Winds of Peace Foundation

Steve Sheppard | October 19, 2010

I have been enthralled over the past week or so as the news coverage of the now-rescued Chilean miners filled the television and radio airwaves.  It has been riveting coverage, to be sure, as first the miners were found to be alive, then that they were able to receive food and water and other essentials to keep them alive as the rescue continued persistently over two months’ time.  We have all marveled at their spirits, their determination, the bonding that helped to strengthen the entire crew.  We watched the heroics above-ground, as families and rescue workers toiled day and night to reach the entombed miners.  And then, finally, we rejoiced as the drilling broke through the top of the safe room so that the men could be lifted to safety. The story was one that we lived through with those families, in a way.  We even came to know some of the names of the trapped miners, and something of their personalities and lives.  When the miners began to emerge from their long tube of escape, emotions were evident in  the faces and teary eyes of virtually everyone at the site, and likely, from most of us watching.  It would have been impossible not to feel the joy of their rescue from certain death.

The ordeal became a truly global event, as geologic, mining and rescue experts from around the world converged on the area outside of Copiapo.  Virtually every major news organization converged on the site for weeks, awaiting the chance to report on the result: either the joy of a complete rescue or the tragedy of a failed attempt.  As a result of the coverage, we all became enmeshed in what was happening, invested with at least our emotions in whatever the final outcome was to be.  The incident provided one of those increasingly rare moments in our lives when everyone seems to be in lockstep with the objective of saving human life.  And when success has been achieved, we rejoice not only out of gratitude for the rescue, but also from the feeling that we have all been in this together somehow.  It is a powerful emotion, one that is infrequent enough to coax tears.

As I thought about the emotions- my own and those of others- that surfaced during this episode, I thought about some other people in need, specifically the ones I have come to know in a place called Nicaragua.  They, too, have been assailed by natural disasters, both drought and flood, which have brought some of its population to the point of despair.  Like the miners, many Nicaraguans are “of the earth,” making their livings from what the ground is willing to yield, subject to its vagaries and dangers.  And as we grew to admire the trapped miners for their perseverance and spirit, I thought about the indomitable nature of many Nicaraguans I have met: in both cases, I am left in awe at what some people have endured.

In Chile, the destiny of thirty-three lives captured the undivided attention of the world for seventy days.  In NIcaragua (and elsewhere, of course, if we choose to look), the lives of millions of human beings are and have been at risk for generations, and the fact barely warrants a notice from  most of us.  As the last miner was hoisted to the surface on Sunday,  the news correspondents marveled at the show of teary emotions from even the most veteran reporters as the miner emerged from the rescue capsule.  I noted my own blurred vision at the sight, and wondered out loud about what made this particular, dire circumstance more emotion-worthy than others.  Was it the relative uniqueness of a mine collapse?  A more bearable number of potential victims?  A finite number of days to the ordeal, whether it ultimately would prove successful or not? 

Maybe we were able to feel such intense care because, for whatever reason, the news coverage allowed us to see their plight, their families and the importance of these men in a depth not ordinarily experienced via daily news.  And by learning even a little bit about them, we cared.  Perhaps we possess only enough tears to shed for those we have come to know….

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Steve Sheppard | October 11, 2010

As another gorgeous autumn weekend unfolded a week ago, I took a moment mentally to note a milestone.  In the midst of an Augsburg College Board of Regents meeting, it dawned on me that I had reached a 5-year milestone in my work with Winds of Peace Foundation.  I took my early retirement from Foldcraft Co. on September 30, 2005 and essentially commenced my work with the Foundation the next day.  Founder Harold Nielsen was in the hospital with pneumonia at the time, and inquired whether I’d consider stepping into the Foundation world temporarily until he recovered.  Within a very short time, I recognized that the nature of the work was, in fact, a calling.  During a visit with Harold in the hospital, he offered me the opportunity to join the Foundation’s work, an opportunity that has become one of the most important events of my life.  And suddenly, five years have passed by.

Last Saturday evening, I took some time to reflect on these past years and considered whether the new experiences have changed me in any ways.  Knowing full well that they had, I was nonetheless a bit surprised when I inventoried the ways.

*Gratitude- I’ve never been one to take people or things for granted, but the experience of working with very poor people has clarified the incredible and unwarranted good fortunes of my life in ways that I would never otherwise have experienced.   There is nothing particularly special or deserving about those of us who have all they need in life.  To the contrary, when it comes to deserving, one could make a compelling case on behalf of those who have struggled through life with far less than they need.  I have been just plain blessed.  I cannot answer as to why.  But I have gained a deeper gratitude in recognition.

*Compassion- Shortly before she passed away earlier this year, my Mother said to me, “You always feel for other people.”  It was a nice thing for her to say (moms always say the nicest things about their own kids, right?) and I suppose that generally I agreed with her observation.  But developing a true feeling for the reality of those in need requires something far more than an innate sense of injustice or inequity.  To truly feel, to know the truth of those realities requires being among those for whom serious need is a way of life.  To see pictures of hunger is sad and sobering.  But to actually know individuals who are hungry every day is devastating and unshakable.

*More Tolerance- I have recognized with greater clarity how few answers I have about life and all of its complexities.  The surety which I felt as a younger man has given way to  many more shades of gray, and on most of the issues over which we debate these days.  I have discovered that the problems are far more complex than I ever knew, and that the solutions are neither simple nor single-faceted.  In fact, my tolerance stems from the recognition that, indeed, each of us represents a piece of every solution.  I need those others, and so do we all.

*Less Tolerance- The words and inaction of political, social and business “leaders” have created a great and uncomfortable skepticism in me.  it’s difficult for an optimist to struggle with skepticism.  But I feel great impatience with the self-serving nature of those who are elected or otherwise chosen to serve as stewards for the common good but who exemplify only a drive to craft their own welfare.  Their behaviors represent a double theft: a theft of whatever material wealth they have commandeered and a theft of the public trust and welfare.  The examples they have set will continue to plague us for years to come.

*Hopefulness- In the shadows of enormous inequality, injustice and injury, there are the people of Nicaragua.  And they continue to pick themselves up after each blow, whether it comes from natural disaster, political disaster, economic disaster or, in some cases, self-imposed disaster.  To witness such buoyancy and persistence is to experience the sense of hope that resides within us all, even when we cannot feel it.  Nicaraguans have the propensity to rekindle hope in those of us fortunate enough to know them, from the sheer resilience of their spirit.

*Generosity- Like most, I like to think of myself as being a generous person.  My parents taught me at an early age that generosity was a major component of character and thus, support for those less fortunate than me has always been a priority.  “Comfortably” so.  But my work among some very poor people in Nicaragua has convinced me that “comfortable generosity” isn’t enough, that what I am called to share of myself is something more than comfort and, in any event, more than money itself.  I have learned what it is to be generous with self, with presence, with compassion.  I’ll likely never be good enough at this.  At the end of the day, generosity is a relative thing, ultimately to be measured only by one’s self.  But being in Nicaragua has provided a very different standard for me to think about.

There are undoubtedly other changes in me, as well, perhaps changes that I do not see in myself or that I am unconsciously reluctant to recognize.  But especially given the relative shortness of my time with Winds of Peace, I find that the experience has shaped me at a time in life when change is more often to be avoided, something about old dogs and new tricks. It has been a discovered treasure in my life that bears sharing with others on this wordly journey.  Whatever the norm or the expectation may be, five years have come and gone like the passing of a summer rain, but with the refreshment of an early autumn breeze….

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Steve Sheppard | October 3, 2010

I read an excellent opinion essay the other day by Mark Gilbert, the London Bureau Chief and columnist for Bloomberg News.  It appeared in The Minneapolis Star/Tribune under the title, “That’s Us, Sitting There On That Crumbling Wall.”  Whether you agree with his economic  analysis or not, I thought he made a telling observation about why we as a people seem to be so incapable these days of addressing and fixing almost any of society’s ills.  “Most of us own truths too painful to confess,” he writes.  “We drink too  much.  We lust.  We envy.  We covet.  Confessing such things, even just to ourselves in the long, dark teatime of the soul, is too distressing.  The collective subconscious of (you fill in the blank with your issue) is no different.”

It’s true.  The issues we face seem too enormous, too daunting for any of us to have any real impact as individuals, and so we set the truth aside as too distressing to tackle.  It’s easier (and less threatening) to think about Lindsay Lohan’s next appearance in court.  And anyway, what could I ever do about an important need?

As I reflected about the crumbling wall that Gilbert references, I remembered the story of Dr. Abel Gussmann.

Dr. Abel Gussmann, a noted German doctor, made a long-awaited visit to North America in 1997.  He toured the U.S., made his way across the northern border to Canada, and reveled in the raw beauty of British Columbia and Alberta.  Near Banff, he was particularly struck by the awesome power and beauty of “the icefields,” the confluence of no fewer than three active glaciers.  So intrigued was Dr. Gussmann that he followed the throng of fellow sightseers onto the glacier face itself, perhaps to be photographed there, or just to breathe more closely the cold glacial air.

Whatever his intent, Dr. Gussmann’s timing was terribly wrong.  For, as many sightseers who have stepped onto the glacial shelf, as many years as the icefields have hosted visitors, this was the moment in time when the honeycombed underside of the glacier’s edge decided that it could not withstand even the modest weight of the good doctor.  The crevass near to where Dr. Gussmann stood suddenly opened up to the Canadian sky.  Dr. Gussmann had no advanced warning to this tremendous glacial yawn, and was suddenly lost to its depths.  Even the most heroic efforts failed to reach Dr. Abel Gussmann in time, and he was dead of hypothermia at the age of 47.

It’s a sad story.  And it’s posted prominently at the desk of the Glacier Information Center at the edge of those icefields as a reminder to every visitor that glacial ice, like the rest of nature, is not subject to perfect predictability or certainty, even with ice depths of over one-thousand feet at some points.  It is subject only to the workings of the ice itself, of each ice molecule’s ability to remain linked with those surrounding it.  At the moment of Dr. Gussmann’s venture onto the ice, at the point of the fissure’s divide, one crystal too many broke the chain.  The insignificance of an ice crystal was matched only by the significance of a lost human life.

Significant things, these glaciers.  They have carved out the bulk of what is Minnesota.  They sculpted the Rocky Mountains over the entire length of North America.  They contributed to the demise of some of the largest and most incredible creatures that ever roamed the earth.  When you contemplate the sheer power and awesome impact that they have, it’s almost impossible to conceive of the single crystals making up the enormous ice sheets, and the sheer power and awesome impact that each has upon the whole.

Mark Gilbert’s “crumbling wall” reminded me of the icefields for some reason, perhaps because our collective fear of a collapse is too awful to contemplate.  I suppose that at some level, Dr. Abel Gussmann knew of the potential for glacial fissures to develop, but the prospect was either too unlikely or too easy to dismiss because of all the other people out there on the ice.  But as Gilbert points out, “knowing and admitting isn’t the same thing.”

I suppose one conclusion to be drawn from the story is that we’re all in danger of being myopic, that we are failing to realize dangers we face- environmental, hunger, poverty, educational slide- toward an unhappy ending.  But I prefer instead a conclusion which suggests that there is an important role for each of us to play, no matter how small or impotent we may feel, and that each one of us can be the difference between crumbling and solidarity….

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