Only 358 Days Until Christmas

I didn't sleep much last night.  Nothing was wrong - no medical malady or nagging annoyance.  No light was on; no faucet was dripping; no branch was scraping the window.  It's just that the kids were leaving well before daylight this morning to get a few hours down the road while a toddler still slept, and I couldn't bear the thought that I wouldn't get up to see them off.  Never mind that I had set the alarm.  My mind completely trusts the technology, but clearly my subconscious has its doubts.  So I tossed and turned and watched the clock until I decided it was close enough and gave up, shut off the alarm and got up.  And waited.  And felt.

This isn't my time of year.  It has nothing to do with the weather.  I rather like the cold, despite the fleeing from it so common among my geographical peers.  My aversion has to do with the holidays.  I hate to see them end.  After righteously forestalling Christmas music until after Thanksgiving, we go into full aural saturation mode for the ensuing weeks.  There follows decorating, partying, shopping, remembering and planning.  But all the aforementioned fit neatly under the heading of "anticipating."  And we do.  We don't tend to think much about Christmas and New Year's throughout the rest of the year, but during the season of Advent and the celebration of Christmas we cram in a lot of anticipation.  I won't speak for my beloved, but between the nostalgia of remembering and the giddiness of anticipating I spend the entirety of the season emotionally drunk on it all.  We cook special meals, we wrap special presents, and the space beneath the tree grows crowded with its own visual manifestation of anticipation.  Family logistics are coordinated, laced with still more anticipation.  The house is readied, the beds are made, the party mix set out in a bowl, the cars pull into the driveway, and all the anticipation becomes present tense.  Embodied.  Incarnate, just to keep with the season.

And then...

And then the space beneath the tree is empty once again.  The driveway is emptied.  The beds are stripped and the sheets stuffed into the washer.  The dishes are washed and the trash taken out.  The few errant pieces of party mix are swept up, and the resident toys put away.  There is an emptiness that remains; a silence, despite the instrumental Christmas songs lingering on the stereo.  And a lump in my throat.  It's a common problem with me.  I'm prone to this kind of melancholy.  As I have learned about personalities I've come to understand that different ones of us are oriented differently to time, and I tend to be oriented to the past - oftentimes to the neglect and detriment of the present and future.  And "the past" is full in my heart as this morning labors to get underway, even if it is only a matter of days since we gathered around the tree; a matter of hours since we closed the door and waved goodbye.  Melancholia.  Perhaps even something of the "acedia" the ancients used to name.  It is, for me, that odd - bizarre, even - intersection of gratitude, joy, contented happiness and profound sadness at the sudden "pastness" of it all; the completion of all that anticipation.

And then...

And then I read Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poem, "The Meeting," the last few stanzas of which observe:

We speak of a Merry ChristmasAnd many a Happy New YearBut each in his heart is thinkingOf those that are not here. 

We speak of friends and their fortunes,And of what they did and said,Till the dead alone seem living,And the living alone seem dead. 

And at last we hardly distinguishBetween the ghosts and the guests;And a mist and shadow of sadnessSteals over our merriest jests.

And I think to myself how lamentable that sounds.  And that I would opt for a different spirit; that I would rather pay more attention to the guests than the ghosts; be mindful and appreciative of, and celebrate these present moments and and upcoming ones with those around and beside me instead of focusing mournfully on absentees.

And then...

And then I tuned in to Chris Botti singing his simple holiday song, "Perfect Day" on that lingering holiday playlist, and hear him say to his beloved, "With you by my side, it's gonna be a perfect day.  How blest I've been that I can truly say, 'with you it's Christmas everyday.'

And I thought, "yes, indeed."  That perfectly describes my good fortune.  This day has much to savor, to experience, and yes, to anticipate.  Tomorrow certainly will as well.  There are wonderments in store of myriad descriptions over the coming months weeks and months, and I am excited by the thought of them - the wonderments, themselves, but also the ones with whom I will share them, and I dare not distract from them by simply remembering.

These have been precious days, filled with precious moments, animated by people precious in my life.  I will savor them, but I best not belabor them because this, too, will be a perfect day and I would hate to miss it.  Botti has it right as far as I am concerned:  spiritually, relationally, experientially, romantically, "it's Christmas everyday."  The thought of it makes me smile.

I think I'll put a few more things in the washing machine, and then go downstairs to exercise.  After all, I need to stay healthy for all that's on the way - even Christmas, only 358 days away.

And then, perhaps, take a nap.  I have some catching up to do.

Come for the Grief and the Grace, But Not for the Refreshments

I held a funeral this week.  As far as I was concerned it was awful.  I did the best I could, but all I had to go on was a cursory obituary about this person I never knew.  The deceased family - a large and local assortment - never responded to repeated requests to meet for planning.  I have no explanation.  I don't mean to cast aspersions.  I don't know if they were too busy, didn't care, had no thoughts the matter, or simply couldn't confront the finality of their mother's death.  I only know it made for a lean service.

I have a fondness for funerals.  I officiate for a lot of them.  In earlier times, most people had ties to a worshipping community and called upon their pastor for leadership in such times of need.  That is less and less the case, leaving funeral homes to scramble with lists of available or retired pastors willing to stand in the breach with strangers.  Most of the time it's a privilege.

Like many pastors, I can trace the eventual inversion of my initial excitement at the prospect of officiating at weddings and dread of officiating at funerals.  It didn't take long to learn that weddings are seldom much fun - populated, as they are, by stressed couples and over-expended families and magazine stereotypes of what "our perfect day" should look like.  Weddings, quite often, convene our most artificial selves for an event in which the things that matter most usually matter least.  There are beautiful exceptions, but the exceptions tend to prove the rule.

Funerals, on the other hand, tend to be gatherings of raw authenticity.  The death of someone we love strips us bare and leaves us broken, raw and beautifully open.  There are certainly exceptions to this as well.  Years ago I wore a bullet-proof vest under my robe at the urging of the funeral director (whose staff was similarly protected) because of ominous portents circling around estranged family members.  Indeed, I wondered about similar precautions while preparing for a more recent funeral home service.  Again, however, the exceptions prove the rule.  Death drives us to a vulnerable "realness" in a way that matrimony oddly fails to accomplish.

All that, and life is precious.  And so I have valued funerals and felt privileged to lead them, graced at the opportunity to honor someone I have loved, or to meet a deceased stranger after the fact.  Once, when a local newspaper quoted me in a story about how families can prepare for such experiences, my son was horrified.  "Dad, is that the way you want to be known?  As 'Doctor Death'?"

Well, I thought to myself, there are worse ways to be known.

But funerals are having a crisis of identity; identity, but also character and even purpose.  As a culture, we are increasingly allergic to any and every kind of discomfort.  It's as though we have made a conscious decision not to be sad, pained or subject ourselves to any unpleasantness.  When threatened with any such ignominy we anesthetize it, inebriate it, ignore it, lipstick it, or flee it.  Especially when it comes to death.  Note the increasingly common abandonment of any organized service at all as reported in newspaper obituaries.  Funerals, after all, are sad - predicated on grief and loss - and we have little tolerance for such feelings or profundities.  So, we simply don't have them, or don't attend them, preferring instead to sign in at the "visitation" but eschew the actual service.  Or, as is increasingly preferred, occasion one of the now popular "celebrations of life" that have largely supplanted funerals as punctuational experiences at the end of a person's life.  But it's not quite the same.  While funerals as I understand them can be celebrations of life, Celebrations of Life are rarely funerals.  And I think that's a loss.

I'm using the word as it has come to be known.  The word itself, "funeral," simply and etymologically means "rites for the burial of the dead."  Admittedly, that description has been fulfilled in all manner of ways.  My first adult experience with a funeral came while I was in seminary.  As a student, I paid close attention.  A formal, liturgically structured service, it was flawlessly executed - beautiful, I suppose in its own way - but never once mentioned the deceased by name or by story after announcing with the Welcome the reason for our gathering.  Utterly cold and impersonal, the whole thing rang empty and flat.

But if that example stands extreme in one direction, our modern "celebrations" simply move indulgently to the opposite extreme.  Perhaps as a consequence of the church's default to narrow rules over deep meaning and "good times" hucksterism over life-changing "good news", fewer and fewer families approach funeral planning with an interest in matters of faith, preferring to simply convene and splash around in a localized pool of memories and disjointed stories, unevenly told.  I'm increasingly amazed at what we wear to such services - or don't wear, or can't be bothered to remove while the service is in progress; and I marvel at the existential shallowness embodied in the moments.  Lost, among other things, is any tethering of this one particular story to anything larger.

Sure, we make room for playing a recording of Elvis singing "The Old Rugged Cross" or AC/DC singing "Highway to Hell" (I'm not making this up), but such are typically the only subtle, if perfunctory, nods to anything eternal.  Surely there is something missing in all this.  Surely there is more to be said about a life than the cookies baked or the fish cleaned or the rounds of golf played or the football teams cheered on.  Surely there is more to be included than anecdotes.

That, for me, is how a funeral differs from mere "celebration."  Funerals reach for something higher, deeper, and more.  For the increasing number of "Nones" among us - those who express no religious identity - that "moreness" will necessarily look for differently expressive vocabulary and forms.  At the very least we could talk about legacy and lessons learned and the augmenting value of others in our lives.  Life, we like to argue, is important; but surely it means more than the sum of our quirks and quips and favorite things.  If we believe that lives are consequential, surely this is a moment to say it out loud, and ponder the significance of how that is true in this particular case.  For those still theologically grounded in and shaped by some understanding of God's presence and purpose and ultimate plan, surely the plot line of a service ought to trace some intentional arc toward that context - toward the implications of eternal life and love - how this one, small story fits into a profoundly larger story.

Surely.  At least.  And let's accept the fact that, while we may chuckle and smile at a memory or expression, it very well may be sad.  And that that is as it should be.

All of which is to say that I would like to think there is more to be said in such moments than a colorfully illustrated version of, "this person lived; this person died; stick around for refreshments."

I hope so.  Because trust me, the refreshments usually aren't that good.

The Humility of Life Beyond My Control

The cold has crept upon us like a Halloween ghost.  It isn’t so much that we didn’t know it was coming; we simply didn’t see it coming.  I didn’t notice its approach, so busy was I admiring the color in the trees and the settling pace.

And then the night froze and the puddles hardened and the leaves fell as, in quick succession, did the first snow.  Our language deceives us - or at least lulls us into unsuspectedness.  Winter - not the actual experience of it, but the calendared technicality of the birth of it - doesn’t actually arrive for weeks.  Several of them.  We can be forgiven, I suppose, for expecting the Cosmos to abide by the seasonal frames.  Autumn, we would like it somehow enforced, will be given its free and full expression - mild days and crisp nights colored by painted leaves - between the autumnal equinox in mid-September and the winter solstice in late December.  No encroachment by a lagging summer on the front end nor an impatient winter on the backside.  Later on, we might make happy exception should an early spring shave a few days or even weeks off of winter.  But if there is a God above, let autumn enjoy it’s full complement of days.

The cold truth, however, is that it doesn’t work that way.  Seasons flow like a stream, drying to a trickle on random occasion while swelling unnaturally and dangerously beyond its banks on another.  Mercurial, they move like the Spirit:  where and when they will.

Like most everything else that finally matters.  Only the puny and ephemeral is subject to our control.   Life and love; meaning and even mastery; joy and depression; condemnation and salvation - all beyond our control or determination.  We can practice and rehearse; we can study and work hard; we can needle and advocate, twist arms and raise our voice, but by only the most superficial definition do we own credit for success or failure.

There is a deep humility required for this admission.  We boast of agency.  We measure, we reward, we incentivize, we nudge, we shame, all in service to our hunger for merit - and aversion to demerit.  But while we can improve on or fall short of arbitrary markers; while we can win jobs or wars or games or awards; while we can best our competition; while we can move certain needles more or less in our favor, we are constantly surprised by how much that matters to us is beyond our control.

Acknowledging this isn’t fatalism; it isn’t stoic detachment.  It is simply the truth that nature speaks all around me.  I had no say in the reddening of the leaves, nor the timing of their fall.  As Job was forced to admit, I do not know the way to the place where light is distributed, or where the east wind is scattered, nor have I entered the storehouses of the snow.  I only know it fell this week.

And I didn’t see it coming.

Morning Worship

Sunday morning, Lakeside

Charlson Meadows, MN

The water is at prayer this Sunday morning, unstirred and hushed; the surface of the lake mirroring the lone cloud and the golden leaves above, similarly absorbed in silent meditation.  Only an occasional bird voices morning praise.  Otherwise, this new beginning is silent.  And still.  The autumn colors and chill, otherwise, the loudest exclamation.  

What is my contemplation?  What is my new day prayer?

Only to pay attention - to listen and, listening, hear; to look and, in looking, see; to wonder and, in wondering, to be fascinated and amazed - with gratitude and awe.

And in such attending, to accept the morning’s blue and green and red/yellow invitation to offer my own autumnal colors in return.

Tending an Autumn Fire

 Charlson Meadows, MN

The logs resident in the fire pit, remainders of the meditations of some prior anonymous visitor, were damp despite the covering lid.  The logs stacked neatly in a rack beneath the trees were curiously dry.  Paper was stored in a nearby bin, along with kindling and a container of lighters.  We arranged the fuel in a teepee of optimism, lit the paper and hoped.

A mild October day, the fire was more aspirationally aesthetic than necessity, but we nonetheless drew close and exposed ourselves to the warmth when flames slowly appeared behind the steamy smoke.

Like a doting grandmother ladling chicken soup, we continued to feed logs to the flame as though its appetite- and our meditative stay - knew no limits.  It crackled and licked and smoldered and smoked, and we breathed in the woody scent, smiling at the extravagance of it while adding yet another log.

There is more smoke than flame - a common enough phenomenon, I’m poignantly aware; or perhaps the flames in this case are simply subtle, making their way incrementally into and among the cracks within the logs rather than showing in the spaces between them.

Perhaps we could use more of that in this volubly exhibitionist culture where it has to be big and blazing to be real - or at least acknowledged.

All of a sudden a tongue of wind licks the embers and a finger of fire points in my direction and signals for yet another log.  Dubious, but dutiful, I comply.  The supervising trees shimmer with the breeze and, as if in moral support, sprinkle in their kindling leaves which curl and disappear into the flames.

The flames rise and fall; disappearing altogether for all I know, only to erupt without announcement.  Passions behave the same, as artists and lovers have long observed.  It’s hard to account for the falling; easier, perhaps, the rising.  In either case, a constant supply of logs is essential.

As with this fire, all the logs won’t be consumed; but they will be ready the next time the cover is dragged away and the foddering paper is stuffed and matched;

...and the memory of this autumn day is reignited.

Snowflakes Unite

I recently found myself entangled in an altogether surreal Facebook interaction that quickly resembled Br'er Rabbit's experience with the Tar Baby.  The more the comments went back and forth, the more inextricably and frustratingly entangled we became.  It was touchy; it was conflictual.  Then, as so often happens, absent better arguments or elucidating insight, the interaction descended into name-calling.  My conversation partner, with all the derision that can be dripped onto and through a typed word, referred to me and various other correspondents in the string as "Snowflakes."

Snowflakes?  I didn't quite know what to make of the label.  Name-calling, regardless of its particular textual and circumstantial formulation, is always a despicably low and amateurish form of human discourse; a flailing of desperation seized upon in lieu of substance.  But "snowflakes"?  Obviously intended as a political pejorative - a putdown of some inscrutable intent - for the life of me I couldn't make sense of the reference.  How fossilized does one's imagination need to be, I wondered - how diminished of wonder and fascination and appreciative observation - to turn one of nature's most evocative and metaphorically rich phenomena into a derogatory epithet intended to belittle and dismiss?  Subsequent Googling clarified that the term has been co-opted by one chorus of the political dysfunction to demean those with whom they disagree as fragile ephemera who go about life with a perpetually vulnerable and inflated sense of their own uniqueness.

Understanding the "put down" only made me sadder.  How has it come to be that those very qualities are viewed as negatives?  Fragility.  Uniqueness.  Vulnerability.  How has it come to be that unbridled, unchanneled strength is adjudged an unmitigated "good"?  In this culture, and increasingly around the world, we thumb our snowflakes into soggy oblivion, and use the resulting moisture to wipe away any residue of those with whom we disagree.  Could it be that this metaphorical descent helps explain the dismissive toxicity in which we now find ourselves deteriorating?

I recall that the word "Christian" was originally intended as a label of derision by those enemies of Jesus and those who opted to follow him; a put down that was eventually embraced and adopted by those very ones it was intended to demean.  I've decided to follow the example of those early Christians and embrace as a label of honor this epithet intended as a slam.  I can't think of any more attractive and aspirational sobriquet than "snowflake".  It is certainly true that I am fragile and therefore vulnerable.  Anyone -- even the most voluble, blustery bully -- is delusional to think otherwise.  It doesn't take very many tiny, malignant cells within us to prove the point.  Likewise, a moment's distraction in an automobile, no matter its size or number of airbags.  Neither concrete nor steel nor stone, we are ephemeral, and the sooner we reclaim that essential truth about ourselves and each other the sooner we may find our way back to a healthier path.

Similarly, it is true that we are unique -- precious, at least in part -- because of it.  No one need take my word for it.  A simple look around will demonstrate the fact of it.  For all of our evident similarities, no one looks or sounds or thinks or behaves quite like me -- or you.  But a careful reading of scripture  -- most scriptures, it turns out -- asserts the existential significance of it.  Surely inheritors and adherents of the Judeo-Christian tradition should have no doubt of our individual and collective preciousness.  It is, according to our understanding of the very voice of God, the essence of who we are.

Holy.
Wondrous.
Unique.
Inestimable.
Irreplaceable.
Divinely adored.

Until we rediscover and reappropriate this essential understanding of ourselves and each other -- until we drift our way into the weighty and powerful bank of fellow snowflakes -- we will simply continue to shoot, ignore, wall out, and annihilate each other.  Somehow, that hardly sounds like a desirable alternative.

So, Snowflakes unite!  As any fallen branch in winter can testify, it is powerful when we do.  We can argue and disagree; we can vehemently counter each others positions and advocate for radically different options, but if it persists that we deny or ignore the fragile and precious uniqueness of each other the metaphor will surely shift.  We will become the broken and fallen branch instead of the snowflakes that overwhelmed it.

Nature, Twisted Into Increasingly Unnatural Shapes

Nature is back in the news this week, although in a way that is decidedly unnatural.  A working group convened by the United Nations has issued a new report on climate change that ratchets up the alarm about the deteriorating state of our environment and the accelerating pace at which it is occurring.  The United Nations is often politically unpopular in this country, which might provoke some to dismiss the report’s findings.  I rather view the UN’s unpopularity as a credential rather than a critique.  Our smug self-righteousness needs needling from time to time.  Our body politic isn’t well-served by the chorus of palace prophets who routinely coddle our leaders and their constituents with what they want to hear. 

The scientists from around the world who authored this climate report are clearly not palace prophets.  They have challenging news to deliver.  Not “news”, really, except in its severity.  The report chronicles in detail the facts we have been hearing for quite some time:  that the climate is changing, chiefly because of human activities, the environment  -- the soils, the air, the temperatures and the weather patterns -- is degrading, and that the implications will be consequential.  We can choose to ignore the facts, but that growling sound we increasingly hear will be our stomachs.  Hungry.  Feeding ourselves will become more and more difficult as a direct result of our behaviors.

We don’t like these kinds of reports, and so we routinely ignore them; burying them beneath a comforting barrage of contrary reassurances from those who profit from the status quo.  They don’t want us to change our ways any more than we do.  Their quarterly reports of return on investment depend upon us doing more of what we are doing, not less; and we simply don’t want the hassle of changing our patterns and reorienting our “way of life.”  Even if it kills us.  So, we keep consuming, extracting, manufacturing, building, eating and relating in ways that are not sustainable, instead of imagining and conceiving and investing in different possibilities. 

In so doing, we imprison ourselves in the facts we don’t want to hear.  Crops that are increasingly difficult to grow; herbicide resistant weeds we are increasingly unable to kill; soil that because of more persistent droughts we are increasingly unable to retain; more frequent and more severe storms that are more and more devastating; food shortages and bread basket conflicts prompting food immigrant refuges we already refuse to tolerate, let alone welcome; political paralysis driving us into another Dark Age; solutions we find inconvenient and therefore ignore. 

When I think of our collective blindness toward climate change and its solutions, I’m reminded of G.K. Chesterton’s famous observation about Christianity - that it has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found hard and therefore not tried.

The authors of the report are quick to point out that it contains more than dire statistics.  It contains hope, in the form or concrete, encouraging and accessible suggestions for changing the trajectory we have set in motion. 

They simply require us to permit ourselves the grace of being redemptively inconvenienced.

Out of the Brokenness

We are broken. 

The trees, for starters, whose discarded branches and twigs litter the muddy lawn after the pruning winds last night.  Beyond the wood, the very earth at our feet is sundered, knifed open by the running rivulets of snow melt and rain given common rending cause by the dramatic change in temperature.  Someone will likely benefit downstream from nature’s theft of topsoil, but the land left behind looks like the victim of an alley mugging.

And as for the rest of us, never mind the wind and water; we are simply broken.  Winter has effectively done its work.  There were times, earlier in the season, when we smugly, assertively even,  added another layer of clothing and ventured forth into the arctic blast as though we were conquerors.  We stepped confidently, if carefully, across the icy parking lots, and turned our dry, red cheeks combatively into the bitter winds.  But that was before; before Winter kept coming, and coming, and coming at us, ramming away at the barred door of our psyches like a medieval army, until our resistance finally gave way, splintering into utter vulnerability.  After months of its relentless battering, Winter has finally, without argument, prevailed.  It has broken us.  

And then just when we were about to succumb, accepting that we were irrevocably broken apart, the weather itself breaks and we realize that we have simply been broken open.  

That’s what Winter is for, at least in part.  The soil understands it, and the seeds that crack open there and find their footing.  If, as Leonard Cohen famously observed, “There’s a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in,” it is similarly true that that’s how things grow — in the cracked and broken, muddied places.  Spring, I’m finally learning, isn’t merely a change in the weather; it is the fecund readiness made possible by Winter’s strong and unremitting hand.  

I’m under no delusion that it is finally over.  The temperatures will almost certainly dive again, and we’ve not likely seen the last of the snow.  But Winter’s victory secured, it can safely loosen its grip.  Our pretensions and self-assurances no longer pose any threat.  No face-saving evasions or alternate explanations remain.  We’ve been broken.  Open.  And mud now fills the cracks.

The only question remaining is, “For what?”  Duly prepared by winter for spring, I wonder what nourishment or beauty will take root in the resulting rubble, muck and mud that I have, as a result, become?

Looking Beyond the Ripples and Falls

“{People} see God in the ripple but not in the miles of still water. Of all the two-thousand miles that the St. Lawrence flows — pilgrims go only to Niagara.”

     ——- Henry David Thoreau 

The sun is rising on a day in which nothing much is planned.  

The calendar is empty.

There are no errands to run.

No packages are anticipated in the mail.

Leftovers will satisfy the needs of all three meals.

At zero degrees, it’s too cold for outdoor projects.

The chickens are fed.

The dogs are snoozing on the sofa.

The laundry is done.

The dishes are washed.

The bills are paid.

It’s quiet — a “still water” kind of day.  

With a sheepish smile I think of how much of my life would have considered such a day a waste of good opportunity.  “Surely,” I would have told myself, “the responsible thing to do is figure out how to make some dominoes fall, some mountains move, some towers get built.”  You know, make something happen....  
     Light a fire.  
          Ring a bell.  
               Draw a sword.

And God knows there is plenty to do — in the world, and around the house.  It doesn't take much imagination to name them.  They are glaring...jarring...clamorous.  Tackling some of them -- checking a few off the list -- in the course of this "empty" space of time certainly wouldn’t be bad.

But busy, it wouldn’t automatically be helpful.  As Thoreau observes, Niagara Falls only occupies one small fraction of the River.   What else might there be upstream?  Or downstream?

It’s easy to hear when the music is loud.  What is to be heard inside the sounds of silence?

Quite familiar  -- and in some ways more comfortable -- with Elijah's experience at the mouth of the cave, hair parted by the great wind, teeth rattled by earthquakes and eyebrows singed by nearing fires...though only occasionally experiencing divinity within them, I will spend this day on different, more muted terms.

I’m rather determined this day to make a pilgrimage to the stillness -- to listen into the "sound of sheer silence" that Elijah described; to attend to the "still small voice" -- rather than the roaring attractions and the ripples that are conspicuously and unusually absent from the schedule, trusting in the holy wonder to be discerned in quiet hours...miles removed from the Falls.

Hungering for Humanity

We are living in a very odd and disturbing time.

I suppose there have been unsettled folk in every “time” who have felt that way, but seriously.  This is an odd time, indeed.  In recent days the press has served up stories suggesting that the U.S. President was placed in office by God Almighty, and that his orange skin is a sign of the Holy Spirit's movement within him.   These are the serious matters with which we are consumed.  Never mind the degradation of the environment.  Pay no attention to the generalized decline of healthfulness in favor of a managed, somewhat mitigated state of illness.  Ignore as irrelevant the violence become epidemic in neighborhoods, houses of worship, dance halls, concert venues and schools.  We’ve got the President’s unnatural skin color to talk about.

Whatever. Never mind my hunch that God isn't registered to vote in our elections, I have larger concerns than political/theological dermatology. I'm too puzzled by — and sleepless over — our culture’s ineluctable and passionate adulterous affair with fear that drives us to belittle and demean each other...

• like the generously hospitable Muslim Imam and his community who have welcomed us to their prayers, their hearts and their table; 
• like the differently gendered campus minister — one of the the most faithfully compelling and spiritually rich Christians I know — who is constantly — constantly — facing charges from her denomination that devalue her humanity and jeopardize her ministry; 
• like the precious Burmese refugee children whose Sunday School Lori and I are privileged to teach on Sunday mornings; 
• like the various hard working immigrants we routinely come into contact with from "suspect" countries whose paperwork is a constant source of anxiety and frenetic maintenance.

We are so afraid; fearful in ways that are robbing us of our heart, paralyzing our souls, suffocating our basic humanity, imprisoning us behind our gated fencelines and blinding us to our neighbors.  It would be one thing if the roof was actually caving in or the infidels were actually clamoring at the gate.  But despite what the politicians are shouting, and the media outlets are repeating, and the social media channels are reposting, the facts don’t support the paranoia toward those unlike us that has become our national pastime.

I know we all don't see these differently raised, differently religious, differently colored, differently oriented people through the same lens, but do we have to be so brutally carnivorous in our disagreements?  Before we became so angry and frightened we tethered ourselves to some fundamental, core beliefs about the value of human beings.  We still pretend to in our pitched battles over abortion and capital punishment, but our behaviors defy our rhetoric.  We may love “humanity” as long as they are kept at some safe, philosophical distance, but we expend a lot of time and heated energy vilifying actual people.

I say let the President dye himself whatever color makes him happy.  While I don’t think it has anything to do with the pigmentational effects of the Holy Spirit, it is certainly his own prerogative.  Meanwhile, I intend to do my best to feed my aching hunger for a little basic humanity.  

To Who Knows Where...

The morning is veiled in fog.  Soft gray blurs the prairie grasses near at hand and dissolves the tree line beyond.  After the successive waves of snowfall in recent weeks and the bitter cold of the past few days, the sudden winter warmup is inviting the intemperate air and all the resident moisture on the ground to dance.  It is beautiful, mysterious...

...and treacherous.  The drive home last night from an outing with friends was treacherous, with visibility extending only occasionally beyond the hood of the car.  We inched along slowly; grateful for the absence of traffic behind us, and for the occasional Sherpa-like taillights guiding from ahead.  The turn onto gravel toward home off the county road was more hypothesis than certainty, but our creeping caution successfully compensated for our lack of confidence.  Finally turning into our driveway, and easing into our garage, we pulled ourselves into the house, slumped wearily onto the sofa and offered silent prayers of thanksgiving for our safety.  It was foolish to be out; a gift to be home.

Today, however, the fog feels more evocative than dangerous — like a Holmesian mystery set among the murky back streets of London.  Anything can happen.  Clearer-headed in the light of day, the prudent are sitting tight.  The roads remain deserted and the airport is closed.  As a sequel to this week’s polar vortex-imposed paralysis, nature has devised yet another mechanism for slowing us down; for summoning us to stillness.  Suddenly there is time to think, to process into insights the data that has windrifted against the fencelines of our consciousness.  Finally, a moment for creative, reflective brooding.  How long we will acquiesce remains to be seen — restlessness has a way of overriding our caution — but only thrill-seeking fools bluster ahead full throttle with their eyes closed.  The more prudent pause, squint discerningly into the mist, and only then pick their way slowly into the ambiguity.  Inevitably, some will sneer at the caution; but it isn’t timidity that fuels the hesitation, rather sagacity.

What, then, shall we do?  How might this wisdom nourish and instruct us rather merely frustrate?  It would be a helpful discipline to learn, after all, for while there are those blessedly clear, blue sky intervals when it seems like we can see forever, in a metaphorical sense fog is more ubiquitous than sun.  It is delusion to think the way ahead in life is obvious or clear.  Most of our steps are best guesses; more intuitive than sure.  On a good day — the sunniest, most cloudless day — the furthest horizon is not actually that far away.  We hypothesize where to turn and best guess at what’s ahead, but finally we walk by faith and not by sight.  We are flying...or creeping...blind.

But caution is prudent; patience, ennobling There is something to be said for pacing our steps, bowing to visibility, and leaning forward with humility...

...to who knows where.

Day and Years and the Gift Of Sunshine

“How do you measure a year?” the cast of Rent famously and musically asked.  

“In daylights, in sunsets, in midnights

In cups of coffee

In inches, in miles, in laughter, in strife

In five hundred twenty-five thousand

Six hundred minutes.

How do you measure a year in the life?”

It’s a big question; a bigger one, still, if the unit in question is not a year in the life but the life itself — a coil that is still joyfully, curiously, hungrily spiraling longer and higher even as it grounds and roots itself ever deeper.  If the song’s 525,600 minutes sounds like a big number, consider these:
 

31,536,000 minutes

525,600 hours

21,900 days

Or…

60 years. 

Those are the celebratory numbers that pop and dazzle the sky today like fireworks on this benchmark birthday of my beloved.  At least they dazzle me; I’m not sure how excited she is about arriving at this decadal threshold.  And it’s true that the numbers aren’t ultimately the subject of celebration.  As the song suggests, it’s all the beats and blinks that pulse behind them.   It’s the cups of coffee, the sunsets, the laughter — even the strife.  It’s the first days of class, and the last; it’s the paychecks, and now the pension checks; the harvests picked, the eggs gathered, the flowers cut.  It’s the meals playfully prepared and then shared together; the kisses and hugs, the nuzzlings of a dog nose.  

But it is more, still, than those.  It’s the kindnesses shared, the laughter spread, the forgivenesses tendered.  It’s the lives stretched, the minds stimulated, the curiosities piqued.  It’s the indifferent and aloof, dragging her or his feet, drawn in and deftly intrigued.  It’s the broken and clumsily mended heart softened and reopened.

I am gratefully acquainted with most of these measures, but by no means all.  I came late to this party.  She, after all, was an Iowan and I, a Texan — miles apart in more ways than one.  I was inching toward 40 when we were first introduced, at a time and circumstance in my life when I evinced a reputation for competence but rarely sunshine.  She, of course, changed all that, encouraging the competence; evoking the light.  Intellectually and spiritually I trust the conviction that some of that light comes from within.  To whatever extent that is true, the delight of my experience in her company is more moon-like, reflecting the radiant cascades that spill my way.  I’ll not gush and bore you with details, except to say that it is a gloriously bright place to live, here in the company of her incandescence — minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.  

Happy birthday dearest Lori Jo.  I’m so grateful for the Waterloo hospital that sheltered your first moments in this world; for your Alexander parents and siblings who nurtured and shaped your subsequent years; for the co-workers and companions who broadened, comforted and challenged your growth, and for the intuitive mutual friends who nudged me into your orbit — a gravitational pull to which I happily submit.  I can’t wait to experience whatever fills and animates the clock ticks, rooster crows, and calendar pages ahead of us.