by Gil Kiekenapp

“What do you want to be when you grow up?” How many times did we not hear parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles ask that question as we were actively avoiding the realization that one day we would have to actually do so. Our MnSF organization has now reached the end of its adolescence and we have been hearing the question often of late, “now what do you want to be when you’re all grown up?” We heard the question and met the challenge face to face at our Little Falls convention on Wednesday, Oct. 10, a date we will look back on as one day we grew up a lot! 

Mama Robin apprehends her fledgling, chirps the question, “where are you going now that you’re growing up, and promptly pushes the youngster out of the nest and watches its wings flap desperately and awkwardly but yet successfully. It feels to me a bit like we’ve just been pushed out of the old nest and must now somehow figure out how to fly into that changed and new world we find is our present environment. Questions abound, and they truly did abound at the Little Falls organizing congress. And it is the asking of the right questions that is of utmost importance right now. We will discover and determine the answers later as we grow up and our wing feathers become stronger. It has always been questions that inspired my growth and maturation. Never has it been from pat answers that my wings have grown any stronger.

Our fall migration has taken us out of Little Falls and the brood-nest of youth and we fly homeward to becoming more (but never fully) mature individuals in an environment that is ever changing as well. Change and adaptation must now happen at each local level even as it has just now progressed at state level. “All politics is local,” once said a bird much wiser than I. What is the need here at home, in our own changing local environment, and how do we best reorganize to meet needs and get some actual work done. The only thing that never changes in this world is that things are always changing. And with change questions are inevitable. Once again, be not afraid of the questions - questions are more the key to successful flight in our growing up than answers. One seems to get wiser with change - as hair grays, leaves fall from trees,  north winds blow colder, and physically present partners mature into memories. It is wisdom that asks questions without expectation of immediate answers. If growing up ceases when I stop asking questions, then I never want to say, now I am grown up.  Let us never stop asking ourselves the question, “what will we be as we grow up?”