Meandering Around the Grange Way of Life
by Walter Boomsma
This article is reprinted with permission from Good Day! Magazine, Volume 4, Issue 4, Winter 2020-21. You can download the actual pages from the magazine for printing. For additional information about subscribing, click the button at the end of this article.
Is It About Social Distancing or Hope and Perseverance?
Thanks to an early December winter storm, we were without power for several days. The Internet was unavailable. We felt quite “socially distanced” in nearly every sense of the words since snow piles and bent birches were blocking our driveway. We couldn’t get out. Not much is getting in. In a perhaps odd way, we do not feel trapped. Possibly because of the limitations already imposed by the pandemic, this seems like merely “more of the same.”
For the past nine months, life seems to have been about what we cannot do. It’s been easy to forget that we should know better than to get trapped into thinking that way.
So as I sit “sheltering in place” in forced darkness, I find an opportunity to remember that many of the lessons of the Grange help us maintain perspective.
We are resilient and remember the words of the Fifth Degree, encouraging us to “hope and persevere.” Since many Grangers tend to be traditionalists, we find returning to oil lamps and the woodstove somewhat comforting and simplifying.
Admittedly, it’s a journey we’d prefer to make by choice.
But in a similar way, returning to the teachings of the Grange can be comforting and simplifying. Perhaps sitting next to an oil lamp and listening to the woodstove snap and crackle contributes.
Those sounds are less distracting than the beeping and buzzing of a smartphone or the laptop. Heck, I don’t even need to walk to the mailbox at the end of the driveway since it’s not accessible.
Nature prevails.
Sometimes that creates inconvenience, but it’s also a comforting truth.
Spring follows winter, just as summer follows spring. Sun follows rain. Life begins and ends and sometimes takes a different shape.
Growing up in New England, I learned a long time ago that “fighting” nature is not the way to go. As a child, big snowstorms meant no school — something we couldn’t do. But we were more focused on what we could do — sleep in, go out sliding, and building snow forts and people.
“There is no such thing as bad weather, only inappropriate clothing,” is a mantra often repeated by Scandinavian parents who insist their children spend some time outdoors every day.
As schools in the United States have learned to shift to remote learning, some districts announced there would be no more snow days. I’m not sure that’s a good thing from my childlike perspective.
One of the benefits of being Grangers is that we learn the importance of managing our own perspective with nature’s help. Instead of fighting with her, we should learn from her.
Current circumstances may force us to remember one of the lessons of the First Degree. It is especially fitting that the Overseer uses the language of yesteryear.
“Courage then, and patience, when gloom broods over your pathway. Weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning. To the upright there ariseth light in darkness, and the path of the righteous shineth brighter and brighter, unto the perfect day. Then shall the crooked be made straight, and the rough places plain, and knowledge be revealed.”
In the language of today, please be patient. We will answer all emails in time, and we hope to return to our regular website posting schedule soon.
When contacted, the power company suggested we may have power restored within hours. I was a little disappointed they didn’t tell us to “Hope and persevere.”
We’re still planning to fill the lamps, trim the wicks, and reload the woodbox.
We fill and trim because, without action, there is no hope. Without action, hope is just a way to pass the time until we’re done living. We can do more than sit in the dark and hope for the power company to arrive.
In the Second Degree, the Master provides a visual lesson with a few com kernels. “There is no object in which, to appearance, life and death border so closely together as in the grains of seed buried in the earth; but when life seems extinct a fuller and richer existence begins anew.”
For me, this was the most powerful and memorable lesson of my first experience with the Degrees. I remember so well watching the Master stir those hardened kernels in his hand and realizing that what we often view as an end is transformation.
Life finds a way.
Days end, days begin.
Light follows darkness.
We are granted the extraordinary privilege of observing, participating, and serving as stewards of the abundance of nature. “From this little seed we have, first the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. So with the mind, when duly nourished with Faith and Hope.”
Look around, even in the darkness. Find some seeds — if not for your garden in the spring, then for your mind during these days that seem dark.
Even prior to the pandemic, one of my favorite things to do this time of year is to stroll during a snowstorm, particularly at night. It’s oddly comforting to experience the quiet as the accumulating snow deadens sound other than this gentle hiss of the falling snow. It’s as if nature is painting the landscape, bathing it in white, and covering everything so there are less distractions. There is less to see and hear while walking in a snowstorm, but so much to think and feel. An occasional animal track in the snow suggests that there are unseen fellow travelers who are… what? Are they in search of shelter or food? Or are they simply traveling because they can?
The snow is not their enemy, nor is it ours.
Like all of nature, the snow — if we choose to see it as such — gives us reason to hope and persevere.
Any degree or ritual quotations are from the forty-sixth edition of the 2013 Subordinate Grange Manual or the most recent edition of the Pomona Grange Manual. The views and opinions expressed in “Exploring Traditions” are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official doctrine and policy of the Grange. Information about the book “Exploring Traditions—Celebrating the Grange Way of Life” can be found at http://abbotvillagepress.com, on Amazon, or by contacting the author.