Greeds and Needs

I have been reminded again in the past week of both greeds and needs in our global society. While watching television late one night, I saw a spot discussing designer purses with the brand name of Mulberry in London with a price tag of between $42,000 and $50,000. According to the piece, the Mulberry is the latest "must have" bag for women of distinction.

On the other side of the coin, I was also thinking last week about the great sacrifices our pastors and missionaries make both in the United States and abroad. One of my former students from John Brown University dropped by our house for an overnight visit. She is now living in North Carolina but has been reared in Kenya in a missionary family since the age of seven. She turns twenty-one in a couple of weeks. While she was with us, she remarked that our house was "the nicest place I have ever stayed." I was a little bit shocked I have to say in my American middle class complacency. Later, as we went to a late lunch at Cheers, our local favorite neighborhood restaurant, she spoke of her life in Kenya and that she and her family did not have running water at their compound, which is located north in the country just south of Ethiopia and Sudan and west of Somalia. She and the three other siblings often had the responsibility to fill up their water containers from afar. Yes, they have their basic needs met of food, shelter, and clothing but certainly have lived for years in a country without the greeds that we have been so accustomed to in our part of the world.

Teej, as Julie's nickname goes, is now living in North Carolina, working at McDonalds, and saving her money so that she will not go into debt for the remainder of her undergraduate degree. She carries on a long distance relationship with a student she met at John Brown University. He is a native of Central America. Together they both long to go to Israel for missionary opportunities. Sponsoring mission organizations simply will not appoint new missionaries if they are in debt. Her grandfather, a pastor on a Cherokee reservation in Robbinsville, North Carolina, has also come from a long line of missionaries and pastors. It seems that several generations of the Teasdale family have given up their greeds in order to serve others.

Today, as I look at the dashiki Teej gave me two years ago after a trip with her fellow students through Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi, I think once more of our great wealth here in America. Our retirement house is modest by most standards and unlike our "dream" home we still own in Siloam Springs with its custom-built features, wood floors, and large one and one-half acre wooded lot. The dashiki is a brightly colored tunic-style shirt that one wraps around her. It has colorful motifs and fringe around the neck and borders. The dashiki can be worn with brightly colored pants and a hat as an outfit. It has even gained popularity in America during the 1990s! Today I look at it and value it more dearly than a mere $42,000 Mulberry purse.

The Real Secret

Rhonda Byrne has recently published a book entitled The Secret that has become incredibly popular. She purports to share "the secret" with all those who read it. It is, of course, the secret to receiving vast amounts of wealth, health, and happiness. As I think about this topic, I also remember another popular bestseller within the Christian community a while back. It is The Prayer of Jabez by Bruce Wilkinson. Based upon a prayer in the Bible from I Chronicles, Chapter 4, it says this: "And Jabez called on the God of Israel saying, 'Oh, that You would bless me indeed, and enlarge my territory, that Your hand would be with me, and that You would keep me from evil, that I may not cause pain.' So God granted him what he requested." It seems that many of us are looking for a simple formula that will ensure us all the blessings possible. I believe this formula changes over time as we get older.

For our three year old grandson, Charlie, the formula for happiness comes through receiving toys that he doesn't have at the moment. For example, he has recently become a Star Wars aficionado. Since our move last year to Little Rock, I had saved a box of our son's action figures and fighter vehicles from 1977. I cleaned these up, after collecting dust for thirty years in our attic, and gave them to him. He was excited for about thirty seconds, and then his attention turned to the the color brochure I had also saved which listed all the action figures possible, as well as other toys in the series. He immediately decided that he needed a C3po and a land rover to make his happiness complete.

For our eight year old granddaughter, Caitlyn, the formula for happiness comes through having friends and thinking of ways she can help other people. I have really loved watching this new developmental change within her as she has turned recently from Charlie's formula to a new one for herself. Developmental psychologists tell us that age eight is the time to observe this shift from children's obsession with themselves more toward altruism. We are planning a short trip together during her spring break, and she is excited about choosing small presents for each of the seventeen cousins she will visit in Texas.

For Garlan and me in our thirties, the formula for happiness came from not only buying all the firsts we had never owned in college, i. e. two cars, house, furniture, and fold-out camper, to being successful in our respective careers as comptroller and secondary school teacher. We found somehow that happiness still eluded us, however, with the pressures of combining two careers with good parenting.

For us now in retirement, the formula for happiness centers on enjoyment of the leisure time we have together. We know these are precious moments and that we are approaching in a few years the biblical life span of "three score and twenty." If we are blessed by God to have more time, we hope to continue to travel to Seattle to see our grandson, Cole, and our daughter, Kimberly. We hope to continue small trips around the state of Arkansas with Caitlyn and Charlie, as we have in the last couple of weeks, to see the Old Mill in North Little Rock and to dig for diamonds at the Craters of Diamonds State Park. In short, happiness when one is in her sixties means family. That's the "real" secret.

Better Places

The announcement was buried, as they say, in today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. It was on page 7B in the bottom left hand corner. It told of the Women's International Day to be held tomorrow in Little Rock to protest the war and to celebrate women's achievements. I wondered how, in the capitol city of Arkansas, the event could receive so little attention. Have we become so passe that neither war, nor a celebration of gender, can take us away from our own sacrifice for the war: rampant consumerism? Our men and women are dying in Iraq and Afghanistan while we buy gourmet dog snacks for our pets. I confess these two images are from a recent sermon by Dan, one of Trinity Cathedral's pastors.

I have never quite gotten myself to the point though where I can be a protester in public. I guess I dread being hauled away by the police and seeing the video later of myself being carried away by two big hulking representatives of the law. I have certainly had plenty of chances to become involved. After all, Garlan and I were students in college in the 1960's during Viet Nam, and I would have been much more unobtrusive then among thousands of people rather than now, with a mere 50 women in pink expected at tomorrow's event.

While I cannot protest with others, I will "take the easy way out" and offer a protest, not with pen and quill of the past, but with the computer keys:


Better Places

The Mantras

I. - Spring

Outside the fragrant breeze parted the curtains of the
miniature house into which it blew.
A man and his son silently watched as a pair of robins
repeatedly pecked the March grass beneath their beaks.
The television carried the Presidential speech:
“The world will be a better place;
It is better to fight them there than in the streets of America.”
The son rose, turned on the lamplight, and said,
“I must go.”

II. – Summer

He read his novel by the flickering lights on the army base.
Would he, like Tolstoy, also see a red flower blooming in the desert tomorrow,
or was that simply a romantic vision only?
He was about to extinguish his reading light when
The commander hurled himself into the barracks, barreling out his words:
“Soldiers, we leave the base at 0:500; I want you to know
Iraq is going to be a better place because you men of honor
have chosen to serve your country.”

III. – Fall

He slumped in his wheelchair as he tried to focus on the autumn trees
outside his window at Building 18.
The leaves dropped one at a time before his uncomprehending eyes.
He placed his hand upon the left side of his skull,
and felt the softness underneath his bandages.
“Don’t worry, soldier,” the attendant seemed to be moving his lips,
“We are going to move you to a better place soon.”

IV. – Winter
The barren landscape of the day surprised even the most hearty
of the farmers at the graveside service that day.
The father sat with the folded American flag in his lap,
running his fingers gently over the stars.
No bird sang; no leaf fell.
The people flowed past them
one by one, all repeating the same words,
“He is in a better place.”