Seek and find

Thursday, October 20, 2023

(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)

Seek and find

Brothers and sisters: what can we see that Abraham found?

Over time, especially the last two weeks, one thing Marc and I found is that all of us are related to Abraham. He had seven sons and a daughter, and those kids have scattered and their children have covered the earth.

In Niagara Falls a soft-spoken but persistent man from India asked us to sign his notebook with the word “Peace,” as many others signed before us. Then he asked us to print our names. Then he gave us wooden bead bracelets. Then he asked us for a donation and showed us previous pages where he had written $20 or $30 next to many of the names. We declined. He asked for our (his) bracelets back.

In Washington Square Park near NYU, Greenwich Village and Wall Street in Manhattan, beautifully dressed men and women were singing and chanting Hare Krishna songs, accompanied by a keyboard, drums and other instruments. Nearby a group of young Jewish men dressed in black and white carried beautiful flowers and looked to the crowd for likely donors. A few steps away grizzled chess players waited for someone to play. “I’ll play anyone,” Chess Charlie called out to us.

On the way northeast from the Amtrak station at Albany, we stopped in Port Henry, NY for gas and ice cream. We ended up skipping the ice cream, but I soaked in the feel of the village and remembered the characters in Walter Edmonds’ book Drums Along the Mohawk, which rips away our school-day romantic thoughts about pioneer life during the Revolutionary War. Part of me was living two hundred and fifty years ago. We are all one river.

Along the Atlantic Ocean in Belfast, Maine, we sat outside on the waterfront and ate mussels,  chowder and very fresh lobster. Then we listened through the broad accents of two friendly natives about the times when they were growing up seventy years ago.

Belfast was the chicken capital of the world. The chicken factory, built next to the sardine factory, discharged all their waste (including thousands of chicken feet) every day into Penobscot Bay. Hundreds of fishermen on the footbridge caught mackerel, flounder, eels, crabs … all drawn to the chicken grease and innards.  They showed us the two pipes where the waste came out. This bonanza began to disappear after 1972’s Clean Water Act. Now in 2023 there are stories, but we didn’t sniff even a whiff of chicken along the gloriously blue bay.

Soon we headed on up the coast of Maine, and under a sweet Sunday sunset we crossed into Canada. To find and get to know more of Abraham’s children, all around.

Are not five sparrows sold for two small coins? Yet not one of them has escaped the notice of God. Even the hairs of your head have all been counted. Do not be afraid. You are worth more than many sparrows.

(Romans 4, Psalm 32, Psalm 33, Luke 12)

(posted at www.davesandel.net)

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