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.

For the Unanswered Prayers, Missed Trains, and Blessings to Come

I have no idea how I wound up here.  Over 7 years into this almost ludicrous adventure it still baffles my mind and teases my soul.  A constantly schooled, city-bound, office shaped guy living on a farmstead, raising vegetables and chickens…and smiling in the company of an indulgently loving and endlessly curious wife, observed by amazed and amused kids who still wonder what happened to their Dad.  It is not what I prepared for.  It is not the brass ring toward which I had reached.  It is…fascinatingly…gloriously…laughably…different.  How did this happen?  

Some have speculated a lost mind.  Some have guessed “mid-life crisis.”  Some have indulged my enigmatic, inexplicable sense that this was where I was being called to be.

Who can say?  It still takes my breath away.

 Years ago, Garth Brooks famously gave thanks for unanswered prayer — that divine dispensation of grace that saved him from the myriad consequences of the stupid, or even well-meaning but misguided, things for which he had earnestly asked. I always loved that song, even though I had no real clarity about the hypothetical eventualities from which I’d been spared.   Regardless, perhaps that accounts for some part of an explanation.  

Years later, my brother introduced me to a song by Walt Wilkins with a similar but differently turned sentiment:

Here's to the trains I missed, the loves I lost

The bridges I burned the rivers I never crossed

Here's to the call I didn't hear, the signs I didn't heed

The roads I couldn't take the map that I just wouldn't read

CHORUS

It's a big ole world but I found my way

From the hell and the hurt that led me straight to this

Here's to the trains I missed

Lunacy.  Unanswered prayers.  Missed trains that led me straight to this.  Perhaps.  All I know is that this is where I am, and this is what I am doing, in partnership with a beloved whose very presence in my life amazes and blesses me and constantly surprises me -- all despite everything that I had intended, prepared for, dreamed of and practiced.  I know all that, and that I am grateful.  Unspeakably grateful.  And happy.

Standing here in the waning candlelight of an old year ending, approaching the threshold of a New Year still gelatinous and unformed, I wonder what insight my past has to pass along to my future.  At the very least it suggests that I am not as bright as I like to think I am, and certainly not as prescient.  My bigotries and preconceived ideas lead me to think I know what’s best — for myself and quite possibly others.  My experience, however, suggests an humbler reality.  As often as not, I don’t.   I hope and pray I can take that to heart.

In this New Year erupting I have no idea what’s ahead, nor which trains I should catch — or miss.  I will do my best to pay attention and discern; I will run down the tracks in pursuit of those engines that seem promising and prudent.  But I pray for the circumspection to anticipate that, as often as not, I’ll be wrong.  

And to be relieved and thrilled by what that mistake and missed opportunity occasions in its place; that I had no way to predict.

Here, then, to the ever-surprising possibilities of the New Year, whatever they may be.  I’m open to them.  

“Night is drawing nigh,” wrote Dag Hammarskjold, former Secretary General of the United Nations in his journal, Markings.  The night of this day, to be sure, but more poignantly the night of this old year.

“For all that has been — Thanks!

To all that shall be — Yes!”

Thanks…

…and Yes!

That's a pretty good way to say "goodbye" and "hello."

Happy New Year.

The Great and Holy Circle Of Love

After singing “ Do You Hear What I Hear” a couple of weeks ago with friends, all of us hauntingly implored to “pray for peace, people everywhere,” I confessed that most of my life I had thought peace to be all about absence — absence of stress, absence of conflict; absence of war; absence of fruitcake. And while all of those things are blessed contributions to it, I’m finally coming to comprehend that more than any absence, peace is above all a presence. 

I should have known it. Scripture is pretty forthright about it — in the flood story where Noah is instructed to make sure that every animal is represented on the Ark; in the Gospel parable in which the servants are commanded to go out to the highways and byways and urge everyone to the feast; in the vision that Peter has of a sheet being lowered down from heaven bearing every imaginable creature, with the instruction to take and eat; to which Peter responds, “I can’t eat what’s unclean.”  “Don’t call unclean what I have called clean,” the voice pushed back. 

In fact, I should have caught a glimpse of it in the very first chapter of Genesis, at the end of the creation story, where…“God looked at everything created and said, ‘It’s very good’”.  Everything.

As if to drive that point home, Paul writes to Timothy what may well be the most challenging assertion in scripture:  that “Everything God created is good, and to be received with thanks.” (1 Timothy 4:4, MSG)

Everything, which is a challenging affirmation on the farmstead where bugs and rabbits invade the vegetables and possums and raccoons invade the chicken yard.  But there is the biblical insistence:  Everything. It’s the reason Jesus came among us according to John 3:16:  because God so loved this world.

We borrow the Hebrew word for it — shalom — without bothering to grasp the expansiveness of its meaning.  Far more than the mere absence of fighting, shalom refers to the presence of wholeness; fullness; completeness.  

In recent months Lori and I have had the joy of organizing and teaching a Sunday School class for Burmese refugee children.  Nearing the end of one of the first sessions, helpers began distributing snacks.  One little boy immediately tore into his packaged treat and began to nibble away.  Another boy, perhaps 6 years old, touched his arm and kindly, but sternly, told him, “You need to wait.  We all do this together.  And first we need to pray.  

Together, with a prayer.  Shalom.   

Peace, then, not so much an absence, but rather the beloved presence of all that God loves.  Like each one of us, and each other.  On his new CD released last month, Minnesota singer/songwriter Peter Mayer sings of just that expansive awareness…

Jesus spoke, entreating them

To live together in a great circle of love

When his followers asked him then

“Who should be included?”

Jesus said…

Let everybody in, everybody in,

Everybody in to the circle, circle.

Everybody, everybody; everybody, everybody,

Everybody into the circle, circle.

 Everybody.  That which God managed to communicate to Noah, and to Peter and the other disciples we are still trying to get our hearts and minds around:  that when any one of us is excluded, we are all diminished — which, more than stars and snow and stables and shepherds, may well be the bigger Christmas message. 

Shalom, then.  Peace on earth, good will to all. 

All of us in this great circle of love. 

Light in the Longest Night

There is a full moon tonight -- forthrightly there, anchoring the night sky just beyond the Christmas tree window.  On first impression it might seem that we could use the extra light because tonight also marks the Winter Solstice — the point at which the earth’s axis is tilted as far away from the sun as it will be all year.  For those of us in the Northern Hemisphere that cosmic tilt results in darkness; the longest night of the year.  It doesn’t soothe us much to know that those in the Southern Hemisphere are simultaneously enjoying their longest day as a result of precisely the same phenomenon.  That these things eventually balance out is little consolation.  Culturally, and perhaps even psychologically speaking, being “rich in darkness” has never really seemed like wealth.

Ours the pity. How else would we see the stars?  How else to fully embrace the perfection of this glorious moon?  How else to give our eyes a break and flex our other senses?  Absent sight we hear more acutely, smell with heightened discernment, and feel our way around with fingers become antennae.  Pressed to eat, we taste with a sharpened mixture of caution and exploration.  All of which is to indulge the reality that darkness both invites and occasions awakened attention.

To my knowledge, no one survives who attended the birth of Jesus.  Nonetheless, absent first hand verification, we persist in locating this occurrence “after hours”.  Whimsical or not, I rather like the idea.  Whether or not the night was “silent”, I’m certain it was holy.  Births, of course, are always holy; but more than that, the darkness would have added a kind of wondrous pregnancy all its own.

Capacity.
Possibility.
Wonderment.
A crackling electricity of fearful hopefulness...

...the very kind of essential nourishments so easily overlooked or crowded out in the light of day.  We are so distracted when the sun is up -- frenetically trying to "get it all done", trying to see it all and do it all.  But, of course, in the urgency of such pursuit we miss more than we catch. 

When else would grace be born but in the expansive infinity of darkness?

I have heard these present days referred to as darkness, and I am aware that the description is not intended as a compliment.  I’m inclined, though, to receive it as such.  If, indeed, it is only at night that we see the stars and appreciate the full splendor of the moon; if, indeed, it is only amidst the darkness that our senses flex their muscles, then let this be a long and deep darkness in which we can “see” most clearly...

What is true...
What is bright...
What is noblest...
What is our highest aspiration for ourselves and the community we hope and help to fashion.

Let it be dark, so that we might feel the pain of others, taste the bile we have churned, smell the stench of injustice and hear the cries of those who are lost.  If it is, indeed, in the dark of night that our soul’s antennae are most exposed and receptive, then withhold even longer the sun.

Minnesota-based singer/songwriter Peter Mayer offers this musical invitation:
Come with drums, bells and horns
Or come in silence, come forlorn
Come like a miner to the door
Of the longest night
For deep in the stillness, deep in the cold
Deep in the darkness, a miner knows
That there is a diamond in the soul
Of the longest night
Of the year.

There are diamonds, then, to be discovered; work to be done this Winter Solstice.
Lots of discerning, healing, birthing work.

Thankfully, this longest night of the year affords us a little more time — a few extra and darkly precious minutes to get it done.

Don't be afraid. 
Use it well.

Happy Solstice.

Morning-After Kissing

First of all, thank you to all who offered themselves up as candidates to the rigorous eternity of tire-kicking that is the campaign season. You’ve done something quite heroic. Go back to whatever you did before this began with a merit badge of civic blessing.

Secondly, congratulations to those who prevailed. Take this brief moment to enjoy a deep breath. That’s about all the respite you will get. It’s time to set yourself to the task — and it won’t be easy. The process, itself, sees to that.

There is a country song that ruefully acknowledges, “It’s hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long” (The Notorious Cherry Bombs).

It’s a clever turn of phrase which, when it is on track, is country music’s stock and trade.  Earthy, I'll admit, but clever.  It makes me smile.  But it’s a wry smile.  Most of us know how difficult it is to walk back out of hurtful words we’ve spoken into a more promising and productive space.

I think of that challenge on a day like today — the day after a bitter political season ground to a close; the day after the clock counting down the hours of a very long “day” of ass-chewing finally ran down.  It won’t be easy in the coming days and months for these elected officials to practice statecraft with these lips that have spent this season in character assassination and moral diminishment.   We are increasingly brutal in our politicking— increasingly personal, and dishonest in our representations.  Suddenly, then, with the votes counted and the machines stored away until next time, fierce opponents are supposed to cohere into a productive and representative governing body.  It’s going to take more than puckering, but if we are going to be a functioning country that’s the work ahead.  

And it’s not just the politicians, of course, who have this difficult relational work to do.  Given our collective comportment over the past year and more, there is a good chance there will be a few lips gathered around our holiday tables in the month we aren’t looking forward to kissing.    The carving knives aren’t the only sharp objects laying around, and we will have some relational healing and accommodating to do.  But if we are to be a functioning family and community that’s the work ahead.  

So how will we manage it?  I remember reading about the awkward difficulty American clergy experienced in the wake of World Wars preaching healing and reconciliation after so lustily preaching against the enemy throughout the war.  It’s easier — and usually more fun — to froth up our righteous indignation and demonization than to work up a sweat in service to healing and common cause.  Which ought to give us pause.  Like it or not, we are going to have to kiss these lips.

I’m not suggesting we merely throw another log on the campfire, hold hands and sing “Kum Ba Ya” — although I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t humming it right now.  Life together in this public space is more complicated than that, and infinitely more difficult.  I’m simply saying we had better find other ways to debate the very serious matters confronting us — global warming and the degradation of the environment, racism, anti-semitism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia and the genuine challenge of existing as but one member of a diverse and messy global community, and our various and seemingly multiplying ways of abusing each other — than with our teeth.  

And listen afresh to what our various religions teach us about the value of human life, the care of our neighbor, and the imperative to love.

Because there isn’t finally anywhere for us to go but into each other’s arms.  

And may God help us to finally comprehend this fundamentally basic truth:

That it is hard to kiss the lips at night that chew your ass out all day long.

Voting With a Different Rubric

I haven’t yet voted. I am happily among the dinosaurs of this citizenry who still enjoy stepping into the voting booth on Election Day and penciling in my choices. As this impending opportunity approaches, I have been thinking about my rubric — how I decide for whom to cast my vote.  In elections past I have carefully reviewed the candidate responses to media questionnaires, noted scores on issue-based report cards, watched televised debates and read with interest the newspaper’s endorsements.  In elections past, positions reigned supreme. But I’ve grown weary of the mud wrestling.  And I’ve become increasingly disgusted by the moral fibers out of which those “representing” me are woven.  So, I’m changing the way I prepare to cast my vote.

While my interest in the positions a candidate espouses on the myriad of issues remains a priority for me, that consideration this time around has been demoted a notch.  After all, it is precisely this kind of blindered voting that has gotten us into the odious mess we are in. 

So it is that I have moved into the place where if “who you are speaks so loudly that I can’t hear what you are saying,” the odds are good that you don’t get my vote.  This time around, then, I will impose a prior screen that has lamentably fallen into collective neglect.  In this election, and those that foreseeably follow, I will only consider those who: 

• to the best of my ability to determine it, keep their zipper up/skirt down, and their hands to themselves; 

• honor their spousal vows if they’ve entered them, and professional integrities, believing that if someone doesn’t keep faith with those closest to them I can’t expect them to do so with me;

• respect the validity of facts, even when they are inconvenient;

• have more than a passing acquaintance with the values of circumspection and humility; 

• demonstrate, beyond the campaign trail, a reverence for the sacred value of humankind and the world in which we live;

• pause to think and consider rather than jumping to immediate action; 

• can meet an opponent’s position with equanimity rather than ridicule;

• come from particular places and tribes but exercise the capacity to see beyond the parochial, not simply for the good of the moment but the good beyond their time. 

Only then, from among those who remain viable after such a vetting, will I consider their politics variously espoused.  

I know there are those who consider this to be an impossibly high bar for a candidate to clear — an assessment I find to be embarrassingly sad. To the contrary, I view it to be such a pathetically low standard so base that it’s hard to imagine how we could have possibly abandoned it.  Surely this is simply the least of what we should expect of each other.  

And tomorrow, in the voting booth, I will.  The days and years after, as well. 

Because another election is never far away.