Graf Kids Summer 09
All is quiet on the home front up here in northern Wisconsin. My three grandchildren are in bed, TV and video games are off and it is deeply dark outside.
I checked out the remains of our two rows of cow manure with working worms in them and the worms are still working. Hopefully we can expand and develop this casting-making enterprise this year. Also when my friend Prasad was in town yesterday he promised, once more, to connect us — my son, the dairy farmer across the road and myself — with the technology persons in India who turn cow dung into energy, Poop to Power, in an affordable way. Hopefully we someday can use these working milk cows’ dung to turn on the lights in a few homes.
The silence of tonight is in sharp contrast to all the talk of last night at this time when I was at a local peace group’s steering committee meeting. There was a lot of talk but left the meeting feeling like it was a waste of time. Hitting baseballs to my grandsons tonight, at least trying to hit the ball with the bat, seemed more meaningful tonight than this meeting. Certainly the silence of the moment is more peaceful.
At our gathering Monday to meet with Prasad we talked about importance of meaning in our lives. Sometimes we put a lot of meaning into one person, like our spouse or into raising our children, and when the spouse dies or the children grow up and are independent, meaning suddenly disappears.
Yet we need meaningful work or relationships in our lives. This might explain why playing with my grandchildren feels more meaningful than talking about a lot of ideas and concepts without taking any action.
I remember a pastor I worked for in a church telling our youth group at a retreat that we all need something meaningful and worth dying for in our lives. Principles, as people, can be worth dying for but the principles must be embodied in our beings. Concepts and words only have meaning when we live them and put them in our lives’ actions. We struggle to say as Gandhi did: “My Life is my message. You must be the change you wish to see in the world.” The more we can say, “my life is my message”, the more meaningful our lives will be.
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