Thoughts and Deeds

 

Here is a piece I wrote for the newsletter of St. Thomas the Apostle Episcopal Church in Dallas, just before Thanksgiving, 2007:

 

Thanksgiving is always a time to reflect on the Pilgrims and Squanto. I’m sure you remember the story we all learned in grammar school. Squanto was a member of the Patuxet tribe in what is now Maine. In 1608, he was kidnapped and taken to England as a slave/servant. When he was freed and returned to America a decade later, he found that his entire tribe had been wiped out by diseases the English had brought with them. He had every reason to hate his captors, but he didn’t. Instead, he helped save the Pilgrims of Massachusetts Bay – who by the spring of 1621 were sick and starving – by teaching them how to plant and fertilize native crops like corn. If there had been no Squanto, there likely would have been no first Thanksgiving.

I thought about that story the other day as I was reflecting on all the good things that have happened since we began the Saint Thomas Community Garden earlier this year. And I reflected on angels – like Squanto – and miracles – like the first Thanksgiving. In college, long before I professed my Christian faith, I took a philosophy course from a rumpled professor who looked like Einstein. A devoted agnostic, he nonetheless offered these definitions that have stuck with me for more than 40 years: Angels are God’s thoughts, he said, and miracles are deeds inspired by God’s thoughts.

Now I suppose any number of learned theologians might quibble or disagree with those definitions. But as I have watched our community garden take shape over the past six months, I’ve seen too much evidence to doubt my old professor. Consider this:

• Our garden committee knew we needed a shed to store tools and hoses before we could even get started. But we had no money to buy one. One night, Lynn Armstrong, a friend from Good Shepherd Episcopal Church, mentioned she had a shed on her rental property. Thought: “If you want, you can have it,” she said. Deed: Harold Spiegel had his crew moved it to Saint Thomas.
• We looked at the enormous size of our proposed garden and asked ourselves, how will we ever get this weed patch ready to grow vegetables for the hungry? Our parishioner Harold Spiegel owns Preservation Tree Service, the best-respected tree company in Dallas. Thought: “My crews have some down time and we can help,” he said. Deed: Harold and his crews tilled our soil, trimmed our trees, and gave us mulch and compost – all at no expense.
• There was no water in the garden space, and we had been warned that it might cost $5,000 or more to install a water meter and run a pipe to the garden. Our Senior Warden Kathy Carson has worked with the city water department in her real estate profession, and Harold Spiegel’s crews know how to install landscape watering systems. Thought: “Let me see what I can do,” Kathy said. “I think we can handle it once we have a meter,” Harold said. Deed: The city installed a water meter without charge and Harold’s crews ran the pipe to the garden at no cost.
• I created a sign to promote the garden but I had only some flimsy stakes to put it up near Inwood Road. It looked pathetic. Saint Thomas’s neighbor to the north, George Hendricks, noticed the forlorn sign. Thought: “I want to make that look better,” Mr. Hendricks told Stephen Waller in a phone call. Deed: At his own expense, Mr. Hendricks bought plastic piping and tie-backs. He straightened up our sign and made it look great.
• We had no tools or hoses to use in the garden. John and Kris Braddock are new members of our parish who moved here from New York last year. They used to have a country house with a big garden north of Manhattan. Thought: “We have lots of garden tools, hoses and garden furniture just sitting in storage,” John and Kris said. “Do you want them?” Deed: Our shed is now filled with the Braddocks’ tools and hoses, and their beautiful Adirondack-style garden furniture is arrayed under our spreading oak tree.
• As we contemplated how much work it would be to keep tilling the soil by hand to make sure it would be ready to plant next spring, we thought: “Wouldn’t it be great if we had a power roto-tiller to use in the Saint Thomas Garden? But we can’t afford one.” Our parishioners Bruce Davis and Wayne Palmer have a beautiful home and garden in Oak Cliff. Thought: Bruce emailed Stephen Waller to say that he and Wayne had a Toro power roto-tiller they weren’t using much. Would we want to use it in our community garden? Deed: I had the pleasure of using Bruce and Wayne’s power roto-tiller to break up the soil before we planted the seven varieties of winter vegetables you now see growing in our community garden.

Thanks to all the angels who brought God’s thoughts to our community garden. And Thanks Be to God for the miracles those thoughts have created. Happy Thanksgiving!

 

 

(P.S.:  Another miracle occurred in April, 2008.  The Most Rev. Katharine Jefferts Schori, Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, accepted our invitation to come to St. Thomas the Apostle and bless our community garden, in an amazing celebration.  The garden has now been helping to feed the hungry in Dallas for almost five years.)



Honorable

My Mom visits me during Army basic training, Fort Lewis, October 1968

 

As I get older, I find myself ruminating on things.  I think it's a privilege of being a "senior" and I love it. 

 

Today is Veteran's Day, 2012.  I was drafted into the U.S. Army in September, 1968.  I spent most of 1969 in Vietnam, all expenses paid.  When I was discharged from the Army, the letter I got thanked me for honorably serving my country.  Truth is, however, I wondered then if I had done the honorable thing.  And even today I am still ruminating on that question.

 

In the 1960s, I thought the Vietnam war was a misadventure and I thought the draft was unfair.  Fifty years later, I still do.  Several million of us went there but 50,000 of us didn't come back.  Did we win anything?  Did we make the world safer?  I tear up when I visit the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC.  I agree with those who call it an angry black gash on the National Mall.

 

How would my life have turned out if I had gone to Canada in September 5, 1968, instead of the Army induction center, as I had considered?  How would I feel about that decision today?  Would I consider myself "honorable?"  I wonder.

 

But I didn't go to Canada.  In the end, it wasn't for any big, Save-The-World reason.  It was because I was too worried about how it would affect my mother.  How would she explain to her friends that her son had skipped the draft and fled to Vancouver?  She was a woman of the 1950s, always concerned about What The Neighbors Might Think.  I knew she'd be embarrassed some, but I also knew she'd be even more out-of-her-mind worried about me.  I'd be a fugitive from U.S. justice and could be arrested if I cam home to visit.  How would I make a living?  Have a family? I always suffered when I knew she was in pain.  I just couldn't hurt her that way.  

 

So I did what I was asked to do,  and I managed to come home.  And I resumed my life and I made a good living and I built my own family and now I'm retired, happy and content.  But I still wonder.  What does "honorable" really mean?

 

Today, as I see tens of thousands of our beautiful young people returning from two wars since 2001, many of them mangled but still alive, I feel a deep hurt.  I imagine another angry, black gash on the National Mall to recognize them.  But I am amazed at their spirit.  So many of them are getting on with their lives, as best they can, not letting their horrific war experiences hold them back.  I suspect that many of them may feel better about "their" wars than I do about "mine."  After all, we were attacked and we had to defend ourselves.  Isn't doing that an "honorable" act?  

 

In my rumination, I haven't found an answer.  I suppose I never will.  I get angry when I see some folks wave flags and put "support our troops" stickers on their cars, and criticize those who don't.  That's so easy.  It's harder to help military families stay off food stamps or hire a veteran or be willing to pay higher taxes so we can give veterans the right benefits.

 

It's Veterans' Day.  It started out as Armistice Day in 1918, celebrating The War To End All Wars.  We've had at least six wars since then.  So,  The War to End All Wars wasn't.  Is anybody surprised?  Do you suppose that, when we're finally out of Afghanistan in 2014, we won't be involve in some new war?  To me, that would be honorable. Let's hope.  It's the best we can do.