Learn from the elders

At a recent conference we were discussing the responses to our current financial and political dilemmas.  The facilitator reminded us that when folks who have survived the Great Depression, Pearl Harbor Day and World War II hear people now in their 30's or 40's or 50's  lamenting today's challenges, they say something like "You haven't seen anything yet." 

Wow... that is hard to believe.  I don't know about you, but nearly every person I know has "seen" resources and possibilities dissolve from life's radar screen in the past few years.... and these elders tell me "you really haven't seen anything yet"????? 

What can we learn from those who lived through those years?  Of course, I know that not everybody did make it.  I know of far too many cases of collapsed lives and relationships, of devestation and death that occurred between 1929 and 1945.  However, I also am blessed and encouraged by stories told by some of my aging friends and relations who survived and at a deep level, even thrived.  The majority of them point to faith as the balm for their parched existence during those years. 

When each day was characterized by "slim pickin's"  and when families knew the meaning of "waste not, want not", folks appreciated the power of "making do..."  Whatever was available was shared.... and for people of faith, the sharing unfolded following the age old prayer:  For what we are about to receive, we give thanks.  People may snigger at our elders who saved every piece of string, every dripping from the bacon, every rubber band.....  but they knew that nothing given should be discounted...that there is no economic or material artesian well. 

I give thanks today for the testimony of people who walked the earth during the middle of the 20th century and who are still modeling abundant gratitude in the midst of scarcity.   Perhaps we are only in the first leg of the worldwide economic crisis... perhaps the financial, political and environmental shockwaves will continue to reverberate.

Faith opens up new hope, though.  We know that somewhere deep within life's surface there is water flowing...   even in the dryest regions of life where we are parched and barren, "something new" is being given.

When the poor and needy seek water,

and there is none,
and their tongue is parched with thirst,
I the Lord will answer them,
I the God of Israel will not forsake them.


I will open rivers on the bare heights,
and fountains in the midst of the valleys;
I will make the wilderness a pool of water,
and the dry land springs of water.


I will put in the wilderness the cedar,
the acacia, the myrtle, and the olive;
I will set in the desert the cypress,
the plane and the pine together,
so that all may see and know,
all may consider and understand,
that the hand of the Lord has done this,
the Holy One of Israel has created it.

                                           Isaiah 24: 17-20

I could be wrong, but I have a feeling that this was the kind of reading that filled the hearts and minds of the survivors of the Great Depression and World War II.  I have a feeling that reminding one another of whatever they did have was the key to their community's vitality.  I have a feeling that there is still much that we can learn from them.... because, perhaps, we truly have seen "nothing" yet.