Today, I experienced a special moment. A story from a person with an amazing experience..
I am leader of a spiritual meeting on Monday mornings. This happened today The subject was..
"gratitude" (Christmas morning , 12/25/17)
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.Being grateful for what we have. I was thinking for a few days about what to say (the leader gives a short lead, - 5 to 7 minutes on a subject from a book.) What do I say on Christmas morning? What am I grateful for? I thought about this. I decided to talk about simple things like running water, electricity, heat, etc. The meeting was in a very old church, ( I would say about 140 years old, maybe older) and I noticed that the church had gas pipes that were used for lighting before electricity was installed all over) So I showed the 8 people at the meeting, the gas pipes that were sticking out of the walls with covers on them, permanently shut off. I also said, that I had a student in one of the high school classes that I taught, that came from poverty on another continent, and he grew up in a small town without electricity. (just to say that has happened in places as recently as 35 years ago)
Here is what happened. A member of the group spoke up, and said he was in the Peace Corp in the 70s and was assigned to a country in Africa, (don't remember which one) in a town somewhere with no electricity or running water. He said that he had to ask one of the local teenagers..(I think he paid them) to get his daily bucket of water. He had some kind of portable gas stove that he used to cook, (boil the water to remove impurities) and commented that in his compound where he lived, there was a hole in the floor in a room (what was a bathroom) where he took a "poop" This member was not the kind of person that would make this up. Here was someone in the room who had an experience with no running water, no heat, and no electricity. And what he did to deal with this.
Live and in person, someone I knew over the years from meetings who had this experience in the 70s in a town somewhere in this world, with no electricity, no heat, or running water. Something we all take for granted, yet is extremely important in life. Something we all should be grateful for. Why? It has only been the last 140 years at most, that we have had these important everyday tools. I told the member that his experience was incredible, and he needs to share it. We have so much, and what we think about is often so little....
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(Yes, I think about "so little" often, but after today, much less).......
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