Peter, Brian, Richard and Indy

Peter Raible was born in 1929 and he died in 2004.

Of all the interesting things he said, this is perhaps my favorite:

“We build on foundations we did not lay. We warm ourselves by fires we did not light. We sit in the shade of trees we did not plant. We drink from wells we did not dig. We profit from persons we did not know.

This is as it should be.

Together we are more than any one person could be. Together we can build across the generations. Together we can renew our hope and faith in the life that is yet to unfold. Together we can heed the call to a ministry of care and justice.

We are ever bound in community.”

My friend Brian Scudamore puts it this way, “We are bigger and better together.”

About a dozen years ago, Wizard Academy board member Dr. Richard D. Grant held a Sunday morning chapel service in Tuscan Hall after an all-day-Saturday Wizard Academy reunion. He began that service by bowing his head and quietly speaking his thanks to all the unseen people who worked to create the clothes we were wearing.

It was a surprisingly moving experience.

Dr. Grant began with our socks, and spoke of his appreciation for the people who grew the cotton and tended the sheep for the wool from which our socks were made.

And then he spoke of his appreciation of the people who worked the machines that knitted those fibers to become the socks we we had on our feet.

And then he spoke of his appreciation of the people who created all the bits and pieces from which our shoes were made. And as he named those bits and pieces that come together to make a shoe, we saw each of those people hard at work, and we understood the benefit we took from their labor.

By the time he got to the people who cut our hair, every person in that room was deep in contemplation of this wonderful, magical, interconnected world in which we live. And we loved the people who carried things across oceans for us, and the truck drivers who deliver things to warehouses for us, and the warehouse workers who load those things onto trucks for us so they can be delivered to the stores in which we shop, and to the restaurants in which we take such great delight.

I hope to someday find the recording of that morning. I would like to share it with you.

Indy Beagle tells me that 33 percent of the things we worry about never come to pass. The next 33 percent are so inconsequential that they are not worth our worry. The third 33 percent are things that might come to pass but cannot be changed, no matter how well we worry. This leaves only a tiny percent that are important, and could come to pass if we do not take action.

I looked at him and said, “Is that your way of telling me to chill out?”

Looking directly into my eyes, Indy just nodded his head.

And then he quickly added, “Stop and smell the roses. Lie in a field and look at the clouds. Quit thinking so much about your reputation and your bank account and all the wonderful things you own. No one wins the rat race except for the rats.”

Then his voice softened a little as he delivered his conclusion, “And in the end, the rats find out, after a lifetime of struggle, that there is no reward for the winner.”

Thank you, Indy. It’s good to keep things in perspective.

Roy H. Williams