vitalwholeness

Just recently I traveled to Nova Scotia to attend the Celtic music Festival, Celtic Colours, on Cape Breton island. This long-standing festival brings in the best from the Celtic music scene and gathers them in one place and time. It was outstanding. Until the hurricane moved up the coast and inundated us, that is. But that is another story.

We stayed at a B&B on the northern coast of Nova Scotia on the way. The innkeeper, June, had just lost her husband little more than a month before. She was a descendant of those hardy Scots who immigrated in the 18th and 19th centuries to Canada. June did it all. She tended the property and grounds, cared for the guests and fed them.

In the morning I arose early before any of the other guests and made my way downstairs, book in hand, searching for a little space for quiet time and a cup of coffee. What I found was June already up and preparing the breakfast. The big cast iron skillet held the frying bacon on the stove top at the same time that bread was baking in the oven. I pulled up a stool to the kitchen counter and warmed my hands around the coffee cup as I breathed in the smells of breakfast on the way.

Since I noticed June wearing a cross and had seen some other spiritual themes in her home I felt comfortable in sharing a bit of what I was reading with her, a book that explored finding the mysterious presence of God even in the midst of adversity. After I read a short quote June thought for a moment, looked out the big double doors that led to her back yard and the marshy bay beyond it. “You never know what’s out there,” she said. And then she shared a story.

“I lost my husband about a month ago and my three grandchildren took it really hard. But of the three the one granddaughter was just inconsolable. There is nothing I could say or do to comfort this sad little girl. Then one day, maybe two weeks ago, she was with me at the house when we heard this loud screech from the back.

Being situated on the seacoast June was used to the calls of birds, but this was different.

“I asked my granddaughter to come with me and we went out into the back yard. We heard another screech, looked up, and in the tree twenty feet above us perched a bald eagle. We just stood there, looking, frozen, and he looked back at us.”

What the family knew was that her deceased husband was a free spirit, and his totem, his animal mascot on this planet, was the eagle.

“We just stood there for maybe a minute and then he lifted off with those powerful wings and screeched as he flew out and away toward the sea. We just watched him and my granddaughter lifted up her arms as though giving some hug to the sky. As he departed he left behind a down feather, that silky wisp of down under the feathers, and it began to slowly, slowly waft down toward us, floating earthward, twirling, and gentle as a breath it came to rest in the palm of one of my granddaughter’s outstretched hands.”

They took it inside and June placed it in a shadow box that would reside in her granddaughter’s bedroom. And that was the end of her grieving.

“You never know what’s out there,” June said. “You have to keep watching and waiting and trusting.”

You remember the old Chinese tale:

Once upon a time a horse wandered into a village and a farmer thankfully took him as his own. All the villagers said, “How wonderful!” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.”

When the farmer’s son fell off the horse and broke his arm all the villagers said, “How terrible!” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.”

When war came and they were drafting young men into the army the boy was spared because of his broken arm and the villagers said, “How wonderful!” And the farmer said, “We’ll see.”

There is too much randomness, unanticipated variables and chaos to really know if something is going to be good or bad in the end. You often don’t know until later and even then the whole story is yet to be told.

We just returned from a holiday in Nova Scotia and it was wonderful. But a storm came and we had to escape and that was terrible. But we ended up going other nice places we hadn’t planned and that was wonderful. But we ran into lots of people who were baffled and amused with American politics of the moment and that was terrible. Maybe.

I don’t have a glass ball to predict the future. Unanticipated consequences are always presenting themselves. But I have the idea that Donald Trump has been a gift to everyone involved in this political process from top to bottom. Now he’s a strange gift. In fact, most everything he is and says and encourages is like the negative of a photograph; by viewing the negative the positive is seen by contrast.

For the Democrats Donald Trump is a gift because he appears to be handing them the election. Whatever weaknesses Hillary Clinton possesses are simply eclipsed. The Dems haven’t earned this; they are being handed this like the team that wins because of the errors of their opponents.

Donald Trump is a gift for the GOP for a much more complex reason. He is actually handing them their future … if they will take it. For a host of inexplicable reasons he became their nominee. But because of that they are having a moment of painful clarity. Like the negative of that photograph they are already asking what they need to become in contrast.

This is very important to the health of the whole country. We need two or more dynamic parties to provide balance. Donald Trump may actually be helping the GOP to rediscover their party of reasonable principled conservatives. We have many examples of those leaders from history. There are future capable conservative politicians – especially those from the next generation – who can fill that bill. Because of Donald Trump they may choose to move away from the precipice and, though they don’t know it yet, Donald Trump may be their painful future gift.

This should give all of us pause. We need to consider a way out of this ridiculous polarization. I have a friend who has a bumper sticker for one candidate on her car. Just this week she pulled up to a stop light beside a vehicle bearing the bumper sticker of the other candidate. Because their windows were down on the nice day the other driver took the liberty to shout at her at the intersection. That’s the atmosphere we have now. It’s toxic.

We need to find the moral will to move forward with the best good for the most people, to be true to our ideals and garner the best from all our principled leaders. We need to cultivate a new generation of pragmatic problem solvers who know how to work together, get it done, and make balanced and wise decisions with integrity.

At our best we really do fine things as Americans. We must remain committed to to creating a more perfect union. I am confident we will. I hope that in retrospect we will look back and see what important part this strange political season has played in making it so.

But, as the Chinese farmer said, “We’ll see.”