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| Brooklyn Street this winter |
The lesson I have learned this winter is that without
money…you are stuck wasting your life...yes really. I watched via social media people who could
go skiing, go to a vacation spot, go to the Syracuse basketball games, attend
runs and walks, go to fund raisers. go shopping to malls, go out to eat or go
to concerts...what if you have no family
that is close, and no money…?
If you are struggling to stay warm, to eat, to keep things
together, to pay ridiculous energy bills… is this called living?
I had someone say to me well you can watch TV or go to the
Library and get books! With no TV
because of the cost of it and no local service, with no car or bus service to
get to a library…what do you suggest then?
The fact is everything costs so much money today that staying
alive could take all of your funds and more.
So in reading research I am doing on the Shakers for next
year’s lectures, I was struck by what actually was their demise. Many would think it was celibacy…but no, it was
modern times and money.
Success and
wealth allowed them to become part of the “World’s People”. They no longer were happy with the simple
life of growing, working, keeping busy, praying and living separate from the world, no
they now saw the need for expansion and progress…the cost…cost them everything.
They could no longer make everything to sell and had to hire
workers who never provided the quality of “Hands to work, Hearts to God”. As people left for the world they had to hire people to grow food or to buy it. Dissention reined as some want this, some
that, none were really happy just staying put away from the world and all of
the things they originally thought were repugnant to God. Even fellowship was lost in squabbles over
money and investments...yes they had tons of money to invest at times. As they saw more of the worldly goods they
wanted more. As the number of Believers left they could no longer keep the
communities clean and neat and working. The rules they lived by changed and then changed gain...they no longer went out to seek new members.
Sad actually… a way of life that brought people together who had
fashioned a society that cared about one another, that was self-sufficient for
the most part…fell to ruin. The Shakers
were the longest running (one group of which is still functioning at Sabbath Lake in
Maine) communistic society in America.
Millerites, Oneida Community Perfectionists, and so many others are all
gone because of religious beliefs…but Shakers kept their vision of God both
mother & father and failed because of money! Believers wanted to be part of what the "world" could offer! Modernization..
I guess that is us today…we all want what the world can
offer us…but for some the world has passed them by and unfortunately, they
cannot be self sufficient in today’s society without the money to make them
that way!
I wrote poem when I was very young, when my mother died I found that she had kept it. It was on life passing me by…and this winter
it has…
Life Just Passed Me By
I felt the
wind like the touch of Spring, /Gently passing in the glow of day./
I saw a
scene so far from me,
/Yet passing just a foot away.
/I heard God as I walked
the hill.
/I stopped to listen and to pray, /And time just passed on by.
May heart
smiled, enjoyed, and cared,
/As my lungs filled with the sweet Spring air;/ And
the breeze against my face wasn’t even there,/ As life just passed on by.
They
laughed at me for I beamed with love, /For the grass that felt like silken
glove,
/It gave me pleasure and just a bit of love, /And time just passed me
by.
/I heard the call of the meadow’s lark,/
I
felt the tree and its rugged bark,
/But time had passed me by.
For now I’m grown and now I’ve lost /The simple heart that would have
bought,/ With a fortune or a ransom found,/
But not even that could stop.../Time from
passing me on by.
Here is a video I did on the Shaker Settlement near Albany..their original settlement...
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