Eons ago I occasionally watched, believe it or not, a television program starring a Catholic priest, Bishop Fulton J. Sheen. He cut a dramatic figure in his cape and raiment and was an effective speaker. But it was his frequent use of the saying It is better to light one candle than to curse the darkness that I remember best.
These days I have little truck with the Church. Any organization that in more than forty years has still not dealt with the sexual abuse of children committed by its clergy … well … that’s simply too long for the organization to be taken seriously.
However, I loved and still love the saying. Sheen used it to encourage people to take positive action rather than just lament the problems. It’s kind of a restatement of the glass-half-full versus glass-half-empty dichotomy.
That’s what we are trying to do in our work with the organization Indivisible. Light a candle here and there … it’s not that we are not doing our share of creative caterwauling these days as well, but doing just that never leaves us feeling clean, but disturbed instead.
In the past month Robin and I been instrumental in organizing three food collection drives for local food banks. The format is simple. We round up a couple of helpers, and then get permission from a local grocery store to set up a table on the sidewalk in front of of the store. We bring along a bunch of cardboard boxes, make a few signs supporting the task, and then suggest to people as they are going in to buy their groceries that they might pick up a little something for those who have been thrown under the bus by today’s politics.
We print out and give them this shopping list at right to use as a guideline, which some helpful soul created and put on the internet. After several hours we take what we have collected to food banks in Montrose. That’s it. To us, each time is lighting one candle. It’s not heroic, it’s not a big deal, but it’s a small positive step.
Far better would have been for the incompetent clots in Congress to have maintained the SNAP program, but hey … we work from where we are with what we have.
BTW. If you have need for a checklist like this one, go to this website and download the PDF. It is totally free, and very helpful. People seem to appreciate the guidance it provides.
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I went looking for a Thich Nhat Hanh quote for this Christmas, and I found quite a few. As most of you know he was one of the people whose writings have been most instrumental in forming my own approach to Buddhism.
He was very much of the mind that there was no conflict between Buddhism and Christianity, that they complemented one another. He even wrote a book entitled Going Home: Jesus and Buddha as Brothers.
Anyway, here’s this year’s quotation from the small man with the big heart. It offers what is definitely a “one size fits all” gift.
If you love someone, the greatest gift that you can make to him or her is your presence. If you are not there, how could you love? And therefore, the most meaningful declaration when you are in love is this: ‘Darling, I am there for you.’ Your presence is very important for him or for her. And that cannot be bought with money.
Thich Nhat Hanh
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We age our pets Poco and Willow by going back through our photos and seeing in what year they first appeared. Poco’s being the eldest and his problems with aging have been in the forefront for quite a while now, and we’ve somewhat ignored the younger and more vigorous Willow.
So it was startling to check last week and find that she had joined our little family as a kitten nine years ago, making her 56 cat years old.
Here is a photo of the pair of them in December of 2016. Willow is now at the long end of middle age!. No wonder she is beginning to take longer naps and wants to be petted more often.
I have the very same issues.
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The button view today … I Believe In America … some of you might recognize it as the opening line from the movie The Godfather, the accented voice coming at you from a darkened screen.
I chose it because it reflects how I feel today, and have for most of my adult life. Not the grotesquerie that I am living in at present, but an America where millions of people were clumsily moving degree by painful degree toward a just and rational society.
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Little Home In The Valley 
Interbeing, by Thich Nhat Hanh, which is on engaged Buddhism, is a favourite book of mine.
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One of the cool things about this guy, who wrote more than 100 books, is that at whatever level one’s interest is in Buddhism, he is ready to meet you there. Never talking down to you, never patronizing. And of course, being an engaged Buddhist is the reason he had to go into exile from Viet Nam. None of the parties involved in that war were receptive to those social teachings. Didn’t fit their narratives.
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Exactly. A splendid example. And he certainly sounded like an all-round nice guy.
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