July Open Spaces

 

Open Spaces

Vol. 21.7

By John W. Vander Velden

 

July is when summer really starts cooking. Most of us would agree that THIS July has been hot. Well for the most part anyway. It has been wet too. When you mix summer, hot weather, and multiple rains, you get one of the seasons less favorite visitors―mosquitos.

Break out the repellant!

Yet such is summer time for us here in north central Indiana, and we do our best not to allow the buzzing beasts or the afternoon rains stop us from doing some of the things we love. Jackie and I are both fully vaccinated against COVID and so our world is broader than it was last July. Even so we have not allowed our guard down completely, recognizing that the situation remains in flux and could change drastically.

Even so it feels liberating to move about at near to the life we had taken for granted. It is our hope that you too have been able to accomplish some of the things that you could not last year. I look forward to visiting with dear friends and relations in the months ahead, as well as the ability to travel again.

Our trip in late May to early June reminded us that things have not completely returned to a pre COVID state. Many places were understaffed as they tried to “get back on their legs” again. I am optimistic they will, but understand it takes time to recover from such a debilitating pandemic.

Yet the Delta variant reminds us that we are yet haunted by the COVID virus, so we still take care. Yes, our masks are often in our pockets, handy when needed. Washing hands and avoiding crowds ingrained into our behavior. As is using hand sanitizer. Things are better, much better, but it’s not completely better.

But because things in the pandemic department have improved so much, I wish you a happy summer and a healthy one as well for you and your family.

Now for a bit of writing news.

I had the vain expectation in finishing part three early next month. However I have had to do some back pedaling. I felt the need to insert a new scene, one I thought was important near the middle of that section of the book. That scene inspired other changes. A few lines here, a page there, you get the point. But I am moving onward friends.

So I come to the last portion of this newsletter. With all the hectic-ness of our world, especially during the summer, I hope you find a few moments of calm. And when you enter that quiet place, even if you must force yourself to do so, look around you at the wonders God has given you, places, people, things to do, and of course love. May the God that grasps the universe hold you gently, guide your steps, and protect you until we can meet face to face.

Blessings,

John

  

Time

 

Time            

        

 

By John W. Vander Velden

 

A beginning…an end. Is our need to measure so demanding that nothing escapes?  Do we limit our perception?  Are we unable to believe in more, being tied to the finite?  Is it simply a weakness of our mortality?  Yet time passes.  It passes slowly it seems while we watch…quickly while we are joyous.  It passes throughout the day with our knowledge.  Passes without our consent as we sleep.  Seconds become days…days become years…time waits for no one.  Yet life is so much more than the arbitrary.  Is it not beyond boundaries, measured by more than the clock and ruler?  Who truly knows our beginning…only God.  Only God measures our worth…a value more than a sum of ticks…  Valued through eyes that see beyond any limits…especially time.

 

 

(130 Words)         1-10-2012

Vast Spaces

 

Vast Spaces

By John W. Vander Velden

 

Growing up I thought I knew what the wide open country was. After all I am a country boy. The son of a farmer that chose for his life’s profession farming as well. I have always lived in the rural farm lands. Surrounded by fields with woods nearby to wander whenever I would want. Yes, my world was bound by property lines and pasture fences, but the space beyond was little different than the land I was free to tread. Though, growing up, I was not outdoorsy as my brothers, I valued the comfort of being surrounded by open spaces.

Perhaps that is why so many of my stories are set in rural areas. Because I not only know them best, but because I love them.

But it wasn’t until March of 1992 that I came to understand that the world I knew was not as broad as others. Jackie and I flew to Arizona. It was our first trip to the South West. It would not be our last. We left Phoenix in our rental car going north and a bit west on a two lane highway. Soon we had left what most would consider civilization behind. The road smooth and arrow straight across the desert of scrub brush and scattered bits of tall stiff grasses made up most of the vegetation that surrounded as we whizzed along toward mountains in the distance. The only mountains I had seen before were the Appalachians, those mostly tree covered masses of rock and soil of the eastern U.S.. I anticipated the chance to see the stony monstrosities of the Rockies.

The Arizona desert was an open world, but the extreme vastness did not register until after driving a road that led straight to the horizon for a full half hour, it yet stretched out as far as we could see. Yes, the mountains were closer.

They were not yet near.

It was at that moment I first understood just how vast many portions of our country was. I came to recognize that my own open areas were microscopic in comparison.

But now as I think about those vast lands of the Grand Canyon State and my inability to comprehend their volume, I realize there is a very different vastness as well. For just as it took a trip to Arizona to generate a beginning of an understanding of the unimaginable open spaces, it takes a similar state of mind to comprehend the vast differences between each of us. Yes, there is much that every human has in common, but in each person is blended a unique mixture of life experiences. Those experiences are shaped by personal history, by economic status, by family, by faith, by location, family culture, by thousands of different things tossed together in infinitely different ways.

Too easy for us to think we know everything about another person. Even spouses that have shared years together cannot know every hidden place within their beloved. And yet we look to the neighbor next door and complain to ourselves over one thing or another while never taking a moment to attempt to understand the people at our doorstep.

And if our neighbor from time to time ruffles our feathers, how can we begin to grasp the vast differences between ourselves and those in faraway lands. To make judgments, attach blame, to belittle, and whether we recognize it or not, place ourselves superior.

Just as it took a trip to the South West to teach me how small my own physical world was, I must take a trip, or attempt to in any case, within the mindset of my neighbor. If I am to understand the lost, the hurting, the hungry, the abused, the neglected, the disenfranchised, the abandoned, the wrongfully prejudged, and the others who suffer, I must make the effort to see through their eyes, feel with their fingertips, walk in their shoes.

To me those actions are signs of love and extensions of myself. I know I will never be able to bridge the vast differences, but with love…real love, I can begin to build the first portion of a bridge of understanding.

For GOD so loved the world…not just the dirt, rocks, trees and lakes, but the people that move about HIS creation. God loves you, me, and everyone.

I mean everyone!

It is our obligation to try and reach across the vastness that separates, to care, to attempt to understand, to judge less, to be more patient…in other words…to love. 

(753 Words) 7-16-2021

More...

 

More…

By John W. Vander Velden

 

 

Too easily important things are taken for granted.  Too easily we place arbitrary value on the most significant.  Too easily we forget what things really mean… Two hundred and forty-five years ago, fifty-six men signed a bit of paper that changed the world.  Fifty-six men placed their lives and all they had on the line… How easily we forget.  How easily the hype of a holiday overshadows.  Our country certainly is not perfect.  It remains a growing experiment.  Years pass and challenges change but the dream remains.  The dream founded by those bold enough to stand…those bold enough to die.  A dream yet forming…a hope not yet completely fulfilled.  That dream need be remembered… honored… pursued…  For that dream is more than cookouts and fireworks…more than flag waving parades…more than marching bands and fire engines’ sirens…  In truth it is more than any of us can on our own achieve…but always remains within our grasp, if only we all reach with common purpose…  Is it not time to remember and more…to work with our neighbors…our fellow citizens…those close at hand and those further…to take that dream and together make it…more…  

 

(201 Words) 7-4-2012