A letter to my preacher

By Frosty Wooldridge

Each Sunday, I go to church. I sit in the front to hear every word.  My minister delivers amazing sermons on how to live life, how to succeed, how to pray, how to understand, how to become spiritually based, how to deal with living in the 21^st century.

Many times, he leaves the congregation weeping from a sad yet inspiring story.  Each time, I leave with greater spiritual knowledge and greater strength to move forward with my task of alerting America of our impending overload of adding 100 million immigrants within 38 years.

This past Sunday, he talked about a mother who loved her son, but trashed her own father each night at the dinner table because the old man fumbled the bowl with his food in it.  The young boy, named Roberto, loved his grandfather.  One night at dinner, the grandfather broke his ceramic bowl.  The mother, his daughter, banished him to the kitchen instead of the dining room.  Young Roberto ate quickly after that and moved to the kitchen to talk with his beloved grandfather.

One evening the old man broke his bowl. The mother raged about how clumsy he was and what a waste to break the bowl. She gave give him a wooden bowl to prevent such further breakage, but a wooden bowl was disgraceful to an Italian family.  Roberto returned to his room. 

Roberto got to his room and started carving a wooden bowl.  Days later, his mother caught carving the mostly finished bowl.  His mother asked him why he was carving the wooden bowl. Roberto said, “I am carving it for you when you reach grandfather’s age.”

The child knew that we all grow into old age and all of us will suffer the ravages of old age.  We must all learn to forgive everyone who struggles with their own lives upon this planet.

The mother suffered pangs of guilt for her poor behavior. The next night, she invited the grandfather back to the dining room and never berated him again.  The family became whole.

I wept at the story.  On Sunday night, I wrote my preacher a letter:

Last Sunday’s sermon: one of your ten best that I have heard in the past ten years that I have listened to your wisdom.  You really touched me with a deep abiding of the human spirit.  As I record your sermons, yes, your words run through my grid and affect me differently than others.  Others may have heard that sermon differently than I did.  You are definitely healing the world and reaching out to countless hearts and minds with your new Internet streaming.  You create greater awakening for humanity.  You accent Jesus’ work like few other ministers in the United States.

My work on the population/immigration front continues in almost mind-numbing frustration.  Any time I bring up reducing mass immigration—the other folks out there start hurling names. Hurtful names such as racist, xenophobe and nativist.  Chicken Little is a big one. It’s most disconcerting in that I have been integrated as a military brat since I was born.  I taught in the inner city with 95 percent minorities. I still teach every race, creed and color with my volunteer ski instruction at Winter Park.  I have always mixed well with any races. After traveling all over the world on my bicycle, I have deep and abiding respect for all races, creeds and colors as I know they (we) are all doing the best we can in life.

I am hoping to carve a wooden bowl for America in order to help all Americans face their own fate on multiple levels. It’s incredibly frustrating.

Nonetheless, I have pushed forward and, yet, I have made zero impact.  My prayers have failed to get me on national media of any kind.  I haven’t gotten on “60 Minutes” , Charlie Rose, Today Show, Meet the Press, Face the Nation and a dozen other shows even with continued requests.

The fact remains that Americans will add another 100 million immigrants to this country by 2050 and the planet will see another three billion people added within 38 years.  It’s nuts and the human race faces daunting challenges as to food, water, energy and resources oil declines.  I think our environment may crash even sooner as we destabilize the planet’s balancing systems.  We will certainly run out of water, arable land, energy and finally, food. 

With that knowledge, I ponder whether it is worth racking my mind and heart and taking enormous time to write and speak about it.  Quite frankly, very, very few care. And if they do, they are afraid to speak up—especially because they don’t want to be called names.  It’s an interesting predicament.

I feel this terrible burden much like Teddy Roosevelt, Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jane Goodall, John Muir, Galileo, Dr. Albert Bartlett, Dr. Diana Hull and many others that pushed toward their goals to enlighten the world.

Anyway, the world turns and humanity lurches into the breach.  Mother Nature will be the final arbiter whether I alert the American people or not.  Thank you again for your deeply moving sermon. It gives me hope for my work and for humanity.

One of your congregation,

Frosty Wooldridge