In Search of a Better Life.

He was only twelve years old.  All he had was a bike and a kiss from his parents.  He left his village in Iran to travel to the capital in search of a better life.  He died surrounded by his children and a loving community at 86.

If you showed up late to his memorial and missed the beginning of his story, you would still be impressed by his list of accomplishments.  He was a teacher, a healer, a mentor, a father, and a dedicated philanthropist.  But, to raise himself out of the pits, with no money, no family, no knowledge, no skill, purely by the urge to survive and the desire for some imaginary better world, and to build a life anchored on a mirage, was nothing short of a miracle.

Incredibly still, his story is not unique.  Many young boys across the country were sent off by poor parents to go to major cities, in search of a job, an education, a better life.  In fact, this is a story that does not belong to the poor Iranian villagers but to many all over the world.  The highly contested immigration to the Unites States is deeply rooted in this very story.

I was reminded of the train station scene in The Fidler on the Roof.  Leaving for Siberia, Hodel cries “Papa, God alone knows when we shall see each other again.”  Tevye answers “then we will leave it in His hands.”

Faith drives the change proceeded by chaos.  As Socretes wrote lifetimes ago “The secret of change is to focus all of your energy, not on fighting the old, but on building the new.”

To most of us it is unimaginable to let a child play on the streets, let alone push him to leave home. 

Yet, we are part the larger circle of life.  The winged seeds carried by the wind land far away from their source, and still within each nugget carry the potentiality to form a new forest.

God’s central blessing was for us to scatter among the earth and be a blessing to our settlement.   Just as the flower blooms out of dirt, just as hope is the grandchild of despair, so too, new life presents a lonely child, on a bike, full of dreams, embraced by God’s Grace.