Caring

President Obama shared this gem with us in recent months:

“Unless you are one of the first Americans, unless you are a Native American, you came from someplace else. That’s why we've always defined ourselves as a nation of immigrants. And we've always been better off for it.”

This quote and others like it have niggled my mind off and on for many years. It is of interest simply because of the stark realization that most Americans are immigrants. In fact a tiny, tiny portion of our population is related to Native Americans – people who inhabited the North American Continent before it was even named.

Native Americans. Amerindians they were called once – and that white-man-centered even then! But even the native Indians of this continent were immigrants. Eons ago it is believed they arrived here from what is now Mongolia or northern China. They walked to the continent over a land bridge that then connected Asia and North America land masses. They drifted southward to warmer climates and survived the ice age.

Later, 11,000 years later they colonized and expanded their population in central and north American regions. These were the peoples displaced by European explorers and rulers – queens, kings and non-royal marauders alike -  as they sought land, treasurer and trading routes to enrich their rule.  We call this Western Civilization when we feel grand! Nonetheless history informs us Europeans entered the ‘new world’ carrying pestilence, plague, violence and death to natives. Some hundreds of years later we narrowly call ourselves the natives and limit new immigrants.

Disingenuous? More than a little!  There is so much we can learn from those who were truly native to our land. Even more can we learn from our forebears. The question is – do we learn those valuable lessons?

I think not or else immigration reform would be much easier than it is. The politics would melt away.

On a different theme, this was found recently as an anonymous gift from the internet:

            “Never get tired of doing little things for others;

             Sometimes those little things occupy the biggest of their hearts.”

I offer this idea for consideration because it looms large at this moment in our nation. Spring storms – especially tornadoes – visit violence, destruction and death upon us. The recent Oklahoma tornadoes are still being measured for their wind speeds and destruction. The dead and injured are still being removed from piles of wreckage.

Our natural instinct is to help. Respond to human need. Approach the victims with hugs, a helping hand, food, water, shelter and clothing. Then a great deal of nurture to help them restore a semblance of normalcy. And lots of help rebuilding homes, neighborhoods and communities.

It is a natural thing we do in these situations. We do it for victims of forest fires, hurricanes, earthquakes, too. We respond with human caring.

When the natural calamity is over, there remains much left to do. Helping people pick up the remnants of their lives and move on to a new future. It is not easy work for them to do; that is why they need our helping hand.

Still later, when natural disasters are not the creating victims, there are millions of people in need. These are the ill, impoverished, halt and lame living among us. These too are the addicts and mentally ill. Many people in need. How do we attend to them?

Although the problems appear enormous there is a simple method we can all use – “doing little things for others” as the quotation above states. We can do this every day in many little ways. We can share a meal with someone without food; or take in an acquaintance who is temporarily without shelter. We can donate unused clothing so others may find use for it. An unused bicycle may be needed transportation for an adult without a car, or pure joy for a youngster without a bike. Baby sitting a young mother – single parent – so she can hold down a job and support her struggling family.

Little acts of kindness. Simple gifts of time or goods to make someone else’s life a little easier. And of course the resultant building of community all of this work helps nurture.

We are in this together. We are of common heritage regardless of the generation or millennia we inhabit. We are Americans with common purpose. Hopefully it is not selfish. With love we create new hopes and new tomorrows. For all to enjoy and benefit from.

This is our calling. To care for each other. Hurricane Sandy reminds us of this. So do Oklahoma tornadoes, and Kansas, and Illinois, and…  All of these are opportunities to re-establish the ground rules of our caring for one another. May we earn our stripes fresh each day!

May 24, 2013