Reflections on a decade just ended:

 I started this blog in June of the first year of the decade just ended, June 2, 2010, to be specific. As I recall, I started it when Sover.net (my email server) got upset with me because a group email I had sent out had been treated as SPAM by many of the email servers of the persons I had sent it to. When this happens, Sover.net stood to lose something that was very important for them (I forget just what that was) and consequently if it happened again, they would cancel my account. What I needed to do was to get written permission from each recipient to receive a group email from me. I actually did that, and sent out at least one more group email from the road (we were making a trip to Alpine, WY at that time), but someone recommended that I start a blog as an alternative to group emails, and that is what I did. The advantage is that I have avoided the above problem; the disadvantage is that not everyone in the original group email list bothers to read my blog. So a big thanks to YOU, my faithful readers.

June 2010 was a momentous time. The Deepwater Horizon oil gusher off Louisiana,  which ultimately released 5,000,000 barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, was in progress and in June, no end was in sight. It looked like an apocalyptic time - what if it never ended? - and my earliest posts dealt with "thinking the unthinkable." I had also just read a biography of John Brown which I had found on a visit to Harper's Ferry on the way out to Wyoming, and I was struck by the parallels between Brown's fight against slavery and the fight that needed to be mounted against the burning of fossil fuels.  Would Brown's militant tactics against slavery be justified today?  Ten years later, it is still a question. We have in many ways slid backwards in the intervening time.

A lot of other things were happening that year in my life. My granddaughter, Katie, graduated from high school and went off to college, and I started a project of sending her the transcribed and annotated letters home of her grandmother, Shirley, who had gone off to Wellesley 60 years earlier that fall.  I continued that project for over five years - past Shirley's  graduation, and Katie came to feel that her grandmother was a friend. That fall we also discovered the connection of Ellen's family - the Tolles family - with Wethersfield, VT where I preached a sermon on John Brown! Three generations of Tolles ancestors are buried in Wethersfield that  Ellen had previously known nothing about.

Ten years later - I'm sort of amazed to still be here, still writings posts, still working on projects, still trying to fight the good fight in whatever ways I can. Much has changed dramatically, especially in the national political arena, but much is also unchanged, and even more, much has been revealed about the nature of our country which was true ten years ago but we were rather naively unaware of it. Getting things out into the open is ultimately for the good, I think, but it makes clear what a huge task we have to make things right! I still have hope that we can, but it is also true that much has been broken that may indeed never be the same again. That's the way it feels right now, anyway.

So -- "Happy New Year "  feels a bit glib. How about "Courageous New Year!"  ?  That the decade opening before us will prove to be momentous, I have no doubt.  But in what  way?

One interesting little footnote. Ellen and I watched an Orson Welles movie back in 2010 titled, The Magnificent Ambersons, (1942)   and it contained this dialogue (quoting my post at the time) :

" George Miniva (arrogant young heir of the Amberson fortune), speaking to George Morgan (auto inventor, manufacturer, very nice guy, who is in love with George Miniva's mother and wants to marry her, but son George hates his guts): "Automobiles are a nuisance, they had no business being invented." George Morgan (after a shocked silence around the table at this offensive remark made right to George Morgan's face): "Well, I'm not sure but what he may be right about automobiles. For all their speed forward, they may be a step backward for civilization. Maybe they will not add to the beauty of the world or the life of men's souls, I'm not sure. But automobiles have come, and almost all outward things are going to be different because of what they bring. They are going to alter war, and they are going to alter peace. And I think men's minds are going to be changed because of the automobile. But you can't have the immense outward change that they will cause without some inward ones, and it may be that George is right, and that the spiritual alteration will be bad for us. Perhaps 10 or 20 years from now, if we can see the inward change in men by that time, I shouldn't be able to defend the gasoline engine, but would have to agree with him, that automobiles had no business being invented."

Amazing words for 1942! Bravo Orson Welles! Well, now, almost 70 years later, with consequences Orson Welles could not have imagined, all the more pertinent words. Will this utterly catastrophic oil gusher be the thing that finally causes us to change our behavior and end our dependence on oil? "

Ten years later, we know that the answer to that question was, sadly, was a resounding "No!"

So...


               Courageous New Year!



A further P.S.

John and Cynthia have created a video with beautiful winter scenes and music from their recent Into the Silence program. It is stunningly beautiful.

Try the following link:


https://youtu.be/6Dw8YkN5diU

A scene from the Into the Silence video