New Year's Eve Rembrances

Lessons learned one New Years Eve

The Place of my youth...I lived a block from here.

New Year Eve was here and I was prepared. I had purchased firecrackers, rockets, flares, roman candles, etc. At midnight, as was German tradition, I would go out into our small cobblestone street and light them.

I could not wait, I had already tested some of them and the results were spectacular. Everything seemed just right for a night of boyish fun, until my grandmother sent me to bed at around eight in the evening, telling me that she would wake me just before midnight, when the real fun would begin.

As I lay in my featherbed, somewhat disappointed, unable to close my eyes, the fireworks and rockets next to me, a light came on in my head and I came up with this crazy idea....what if I lit the fuse of just one of the rockers and just before it went off I would extinguish the wick?

That is just what I did -- with one drawback, it did not work out as planned. The results were in living color and ultra sound, a most spectacular moment...The room lit up, smoke and sparkle everywhere as the rocket buried itself into my featherbed and the exploded with a loud bang.

The bed was smoldering and on fire as my grandmother rushed in with grandfather at her side, my mother right behind them...She grabbed the water urn from the night-stand and poured it onto the flames...after which her full attention turned to me...

That night I received a protoplasmic posterior stimulation that I remember to this day and worse...I was confined to stay in my mother's bed and could not partake in any of the midnight festivities...I sobbed myself to sleep as I heard the explosions of fireworks in the background.

I was sad about the fire and the spanking, but mostly that I could not join the fun and activities...and there was a New Year's Eve Reflections

part of me that dreaded facing the next day and probably more of a lecture from my mother and grandparents.

When morning came I heard my grandmother stirring in the kitchen. I did not know how she would act toward me after this latest prank, but my hunger pangs got the best of me and I entered the kitchen just as she was loading coal into the cooking stove...When she was done she turned, looked at me...a sort of smile on her face...her arms open to welcome and hug me...as she said ..."I am glad you did not get hurt last night."

Forgiveness flowed from her to me as she embraced me and I experienced another moment of Grace in my life...I did not know how to respond, it was wonderfully overwhelming...I felt clean, free, loved.

Many years later I sat with a young man in my office in Africa. He had stolen some things in order to help his family. He had also spoken evil of me saying that I was just another white man here to take from Africans...This was my chance to get even, this was my chance to let him have it, to get revenge, to show him who was in charge, to show that I had the power...and my mind went back to that New Years Eve, and the next day, when my grandmother embraced me...I oddly felt it like it was happening once again...at the same time...I realized that I was not in this world to simply judge...to leave imprints of power and strength...but that real strength was giving Grace to someone who deserved judgment...to show mercy and kindness...to let forgiveness flow and keep the channel of life open between us...to empower not through demands to the head, but graceful appeals of the heart...For a moment ... the what if...what if he did not respond the way I wanted him to...The realization that such was not my responsibility, that my responsibility was simply to bless, not to curse...to pour forth that which had been given to me in times past...Grace...

Each day I face choices, whether I will pass on the Grace or dam it up, whether to be channel of Grace, or turn the Grace away from the one who needs it and allow bitterness, wrath, malice to rule, to divide...to destroy the bonds of love and Grace...

In the words of Francis of Assisi..."Lord make me an instrument of thy peace...."

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Celebrations with an African Twist

New Year's Eve Remembrances

Lessons learned one New Years Eve