Dear Friends ~ In another corner of my life, I teach what I call Baby's First Research Paper classes to middle school students. Recently I guided two dozen tweens through a project creating timelines of the people and events that made possible an invention of their choosing. Their topics ranged from toasters and the Slinky, to water purifiers, baseball mitts, and seat belts. I soaked up pages of interesting factoids over the month (Did you know that astronauts have used Silly Putty to hold instruments down in zero gravity?), watching them morph from mere points on a line, into stories — or "biographies" — of things. I wouldn't categorize them as "Entrepreneur Seizes Business Opportunity" stories as much as "Someone Recognizes Another Person's Need and Devises a Way to Meet the Need" stories.
The idea for the first windshield wiper fits into the latter category. In 1902, Mary Anderson was riding in a streetcar during a winter storm. She was astonished that the driver "had to climb out of the car constantly to scrape off the sleet, snow, and rain," often along the narrow shoulder of a busy street. He also had to travel with his head sticking out the window in freezing temperatures. "When she got home," my student wrote, "she sketched a blade that could move automatically."
"Necessity is the mother of invention," the old saying goes. I'm tempted to take out my editing pen and suggest we rework it to say, "Necessity is an auntie of invention. As is her sister, Kindness."
Our world is a story punctuated by subtle kindnesses; It is also kind for us to remind one another that this is true. And the power to envision new realities — to problem-solve and meet needs — is ours as much as it is anyone's. ~ Joy
The accumulated wisdom of centuries teaches us that God speaks to the human heart most intimately only in silence. Silence and an inner emptiness or receptivity are the strange conditions for all our relationships. Without the ability to be silent, to wait, to be receptive, all our attempts at communion become manipulative and possessive. We become frustrated because we want instant gratification. We want all of who we are to be revealed. We want to know the end of the story. We find it difficult to wait. Waiting in the stillness, is, perhaps, the hardest of all human activities. It is not only hard; it is dangerous. The act of self-emptying leaves us open to attack from other quarters ... Yet it is only in silence that who we really are begins to appear. In the end, we need not fear, for it is our own best self struggling within, longing to be free.