Definition of Masterpiece: Kansas Sunrise as viewed through rear view mirror while skirting a hilltop on a rural road. Ahead sit redtailed hawk and fox - both eyeing same prairie grass prey through the mist. Stunning.

Airport Chapels

I have been visiting airport chapels since my ‘Road Warrior’ days as a professional speaker. Because chapels have represented healing and comfort to me since childhood, I have looked for chapels to visit in airports as well.
“As a traveler, I am always pleasantly surprised whenever I find one; most often, the space is tucked away and fairly difficult to locate. But once there, I sit down, breathe in the holy air and thank my God for a respite from the hustle of travel.
“I realize that my own journeys are not unlike those of early pilgrims.
“When I sit in an airport chapel, I often do not see the antiseptic seats or the few potted plants that brighten the space. I see instead sojourners from the past of every stripe imaginable; I consider how grateful I am for the safety of having ‘made it this far.’
“I think back to all the travelers before me who welcomed a moment’s peace in their busy day exactly as I do in that moment. I imagine how connected to my fellow travelers I am.
“I observe a woman praying her rosary before boarding her next flight. Another time, I see a Muslim, leading his son in tow, and finding a prayer rug to fold himself upon, facing Mecca and the kaaba.
“Whenever I visit an airport chapel, I first always look for the visible signs of multi-faith worship or prayer.
“Not all chapels are truly inclusive. Recently, I read a note in the chapel guest book from a fellow traveler at Chicago Midway: ‘Why have you no menorah, at least, for the Jewish faithful traveling?’”
If Kansas City's airport is to recognize the spiritual diversity of the Heartland and to be truly international, it should join other major airports by dedicating a space for what I think of is “time to get still.”
Said friend and KC Star columnist Vern Barnet, "I do not want government taxing us to support religious activities, but faith and secular groups could rent and furnish a space welcoming all who travel, making their trip more meaningful as we realize that we are all pilgrims on this planet, as the planet itself whirls through space with our lives unfolding." I thoroughly agree.

On Speeches, On Servants' Hearts, on Dr. Martin Luther King

On Martin Luther King, Jr. – His legacy to me, a second-generation MOM

In June, 1968, I graduated from Maria High School on Chicago’s South Side. Ours was a somber graduation – Bobby Kennedy had been killed the week before and Martin Luther King, Jr. had been murdered but two months prior to that, on April 4. My high school was situated directly across the street from the last “white “ park then and the nuns had sent us home, I remember, due to fear of riots in the city.

A friend and I had started a literary magazinethat year – we had already highlighted the tragedies of the 1967 Israeli-PalestinianWar and now were marching down the aisle to receive our diplomas to the tune of Climb Every Mountain – that long sad Mother Superior song from The Sound of Music. Hardly your typical Pomp and Circumstance.

And I remember thinking then, and knowing now

– that Martin Luther King knew something about climbing mountains. I remember how ANGRY I was then about his assassination; I remember thinking then that SOMEBODY HAD TO DO SOMETHING to stop the hatred. I remember thinking then that when I left high school and later home, things were going to be different. There would be change in our country. Would there? How COULD there? And who was going to do that changing? I don’t think it had occurred to me yet that it was every day people – you – and you – and I - who would be making differences – And the question here today is “are we making differences?”

For a while before the last presidential election, I began to believe that we just might be really getting there. I worked for a few months at an election office, where I was privileged and so excited to see hundreds upon hundreds of people come in to vote, often expressing that THIS IS MY FIRST TIME TO VOTE!!! And I would so joyfully respond – and don’t let it be YOUR LAST!! There was no doubt that things would be beginning to change. I am from Chicago, originally, and I was THRILLED that my hometown has raised up a new president – from as diverse an area, Hyde Park, as any in the country, and that my own son lives there today. But there is always more work to be done.

From my perspective as a mother who raised three young men in a Kansas City suburb, I want to be able to say

Yes, We ARE MAKING DIFFERENCES. And no. No, we are

not there yet. Here’s my personal perspective.

My mother and father had come to this country from the small Baltic country of Lithuania as refugees after WWII. They had spent five years after that war in refugee camps, and then made their way to Chicago by way of Ellis Island in New York. It is the story of millions of immigrants.

I was the only one in our family who was born in the United States. Within 6 months of my birth, my father left our family, and here was my Mom, 27 years old, with 3 little kids under the age of 5, and not one of us spoke English. (Actually I wasn’t speaking yet AT ALL!). My mother was a college graduate but she couldn’t prove it because she had no diploma when students fled her country to escape the invading Russian army.

There was no government aid then; no assistance.

She took a job as a carrot and onion peeler at a Campbell’s Soups factory on Chicago’s South Side and eventually began to learn English. After a while, she went nights to school to become a medical technologist and went to work in a hospital. She worked two shifts a day for over twenty of the 39 years she lasted at St. Anthony’s before she died. I never saw her through all my high school years except on Sundays, because I was gone to school before she’d come home and I’d come home and she’d be gone. Yet my mother was amazing. Every day, she would leave my brothers and me a note, encouraging us to do well that day, and she would say to me, “Gaile, you might not get the dishes done tonight, but that’s your second job. Your first job is to MAKE SURE YOU KNOW SOMETHING MORE TODAY THAN YOU DID YESTERDAY, because YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT TOMORROW’S GOING TO BRING. Your first job is learning - and learning daily.”

As I like to say since, then, yeah –

Things can change. Things DO Change. Things will ALWAYS be changing . CHANGE is INEVITABLE – but GROWTH is OPTIONAL!

So when I came across the speech of Martin Luther King that said:

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but

comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent,

I felt I knew what he was talking about. I loved that last line - a MAN CAN’T RIDE YOU UNLESS YOUR BACK IS BENT.

It was EXACTLY what my mother, as an immigrant to this country, had taught me. She would say to me,

‘Never mind that you don’t have a dime in your pocket. You walk with your head held high. Don’t ever slouch and cower – even if you’re penniless. Don’t let someone catch you looking down; they’ll think you’re looking for loose change! No, you carry yourhead high, like you’re a queen.

Let people wonder if you have a dime or 100 dollars in your pocket; don’t worry about what they think of you. You just worry about keeping your dignity. And you treat others with dignity as well. And nobody, NO BODY can own your thoughts or decide for you who you are. Always remember that!’

I believe that the power of Martin Luther King is that he shouted for all to learn the same things my mother was teaching me in our kitchen.. Dignity, faith in oneself, belief that a better life is meant for all peoples to share in is a legacy that was so simple and clear to me that it actually became quite profound. I hold all immigrants, all people of differences especially dear because I know what poverty and struggle looked like growing up and I listened atingle to King’s voice becoming a clarion call for not just his own people, but for all people of minority, of “outsiderness” to this, or any country, as well.

So, when I married and moved to Kansas and became a mother to three sons, I couldn’t let those beliefs leave me. It was important to me to rear sons who understood that not all the world lives in privilege and safety as they seemed fortunate to do. But they had to

know that regardless of from where, and how people spent their day, they were all EQUAL – people, too – PEOPLE OF VALUE IN THE EYES OF whatever Creator they held to be theirs.

An individual has not started living unless he can rise above

the narrow confines of his

individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

It was important for me that my sons understand the value of service. I believe that my legacy from Dr. King was that reminder to broaden my concerns for others. Perhaps not each of us can be senators or representatives or city commissioners or servants committed to public office, but each of us has a sphere of influence that we are the center of. Each of us has family or friend or coworker or EVEN A PET for whom we ARE THE CENTER OF THEIR UNIVERSE, or we are a light of relationship to someone in this world. It is with these people, in our DAILY interactions, that we model the words and wishes of Dr. King. I treat every cabdriver, every waitstaff person, every cashier and busdriver I see in as friendly a manner as I do the banker or the doctor I encounter. (That’s not to say I carry on with all these people!) but THE IDEA IS THAT NO ONE IS INVISIBLE. NO ONE. I remember how invisible people wanted to make my mother because she could not speak unaccented English.

Martin Luther King has said that Almost always the dedicated minority has made the world better.

And I believe that. But that minority is NOT just one

of color. It includes all disenfranchised people – be they struggling with injustice due to color or gender or ethnicity or language. I think of all the differing groups of immigrants who have lighted here, and all the contributions made from throughout the world and think yes, Dr. Martin Luther King was right.

Almost always the dedicated minority has made the world better.

And, that minority sometimes includes lots

more people than seems evident at the surface.

And here’s why I think we are making some

progress today, although we are not there yet:

I take example from my boys who are not boys today but men.

Each is seeking his way by

looking to service to others.

I truly believe that they acquired

“servants’ hearts, in a way, because of Doctor King’s legacy. By the time they were now growing up in school, it was so natural for them to think of people as equal because he had paved the way for that equality. Because of Dr.MLK, they don’t use qualifiers like, “my black friends" or that "Spanish guy hit my car." They don’t say, "the Chinese girl in school…".

Because of MLK, my sons see Obama not as the first black president but as THE president, period.

Of course, there is still much work to be

done. But I have such faith in our future together. They did not graduate with the same heavy hearts as I had back in 1968, wondering what will happen in this country. There are problems to face, but there is SUCH OPTIMISM, too! WHY???

Because of OPPORTUNITY. Martin Luther King believed in the OPPORTUNITY we afford ourselves in our HUMAN SPIRIT.

Our country, our government, peopled with

strong and believing workers is MILES AHEAD of other places in this world - miles ahead, in spite of fears and concerns of economy and of future. As long as we embrace together the opportunities afforded us in this country, we can continue the legacy of dignity, one for another, of the ability to learn something new each day, as my Mother used to say. America really was NOT kind to many minorities early on – but today, thanks to legacies like that of Martin Luther King, it TRULY CAN BECOME the Promised Land he’d dreamed of.

On Martin Luther King, Jr. – His legacy to me, a second-generation MOM

In June, 1968, I graduated from Maria High School on Chicago’s South Side. Ours was a somber graduation – Bobby Kennedy had been killed the week before and Martin Luther King, Jr. had been murdered but two months prior to that, on April 4. My high school was situated directly across the street from the last “white “ park then and the nuns had sent us home, I remember, due to fear of riots in the city.

A friend and I had started a literary magazine that year – we had already highlighted the tragedies of the 1967 Israeli-Palestinian War and now were marching down the aisle to receive our diplomas to the tune of Climb Every Mountain – that long sad Mother Superior song from The Sound of Music. Hardly your typical Pomp and Circumstance.

And I remember thinking then, and knowing now – that Martin Luther King knew something about climbing mountains. I remember how ANGRY I was then about his assassination; I remember thinking then that SOMEBODY HAD TO DO SOMETHING to stop the hatred. I remember thinking then that when I left high school and later home, things were going to be different. There would be change in our country. Would there? How COULD there? And who was going to do that changing? I don’t think it had occurred to me yet that it was every day people – you – and you – and I - who would be making differences – And the question here today is “are we making differences?” Or, as you program entitles it, “Are We There Yet?” (depending on who has spoken or whether I am first….)

For a while before the last presidential election, I began to believe that we just might be really getting there. I worked for a few months at an election office, where I was privileged and so excited to see hundreds upon hundreds of people come in to vote, often expressing that THIS IS MY FIRST TIME TO VOTE!!! And I would so joyfully respond – and don’t let it be YOUR LAST!! There was no doubt that things would be beginning to change. I am from Chicago, originally, and I am THRILLED that my hometown has raised up a new president – from as diverse an area, Hyde Park, as any in the country, and that my own son lives there today. But there is always more work to be done.

From my perspective as a mother who raised three young me in a Kansas City suburb, I want to be able to say Yes, We ARE MAKING DIFFERENCES. And no. No, we are not there yet. Here’s my personal perspective.

My mother and father had come to this country from the small Eastern European country of Lithuania as refugees after WWII. They had spent five years after that war in refugee camps, and then made their way to Chicago by way of Ellis Island in New York. It is the story of millions of immigrants.

I was the only one in our family who was born in the United States. Within 6 months of my birth, my father left our family, and here was my Mom, 27 years old, with 3 little kids under the age of 5, and not one of us spoke English. (Actually I wasn’t speaking yet AT ALL!). My mother was a college graduate but she couldn’t prove it because she had no diploma when students fled her country to escape the invading Russian army.

There was no government aid then; no assistance.

She took a job as a carrot and onion peeler at a Campbell’s Soups factory on Chicago’s South Side and eventually began to learn English. After a while, she went nights to school to become a medical technologist and went to work in a hospital. She worked two shifts a day for over twenty of the 39 years she lasted at St. Anthony’s before she died. I never saw her through all my high school years except on Sundays, because I was gone to school before she’d come home and I’d come home and she’d be gone. Yet my mother was amazing. Every day, she would leave my brothers and me a note, encouraging us to do well that day, and she would say to me, “Gaile, you might not get the dishes done tonight, but that’s your second job. Your first job is to MAKE SURE YOU KNOW SOMETHING MORE TODAY THAN YOU DID YESTERDAY, because YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT TOMORROW’S GOING TO BRING. Your first job is learning - and learning daily.”

As I like to say since, then, yeah – Things can change. Things DO Change. Things will ALWAYS be changing . CHANGE is INEVITABLE – but GROWTH is OPTIONAL!

So when I came across the speech of Martin Luther King that said:

Change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but comes through continuous struggle. And so we must straighten our backs and work for our freedom. A man can’t ride you unless your back is bent,

I felt I knew what he was talking about. I loved that last line - a MAN CAN’T Ride you unless your back is bent. It was EXACTLY what my mother, as an immigrant to this country, had taught me. She would say to me, ‘never mind that you don’t have a dime in your pocket. You walk with your head held high. Don’t ever slouch and cower – even if you’re penniless. Don’t let someone catch you looking down; they’ll think you’re looking for loose change! No, you carry your head high, like you’re a queen. Let people wonder if you have a dime or 100 dollars in your pocket; don’t worry about what they think of you. You just worry about keeping your dignity. And you treat others with dignity as well. And nobody, NO BODY can own your thoughts or decide for you who you are. Always remember that!’

I believe that the power of Martin Luther King is that he shouted for all to learn the same things my mother was teaching me in our kitchen.. Dignity, faith in oneself, belief that a better life is meant for all peoples to share in is a legacy that was so simple and clear to me that it actually became quite profound. I hold all immigrants, all people of differences especially dear because I know what poverty and struggle looked like growing up and I listened atingle to King’s voice becoming a clarion call for not just his own people, but for all people of minority, of “outsiderness” to this, or any country, as well.

So, when I married and moved to Kansas and became a mother to three sons, I couldn’t let those beliefs leave me. It was important to me to rear sons who understood that not all the world lives in privilege and safety as they seemed fortunate to do. But they had to know that regardless of from where, and how people spent their day, they were all EQUAL – people, too – PEOPLE OF VALUE IN THE EYES OF whatever Creator they held to be theirs.

An individual has not started living unless he can rise above the narrow

confines of his individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity.

It was important for me that my sons understand the value of service. I believe that my legacy from Dr. King was that reminder to broaden my concerns for others. Perhaps not each of us can be senators or representatives or city commissioners or servants committed to public office, but each of us has a sphere of influence that we are the center of. Each of us has family or friend or coworker or EVEN A PET for whom we ARE THE CENTER OF THEIR UNIVERSE, or we are a light of relationship to someone in this world. It is with these people, in our DAILY interactions, that we model the words and wishes of Dr. King. I treat every cabdriver, every waitstaff person, every cashier and busdriver I see in as friendly a manner as I do the banker or the doctor I encounter. (That’s not to say I carry on with all these people!) but THE IDEA IS THAT NO ONE IS INVISIBLE. NO ONE. I remember how invisible people wanted to make my mother because she could not speak unaccented English.

Martin Luther King has said that

Almost always the dedicated minority has made the world better.

And I believe that. But that minority is NOT just one of color. It includes all disenfranchised people – be they struggling with injustice due to color or gender or ethnicity or language. I think of all the differing groups of immigrants who have lighted here, and all the contributions made from throughout the world and think yes, Dr. Martin Luther King was right.

Almost always the dedicated minority has made the world better.

And, that minority sometimes includes lots more people than seems evident at the surface.

And here’s why I think we are making some progress today, although we are not there yet:

I take example from my boys who are not boys today but men.

Each of my sons today is seeking his way by looking to service to others.

Now, I truly believe that they acquired “servants’ hearts, in a way, because of Doctor King’s legacy. By the time they were now growing up in school, it was so natural for them to think of people as equal because he had paved the way for that equality. Because of Dr.MLK, my sons don’t use qualifiers like, “my black friends or that Spanish guy hit my car. They don’t say, the Chinese girl in school….

Because of MLK, my sons see Obama not as the first black president but as THE president, period.

Of course, there is still much work to be done. But I have such faith in our future together. They did not graduate with the same heavy hearts as I had back in 1968, wondering what will happen in this country. There are problems to face, but there is SUCH OPTIMISM, too! WHY????

Because of OPPORTUNITY. Martin Luther King believed in the OPPORTUNITY we afford ourselves in our HUMAN SPIRIT.

Our country, our government, peopled with strong and believing workers is MILES AHEAD of other places in this world - miles ahead, in spite of fears and concerns of economy and of future. As long as we embrace together the opportunities afforded us in this country, we can continue the legacy of dignity, one for another, of the ability to learn something new each day, as my Mother used to say. America really was NOT kind to many minorities early on – but today, thanks to legacies like that of Martin Luther King, it TRULY CAN BECOME the Promised Land he’d dreamed of.

"It is a given, that ever life lived on this earth has its fill of hurts.

Not ever hurt, though, comforting as that might seem to some, comes from abuse."

Today is the day I have finally had enough.

I've been pretending, of course, all along.

That's not to say I haven't been busy. Au contraire, I've kept at it throughout.

Sold some World Books, studied Buddha, directed Purlie, died on stage.

Baked bread enough to fill a cave for Croesus and every minotaur -

from dill to disgusting. Ad-libbed deep prayer and did crosswords

in airplane seats darting here to there.

Studied poetry, learned to riff, won awards and dug til stiff. Let my heart soar.

Paid my dues with daily tasks, spiked my orange juice from flasks, always wistfully, of course.

Lost a thousand pounds and gained them, lived life rich and ate a horse.

Scho0l I taught, and morals, too. Trained adults, threw coins in Rome. I slept on floors.

Gleaned a mile - kept the smile - worked retreats and laughed too much.

Kept a schedule, blew the wad, stayed a friend to one with sores.

Lived life poor, and not Al Franken nor any other wit as such

who'd say 'never good enough, strong enough, how can people like me?'

If they only knew, could see right through my acts, done so politely.

Nah. Could never laugh TOO much.

But today I got really peeved.

I met her, watched her, dwarfed in size with made-up eyes to show the world her whimsy.

But she had done what I have not - parlayed her stuff, albeit flimsy, into a real live career, oh please. And there I was to ask of her a chance - just begging that she notice me - Could I? Would I? Should I try to win her favor so to get some work - enough to pay the parking bill or train ride there? I must wear a skirt and act the flirt to garner tips and plenty. I did the stint, steeled like flint for shots with girls of twenty.

When last had I been angry enough to recognize my Fall? I have not honored who I am.

Through all the years, it mattered not that I'd foregone my call. Not teacher, actor, scribe nor wit - just a daughter, sister, wife

who had decided that her life

was to be that of mama filled with drama who would never ever speak her truth because it'd cost her all - and I mean all - her soul's delights.

I have had enough. I am stepping out and into the world as I am meant to. I start today. Right now.