Tuesday, December 15, 2020

A Light at the End of the Virus Tunnel

 I don't know how often I am hearing or reading that expression in relation to the vaccine for the virus. People receiving the first vaccine have been saying it as well as others in health care and politics. 

In 1955 while in my last year of seminary at Alexandria, VA, I said it and my fellow classmates said it. We had heard it from those who graduated before us. The first year of seminary you entered the tunnel, the second year was the darkest, where am I and what am I doing here?. And during the third and last year one began to see a light at the end of the tunnel and then graduation into the full light of day.

I am sure this metaphor has been moved to countless places. You can add your own observations and story.

The pandemic complicates the expression. While the vaccine my be the light at the end of the tunnel the virus competes by providing the greatest number of new infections, over loaded hospitals and exhausted medical caregivers, and a rising number of deaths in nursing homes and among the poor. We have not had the cooperation of some people to wear masks, keep the distance, and wash their hands. The coming together of families over Thanksgiving is now showing up as more people come down with the virus illness. Christmas and other religious gatherings are ahead of us. What will we experience before the light is the light. I have heard it said the night is darkest before the dawn. True or false. In our experience with the virus it may be true. 

We have a language that provides metaphorical short cuts. You move a word or expression to a new place to communicate a lot of meaning by piggy backing when you move the expression or word to a new place. We are image makers.

Close off for now as I start collecting. Now adding on the 25th of December with people traveling and families gathering. Not here. We are celebrating separately while keeping in contact texting, iPhone, and Zoom on Sunday. 

The light at the end of the tunnel disappeared fast as a popular metaphor only to be replaced by the word hope. Hope is the big word this Christmas. You can find the word countless places. I will not try to name them. 

The most unique was the Doctor and Genesis Medical in Davenport who started dancing after he received he shot. I had to look up the words to a folk hymn, The Lord of the Dance. I heard the author sing the song in a folk song gathering. He is an English Quaker. Those interested can find the words by engaging the internet that has more information that the Public Library.

The light at the end of the tunnel and hope seems to have skeptics with reservations to taking the vaccine. I will be ready myself and so will my wife who is a nurse. She is critical of the pictures showing nurses giving the shot to special people.  They are doing it wrong. I have received instructions for doing it the right way. So far she hasn't seen anyone doing it right and since she is a ob/gyn nurse she knows how important the right was is for babies. I will try to arrange to have her give me the vaccine shot the right way.

I haven't seen this metaphorical expression but there is the term "a shot in the arm."

Shalom,

Marlin Whitmer, retired hospital chaplain

Founder of the Befrienders and the art of story metaphor listening.







Friday, December 4, 2020

Immigrants all, starting with Abraham


The Quad City Times carried a lead story in their Celebrate Section onThurs., Jan. 14, 1999 that is a Genesis 12 story. Genesis 12 begins the journey of Abraham when he is called by God to leave the city of Ur. 

 

The Call of Abram

1The Lord had said to Abram, “Go from your country, your people and your father’s household to the land I will show you.”  (NIV)

 

I encourage your reading about Abraham starting with the 12th chapter of Genesis. I have been reflecting on the Genesis story of Abraham more than once in these blogs.  

 

The headlines in the QCTimes read"Strangers in a friendly land." The stories by Paula Parrella begin with this line, "Imagine yourself in an unfamiliar country where everyone around you speaks a different language." I wonder, did Abraham know the Egyptian language? Or did everyone speak Arabic? When did Hebrew come in?

The article documents four families: Two are from Bosnia and two are fromVietnam who left the familiar for the unfamiliar. As America becomes more multi-cultural Genesis 12 takes on more meaning. America has been a place to dream, vision, learn, work, etc., a promised land. Have we not been agathering place for Genesis 12 folk? Thomas Jefferson wanted to have "acloud by day and a pillar of fire" on the dollar bill. We do have “a new order under heaven.” He was proposing a direct image from the book of Exodus andthe way Moses and the Hebrew people traveled in the wilderness for the promised land ... another journey story and a continuation of the journey of Abraham.

All my ancestors left the familiar as Abraham to come to this unfamiliar land of promise. They came for different reasons and from different places, there is more than one Ur. The Whitmer’s came to escape religious persecution before the Revolutionary War, coming out of Switzerland and arriving here from Holland. Another Great Grandfather came with his wife from Germany to escape military conscription or jail. We have more than one story. My Irish Great Grandparents came to escape starvation, the potato famine. My Scottish Great Great Grandfather, I am not sure about the reason. He came early but moved along with the Whitmer’s to become a well know blacksmith in the early days of Cedar and Muscatine Counties, Iowa.   

 

The result, my mother's first language was German. She grew up on a farm near Louden, Ia. When I went to the Krienbring Reunions as a boy I heard the elders speaking German. My mother understood. My father did not speak German. He felt out of place. Plus he didn't play cards or drink beer. There was one other man with a German background and a farmer who did not play cards or drink beer. They would visit about farming. 

 

During WorldWar 1 my mother abruptly stopped speaking German while in grade school. America’s participation in the war brought criticism to Germans for using their language. Iowa passed a law forbidding the spoken language. The trauma of that event continued for my mother’s lifetime. She would not even share a German word or phrase when asked. 

I remember going to a Japanese New Years party in Chicago. I was the only Caucasian. My friend George Hayashi, seminary classmate, had invited me as we were on our way back to Virginia Seminary. It was agreat party. They had plenty of food, mostly pickled. The women said they had been preparing for months. I like pickles and it all tasted good even if I didn’t know what I was eating.  They had plenty of drinks, warm saki. Wow! Laughter was also plentiful although I didn't know what they were laughing about. George would occasionally translate. It must have been funny in Japanese. A number there were survivors of the Japanese internment camp. George had been in the Japanese internment camp during WW11 as a young boy. Another story. Another harsh treatment of immigrants.

 

This reflection was first writing in January 14, 1999. Now under some revision I submit this with the acknowledgement that Donald Trump is the President of the United States. He must have an entirely different interpretation to Genesis 12 with the rhetoric of the building of a wall along with deportations and severe limits on immigration. He reminds me of our previous mistakes generated by fear and the impact it had on people's well being, like my mother.

Do you have any Genesis 12 memories and/or current Genesis 12 happenings in yourneighborhood? I think it is important to reflect on these stories as we struggle with our post 9/11 world that lives in fear of the “other.” We were once the “other.”


Shalom,

Marlin

 

Founder of the Befrienders in 1966 and the Art of story metaphor listening in 1975. 

Read the blog "Comfortable with the Uncomfortable."