On Fri, Feb 11, 2011 at 12:13 AM, MarshaV <[email protected]> wrote: > > > "What do you see here, my friend? Just an ordinary old cooking pot, > black with soot and full of dents"
Last night I drove by DQ University again. I go by that way frequently, since my youngest daughter's school and my oldest daughter's school are both along that route. Last night it was to my oldest daughter's school I was headed, where my youngest had been dropped off and my oldest was in a play. I always think about DQ as I pass. And wonder, what I should do or if there is anything I could do or if I should have done things differently in my attempts to get involved with that place. Indian affairs can be so complicated. The last time I really tried, I came down there for a board meeting, and right off the bat I was ignored as an outcast because I was a friend of Rudy Al James, and some there had had a negative experience with Rudy in the past. He'd tried to warn me, that it would be so, but I felt I should try anyway. So I went. I sat on a cold metal chair next to a table off to the side, and didn't say a word for the 10 or so hours I was there. It was a cold foggy day, the temperature never got above 40 and all that moisture in the air just seemed to seep into our bones. There was so much disorganization and waiting around for this member to get a ride, that member to make her bus connection. The heat was off, the electricity was off, and the whole affair just seemed so low-rent and unorganized. The ladies on the board though, were not unorganized. They had their agenda and matters of discussion and they went through them all. As I sat and listened. While I sat and listened, one lumpy old woman dumped a big bag of groceries on the table behind me, and then while the meeting was going, proceed to chop up a bunch of vegetables and plop them into a battered tin pot with a portable propane burner bringing them to a boil. The chopping motion wiggled the wobbly table against which I was leaning, and I turned and smiled at her and she smiled back, but we didn't say anything, both listening to the interminable problems and accusations and defenses of the board and I kept leaning against the table and after a long while, the stew was done. Elk, I believe it was. Very hot and very tasty. In fact, just about the best stew I ever had. Maybe it was because of how cold we were and how hungry, but it meant an awful lot to me. We all remarked upon how good it was, but nobody really made a big deal. It seemed to me that it was just understood or taken for granted, that this is the way life is. We might get cold. We might get hungry. We might get bored plowing through a long agenda and frustrated over all the insoluble problems of life and our conflicts with one another. But there's also good, nourishing food along the way and we share it with one another and then go about our business. And the funny thing is, with time many of the memories of the conflicts and problems have faded, but the memory of that stew is what sticks with me and when I drive past DQ, And it wasn't just the taste of stew, so much, but the look in her eye, the old woman making it. The calm, the peace, the understanding. It's something I don't find anywhere else in our rushed and hurried world. It's left me with a taste in my mouth that is bigger than mere food - a taste I long for still. "What to you seems commonplace to us appears wondrous through symbolism. This is funny, because we don't even have a word for symbolism, yet we are all wrapped up in it. You have the word, but that is all." Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
