Inspired by Scholastica

  Juneteenth Thoughts On June 19, we celebrated Juneteenth, which commemorates the end of slavery in the United States in 1865. President Abraham Lincoln actually signed the proclamation in 1863, but many white slave owners didn’t tell their slaves because they wanted to keep them as their property. The injustices and cruelty against Blacks continued long after that even to the present day.   One of the most noteworthy examples was the brutal lynching of Emmet Till, a 14-year-old Black teenager, accused of flirting with a white woman in Mississippi in 1955. Another is the murder of Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist, who challenged the segregation at the University of Mississippi in 1963. The most famous is the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.in 1968. The most recent was George Floyd, the innocent Black man killed by police in Minneapolis in 2022. Perhaps the most egregious example of prejudice was the destruction of a wealthy Black neighborhood in Tulsa, Oklahoma,

  Refreshing the Soul When I am beleaguered by the political situation or troubled by the controversies in the Church or disgusted by the lack of concern about environmental crises, I turn to poetry, particularly Mary Oliver’s poetry. She has a way of filling me with wonders of nature that calms my soul. In her poem “Messenger”, she says, “Let me keep my mind on what matters,/ which is my work/ which is mostly standing still and learning to be astonished.” And she has all matter of things to be astonished about, “the phoebe, the delphinium, the sheep in the pasture, the moth and the wren, the sleepy dug-up clam.” In other words, all the seemingly inconsequential things that make our world livable and astounding. It takes time to see into the heart of things as Oliver does. In her poem Invitation, she says: “Oh do you have time/to linger/for just a little while/out of your busy And very important day/ for the goldfinches/ that have gathered/ in a field of thistles.” Most of

    Overcoming Barriers Change is hard. Most of us like to keep our regular routine rather than begin something new. When we are used to our job, our home, our town, our space, we feel comfortable. To step out into the unknown is often scary. Overcoming barriers to achieve a better world is hard work. There are some people who like new challenges, and can adapt to changes whatever they may bring. They like the excitement and adventure of what lies ahead. These are the risk takers and leaders who can generate new ideas and make hard decisions. I think of people like Ghandhi who was able to overcome British domination and lead his people with peaceful resistance. He caused India to change from a British colony to an independent country. I remember Wangari Maathai who started the Green Belt Movement, which succeeded in planting over 51 million trees in Kenya, making her country more economically and environmentally successful. She had to undergo imprisonment and other setbacks but