Be The Change You Want To See

                                                

            Do you want to make a difference in the world? Do you want to see some real change in the way the world is, and how your community functions?

            “Be the change you want to see in the world.” (Mahatma Gandhi)

            “Volunteers are the only human beings on the face of the earth who reflect the nation’s compassion, unselfish caring, patience and just plain loving each other.” (Erma Bombeck)

            Do you want to live in a better neighborhood, a better community? Do you think the world could be a better place? Are you tired of hearing about the troubles of the world and all the negative political rhetoric?  Are you frustrated that things are getting worse, and there’s nothing you can do that would make a difference?

            Then, get involved and volunteer.  Connect with a person, help them out, and make a difference.  Take a few minutes, an hour, maybe a day, and offer your talent.  Pay attention to someone, work together on a project, or simply have a conversation and offer a kind ear, a helping hand. 

            Find a group where you can get involved.  Or do something on your own.

It can start with just a simple conversation at the grocery store or with a neighbor, a few kind words, and maybe a helping hand. 

Volunteers are at the center of our community life.

Our schools, churches, community festivals and gatherings, museums and parks are staffed by volunteers. Much of what happens around here would quickly fade away without dedicated volunteers.

            On a more personal level, our volunteers are helping an elderly neighbor with their yard work, or bringing them a meal.  Others tutor a child, or help out at school or church.  The possibilities are endless.

            Our community calendar in the local paper is filled with activities run by volunteers, working to make this community a better place to live.

            I see the impact of volunteerism everywhere.  Without them, our welcome mat wouldn’t be as inviting, and as enjoyable for our visitors.  Our youth and our seniors wouldn’t be as integrated into our social fabric. Our community wouldn’t be nearly as vibrant and supportive. 

            Look around you.  Volunteers make a difference, and they change lives. 

            I volunteer.  I find a project, I connect with a person, and pay attention to them, and put action into my caring for their wellbeing.  I make a difference and my heart is filled with a sense of purpose, a sense of accomplishment. My volunteer work at the local youth prison and with master gardeners gives me a sense of purpose, and helps change people’s lives for the better.

            In volunteering, I become an instrument of change.  I am part of the solution to a small part of the world’s problems, rather than a person who just sits back and complains. I have a purpose, and become a voice for doing good.

The payback for me is amazing.  What I give I receive back tenfold.  I feel better about myself, I contribute, I connect, and I become a better member of my community. 

            Volunteerism is all about health, my health, the community’s, my state, my nation, and the world. 

I can even stand to watch the evening news, and know that I don’t need to just listen to the litany of the world’s problems and get caught up in all drama. I’m not the passive listener, who can easily say the world is a miserable, hopeless place. Instead, I am part of the answer, an agent of positive change. 

---Neal Lemery, July 26, 2016

Thanksgiving, 2015

                  Finding Thankfulness and Gratitude in My Life

            “Thankfulness is the beginning of gratitude.  Gratitude is the completion of thankfulness. Thankfulness may consist merely of words.  Gratitude is shown in acts.”

 –Henri Frederic Amiel, Swiss philosopher

            The harvest is in, the garden has been put to bed, and the weather has turned cold.  The days are growing shorter; winter has arrived. It is the season of a comfortable chair, a warm blanket, a mug of tea and a good book. 

            It is also a time of being thankful and grateful.  At Thanksgiving, we gather around the table, sharing food and companionship.  It is a time of quiet celebration.

            Thanksgiving is a quiet, contemplative holiday with few expectations.  Simply being together and sharing a meal is all that the holiday seems to require of us.  Oh, and the obligatory giving of thanks. In the rush towards the consumerism and frenzy of Christmas, it seems easy to slide right by this time of giving thanks, and plunge into the next holiday. 

            And, when we do that, we forget to pause and reflect, and to be truly thankful.

            The real holiday, the real celebration this week is a time to go inward, to truly appreciate what we have in our lives, and how we are to live, to truly be children of God.  Thanksgiving is all about love, in all of its dimensions.

            This year there is much to be thankful for: the necessities of life, purposeful work, time with friends and family, health, and being able to serve, to be of service.

            People in my life this year have achieved much.  One friend is moving into a new home, his first, very own, this is really mine, home.  A year ago, he was adrift, unemployed, unsure of himself.  Today, due to his hard work and his belief in all of his possibilities, he has a rich, purposeful life.

            Another friend is casting aside distractions and old misery, and healing old wounds.  He’s taking charge, doing healthy things, putting his life in order.

            Another friend passed a test in school.  He conquered his fears, his self doubts; he has conquered his sabotage of a future of rich possibilities.  He is ready to move on, and he has shown to himself that he can grow, and learn, and be successful.  He has climbed his own mountain, and can believe in himself.

            I am recharging my own creative energies. I am writing a serious book that gives voice to those who are less fortunate. I am immersing myself in creating music and art, and being an advocate for others.  I am pausing to look at the beauty of the world, in this very moment, to appreciate who I am and where I am going.

All this is scary, terrifying work.  What if I actually accomplish what I dream? Are there really no barriers, no limits to what I can accomplish, if I put my mind and my soul into the effort?  I might be successful? Me? But, then I will have to take on even greater challenges, and be responsible for my effort. Really? Little old me? 

            Yes, me.  I am the one.  I am the one who can change the world, one little step at a time.  Changing the world is really my job.  And, I can do it. 

            We all have our obstacles.  And we are all capable of success, and believing in our strengths, our possibilities. 

I am a citizen of the world and I pay attention, I learn, and I try to apply my energies and my awareness to being an instrument of positive change.

We live in troubled times.  Yet that has also been true in years past.  Every generation has faced that challenge, and had to answer that question, can I really accomplish my dream?

I choose to be an agent of change, and to not retreat into silence and indifference. I believe we are called to respond and to act, to be proactive, to be God’s instruments of change.

Maybe I can’t wave my magic wand and achieve world peace. But, I can move in that direction.  I can bring myself and my work into a state of constructive peacefulness.  I can work to nurture that energy into my family, my neighborhood,  and my community.  

I can make a difference.

I can join with other like-minded people, and consistently do good works. 

Each of us is a peace-maker.  Peace making has to start somewhere. 

“Let there be peace on Earth and let it begin with me,” the song says.

We all have our story.  Be a listener, and hear someone speak their truth,

perhaps for the first time. Let everyone’s story be told, and be heard.

Each of us can do an act of kindness and compassion.   Pay an act of kindness forward. Buy a stranger a coffee, help an elderly person with a package, talk to a friend, visit the sick, the lonely, the imprisoned.  Maybe bring a meal to a sick neighbor.  Volunteer. 

Strike up a conversation while waiting at the grocery store check out.  Ask the clerk how they are doing and listen to their answer. Hear them, deeply and compassionately.  Hug a friend who seems upset, lost, without hope.

In any of that work, there is kindness and compassion.  You are giving of yourself, and you are showing others how to be human, how to be kind and loving.

            “Be the change you want to see in the world,” Mahatma Gandhi said.

            Our example, just something simple, can change one person’s life.  And in that, we change the world.  We make our planet just a little better. 

            Isn’t that the Golden Rule? Isn’t that what the prophets, the scions of great religions have preached?  Isn’t that being an instrument of God’s love for every one of us?

            Each of us is special, unique.  We are here for a reason.  And, isn’t that reason to show love and compassion, to be kind, generous, thoughtful of others?  By our example, we show the way, we demonstrate how people should really live, how we really are the children of God. 

            Today, I give thanks, and I am grateful.  And, in my own, small way, I am making a difference, I am changing the world, one small act of kindness at a time.

                                    ---Neal Lemery, November 24, 2015

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Searching for Potential

(from Ruralite Magagine, February, 2013)

Neal Lemery spends Sunday afternoons demonstrating ‘normal’ to young inmates

by Denise Porter

Neal Lemery plans to continue his volunteer work at the Tillamook Youth Correction Facility now that he is retired. He wants to help break the cycle of violence.

Every Sunday, cup of coffee in hand, Neal Lemery and a few buddies sit at a table in a small canteen swapping stories. Sometimes they play guitar or a game of cards. Mostly they talk about their future goals, trips they would like to take, dreams.

Other times, the conversation gets deeper and one of the buddies opens up about his childhood: his addict parents, the homelessness and sexual abuse that were what he understood to be a normal childhood.

Neal’s buddies are among the 50 inmates serving sentences for some type of sexual offense at the Tillamook Youth Correctional Facility.

Neal visits several times weekly. The task both gives him joy and mentally exhausts him.

“It’s pretty draining,” Neal says of his visits. “When I come home Sunday afternoon maybe all I’ve been doing is sitting at a table having coffee and playing a game. But this ‘normalcy time,’ is such a new thing for them and they drain you. They’ve never had it before and so they just absorb it. You have to monitor yourself.”

Neal has spent his life working with Oregon’s judicial system. He retired January 2 after 12 years as the Tillamook County Justice of the Peace. He was an Oregon lawyer for 32 years, served as a defense attorney and judge and has spent his entire career in Tillamook—the town where he was raised.

“I’ve sat in all the seats in the criminal justice system here,” he says.

As the Justice of the Peace, Neal officiated nearly 1,800 civil marriages and doled out traffic and fish and wildlife fines.

He says he has always tried to be fair-minded. Rather than locking people away, Neal values educating them. He asked drunk drivers to attend classes—and then report to him after the class with an essay about what they learned.

His biggest challenge as a judge was enforcing mandatory sentencing laws.

“We used to give judges discretion to do the right thing,” he says. “Certainly we’ve taken that away in criminal court. I think you need to consider the person and their circumstances and what’s best for the community.

“We have our own unique values and my job is to reflect the community’s values. The way to fix it is one person at a time, one day at a time. I think if you can change one person, it’s a good day.”

Two years ago, Neal took a call from a friend asking if he could mentor a young sexual offender whose father had died when he was only 15, and whose drug-addict mother would visit her son stoned. Since then, he has made regular visits.

These young men are locked away for a reason, he says. They committed a crime. But the truth is, their behavior was learned. Most were sexually abused as young children.

“People want to blame the ‘neighborhood pervert,’ but really, for nearly everyone there, it was a family member that abused them,” Neal says. “From them, they learned to victimize people.”

Some inmates will never recover from their own trauma, he believes, but he says others can and will, with the correct guidance and can be shown how to break the violent cycle they have known.

“We’re trying to figure out who they are, because they don’t know,” says Neal. “I come, we play Scrabble, have a nice Sunday afternoon like ‘normal’ people would. They’ve never had that. They’ve never gotten mail or a birthday card in their lives. 

“One kid freaked out because we gave him a birthday party. He’d never had one. Can you imagine that? There’s been so much sexual abuse and violence; they just don’t know who they are as people.”

Neal’s wife, Karen Keltz, a retired high school English teacher, comes for many visits, too. Karen helps the young men finish high school paperwork and mentors them through college courses.

“She loves it,” says Neal. “They need a mom figure—a sober, decent mom that cares about them, too.”

There is one inmate who Neal has especially enjoyed mentoring. Perhaps it is because the young man is a gifted musician, learning the guitar from Neal in just a few weeks, or perhaps it is because he took the initiative to finish high school, is enrolled in college online and has nearly a 4.0 GPA.

“He writes songs, jazz, blues, rock and he wrote one about me,” says Neal. “It makes me cry every time he plays it for me. The lyrics say something like, ‘You never yelled at me, or gave up on me; you showed up and changed my life.’”

One of the ways Neal pledges to help is by being there when the inmates are released. As part of their terms of release, each needs to spend the first six months in the town where he committed his crime.

Neal sees them settled, enrolls them in college, takes them camping—a longtime wish of one inmate—and gives each every chance to succeed.

Neal plans to learn new hobbies and travel during his retirement. He also will continue to volunteer and mentor and will draft new legislation.

“I want to work on something systemwide around the state for better and more transition services,” he says.

Neal has roughed out a book about mentoring young men.

“There really isn’t a book out there that talks about the crisis in our country of growing up without a father,” he says. “The message I got at home from both my parents, and especially my dad, was ‘You have a brain and a body. You are a child of God, go out and do something!’ A lot of people don’t have someone in their lives to tell them that.

“That’s where I came in—in court as a judge and now, as a mentor. I say, ‘You have potential. You need to use it.’ And I will follow through the next time we meet and ask you, ‘Now tell me, what have you done to reach your potential?’” 

Posted January 30th

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Peace Making

Peace Making

It is a lofty goal.  Religions preach it. Politicians speechify it.  Song writers laud it.  We all like to say we are peaceful, loving people.  

And, it’s really the other guy who can’t get along, who pushes us into the argument, the fight, the war.  

“They started it,” we say, justifying our own escalation of the argument, as we stiffen our backs, and pick up the nastier word, the bigger stick.  

Our wars are longer now.  This country’s ten year war in Afghanistan barely makes the main section of the daily newspaper, and rarely hits the front page.  Our “victory” in Iraq really isn’t seen as a victory of democracy over tyranny, but rather a bad nightmare we should really rather forget.  

The latest Israeli-Palestinian rocket war is seen as inevitable and unsolvable.  And, folks quickly blame one side or the other for the terror and destruction, the deaths of families, and the unbending, inflexible positions of the major players.

Not many people see the irony in both sides justifying their geographical arguments on scriptures and theologies that also preach unconditional love and peacefulness being the true direction to humanity from an all loving God.  

And, at home,  war is being waged.  We have the highest rate of jailing our fellow citizens of any country in the world.  And, we criminalize and jail drug addicts.  Our economy continues to impoverish millions of families.  Our politics of late turn into high paid deceptive and vicious advertising and name calling, rather than looking towards solutions to difficult problems, and an expression of compassion and helping others achieve the American Dream.  

Aside from all the noise, a quiet revolution is going on.  Without fanfare, without a lot of chest thumping and back slapping, change is afoot.  

Volunteers, neighbors, students, good people from all walks of life are making a difference.  Soup kitchens and warming centers are springing up in the basements of churches.  Food banks, community gardens, and community centers enjoy quiet and energetic support.  Twelve step programs are strong and are attracting healthy members.  Prison outreach programs, local music jams, potlucks, and community thrift stores are thriving.  

We baby boomers are retiring now, in record numbers, and we are volunteering, helping out, talking with people.  We are engaged in our communities, our neighborhoods, and in our homes.   People are tending their gardens, taking up crafts, and working with others.  We teach each other new skills, and we are reaching out to others, on every level.

The grass roots in this country are healthy and strong.  Social media has expanded the front porch and the neighborhood coffee shop into a bigger, national neighborhood of old friends, old classmates, and long lost relatives.  New connections are made, and our common humanity, our common passion for connecting with others, for caring for each other, are re-weaving the social fabric.

As a country, and as a community, we are re-creating our social conversations, and deciding what topics we will take on.  Newspapers and the major television networks, and other corporate media are finding their audiences shrinking.  New books are now self-published, and marketed by word of mouth and on Facebook and blogs.  We are taking charge of what we talk about and what we learn.  

The richness of our own wisdom, our heritage, our values, and our work is now easily shared, and easily explored.  What I think and what I want to say to others now can be quickly “aired” to not just my household, not just to my buddies at the coffee shop, but to the world.  With a few keystrokes, my morning rant about one thing or another can be put out to all my friends, and, literally, to the world.  

Someone thousands of miles away can read what I think, and can find my thoughts, on their computer and their cell phone.  “Google it” is the motto of this decade, and the back fence conversations start up with a smart phone text or a reply to a Facebook posting.  We’ve become master weavers of the social fabric.  

We’ve rediscovered the value of those rich one on one conversations, the power of reaching out and simply saying, “I care about you.”  Yes, we do that electronically, but we also do that face to face, neighbor to neighbor.  This is our reality; we are rejecting the mass media view of the world, and being told what to think and what is truly important.

This morning, the cashier at Denny’s and I had a rich conversation about the real meaning of Thanksgiving and thankfulness, and the crass commercialization of Christmas.  She’s rejecting that commercial hoopla and instead, she’s gathering and distributing underwear and toys for foster kids. Her mom is mentoring those kids, filling a need in her community, changing lives.   

I’m spending time with young men at the youth prison in my town, playing guitar, being friends, hopefully showing them a more fulfilling way to live. Me buying them coffee at the canteen, just being there, and listening, is opening hearts, and changing all of us.

Yes, small steps, but in the right direction.  Together, we are an army, working for change.

Perhaps this country’s “Arab Spring” starts with those conversations at Denny’s, or engaging your neighbor in an idea to revitalize your town. It starts with each one of us, one step, and then another.

We’ve rediscovered the power of taking the initiative, of finding our voice in our community.  When I post something on Facebook, or write a rant about something on my blog, or “share” a particular article I’ve found on line, I’m really joining my neighbors on the front porch, or at the coffee shop.  

I don’t have to depend on the corporate media to set the agenda, or tell me what the real “news” is, or what to believe.  I’m my own news editor now, and I produce my own news show.  My friends and neighbors do that, too.  Our conversations, in person and on line, are abuzz with new ideas, rich discussions, and the rebuilding of our collective social consciousness.

In all that buzz, we are rediscovering the power of that one on one conversation, about caring for each other, and getting involved with each other.  That is the practice of love, love of self, love of family, love of our fellow humankind. Isn’t that the true meaning of the holidays, our true spiritual calling?

We are getting off the couch and thinking for ourselves again, and rebuilding our community, making peace.

--Neal Lemery 11/22/2012