column about America

I have opportunity to visit with many different people. For this I am grateful....most of the time. However, lately I feel myself sometimes filling with despair. The news isn't good, the responses to the news are not good . I forget my prior resolution to put things in an historical perspective and think "this too will pass". It has helped during this fourth of July celebration to receive a wonderful book by a now local adventurer, Bill Chapman, who opened a photographic gallery three miles north of Hatch. In his young days, he build a raft and floated the Mississippi River from start to finish and also did it again thirty-two years later in 2002. His perspective is right soothing. Rivers can call up in us a strong, visual and emotional reminder that movement and change and flow is how it is. Sometimes the flow has to put up with obstacles, but it just keeps doing its thing--flowing. Freedom, prosperity, greed, restrictions, too many restrictions, a tantrum of some kind and then back to freedom's peaceful flow. I suppose it makes sense to sometimes just go fishing, commune with a river and wait. And sometimes it means it makes sense to step up and help boost our lot in the flow through the rapids. That is the hard part, knowing when it is our turn to paddle or boost. I have no easy formula to know that time. For some of us, we can only be cheerleaders. And cheer for America I choose to do. I like what was in our Lake Branch Church program last Sunday. It was written decades ago by the beloved American poet, Carl Sandburg. Here it is:
"I see America, not in the setting sun of a black night of despair ahead of us. I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun, fresh from the burning, creative hand of God. I see great days ahead, great days possible to men and women of will and vision."
Send suggestions to Veda Hale Box 956 Panguitch, Utah or email vedahale@hotmail.com