"The root of all disturbance, if one will go to its source, is that no one will blame himself "-- Dorotheisis of Gaza, as quoted in a book entitled simply, "Dakota," by Kathleen Norris.
This book, "Dakota," is kind of a spiritual journey that a woman took who lived in New York and wished to go back to her roots in a small town in Western South Dakota.
Ms. Norris talks about a Benedictine Monastery that evidently is close by the small Western Dakota towns and the people who inhabit them, often comparing the similarities and the contrasts between people who live close together in a monastery and how they adapt, and people who live close together in small towns and how they cope.
She tells the story, as an example of the difference in openness between the two, of the revolution in the Philippines when nuns took to the streets rebelling against Marco's regime. Some nuns objected, saying it was a worldly thing and they should not be going into the streets and demonstrating. They had a meeting and it was decided that those who wanted to, could go into the streets, those who didn't think it proper, but still agreed with the movement could feed and help the ones that did demonstrate, and those that were dead set against it could pray for the others.
In contrast to this "coming together," When a new minister brought a nonpartisan election folder explaining the various positions to a small town Dakota church meeting, she was told that church and state should not mix and there was no discussion at all about it.
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I was watching "Cops" last night, one of my favorite programs. The cops were gathering to serve a fifty-thousand dollar warrant on a guy that had a history of violence to cops, and was known to carry weapons. It was not expected to be a walk in the park.
The team got out of their cars, all duded up with their amament, going into this bar where they had learned the perp was. This group of five or six cops, plus the ones filming, started towards the bar. A young girl of about twenty wearing a white blouse and blue jeans was inside the group, walking with them. She seemed to be with them, but had no gear, no uniform, no weapons, and was right in the middle of the frame of the filming. She walked with them up to the door of the bar where I lost sight of her and the cops took the guy down, found a cocked and loaded weapon in his belt.
Who was she? What was she doing there? Why did the cops let her come along like that -- or didn't they see her? What the hell, anyhow?
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I'm seven years old, watering my rock garden. My older brother by two years asks me what I'm doing. I tell him I was growing rocks. He said, "Rocks don't grow."
I replied, "Oh yeah? Where do you think big rocks come from?". As soon as I said that, I thought, "Oh, no. How stupid.".
In First Grade, we learned about the Sahara desert and the Oasises. I was especially impressed with the pictures of date palms. When I got home that day, I took an empty one pound Folgers coffee can, filled it with dirt, planted a date pit and put it in the oven to warm it up to the heat of the Sahara. I cooked all the water out of my "garden," and I remember thinking it wasn't going to work, and I almost remember throwing the whole mess out.
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I was out walking looking for somewhere to "serve" when I came to a small building where they were giving away clothing to the poor. Walking in, I noticed two women - one rather tiny and old, the other young and regular size. They were hanging clothes on racks - all very neat, as if in a retail store. I asked the old lady if I could help them, and she agreed.
I found out that the clothes arrived from donations given at the church which sponsored the store.
The old lady told me a few days later that she had asked the minister of the church if he would send someone over to help them. When she called to thank the minister for sending me, she found out that he had never found anyone to send. I had arrived the very next day after she had asked the minister for help so she had assumed that the minister had sent me. She told me she had thought I was an angel when she found out the circumstances of my being there. I myself thought it unusual.
The younger woman, after a few hours that first day, told me she had been raped, but not to tell anyone else that. A few days later the old lady told me the younger woman had been raped, but not for me to tell anyone else, since the girl wanted to keep it quiet.
The old lady, who was in charge, tasked me to clean up the back room. In there, boxes were stacked to the ceiling in the rear and almost to the ceiling in the rest of the room. There was one small aisle through the boxes where one could walk. Stacked against the front wall were several mattresses.
The younger woman and I started rearranging stuff in the boxes - shoes in one, purses in another - there were a LOT of purses. When a box was full, I started a new pile, expecting to go through the whole lot until everything was orderly.
Since it was summer and no air conditioning was available, we left a large upward sliding garage-type door open. Frequently someone would come by and ask for certain articles of clothing. The girl always told them to go into the main room, that this room was just for storage.
Occasionally someone would see the mattresses and ask for one. I told the old lady and she said they had to go through the church and get a paper to show us before they could have one. We NEVER, in all the time I was there, ever gave even one mattress away, although maybe twenty people had asked for one.
I overheard the women talking about a man that had been in there one day, wanting a pair of shoes. They didn't give him a pair because, as the old lady said, "He wasn't humble enough."
There was a small plot of dirt between a concrete border by the front door, containing a water faucet. I planted marigolds there one morning, and kept them watered. I liked seeing them every morning when I came to work.
One morning there was a long line waiting for the store to open and as I went down the line, I looked closely at every person and that is when I came to realize the truth of what Jesus said when he declared that "The poor will always be with us." I could easily see that if you gave each one of these people a million dollars, within the year they would be back standing in line waiting for free clothing.
One day the old lady told me that the younger girl kept preventing her from giving the clothes away that were in the back room. She told me to get rid of them. I asked her if I should throw it in the dumpster and she agreed that that would be a good idea. I started doing that and pretty soon people started asking me if they could go through and take some of the stuff. I said, "sure."
A crowd gathered in the alley. People brought cars and were filling the seats up with clothing. I would set the boxes down so they could go through them before I threw them in the dumpster.
Eventually the younger woman got wind of what was going on and came out and started raising hell. I and her argued about the advantages of giving the clothes away like we were supposed to do as opposed to storing it forever in the storage room. She was in favor of the latter. At one time during our discourse, she declared plaintively, "But I was saving those for my kids."
She objected to all of the folderol. The crowd was excited. The young lady, voicing her objections to the whole thing, declared that "It was just like Christmas" but not in a good way - in a chaotic way.
This woman and a short young Black man got into an argument - the Black man calling her selfish, the lady telling him she was going to get her boyfriend to beat him up. Trying to calm the rough waters, I slowly pulled the garage door down, being careful to let the two of them vent as then wished until they were both actually bent down, shouting at each other under to door opening which by this time was about a foot and a half from the floor. That part was pretty funny.
After the door was closed she berated me again and wanted me to promise that I would never let anything like that happen again. I promised her that I never would. What I meant was that she would never see me back here again.
A few weeks later I dropped by and my pretty flowers were all dead. The place itself closed down a few weeks later.
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