January 12th, 2017
Yesterday I started a story about my Great Uncle Clare.
Most days I drove my motorcycle along the grassy fence line past his farm, ignoring his apparent need for help. He needed help. He would have appreciated the help. But somehow, I don’t think he minded that I rarely stopped.
He was not a man that sought to be seen. He was a man to do quietly. And he had spent a lifetime of quietly doing; quietly planting seeds in not so fertile ground, waiting and hoping that someday they might take root.
Whenever I did stop to help, that’s what he did for me–plant seeds in my not so fertile ground, thinking that seeds planted in infertile soil had a better chance of sprouting than if he had never planted them at all.
And so he did, one late spring morning with the chill of the morning dew still lingering in the air. Our legs dangled over his warped wood hay wagon, our faces to the east as the sun rose over the mountain, delivering life to another day.
The Clorox jug I spoke of yesterday, rested between us providing water now that the chores were done. “It’s not cold, but it’s wet,” he said as he twisted the wooden wedge back into the jug’s mouth. With a playful glimmer in his eye and seriousness on his face, he said to me: “David, last night I had a dream. I dreamed I was awake, and when I woke up, I was asleep!”
What he said made no sense to me. Dream that you’re awake? Nonsense. I’m sure my face revealed my confusion, if not disdain.
Uncle Clare laughed at me so hard that I thought he would fall off the wagon.
That moment has never left me. His statement, dreaming he was awake, and then waking to find himself asleep turned in my head periodically for nearly forty years, most of the time not making any sense.
Then a few years ago, it suddenly made sense. “I dreamed I was awake, and when I awoke, I was asleep.”
We often go through life thinking that we’re awake, alert, and aware of things around us when in reality we live in a fog; asleep to needs all around us, asleep to our behavior, asleep to our need to change, asleep to what we could do if we woke up.
Thinking we are awake when in reality we are not results in our depriving those whom we could help, cheating ourselves from growth and learning, sentencing us to long periods of self-diminishment. We become smaller and our soul’s contract.
Please, Mr. Trump, make sure you’re awake to the needs of our people as you take the helm of our country on January 20th.
Sincerely,
David O. Leavitt
