When I was seven years old, growing up in the big city of Minneapolis, something wonderful happened to our family - my parents bought a farm near Osceola, Wisconsin. We kept our home base in the city, but I spent all my summers and weekends exploring in my own vast, private natural playground. The farm was nestled in an exquisitely beautiful natural area of forests, fields, and bluff lands along the Lower St. Croix River. Three ecosystems converged there: Northern Boreal Forest, Eastern Hardwood, and Tall Grass Prairie.
My father began buying up farmland along the river in the late 1950's with the idea of creating a membership association of vacation homes that would preserve the natural beauty of the area. Dad was inspired by a cabin on the river belonging to his friend and business partner, Roderic Shearer. Roddy's cabin was just south of McCloud's slough. Roddy was one of the "river rats" - those high spirited city folk who had summer cabins and entertained and boated in the river. Roddy played a mean boogie-woogie at parties on a grand piano that had to be moved out and back in each spring when the river flooded the cabin.
The first property my parents acquired was a red farmhouse with a dairy barn, silo and outbuildings on 280th Street. that house was where the local DJ, named "Donuts," later lived. The house to the south was also purchased and for a short time, my parents were landlords, which they found not to their liking. That first summer we children delighted in the animals that the farmer had not yet moved: pigs, cows and chickens. Next to the barn, there was a milk house that was always cool inside. It became a bedroom with two twin beds. We climbed into the silo, collected salamanders, frogs and all kinds of insects. We danced on the rolling mountains of dried corn in the corn crib. One of my favorite things was bringing the pigs our food scraps.
Next, my parents sold the two dwellings and acquired the adjoining land which included a stretch of the river. We lived in tents on the river bluffs for a summer. I remember a night when a daddy-long-legs shared my sleeping bag - unfortunately, it got squished. Checking for ticks was a nightly ritual.
The next summer, my father built three ply-wood cabins and an outhouse. They were uninsulated square boxes with large screened windows covered with Plexiglas sheets that lifted out. The cook cabin sat in the meadow, at the edge of the forest. It had electric lights, a propane stove, refrigerator and sink, but no running water. The two sleeping cabins were a short walk into the woods. My parents’ cabin had a deck with a view of the river. Poison ivy is particular as to where it grows - not too much sun, not too much shade. Our path in the woods to the cabins had ideal growing conditions for poison ivy and it was prolific. We learned to tread carefully, and my dad often suffered from patches of poison ivy on his legs and arms from working in the woods.
We spent the next three decades inhabiting this rustic set-up, enjoying the close contact with nature which our glorified camping on the land provided us.
The St. Croix River was our favorite place to be. The road down to the river was always washing out from the rains and we spent many a hot, summer day shoveling gravel into the ruts, sweating and drinking cold bottles of Orange Crush and Coca Cola. The reward was the refreshing river waters awaiting us. My brother Peter and I and our friends played all day long in the warm, shallow waters of the river on our private stretch of beach. Across from our beach there was a mysterious island on which a thicket of trees, willows, maples, bulrushes, and arrowroot grew. I’d allow the current to carry me downstream to the beach across from the tip of the island where McCloud’s Slough joined the river. Beyond the island, the river became a wide, deep channel of cold, forbidding water, too dangerous for me to enter.
When I was feeling brave, I would swim to the tip of the island. The current was fast and strong and had carved out a deep pocket in the river which I had to swim across to reach the island’s steep banks. I developed a stout heart, strong muscles and lungs fighting that current. My reward was an island all to myself, lush with the green triangular leaves of arrowroot and thick, strong-smelling black clay that I reveled in, squishing it between my toes and slathering it on my body. Children instinctively know the value of a mudpack.
When I was ready to leave the island, I would jump in the river and attempt to swim back upstream to our beach, eventually giving up and walking along the shore in the shallow water.
I would sit in the river, looking across to the island at the willows and maple trees that arched over the water creating dark, shadows on the riverbank. Their leaves shook in the breeze and reflected the sun’s light. Diamonds sparkled on the water’s surface. If I sat still long enough, minnows approached and nibbled on my legs and toes, tickling me. Walking in the shallow water, head down, I dug for clams in the ripple-patterned sand where I spotted bubbles rising to the surface. A common activity was running for the deeper waters and plunging in head-first in an attempt to lose the vicious, biting horseflies that tormented us, buzzing in circles around us. I would swim underwater, holding my breath as long as I could. When I surfaced, more likely than not, the horsefly was waiting for me and I’d dive in again. I’d keep this up until the fly gave up, my persistence, if not my superior human intelligence having finally outwitted the fly. They were much bigger than the mosquitoes we were constantly swatting, and their bites were painful. I hated the sensation of slapping them dead when they were in the act of biting me.
On the beach, I dug holes, burying my feet in the cool sand, or wrote and drew pictures with sticks in the packed sand. We explored the river bottomlands and slough, walking bare-legged through sharp grasses that cut into our flesh like knives, feeling the dry, hot sand on the soles of our feet. A quick dip in the cool water relieved our feet of the burning sensation.
From a distance of 70 years, looking back to my childhood, it seems as if those long summer days went on forever - as long as we had energy for them, and our energy was boundless.
My father worked in the city during the week. On weekends, if it was sunny, we motored upriver in our aluminum row boat for a picnic on a sandbar. Once launched into the river, my dad would crank up the motor and we’d slice through the water, leaving a frothy wake. My favorite spot to sit was in the very front of the boat, feeling the rush of air and spray on my skin, the cold aluminum seat under my bathing suit-clad bottom. We had to shout to hear each other above the roar of the outboard motor. We kids were on the lookout for “deadheads” and would call out, “deadhead to the right!” (or left, or center) when we saw a submerged log partially sticking out of the water. My dad would maneuver the boat around it. We knew well the river’s shape and contours, how to keep to the main channel (which wasn’t always in the center of the river) and avoid the hidden sandbars; but the river was unpredictable, always changing, and many times the motor snagged on a completely submerged log, or we’d hit a newly formed sandbar. If it was a sandbar, my father would shut off the motor and quickly lift up the propeller. We would jump out of the boat and pull it to deeper waters. If it was a log we’d snagged, the motor would shut off and our boat would to come to a sudden halt. Again, we had to jump out of the boat, but this time into deep waters. We’d swim the boat towards shore and tow the boat upstream in shallower waters. One hand on the gunwale, we dug our feet into the sand and leaned against the force of the current, sometimes in water up to our chest. We met the river’s muscle on its own terms, without the speed and power of technology. We were puny in comparison. My father sat in the boat, replacing the bent pin in the propeller that had caused the motor to shut off. Soon we’d be on our way again, thanks to my father’s magic – smart, strong and healthy, there was nothing that my father couldn’t do.
We stopped for lunch at our favorite sandbar near the northern tip of the island, where the railroad bridge spanned the river. My mother unpacked a picnic from her wicker basket of deviled eggs, cold chicken, potato salad, black olives, Swiss cheese and ham sandwiches, peanut butter sandwiches, potato chips, and one or two packs of cookies chosen from among our favorite brands: Chocolate-covered graham crackers, Hydrox cookies (better than Oreos), Vienna Fingers (vanilla crème-filled cookies), Pecan Sandies, Chips Ahoy, Vanilla Wafers, ginger snaps and Fig Newtons. Bottles of Orange Crush, 7-Up, Coke and cans of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer (for the adults) were packed in ice in the cooler.
Sometimes we motored farther upriver to a rocky beach where Indian caves were dug into the soft, sandstone cliffs. To reach the caves, we had to climb a short, steep trail, grabbing onto tree branches to help us upward. The front of the cave had a high, arched ceiling and a sandy floor that sloped upwards to the back of the cave. At the back of the cave it was dark and the atmosphere became progressively cooler and damper. There were small openings of tunnels that one could follow and, supposedly, surface somewhere up on the river bluff in the forest or in a field. We never dared to find out. The sandstone walls could be carved into with a stick, and we broke pieces of it off in our fingers. With nothing on but our bathing suits, we became chilled, but it didn’t interfere with our enjoyment of the mysterious space, it rather added a novel dimension to our experience. Summer on the river was filled with fresh, sensuous raptures and adventures that only children can know, and it was always too soon when we had to leave - our parents were calling us.
On the way back, we would shut off
the motor and float downstream through the slough, us kids trailing behind the
boat in truck-sized inner tubes, while the grownups drank beer and talked and
watched for birds and new wildflowers to identify. This was one of my parent’s
favorite things to do. My mother always brought along her Peterson guides to
the wildflowers and birds. Springs fed into the slough and she would point out the
watercress, Forget-me-nots, Marsh marigolds, or her favorite, the red Cardinal
flower. My mother was well known for her gourmet cooking and she learned to incorporate many wild foods into her menus. Potato-watercress soup was a favorite recipe.
Parts of the slough were narrow and twisty with dead trees jutting out from the banks around which driftwood piled up. Tangled tree roots and over hanging branches created cave-like structures. Silent and swift, the current carried me into them, my inner tube bumping up against the piled up driftwood. I’d grab onto the weirdly-shaped tree roots and branches and pull myself along, pushing away from the debris, paddling and kicking with arms and legs. A thick curtain of trees and willows on either side of the slough prevented us from seeing what was up ahead in the river bottomlands until we got around each bend. On rare, special occasions, we’d surprise a Great Blue Heron. It would lift out of the water with great wings, long legs trailing, its primitive, guttural call notifying the other residents of the slough of our presence.
The slough gradually exercised a kind of spell on us, and we would lapse into silence, suspended in time, floating in the dark waters, carried along by the river. Shafts of sunlight filtered through the translucent green canopy of trees. In our hushed domain of alternating light and shadow, the only sounds were the pure notes of bird calls, the buzzing of insects, or the scrape of an oar as my father pushed the boat away from a protruding log. Drifting noiselessly, passively watching the scenery go by, we temporarily lost our grip on the everyday, usual world. I wonder if that was the beginning of my later existential musings about life: “…a star at dawn, a bubble in a stream, a phantasm and a dream…all this fleeting reality.”
Eventually, the long silence and
monotony of floating in the slough would become too much for us kids and we’d
start to complain. We’d had our fill of the river and we wanted to
go home, to the upper meadow and river bluffs where our cabins were. We whimpered
and moaned and bugged our parents who patiently put up with us, and finally, we
arrived at the main channel of the river. We climbed into the boat and our dad
would start up the motor. It was a relief to exit the slough into the sunny,
main river channel, and soon we were back at our familiar beach where Dad
would expertly maneuver the boat, cutting the motor at the last moment before
the prow hit the sandy river bank. After we unloaded the boat, Dad would lift off
the motor and drag the boat to a hiding place in the woods, where he locked it
to a metal chain threaded through a hole in the gunwale and wrapped around a
tree trunk. We pulled pants and shirts on, brushed the wet sand off our feet, and
put on our tennis shoes. We took some of the river with us: there was sand everywhere
- in our clothes, our shoes, our leftover picnic lunch, our scalp, our ears, between
our toes and fingers, and even in our bellybuttons. The high-pitched whine of mosquitoes accompanied us as we walked a short path
through the woods to the jeep for the final leg of the journey – a wild ride up
a steep trap rock road.
When we tired of the river, there were the fields and forests to explore, more wildflowers to identify: black-eyed susans, columbine, trillium, jack-in-the-pulpit, purple and white asters, butter and eggs, gentian, columbine, lady’s slipper, mullein and milkweed. There was the abundance of the land to gather: red raspberries, wild plums, wild grapes, crab apples, morels, and watercress. There were painful rashes from the nettles I accidentally brushed up against, horrible itchy rashes from poison ivy, mosquito bites and wood tick searches every night before we bedded down in the three plywood shacks my father had built on the river bluff.
We invited friends out to the country and built bonfires at night on "lightning hill." We kids toasted marshmallows and lay on canvas tarpaulins, gazing up at the stars, exclaiming over falling stars, listening to the crickets, owls and the grown-ups talking late into the night. The moon rose over the trees and falling asleep, I would half-awake as my father lifted me and carried me to the jeep and back to our cabins.
Over the years, my parents accumulated 1700 acres of these beautiful fields and forests and river bottom lands in the St. Croix River Valley. Dad would come home from the country and tell us tales of the "Norwegian bachelor farmers" he had been schmoozing with, trying to convince them to sell their land. Being of Norwegian stock himself, Dad understood how to interact with them. They appreciated Dad's reserved, quiet demeanor and he was successful in purchasing more and more land. But the vacation home development proved not to be successful.
With the passage of the 1968 Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, "the Feds" bought our stretch of riverfront, which put the vacation homes plan somewhat in limbo, though Dad managed to negotiate private access to the river through two roads, at the north and south ends of the property, where people would have been able to keep small boats. While my parents wanted to preserve the outstanding natural character of the land, they needed to make their investment pay as they were deeply in debt. This
was a great source of strain in my parents' marriage, as my mother was
terrified of all the debt they had been accumulating in purchasing
property. Eventually they were forced to sell the land when the development failed to attract the necessary buyers.
This is the point in my story where
things could have gone in a depressingly familiar direction: with the triumph of haphazard, profit-motivated
development and the destruction of the natural beauty of the land. As my parents could no longer afford to hold onto the land, some
developer could have bought it for a song and my parents would have had no say
in how it was developed. The long history of exploitation of the river valley for short-sighted material gain would continue.
I am happy to report that this was not the outcome. The land was not sold to developers and my childhood paradise has not been ruined. If anything, it is even better than before, having been converted into Standing Cedars Community Land Conservancy.
My parents were pleased that the land was protected. After the sale had gone through, my father said to me, "When you bring in the people, you ruin the land." (There is truth to that, though I do feel that people and land can co-exist harmoniously when we hold stewardship values.) The spirit of the land is intact. The fields have been restored to original tall grass prairie, abundant with wildflowers; the woods and river bottomlands and sandy beaches of the river have been preserved for generations to come and enjoy. It is an oasis of natural beauty and wildness where the public can come to recreate, walk the trails, picnic, swim, canoe, cross-country ski, hunt and watch the moon rise while the coyotes howl and the owls hoot. It is a place to commune with nature and refresh the human spirit.
I am grateful beyond words for the establishment of SCCLC. How many people can come back to the place where they grew up and find it still intact? What does it mean to come back and walk the beautiful prairies and woods that my childhood senses inscribed so vividly on my soul? To walk and want nothing from the land except to partake of the beauty? To walk in the late afternoon when the sun casts its rays creating long, slanting shadows and backlighting majestic Big Bluestem grass, silky Indian grass, purple asters, golden rod, flitting monarchs and swallowtails...then feeling the soft, warm evening breeze descend at dusk after the sun has set, walking through pockets of cold air where the land dips, hearing the owls hoot and the crickets sing, watching the moon rise over the prairie...you cannot put a price on that feeling.
The beauty of SCCLC is that there is so much of it, and so much variety. I encourage people to come and walk and ski this land at all times of the day and in all seasons so that they can cone to know and love it as I do. "Forest bathing" is a real need we have. There are gorgeous stands of birch and poplars and oaks and maples and basswood...the trees murmur and speak to each other and to us as we walk in the woods and we are comforted and refreshed. You can find American wild ginseng in the woods, - some say it's better than the Chinese ginseng. There are mushrooms and healing herbs and wildflowers such as Bloodroot, Trillium, Jack-in-the-Pulpit, Lady's Slipper, Columbine. And the prairie! You can be walking in the woods and suddenly come to an opening with a prairie meadow. After decades of the cultivation of corn and soybeans, to bring back native prairie is a stunning accomplishment. There is a whole prairie ecosystem that is flourishing. This idea of native prairie is catching on, even inspiring farmers as they learn to plant strips of native prairie grasses between their crops to help stabilize the soil.
When I walk in the prairies, woods and river bottomlands, I feel how stewardship is truly the right relationship for us to have with the land and plants and creatures and each other. It incorporates values of reciprocity, reverence, respect and responsibility...and recreation! The five "R's," if you will. Only with this feeling will we be able to protect what we love and keep it for the generations. We can all live so much better if we have that awareness, that love, that sense of belonging and the knowledge that we are privileged to be part of a greater whole that is our birthright. This is what I would wish for people who come to SCCLC - that they feel it is their own, that it is their home and that it belongs to them, and they belong to it.
www.standingcedars.org
A personal account of our family's role in the acquisition of the land which became the Engelwood parcel of Standing Cedars Community Land Conservancy
In contemplating things, it seems to me that three things were crucial in contributing to the ultimate fate of our land and its role in the creation of SCCLC:
1. 1. My father’s love of the St. Croix River Valley and his talent in acquiring real estate
2. 2. Senators Gaylord Nelson and Walter Mondale who strongly took up the cause of conservation. First the passage of the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which designated the upper St. Croix River as wild river. Then in 1972 they convinced congress to designate the Lower St. Croix as a scenic river, giving federal muscle to the effort to forestall development. They purchased scenic easements from landowners who were increasingly pressured to sell to developers.
3. 3. The campaign initiated by Rick and Verna to create SCCLC
During the year-long campaign to raise the funds to purchase our land for Standing Cedars, I was living in California and had been watching with bated breath to see if the campaign would be successful. Happily, it was successful, and the land was protected. Even my father, after his project to develop the land as a 55 vacation-home association failed, admitted to me, "I realize now that when you bring in the people, you ruin the land."
The following is a letter written to me by my mother, Topsy, in July of 1998, four years after our family's land had become the Engelwood tract of Standing Cedars Land Conservancy.
7/28/98
Dear Cath,
It’s early morning and another beautiful day. The weather is
making up for all the rotten, rainy, chilly summers of the past during which we
explain to disappointed house guests that July is usually a beautiful
month. We are savoring it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about our last conversation
concerning all the bad things that are happening to the environment. The
situation does appear to be grim from our point of view. However, if we allow
ourselves to become depressed about it, we are taking a responsibility which
doesn’t belong to us, but belongs to God. A case in point close to home is the
Standing Cedars Land Conservancy.
The history of the land starts with us before you were born
when Dad acquired some stock in Cottonwood Land Company. What he had in mind
was coal, or perhaps oil, certainly not land. As time went on, he purchased
more stock until he and the Shearer brothers obtained a controlling interest in
the company. (It was a very small company.) By that time and by manipulating
some government crop programs (we had no capital), Dad had acquired two
adjoining farms on the St. Croix River, the one with the little farmhouse by
the road (where we stayed) and the farm to the South.
Because the land was poor farmland, it appeared that farmers
would be willing to sell other land if a buyer appeared. It was then that Dad
conceived the development concept. He had never heard of a Land Trust, but he
did greatly admire Encampment Forest Association [in northern Minnesota along Lake Superior] with many acres of lovely forests and a
relatively few number of houses. He never had any intention of including a golf
course in the development. (Although he loved to tease me by pointing to my
favorite field and saying, “Wouldn’t that make a lovey golf course?” He was
interested only in a concept similar to Encampment and thinking of “second” or
vacation homes.
But how to buy land when there was no money? With the acquiescence
of Roddy and his brother, Dad sold the land out in Wyoming (keeping the mineral
rights) and with that money started buying land for Cottonwood. After he ran
out of money, he managed to get a huge personal loan from a businessman who was
somewhat interested in the area. With that and, at some point, additional money
from the Heide Trust, he slowly purchased land. He was so good at it that he
managed to put together 2,000 or more acres including a quarter of a mile of
river front. You might say that God gave him a
talent for creative financing and allowed him to buy all that acreage.
During this period, I was kicking and screaming all the way.
Dad was doing less and less lawyering and spending more of his energies on
Cottonwood. I was absolutely terrified at the huge debt and couldn’t see how we
would ever pay it back. (It was a great source of conflict in our marriage.)
Dad, however, had absolutely no doubt and I reluctantly went along.
After all the land was purchased, the St. Croix was declared
a Wild River. The Feds announced they would purchase some land outright and put
other land in Scenic Easements, a method of putting tight restrictions on the
land without actually purchasing it. Property owners, including Cottonwood and
us, began fencing with the government to get the highest dollar for purchased
and scenic easement land. Congress had appropriated a limited amount of money
for these acquisitions, and it looked as though the money was running short.
Just before the Feds declared a moratorium on further outlay, we and Cottonwood
settled. It wasn’t as much as Dad wanted, but it was better than nothing, and in
our own case, the person who made our personal loan was getting restive.
You might say that God “saved our bacon” just in the nick of
time (Since I’m into cliches.) We were able to pay off our debt and had enough
money both to live and to do some renovation on the red brick farmhouse which
we had purchased from the Heide Trust.
Dad then persuaded the Shearers that it was time to develop
the south half of the property. A very large sum of money was borrowed by
Cottonwood and a good trap rock road was built down to the South slough. (In a
brilliant coup, Dad had negotiated with the Feds to keep river access at both
ends of the property for 55 families who would own property in the development.
The would be allowed to keep small boats at the base of each of the two roads
to the river. No one else had been able to do such a thing.)
After that, they got Dick Noland to create a very fancy
brochure with still fancier enclosures which were sent out to a select group of
people. Nothing much happened. A little interest was shown, but no one came
close to a purchase. Time passed; cottonwood was broke, all the money eaten up
by the road, the brochure, and taxes. The bank was about to foreclose, so Dad
decided to get a personal loan using our Mt. Curve house as a collateral. I
went with him to sign the papers (still kicking and screaming, but I did it).
The Cottonwood debt was paid off and we took on the debt of Cottonwood.
Nothing was happening so we sold the house on Mt. Curve to
help pay the interest and to live on. Fortunately, I was still working, and my
salary just about paid the interest on the loan. Dad was able to sell some Cottonwood
lots on the east side of 280th Street which were separate from the main
piece. Some of that money came to us. We lived on this plus my salary, and
Dad’s Social Security.
Cottonwood taxes were a terrible problem so Dad found a
company which would do some very careful and selective logging of the Cottonwood
property. He made sure only to log those areas which would have the least
effect on the property. That money was used to pay back taxes on Cottonwood.
They were huge!
We were running out of money pretty fast as my salary was only
enough to pay the interest on the loan. Dad gave up the idea of developing the
land himself and turned it over to a real estate person. Nothing continued to
happen, so, as soon as I retired, we gave up the apartment and moved to the
farmhouse. Finally, there appeared some interest by developers and there was
one hot prospect whose name we didn’t know. Suddenly, our real estate man got a
brain aneurysm and had to be operated on. He survived the operation, but his short-term
memory was temporarily destroyed. He didn’t remember who Dad was, much less
what had been going on with the property. It was about that time that I began
to wonder a little. It occurred to me that something that I didn’t understand
was going on.
Things were not going quickly enough. We had put a mortgage
on the farmhouse and were trying to manage on that money, our Social Security,
and my U of MN retirement. It was looking as though we were going to lose the
land because we couldn’t pay the taxes. Furthermore, some developer would be
able to pick it up for a song and we would have no say on how it would be
developed.
One day, Verna Kragnes (from Philadelphia Community Farm)
called to ask if I knew of any property for sale in the area. I said, “How
about 1100 acres?” She said “What??!!” So I explained the situation to her. It
was then that she conceived the idea of a Land Trust. What an amazing woman!
She and Rick began to try to find money and we hung on by our fingertips hoping
to avoid foreclosure.
It took them a year of ups and downs. They would think they’d
find money, then it would evaporate. They looked in every nook and cranny of
the grant giving world. Finally, Verna made a significant contact with a woman
who ran the granting arm of the Wisconsin DNR. No money had been allocated to
our area of the state and this was an opportunity to spread some available
money around.
By this time, Verna had established Standing Cedars and had
a Board of Directors. They started to raise private money (mostly from St. Paul
people who had cabins across the river and didn’t want their view of Wisconsin
spoiled), but the entry of the state made a huge difference. Finally, Verna put
together a loan from a non-profit, a huge grant from the state, and private contributions.
They made Dad an offer and it was too low. It looked as though the negotiations
had stopped. However, they came back, Dad negotiated with them, and the sale
was made.
It was a complicated transaction because we had land, the
Heide Trust had land and Cottowood had land. I can’t give enough credit to Dad
for the way in which the sale was handled. He also was not greedy. He tried,
and was successful, in representing every one’s interests, including that of
the Land Trust. (He did believe in the concept.)
In retrospect, God would never pick a developer who didn’t
bother to do a market survey; who mailed to a list of people who were out of
the housing market; and who had no sales force. It’s clear that HE never meant
Dad to be a developer and I was to be the contact that found the buyer – merely
an actress playing the part assigned by the Big Director in the Sky. The land
was destined to be a Land Trust, at least for now. We can’t really say what
will happen at a later date. Since the mind of God is inscrutable, we can only
speculate. Perhaps Dad and I found each other and got married so we could play
a part in this little drama. We’ve said our lines and it’s time for us to leave
that particular stage. And so we have, except for an abiding interest in the
land and, of course, Dad is on the Management Planning Committee...
If we allow ourselves to become depressed because of the
state of the world, we are taking responsibility for something that belongs to
God. He is in charge. Not only are we not in charge, but we also haven’t the
slightest idea what his plans are. Here is a quote from Fritjof Shuon which has
been a great comfort to me.
I am responsible, before God, for
my soul; all else I leave in God’s hands. This
means, firstly: I am not responsible for what others do; and secondly: I
cannot change the world, or do away with every wrong, and I need not fret over
this.
I am responsible, before God, for
my soul, hence for my spiritual and social duties; I discriminate between what
is essential and what is not, or between the Real and the unreal. All else I
leave in God’s hands. Such are the virtues of resignation and trust.
This is a long and complicated letter. I thought that if I could tell you about a lesson that I have tried to learn, you might find it applicable in your own life.
Thinking of you and praying for you always,
Much love,
Mother
