Inspiration from the Concord Bridge

Posted on October 25, 2011 by Sharon

Do you ever feel discouraged into inaction? Afraid to tackle something because it
seems mundane in the face of a greater problem?

The North Bridge in Concord is known in America as the site of the beginning of the
Revolutionary War in April, 1775.

British soldiers marched from Boston to this farm town in the middle of the night to seize “Ammunition, Provision, Artillery, Tents and small arms” collected by the colonists. Their goal was to arrive in Concord “with the utmost expedition and secrecy” but, as even today’s schoolchildren know, Paul Revere raced on horseback to warn the colonists that the British were on their way. Instead of being surprised, the colonists were prepared.
They gathered in the darkness on the high ground above the town, just over the
bridge.

A guide told us that these colonists did more than huddle in apprehension of the
approaching British troops. They went to work that night in the best way they
could figure out to defend their families and their homes. This is what they
did: The farmers dug holes in the dirt, something they needed no training to do.
They buried weapons and ammunition in the field near the bridge. The British
couldn’t seize what they couldn’t find. Here’s the field today.

The countryside is placid and quiet.

Is your life calm and peaceful? Or do you wait in the dark, knowing trouble is approaching, unsure of what to do? It’s easy to be paralyzed by fear in the night. Maybe there’s
something you can do — something to prepare, something to dig, something that’s easy but effective — while you wait for the dawn. Small acts may require great bravery.

The war would last for years; freedom for America has always come with cost. The
work of those colonists in burying and thus saving their arms was only a beginning, but how significant an action it was.

Is there something you could start on today? What can you do that may make an
inestimable difference?

Linking up with Texture Tuesday, hosted by Kim Klassen, who supplied the beautiful textures for these photos.

Good Reads: Learning from the Serum Run

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Sharon

The Cruelest Miles by Gay and Laney Salisbury

Need encouragement to just keep on doing what you need to be doing for another day? This book may be just the story to inspire you.

A diphtheria epidemic breaks out in Nome, Alaska in February, 1925. Medication is urgently needed, but blizzard conditions prevent delivery by air. The result is an epic effort by mushers and their dogs as sleds race across snow and ice with the precious serum.

Relay teams of dogs and drivers run day and night, covering 674 treacherous miles. Temperatures of 65 degrees below zero are recorded along the way. Sightings of the sleds are daily news as the nation follows the drama.

The authors convey the life-and-death undertaking in heart-pounding detail. In one leg of the journey, musher Leohnard Seppala attempts to cross frozen waters
when he hears a crack and realizes he and the dogs are floating on a block of ice out to sea. Nine hours later, his ice raft drifts towards a floe jammed against the shore. Five feet of icy water cascade between the team and the
floe. The plan: Get the lead dog Togo to the other side so he can pull the two chunks of ice together. Seppala “tied a long towline to Togo’s harness,
picked him up, and hurled him across the open channel. Once on the other side,
Togo dug his nails into the floe and lurched toward shore. The line snapped.
Togo spun around and looked back across the chasm at Seppala. The line slipped
into the water. Seppala was speechless. He had just been given a death
sentence. As Seppala stood staring across the lead at Togo, the dog dove into
the water, snapped the line up into his mouth, and struggled back out onto the
jammed-up floe. Holding the line tightly in his jaws, Togo rolled over the line
‘until it was twice looped about his shoulders’ and began to pull. The floe
started to move and Togo continued to pull until it was close enough for
Seppala and his teammates to jump safely across.”

On the seventh day of the run, the final relay team glided into Nome and delivered
the antitoxin. Every glass ampule of the serum arrived intact. The epidemic was
beaten.

The dogs of the last leg of the long journey were led by Balto. Today you can see a
sculpture of him in New York in Central Park. You can view an animated film
about Balto. What you learn by reading this researched account of the run is
that Balto ran a relatively short distance. Togo ran much farther in more
extreme conditions. He saved Seppala’s life. He should have garnered renown as the hero. Instead, the medals awarded to Togo hang around Balto’s neck in the bronzed version of the serum run.

The dogsled teams gave their all, risking their lives to save others. Fame proved fickle, but at the time no one thought of anything beyond the task. One musher summed it up: “I wanted to help.”

Seppala and Togo. Photo Credit: Ralph Morrill

Some days we may think we do our daily tasks and no one sees. We feel hidden in life’s snowy dark trails. This book reminds us to grab hold and wrap the figurative lifeline around our shoulders and dig in. Someone in our lives depends on this. That’s reason enough to keep on pulling.

Finding Lighthouses in a Forest

Posted on October 12, 2011 by Sharon

Do you ever feel like your life is on hold? Like you’ve lost momentum? Thinking you
were made to do something more, something great, but your potential is hidden
at the moment?

In a forest in Eastham, Cape Cod, you will find three matching lighthouses.

Why are they sitting in trees instead of perched on the shore? We know that
lighthouses should be on high bluffs visible from far out to sea. They were meant
to do great work, to shine bright and guide ships to shore and save crews from shipwreck.

These “Three Sisters” were built on the Atlantic in 1837. They did indeed
light the shore for more than a century. Seafarers knew where they were headed
when they spotted three lights together, rather than one or two. These sisters
served well. But Cape Cod is known for extreme weather and crumbling cliffs. Erosion
brought the sisters within eight feet of the cliff’s edge. A hundred years ago,
two of the lights were moved. Eventually the third was moved and a new light
was built further back on the bluff. It’s beauty has made it a model for
artists and postcards and potato chip bags.

The sisters are difficult to find today. A guidebook and diligent attention to
signage is necessary. Most tourists to this beach find only the picturesque newer
lighthouse. We joined forces with a couple of delightful travelers and together
we discovered the sisters in their quiet clearing.

The sisters have been restored, but two of them are missing their lights.

These lighthouses aren’t being used for their original purpose. But they are lovely.
They brought smiles to us who took the time to track them down. The peace of
this hidden patch of lawn graced by these sisters brightened the cloudy, drizzly day.

Maybe you aren’t where you’d hoped to be at this point. Maybe you wanted to be high on a bluff, seen by many. And you’re in more of a forest. And the light may be lost at the moment. You are still beautiful, though. To those who see you, you still shine.

Where are you sitting today? Are you hidden in some way? Or are you in a marvelous season on the bluff? Wherever you are, keep the faith; remember that to someone you are their light.

Good Reads: Sarah’s Key and Remembering What’s Important

Posted on October 10, 2011 by Sharon

Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay

Sarah’s story begins to surface when a journalist is assigned to research what happened in WWII in a Paris neighborhood 60 years earlier. The book alternates between the voices of the journalist and a young girl in wartime Paris named Sarah. We are there as Sarah’s family is rounded up on a sunny July day in 1942. She and her mother and father are held with hundreds of others in a velodrome. Without food and water for sweltering days, these Jews are then herded onto trains. Most of them end up in Auschwitz, where they are immediately killed. We hear the screams, we see the grime and blood, we feel the horror.

This pogrom is a fact of history; Sarah’s story is fiction based on this fact. Sarah
tries to save her little brother by locking him in a secret cupboard before
they leave for the velodrome. She puts the brass key in her pocket, thinking
she will return later that day after the threat is gone. She will save his life.
When it’s clear that she won’t be returning that day — or ever — she panics.
Her actions form the rest of the story, a mystery eventually unraveled by the
journalist. But the emotional cost of the discovery is great to many people
caught up in Sarah’s trials.

Journalist Julia, struggling with a failing marriage and pregnancy, comes to see that
nothing can surpass the value of one life. She sees the stark reality that time
may not heal the loss of a child. Those who know this can’t always explain it
but they bond because of their knowledge. As Julia uncovers layer after layer
of Sarah’s story, she finds courage to change her own life.

The goal of the author of Sarah’s Key is not to spin a tale of happily ever after.
The point is, rather, summed up in the speech of the French president decades
after the shameful day in 1942 when the French police “delivered those it protected
to their executioners.” The message is: “Remember. Never
forget.” The Sarahs and all those Jews in Paris and all the victims in
WWII and throughout history — every life lost precious. Every person alive
today is, too. You are. I am. This is what we should never forget.

*The movie adaptation of the book is in theaters now and is stunning. Here’s a preview.

Missing Hope

Posted on October 5, 2011 by Sharon

Hope is beyond what we can see. What we can touch, feel, know, smell, create may not
last. We can’t hope in these. Hope looks further. If we only look around at the tangible, we are missing hope.

A trip to The Old Town Cemetery in Sandwich, Massachusetts shows you where hope
is not. This graveyard opened in 1663. Its preservation of the record of lives
in the this small New England town isn’t encouraging.

Gravestones once carved with florid tributes to loved ones are now blank, all the carefully inscribed words lost to wear and weather.

Some stones are chipped.

Some tilt.

Some are almost overcome by encroaching grass and earth.

Stones fell and shattered.

Loved ones were buried without names here.

What started as planned rows and family plots are lost on the hodge-podge slopes.

The message of this place is that life is transient. Love etched in granite wears
away. Markers set in dirt sink.

The lake below the cemetery is still there, though, more than 300 years after the
colonists first laid their family members to rest beside it.

As water nourishes physical life, hope nourishes our souls. And hope is found in something bigger than we can see. Hope is possible because of faith. The colonists may have sung the old hymn that says, “O God, our help in ages past, our hope for years to come, be thou our guide while life shall last, and our eternal home.” With faith, hope
is carried beyond the graveyard, beyond the decay of earth. That is the hope that lasts. Wandering in The Old Cemetery of Sandwich on a cloudy autumn day brings this truth home.

Linking up at Ann Voskamp’s today.

Good Reads: The Grace of God by Andy Stanley

Posted on October 3, 2011 by Sharon

As we add years to life, we acquire labels. Some are labels to be proud of: graduate, husband or wife, scientist, writer, musician, mother or father. Some labels we’d just as soon peel off and discard but we can’t: unemployed, divorced, stubborn, chronically ill, alcoholic. Andy Stanley looks at grace and its intersections with labels. He goes through stories in the Bible and studies the people. For example, he relates the story of Rachel, whose label was ”harlot.” We learn about Rachel helping the Jewish spies. She’s praised in both the Old and New Testaments for her faith. We find no record that these men judged her, tried to change her lifestyle, or dismissed her as inferior.

The point of Andy Stanley’s book about grace is this: “The reality and the
embarrassment your label reflects is not an obstacle to God’s grace. You, like
Rachel, are invited, label and all.” We are all welcome to join God in a
relationship, no matter what labels we own or don’t own.

Grace “allows us to honestly face and carry our pasts but without being
controlled by them.” This book helps us take an honest look at living with our labels.

After showing grace in several Bible stories, Stanley summarizes his thesis on the
final pages of his book: “In God’s story, you are the focus of a celebration. Not what you’ve done. You.”

It may take a lifetime to begin to understand this truth; it will certainly take
constant work to extend this kind of grace to those around us. Nothing is more worth our focus day by day.

Disclosure of Material Connection: I received this book free from the publisher through the BookSneeze®.com http://BookSneeze®.com book review bloggers program. I was not required to write a positive review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.

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