Purpose

Introduction by Phil

If you listen very closely, the souvenirs that you gathered over your lifetimes and placed in your home might whisper their history to you.
Can you hear them?

   The actual song itself is available only in spoken form, as requested by Philip.

Response by John

I love that last GEM recorded by Phil, entitled Something Says You’re Home.

This story I would like to tell is about friends of mine. Friends of my husband’s and mine, who recently got refugee visa’s from the Ukraine, and are now living in Oakville, CT.

Twenty something years ago, my husband is working in the shop, and the woman who was the engineer, she was crying. He said, “What is wrong Galina?” She said that my friend Irina in the Ukraine, she lost her husband at 28 years old of diabetes, because if the was money, there was no medicine, and if there was medicine, there was no money.

Artwork by Bruce Zboray www.bruce-zboray.artistwebsites.com


I am drawn to thin books. Books you can read in one or two sittings. With pictures or a fancy border – like an ancient manuscript – decorated. And a hard cover with cloth, where you can feel the weave.

Others may enjoy epic novels of a thousand pages – not I. Maybe it’s me wanting to “know” the whole book at once – no need of bookmarks for me.

In summers, during most of high school and college, I worked in a summer camp. My assignment was, pretty much, to protect and entertain a cottage full of three-to-five-year-olds. It was such fun that I decided I’d like to teach children as a career.

After graduating from the university, our certificates covered: nursery, kindergarten, and grades 1-8.

As luck would have it, before graduation I was hired to teach in my hometown. The year was 1969, a year of many problems and few jobs. So this was a blessing.

I thrive being around people with imagination.

People who can see things that aren’t there yet and talk about them as if they are real right now. Like cars that fly, a practical end to hunger and healing sounds that work infinitely better than chemical drugs.

People who can create – pictures, music, dance, inventions.

People who can see the world in a better way.

Without these people, I feel lonely. Yes, my wife and children fill a kind of loneliness, for which I am very thankful.

I have found that I can be in a room full of people, and feel absolutely isolated and lonely. Perhaps this happens to you, too.

So, there is something more going on with loneliness than just needing to be around other humans.

Perhaps we are lonely for this, that, and the other.

When I take care of a garden, I feel that the flowers, vegetables, herbs, and all that grows out of the soil are my friends. So, I like visiting the Hartford Flower Show, the Bronx Gardens, and the Durham County Fair.

Grandpa and grandma came to the USA when they were in their very early twenties.

They came with little money, so they had to rent a place to live. Grandpa was a wise man and a great observer.

In Italy he trained as a shoemaker, but here that job would not provide adequate income. So he found a factory job for steady income, but he also found wealthy clients who could pay richly for handmade shoes.

Grandpa marveled at the public transportation system. With one coin you could ride, then “transfer to anyplace you want to go.” He never spent money on owning a car.

This is the story of how I learned about Dr. Albert Schweitzer, who had a jungle hospital in Equatorial Africa. The reverence for life for all animals, he created this idea when he was in Africa in 1913, when he first went to the hospital in the jungle.

The reverence for life came to me when my mother passed away. I was stationed in Germany. I came home to New York, and my father said, “I want you to meet this woman”. She was a Jewish refugee from Vienna. She won the 1958 Oscar for a documentary on Albert Schweitzer, who I’d heard of.

Do you recognize that sound?
Can you hear it?
Listen
The sounds of nature
There all around us
Can you figure it out?
It’s like life
Can you figure it out at times?
When you don’t understand
Can you trust?
Do you have faith?
Do you have the faith enough to know all is well?
To embrace each day, the gift of your life
To find the joy, happiness and the peace in solitude
Or out there amongst others
I hope you can hear the sound and recognize it
It’s all around us all the time

Hmmm a square peg going into a round hole?
Where do I fit in
Where do I fit in in life
It’s like
What’s my purpose
I don’t know
I just feel like I am
I’m not getting it
I don’t seem to be
You know just really creating what I want in my life
Or in the world
I just feel like
I am just existing
I am not doing my part
It is not about doing
It is about being
It is not what you can accomplish
It is really about how you feel
How you go about your day
How you view your self