It was about 5 PM, Nashville time. I was on the phone, waiting on hold for a service rep to help me through a technical issue. The “on hold” music finally stopped and a click signaled a live connection was moments away. A young sounding female voice, with very broken English, welcomed my call.

About a minute into my reason for calling, strange cackling sounds started to dominate the call. I tried to speak again but the cackling got even worse. I asked, “What on earth is that bizarre noise?” Turned out they were roosters, faithfully doing their job at approximately 5:45 AM, Laos time in Southeast Asia.

I burst out laughing and made a comment like, “Please put one of them on the phone!” At that point, she started laughing and for the next few minutes of background “Cock-a-doodle-doos”, we exchanged “rooster” banter.

At one point, in between laughs, I asked her something like, “Can you quiet them down?”
“I can’t change their minds!”, she said.

That statement took me over the edge! I totally lost it and had one of those belly laughs that make you feel like health is filling your body. She came unglued too and laughed as beautifully as I have ever heard (except for my wife, Jeannie:) 8,500 miles away…all compliments of COVID 19.
“What?” you may say?
“Yes!”
The pandemic required her to work from home, with the neighborhood roosters, whose minds she couldn’t change!

Before we got to the reason for my call, we began to talk about “real things”. Things like being required to work from home, separation from family members, etc., uncertainty regarding the future blended with faith and the belief it would all eventually work out.

It felt so good to relate heart to heart with a fellow “global” family member without knowing or caring about race, politics, religion, nationality, physical appearance, financial/social status or any of the other insignificant issues that crowd our lives. Just “human to human” brought together in a strange way by a worldwide pandemic.

As a family, we lived in NYC when the Twin Towers came down. We also lived in the DC area when people were being randomly shot at gas stations by a sniper. There was a terrible, eerie feeling throughout the area knowing that if you didn’t keep moving while pumping gas you could be shot and killed. We all shared the pain, fear and challenge of those horrific events that were citywide and somewhat nationwide. But this monster, this pandemic, and the residual implications of it, has challenged every single member of the entire human race simultaneously.

It does not choose a side. It does not segregate or separate and we can beat it if we “think like it thinks”!

It is ONE, against ALL. So, ALL of us need to be ONE against it. Never has the statement, “United we stand, divided we fall”, been more applicable. The trouble is many of us are using that statement to promote and sometimes enforce our particular “side” against those of another “side”.

Just think of what we could accomplish to combat all common enemies like poverty and disease if we focused our precious energy on healing the whole rather than articulating new ways of disparaging particular groups within the whole.

Could the “Silver Lining” of this pandemic be God showing us how much we need each other to take the next step toward becoming a more peaceful world? Could this commonly shared global fight be teaching us how, why and where to invest our energy?

Challenging times bring out the worst and the best in us.

Some of you know I have recently been diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease. I am fighting it every way I can: mentally, physically and medically. But most of all, I am fighting it through prayer. And I am happy to say, I’ve got it on the run. I will beat this!

In addition to many personal challenges, Jeannie and I also both contracted Covid 19 this past December. We thank God our symptoms were relatively mild as compared to many. But it was frightening, none-the-less.

This song, “Silver Lining”, was forged on the anvil of our lives throughout a very memorable 2020 and now, 2021. We are in our early 70’s, still believing, regardless of the challenges we face, that the best of our lives is yet to come. There is no time for fear, negativity and especially hatred.

Please consider the roosters while you read the lyrics of this song. Allow them to lift you up and perhaps untie the knot of anger that has grown tighter in your soul over those you disagree with.

The roosters can’t change their minds…but you and I can.

Thank you for reading.

Please post and share the song with everyone. Let’s go viral!

You can download the song here:
veltzmusic.bandcamp.com/track/silver-lining

With sincere love and appreciation,

Ken & Jeannie Veltz