.30 am. It was 32°, the sunlight reddish (‘Red sky in the morning, sailor take warning’) in a cloudless sky with a breeze coming in from the ocean. I was wearing my winter riding clothes. Those and the physical exertion of controlling the machine kept me perfectly warm.

Others weren't so fortunate. Crossing a bridge to the small downtown business district, I saw bodies in sleeping bags along the base of the rails. More figures were seated together on low concrete walls topping the banks of what passed for a river after years of drought,   only occasionally moving. I stopped at a light, breath pluming in the air. Two men, in their twenties, I think, began crossing the street. They didn't seem to notice the signal was against them. Both wore three or four layers of clothes, a mishmash of colors and fabrics faded and tattered and not looking nearly warm enough. Baseball caps pulled low against the breeze, they stared straight ahead, their strides unsteady and stiff. The one nearest me was muttering under his breath. The other appeared stunned by the cold, his face slack and expressionless. As they passed I heard what the one nearest was saying.

   "We're not going to die today. We're not going to die, homie." He shook his companion by the shoulder. "You hear me?" When he didn't get an answer, he shook him again. "You hear me?" As if the words had somehow been pulled out of him, the other said,"We're not going to die." The one nearest said, "That's right." They reached the far sidewalk and kept going.

   And so did I.

Legions In the Mud • India 2013

Several years ago a young Indian journalist working for a newspaper in New Deli was assigned by an editor to do a story on the rise of a prosperous middle-class in India, increasing dramatically in number and beginning to have a widespread impact on the country‘s economy. 

The journalist, himself a member of that class, interviewed people in various towns and cities across the central part of the country, seeking their views on how this new prosperity had improved their lives. Their remarks led him to go farther afield and gather stories from Indians in the countryside, and discover the way this great change was effecting them.

One afternoon he visited a large manufacturer of pottery and bricks. Much of the work was outside and apart from the buildings where clerical and sales employees were protected from the weather as they went about their tasks. The men and women actually making the clay used for the company‘s products worked in the open or in sheds without walls, using tools and methods that hadn‘t changed for generations.

The journalist approached a worker shoveling clay into a wheelbarrow. Although not much older than the journalist, the worker seemed middle-aged. His clothes were drenched with sweat; his shoes and trousers, his arms and hands, were caked with mud. When the journalist asked his usual questions, he was immediately made uncomfortable by an unblinking glare directed at him, an almost palpable anger emanating from the worker.

Silence. Then, as the journalist was about to try to persuade the man to talk to him, the man spoke, his voice harsh and forceful. 

He said, ”You understand nothing. What you say has nothing to do with us. We are born in the mud. We live and work in the mud. We will die in the mud.” He returned to his work. When the journalist began to speak, the man only said, ”Go away.”

•            •            •

This is the fate of the vast majority of the human race. The kind of work varies in detail; the condition in which it takes place varies in detail. They struggle every day of their lives in ways ignored and unacknowledged by many who should know better. They should be recognised as those critical to the survival of the human race. They should be honored. They are what I call the Legions in the Mud.

Perdition to those trying to keep them there.

Poetic Observations 2

.         .         .

Is there so small a range

                            In the present state of manhood, that the high

                            Imagination cannot freely fly

                            As she was wont of old?                                                                                               

                                          .         .         .                                            

                            From Sleep and Poetry

                            John Keats

A Prayer During Morning Walks

Lord have mercy,

Christ have mercy.

Lord have mercy on us all.

I ask your blessing, Lord, on all in need,

especially on those 

struggling to remain with you,

struggling to return to you,

struggling to come to you for the first time.

I ask your blessing

on my family and friends, 

on those who call themselves our enemies,

on all those with whom I have worked,

on all the children and innocents of the world.
All those sick and in pain,
hungry and thirsty.
All those tired,
without work, without homes,
without families, without hope.
All those abandoned,
all those forgotten,
all those ridiculed,
all those ignored,
all those held in shadow, unable to move into light.

I ask your blessing on my little place, this day and night.
Keep it safe, and warm and dry,
peaceful and quiet.
Protect it from all harm.

I ask your blessing on my neighbors.
Keep them safe.

And I ask your blessing on me, Lord,
this day and night, on the road and
at whatever work I do.
Please keep me safe; protect me from all harm.
Strengthen me in your service.
Strengthen me for the passage ahead.
Heal my body, my mind, and my spirit.
Shelter me in your arms, and protect me from
the snares and cunning of the Devil.
And if at times, today or tonight,
I seem to have forgotten you,
I have not.
And I beg you not forget me.

All this I ask in your name,
your glorious and eternal name.
Amen.