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Guatamala Visit to CETNA School

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Hope happiness and song rise from the students of the CETNA School, Parramos Guatemala. Lorraine and I joined our Nassau Presbyterian Church mission team to visit the school to which we’ve been contributing – where students and faculty exuberantly welcomed us with a parade of home made flags and dances.   While outside these walls lies a reality of harsh relentless labor and subsistence economics, within springs an oasis of joy and aspiration.  We painted the building & repaired with the parents; worked and played with the students, while our three doctors set up a clinic.  The takeaway: delight in each day and happiness of spirit do not require a land of plenty.

Antigua Guatemala.  Mauela planted, grew, and picked the cotton, spun it into theads, grew and harvested the herbal dyes, colored each of the bright strands you see, then on her backstrap loom she weaves a magnificent and highly artistic cloth.  Imagine the pride. Her products are sold at the local women’s cooperative which we visited on our Nassau Church mission trip to the CETNA school with whom we partner.  Are our own lives to

Lorraine’s camera takes a bead on a shy parrot in the forest surrounding the Fuego Volcano, while Bart runs off to swim in the nearby lake.

 

My Pride is Showing

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Americans are not a resigned people.  We have never gone sheepishly into that dark pit of oppression – be it monarchy, corptocracy, or any other thug.  Those brave individuals who took that dangerous step of cutting ties with the empire of England, were, I believe, very much like the best of us today.

On July 4th, as they set pen to Thomas Jefferson’s masterful declaration of Independence, each one was painfully aware of his signature’s significance.  Yes, they were proclaiming their beliefs in their compatriots in this land – and the people of all lands.  Yet they also realized the personal sacrifice involved.  This paper proclaimed their willingness to immerse themselves in an undeniable declaration of war.  Their families, their lands, their holdings would all come under attack, and life as they knew it would never be the same.  And they signed it boldly all the same.  And the war did come.   It was a war that marked this people’s – this new nation’s – zero tolerance of oppression.  It demonstrated to a weary world their instant willingness to gather and kick back against those who would trample their freedoms for the benefit of English merchant princes.

This day, as in every age, oppressors rise up among us.  There seems to be never any shortage of conniving people who place personal enrichment over the common good.  And once more, my fellows in this America take aim at the oppressors and fight the injustices as they see them arise.  So on this July 4, 2018, I am grateful to be an American, grateful for the freedoms that were won for me by our nation’s founders, and ever after.

But much more, I cannot but help feel a powerful surge of pride to be part of those Americans of today who, as we speak, are continuing to set their pens to Mr. Jefferson’s Declaration.  No, not all Americans join this fight.  Even during the American Revolution, nearly two thirds of colonials remained loyal to the British monarch.

Yet by the millions Americans continue to set their muscle, time and resources in the fight to sustain a just society.  Their methods and causes are numerous.  You can find them everywhere.  Our zero tolerance for oppressors continues.  And that, my compatriots, makes my heart soar with hope on this Independence Day. 

– Bart Jackson

 

 

This Glorious Easter Morn

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I have risen with the sun and lifted my arms high in appreciative salute to Helios as he pushes through the clouds and over the trees.  Soon my bride and I will head off for Nassau Presbyterian Church, don our choir robes and I, with more gusto than talent, will bellow forth my favorite hymns, with such treasured lyrics as: “…bid the grim demonic chorus Christ is risen, Get you gone….”  Oh yeah.  Today the good guys are winning.

Sweet Spring has drawn our weary heads out of the winter of our discontent and her first teasing perfumes resurrect new hopes in all of us.  ‘Tis the season that has prodded poets’ pens throughout the ages.  (You will not be subjected to my Persephone’s Return poem conjured for my bride this morning.) But allow me, if you will, to pass on to you one fervent seasonal wish:  May you resurrect Hope within your own life.

There are indeed more people who want to help you than hurt you.  Our own culture bulges with public servants and private donors and good-hearted souls who are contributing to their planet and fellows.

Why not find and celebrate them?  Whether you join them or not remains, of course, your choice.  Yet, may you be aware of all the good that the fellows of your species are doing.  As always, there is great money and great sources of power to be had by stirring up our fears.  Those who lay out an array of threats are legion.  But in the end, despair is simply an inaccurate vision.  Hope has the majority on its side.

So as the season comes into full flower, may we all bid the grim, demonic chorus Hope is risen, get you gone.

Oh, and to my atheistic buddies who will doubtless greet me on this particular Easter with, “Christ is risen – April Fools!” I get the joke.

Wishing you every success,

 Bart Jackson

 

An Invitation to Walk

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I would like to invite you this Friday, March 30th to take a walk – but not with me, and not with anyone else.  For many of the Christian faithful, today is Good Friday, a culmination of the Lenten season.  For us, these previous 40 days have served as a period of thoughtful reflection.   Time set aside to take stock: look at what we have done, discover what has driven us to do it, and decide which path in heaven’s name do we want to take now.

Four hundred years before the itinerant Galilean preacher Jesus took his path to Jerusalem, Socrates, another great and compassionate thinker also facing death for his disruptive ideas, stated, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”   It is with that goal of reflective self-scrutiny that I invite you to set aside some time and take this very vital walk with the most important person on your life – yourself.  Leaving devices, notebook, and pressing responsibilities behind, why not walk a little deeper into your life.  With the innocence of you the child, and the accrued wisdom of you the sage make that solitary stroll.

Spring everywhere makes hints of new hope and high promise.  Signs of new life emerge all around us.  Might this not be time to resurrect some old dreams, fashion some new ones, and plan for more fulfilling days ahead?

Wishing you every success, Bart Jackson