Gleaning Wisdom

   Last week it was time for the big grocery shop.  I am not a fan of grocery shopping. Now a days there is this new fangled thing you can do where you order your groceries online and just pull up in the parking lot and your shopping has been done for you!...have I ever done that? No I have not. Why? I don't know, but maybe I just suck at technology. Maybe I feel too intimidated. Maybe I don't trust the shoppers to care about the produce they are picking for me? When it comes down to it though, I still do my own shopping. This time I was with all four children.

  We rolled in and the youngest one frantically waved at himself in the security camera. He had his soother in his mouth. I caught the eye of an elderly gentleman but looked away. We stopped for a minute to regroup and get ready for this rather large grocery shopping endeavor. All of a sudden someone gripped my arm! It was the elderly gentleman. He was wearing a beret covered in all sorts of pins and he was stooped over a little. He started the conversation giving me a tip on how to break my four year old of his soother habit. If I put mustard on the thing (he did this with his children) it would work like a charm. I thanked him and then he continued his conversation. Somehow he started talking about his life. He grew up in Germany. I learned that his great grandparents had been millionaires. He pulled out actual pictures (bent and aged from an inner jacket pocket) of his ancestral family home and of his home town and then of himself. He was holding large brightly decorated cakes in the pictures because he had owned a family bakery. He also had pictures of his dog and cat snuggled together. His strongest advice to us was to make all people welcome in our home ~ to love others all the same. I think growing up in war era Germany had made that sentiment very important. He told us that this had always been his motto. That he had faced hatred from other nationalities but he had always been open to everyone. He told us that his animals acted the same way. They loved each other very much and people as well. He talked to us for about fifteen minutes. He had no personal space boundaries, and my children listened quite in awe. At the end they all smiled at him and I could see this warmed his heart, and as we parted ways he shouted after us, 'never say goodbye say Auf Wiedersehen ~ until we meet again'!

  I have not taken the opportunity to chat with an elderly person for quite a while. My grandparents are gone and I miss them a lot. My life is quite isolated in some ways and I just don't honestly see many people or talk to them all that often. This small chat blessed me so much. I so appreciated his wisdom, his time, his kindness and his advice. Something similar happened to my husband a couple weeks ago as he stood in line waiting to get into a doctor. He had a long chat with an elderly gentleman who also was full of kind advice and much wisdom. They had never met before and may never meet again, but my husband came away just feeling so imparted to and cared for.

  There is much much wisdom to be had ~ much to be taught, much to be learned from our elders. In this society we take that for granted and don't remember the value of the Ones who have gone before us. If you are from a culture that appreciates and gleans from you elders you are richly blessed.

Have a lovely week
xo