Helpers -- April, 2011

"When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, "Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping."

Fred Rogers

Fred Rogers was an amazing man and I have quoted him before in my writing. I turned to him once again over these past several weeks to reflect on the meaning of the above quote. Its message gives me hope and helps me focus on positive action rather than fear and helplessness. I have thought about the viewpoint of "looking for helpers" when a catastrophe occurs and found great comfort in the perspective. I have speculated on how impacting being a helper is. Helping is not only being at the site of a disaster it is also doing whatever you can from right were you are.

Helping can constitute many actions. The first and very powerful action to help is immediate prayer and mediation. Pray for understanding, pray for healing and pray for enlightenment.  Another obvious action is to contribute money and time. Yet another way to be a "helper" is to elevate your own expectations of how you interact with your immediate world. Be kinder, laugh more, give more and expect less. Give in whatever way you can. Learn from your mistakes. As we each begin to do so we will create a conscious vibration of leaving behind the past errors and creating a new world where we grow in wisdom through experience rather than just repeating the same old thing over and over again. A gentler, kinder world could begin to flourish.

When I first read the quote by Fred Rogers I remembered my early childhood Catholic upbringing. In the Roman Catholic catechism, the theological booklet given to all young Catholics, we were asked: "Where is God?" The answer: "God is everywhere." I struggled with that answer as I matured and began to question the rote response. How can that be? How could God be in ugly places like war zones and death camps and earth disasters. In reading Fred Roger's recollection of solace from his mother I saw the answer to "Where is God?" in a novel way. God is in the helpers rushing to bring aid when the unexplained, the devastating and the horrible occur. And they are everywhere even in the most awful places and awful times.

We live in a world of Ying and Yang. Nothing exists without its opposite. So just as the world seems to be shearing apart it is also being put back together. Just as life seems to be spinning out of control people are joining together to bring healing and repair.

Acting as a helper takes the courage to remain centered in the belief that love will triumph over evil, that good will win over bad. But rather than spending time in that philosophical debate I prefer to focus on my world and what I can shift and alter. I aspire to stretch farther than I have ever thought possible in order to claim the role as "helper."

Love and light,
Nora

I reach out to others with love and kindness, what I do matters.

The Train Ride

I am traveling north from NYC on the noon train and if we keep to schedule in just a little over 2 hours I will arrive in my hometown. Looking out the window there are times when it seems that just the tiniest sliver of land separates the train car from the ice laden river alongside me. It thrills me. I have prepared for this, dashing onto the train to ensure a seat on the left hand side, the window seat with the Hudson River view.

A Canadian goose, frightened into flight, flies parallel to my window slowly losing ground falling back, back and away but not before I watch it's wings gracefully beat against the winter wind.

I contemplate the river. The January ice is multicolored, patches of wavy aqua marine stretch into navy and mushy gray. I imagine walking across the ice to reach the opposite riverbank but notice places where channels have been cut by river barges. The water is choppy and a steely black.

I watch from the window as we chug past a cookie-cutter park with a jogging trail snaking along the river side. A parka-clad woman throws a frisbee into the air. Her border collie leaps capturing the spinning disk with sheer joy oblivious to wind or temperature. Their breath makes little clouds of moist air. A walker walks, heaving himself into the wind with great strides on the charcoal path of concrete slicing through the still-white snow.

I pass gingerbread houses from Victorian times with puffing chimneys and streets bathed in winter sunshine. Giant maples reach their bare branched fingertips up to touch the sky in what seems to me like praise. Or are they pleading for something? I wonder.

West Point sits on the edge of a cliff like a fortress impenetrable in sand-blasted stone holding the secrets of lost decades.

We follow the river as ancient mountain ranges rise up in their wintry majesty. The Catskills home of lore and legend and in the distance the Adirondacks soar misty blue and mysterious.

Croton on the Hudson, Garrison, towns fly by with names plucked out of a Norman Rockwell painting. We blink past Wappingers and Poughkeepsie, towns christened after the native Indian tribes who for so long held a peaceful pact with the land they roamed.

Even though I now live among palm trees and gulf breezes the Hudson River landscape resides within me. It stirs my heart with something much deeper than nostalgia. I still believe that something magic lies hidden in the foggy mist that rises from the river in early morning, that the steepled, old graying towns, the winding roads and the arching railroad trestles hold secrets yet undiscovered. It seems to me that something mysterious and altering resides there waiting for me to discover it. These visions and vistas whisper that I am not alone; that I belong, that I am a part of something ancient and holy and that it is a part of me.

As the train slides into the depot I watch a hawk soar into the slanting afternoon light. I breathe a sigh from deep within. I am home.

Nora Hooper