Grandpa Sam, a Navajo elder, has been visiting us for the last two weeks. He’s here from New Mexico. We’ve been spending a lot of time sitting around the breakfast table – hearing about his life, his stories, the way things have been for him and his people.
Being sent to reform school.
The war in Vietnam. Being exposed to Agent Orange which still affects his mind and his joints. Machine gun fire that blew out his ear drum.
His son dying. His wife getting sick.
His other daughter dying.
Each time he wanted to give up, each time the road felt too hard, the suffering too much ~ someone or the Great Spirit told him ~
You gotta go on.
School shootings, unspeakable trauma, wildfires.
Sexual abuse by priests, slandering of women by our current president.
Thousands of species going extinct. Glaciers melting. Underground nuclear warheads in North Korea. A 97 year old holocaust survivor gunned down by a Neo-Nazi while in prayer in her temple.
You gotta go on.
Because it’s stories like these.
Nelson Mandela, in prison 27 years, finally freed and creating the Truth and Reconciliation Council for Peace in South Africa.
Christopher Reeves, our favorite SuperMan who was thrown from a horse and paralyzed from the neck down. Through meditation and the power of his own mind he regenerated his own neurons, disproving a foundational belief of science that neurons don't grow back.
Rosa Parks, who refused to move to the back of the bus and launched a solidarity campaign in Alabama that changed the nations laws on segregation.
Because you don’t know where your life is going to turn, who you’re gonna touch, who’s gonna need you.
You gotta go on.
Because maybe someday you are gonna save someone. Maybe you already have.
Because maybe your one vote is gonna be THE vote that changes history.
Because maybe your positive thoughts will change someone’s negative thoughts, because maybe your home will be someone’s refuge, because maybe your heart will be the bridge that heals, because maybe you will transform someone’s life for the better; your own, a child’s, or an elder’s.
You are an ancestor in training. You were the dream of your mother, your father, your grandmother, your grandfather, your ancestors. You are dreaming our future forward.
We need you. You gotta go on. We gotta go on.
With all my love this season of Thanksgiving.
Thank you for going on.
