This month some of us have been remembering some very powerful and life-changing events. None of us will forget 9-11, and the tragedy which shocked the world, eight years ago.
In Britain we have also been remembering the outbreak of World War II, seventy years ago. People have asked why the seventieth anniversary? We all understand fifty, or a hundred, but it seems odd to make so much of this.
The answer is that the generation who lived it are passing away. Eighty years, and there will be far fewer. This year we also lost the last three men who fought in World War One. They were over 110 years old – a living history we are poorer without.
One of the newspaper articles I read reminded us of the spirit we had then, when for a brief while, Britain stood alone.
There was a spirit of courage, sharing, a defiant humour, a determination to survive, never to give up hope. It is good to be reminded of those days, of how little we had, and yet were so willing to share, to work without complaining, to make terrible jokes, to laugh and to weep together. People who thought of themselves as ordinary, millions of them, became extraordinary in the best possible ways.
One such person specifically remembered was Nicholas Winton, one hundred years old this year. Seventy years ago he was in Prague, and realized what was happening to Jewish people. He organized a train and rescued hundreds of children from death. He was a clerk at the British Embassy – who decided that he must save lives.
We celebrated that event this September. Sir Nicholas Winton, 100 years old, was at the station in London when another train arrived, carrying the same children, now old people, with children and grandchildren of their own, here in the country where they came as refugees, terrified, with labels pinned to them, never to see their parents again. But they were alive, and the future lay ahead of them.
Watching the reunion moved many of us to tears – me included. There is so much to be grateful for, a past to look back on with awe and respect. Will future generations look back on us with the same feelings? Have we preserved what we inherited, even added to it?
Sometimes I wonder if we let ourselves be too easily discouraged, complain about small things, allow modesty to be overdone and change into talking ourselves down and aiming far too low.
My father used to tell me 'never be ashamed of missing the mark, only of aiming too low'. Why should dreams be small? Are we not trying, wishing, hoping and working to become as God?
Which brings me to another amazing person. I imagine many of us will have read in the newspapers, or seen on television, the young Englishwoman, Hilary Lister, who is quadriplegic, having power to move only in her head, and who has sailed alone around Britain? I would be unable to do that safely, successfully, and afraid to try – and I am in pretty good health and have the use of all my limbs and faculties. All she can do is move from one straw to another with her mouth, and either sip or blow. And yet she has made that journey!
What is the human spirit capable of, where there is courage and will? Are not my troubles or disadvantages too small even to give a name, let alone to stop me? It is me who stops me – not circumstances.
The whole of life could be likened to setting out in a one-man boat, to sail beyond the horizon to a world of promise. We pass other boats on the way, but whatever they look to us to be, they are all really one-man boats, as alone as we are. We signal to each other, but ultimately we sail our own craft, and work our own passage.
Sometimes the current carries us, at other times we need to tack and veer across the wind, and make some hard decisions, sit up all night at the helm. Sometimes there is no wind and we have to row, at other times there are storms and we have to batten down the hatches, even do some bailing when the water comes in.
But if a quadriplegic can do it – can't we?
The third remarkable person is a friend of mine. She has just published a book about many of her experiences, and it touches on the stories of a number of extraordinary people she has known.
The title is 'Whisper my Name to the Grass', and it is available through Amazon.
The title comes from a remark made by a unique man, a professor in the Republic of Georgia in the Caucasus, at that time part of USSR. Political restrictions forbade him from leaving his country, but nothing could imprison his mind. He learned many other languages so that he might read the great writers in their original tongues, and feel closer to understanding their minds and hearts.
As my friend, Doris, was ending her visit with him in Georgia, he asked her next time she visited the Statue of Liberty to whisper his name to the grass on the earth there.
Do we truly understand the gift of liberty? Do we treasure it, prize it, use it to the full, honour it, and thank God for it? Do we spare a thought for those who gave their lives so that we might have it? And a thought for those who do not – and then give any effort to trying to extend it so they do?
Her book is the story of how she, as a seemingly ordinary mother of four, took her youngest daughters, teenage twins at that time, on a trip to Russia, and then from Russia to Georgia.
She saw the people, the countryside, the towns and cities with a vividness few writers can retell with such passion and beauty. She met and befriended amazing men and women, saw triumph and disaster, civil war and the striving to build a new nation. She saw the collapse of communism, did amazing humanitarian work, helping to get fire engines, food, medicines to where they were desperately needed. In the end she even became adviser to President Eduard Shevardnadze himself.
The book is full of amazing people, but in a way she is the most remarkable. She began as what may have seemed merely a housewife and mother, with the courage and curiosity to travel to the Soviet Union. She accomplished what might have seemed to be impossible.
She introduces us to people we will never forget. Just two very brief examples. The first was an old man who had given his whole life to Communism, made incredible sacrifices so his family after him could have a better life. Now Communism had fallen, collapsed in on itself. He was dying. How could his family tell him the truth, that all his effort had ended in nothing? Of course they hid it from him with careful, gentle lies. What else could anyone do? Thank God we have not been faced with such a grief.
The second old man was also dying, but hanging onto every last day, last hour, in the hope that he would live to see Communism fall! His family feared that he might not succeed, so they told him that it had already fallen, and celebrated with him!
His joy was so intense he found new strength, and survived another few days! Communism really fell! He asked what the cheering was about now. What could they say? They too had to lie, invent another cause for joy, and keep up the façade until a very short while later he passed away.
Glimpses into vital and passionate lives so unlike our own. People we will never meet in person, yet their dreams and lives and losses are just as real. We have more to thank God for than we realize, most of the time. We have treasures of peace and plenty, of freedom and knowledge, opportunity, beauty and wealth of experience that we barely grasp or understand.
We are NOT ordinary! We can be giants. We do not need to be handed opportunities, we can make them, seize them as they are passing us by, or go out and hunt for them.
We might be a simple clerk in an embassy, or a quadriplegic who can do little beyond sip and blow – and dream! Or a seemingly ordinary mother and housewife in Utah – but movers and shakers - the ones who have the dreams – if we choose to!
Choice – that is the gift our Father gave us from the beginning – even if it is as small as whether to sip or to blow – one can still move worlds!
