Our beloved island is birthing spring! Azaleas and rhododendrons are lavishly pink
and purple. Lilac buds are getting
ready. A great blue heron surveys its
realm from the shore of the pond,
standing on one leg. “Pinkletinks”, tiny
frogs that inhabit the damp low places, are singing their ecstatic chirping
songs. We open our car windows as we drive so we can hear their invisible
presence and feel the joy. A pair of
fluffy white “pillows” float on the pond - two majestic swans - their graceful
heads and necks submerged, grazing the bottom for breakfast.
With spring
comes the tell tale signs that our quiet winter, our time of rest and
restoration and recovery from the previous summer, is gradually coming to an
end. There are more visitors on the
weekends. Once again bicycles share the
narrow roads with auto and truck traffic.
The sounds of hammers and saws and the smells of fresh paint and
sawdust abound. Here and there the signs of “summer anxiety”
can be seen and heard.
For more
than fifteen years, a local restaurant has graciously provided an appreciation
dinner for the Island Food Pantry and Habitat For Humanity volunteers. The dinner has provided a public opportunity to express gratitude for
the service that volunteers provide. It
has had a practical business benefit too.
Each year the restaurant employs a number of temporary seasonal staff from several
countries in Eastern Europe. The appreciation dinner gives the restaurant an opportunity to do a “dry run” with their new employees before opening for the season.
The dinner
will not happen this year. Due to difficulties and delays in the getting visas,
the staff that the restaurant depends upon may not materialize this year. Delays are forcing the restaurant to open a
full month later than usual. Loss of
employees and loss of income for an island business make the issue of recent
government immigration policies a
reality “on the ground.” The same story
is told by numerous businesses around the island.

Meanwhile, our Sunday morning book discussion group is
reading “Reconnecting with Nonviolence”,
the 6th chapter in The Rebirthing of God: Christianity’s Struggle for New
Beginnings by John Phillip Newell. Newell reminds us that “There are angels of light and angels of
darkness in us all. One moment we may be
preaching nonviolence as the only true energy for real transformation in our
world. The next moment we may be
consumed by violence of heart. Sometimes
this is provoked by the most trivial of disagreements and at other times by
differences of real substance. But whether or not our violent feelings or
actions ever feel justified, that is never the place from which we can effect
real change if we are seeking world peace.”
These are
thoughts that our small community grapples with as we prepare to thread our way
through another summer replete with
heretofore unknown stresses created by forces and by decisions made in places far
beyond the reach of our own control and influence. In our microcosm we encounter, on a much
smaller scale, the same issues that
affect pretty much every aspect of life
in communities and nations around the globe where economic and immigration policies are determined by those who will be
least affected by the outcome of their decision making.
So - our summer challenge is to stay connected with one
another, to support each other in our determination to give the greatest power
to our angels of light, to maintain patience in the face of the frustrating encounters with immigration bureaucracies, to offer gracious hospitality and kindness, to stay
conscious of the fact that we are all living under the stress of the
unpredictable whims of power, to offer unconditional love to one another - -
and to roll down the car windows and listen for the sheer joy of the
pinkletinks.
Vicky Hanjian April 28, 2017
Vicky Hanjian April 28, 2017
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