A Big Number for a Happy Day

 It’s a disconcerting feeling to turn 65.  I’m not complaining.  After all, it’s great to be alive. It’s just that, in a weird irrational way, I never thought I would be this old.  I suppose I imagined that I would reach some mythically perfect age – say, 55 – and just hold there.  The “reaching” part worked out quite well.  It’s the “hold” part that the universe bungled.  I kept aging.  Year after year until reaching this Medicared benchmark.  So far.  Which is to say that I have no immediate interest in stopping the process.  Who knows, for example, what 70 might hold – or 100?

 

And really, 65 turns out to be quite lovely.  I’m healthy – never mind the extra pounds I could do without.  I’m blissfully happy.  I can still get out of a chair without assistance. I am blessed with a cradling circle of loving and encouraging family and friends.  I’m immersed in pursuits that nourish and enlarge.   I feel more generative than perhaps at any other season of my life – growing things, writing new thoughts, creating new possibilities, dreaming about new destinations and innovations and ideas and experiences.  Which should not be surprising.  These days greet me with more opportunity than responsibility; more invitation than demand.  There is an evocative space in these days that was almost certainly present all along, but within those earlier frames of employment and breadwinning and resumé-building and parenting, failing and recovering and, let’s face it, growing up myself, wasn’t always privileged with attention.

 

And so I will embrace the strangeness of this birthday, and nestle into the loving embrace of those in my circle.  It really is good to be here – feeling not merely my own pulse but that of the life around me; looking and listening and brooding and breathing; noticing and imagining and exploring and touching and discerning the greening yet emergent in these autumn days.

 

Welcome, then, 65.  I look forward to getting to know you.

In the Shock of the Unexpected, and the Grief of the Unwanted

I didn’t wake up this morning anticipating the final goodbye to a beloved pet.  Yesterday was like any other, as were the days before.  There was nothing to signal concern.  Sure, he was getting older, but 10-years old is hardly geriatric.  This morning he was obviously sick, we took him to the Vet, and following a couple of hours of diagnostics, we found ourselves holding him with his terminal diagnosis, petting his head while he looked tenderly first at one of us, then the other, speaking his name while the Vet emptied first one syringe and then a second.  A peaceful moment later, he was gone.

 

I hesitated to write about this for any eyes beyond our own.  After all, who needs one more sad pet story amidst so much anguish and trauma and global grief and pain?  But perhaps poignant contact with the death of a beloved dog is the very thing we need – flaking particles that we have become of a collective heart so calcified and atrophied as to scarcely beat at all.  We have become brittle and brutal to one another; acrimonious, poisonous and simply mean.  Maybe a heartbreaking gaze into the soulful eyes of a diminishing dog can be at least one solvent drop on our coronary concrete.

 

Tir was, from the beginning, Lori’s dog – a too-soon replacement, in my opinion, for our treasured “first” dog that had only recently passed away.   Grieving, we salved the loss with a puppy who looked identical to his forerunner.  He was barely weaned.  As his later quirks bore witness, he could have benefited from more instructional time with his mother.  But home with us he came, and promptly set about the work of transforming our home into his.    

 

He could be demanding, and he could be militantly petulant, as I found out one Christmas Eve when I tried to take away the full diaper he had snatched from our grandson’s changing table.  The puncture wounds from his bite eventually healed, but I never tried that again.  At the same time, he was routinely protective and loving.  He slept outside the door of any overnight guest.  He guarded our grandson like he was the Crown Prince.  When one of us was sick, Tir couldn’t be dynamited from our side.  We were his responsibility, and he took his job seriously.

 

Not quite one year old when we moved to the farmstead, he quickly established himself as the watcher and the “dog bell.”  His favorite perch was the back of the sofa from which vantage point he could survey the front yard through the large living room window, warning us with voluble animation of passing deer, squirrels, visitors and delivery trucks.  

 

And he would cuddle.  He would rarely initiate such affection, but he never complained or resisted when one of us needed a hug.  He would willingly submit when we drew him near, and settle himself into a pliant puddle of flesh in our laps.

 

And all of a sudden it is a quieter, soberer place without him.  Yes, we have other dogs.  Yes, and absolutely they are precious and dear and every other minute make us laugh or sigh with pleasure at their company.  It’s not that we are suddenly alone.  It is simply that Tir is no longer among our company.  He was who he was, and the others are who they are.  Tir, moreso than any of our other companions, taught us the absurdity of the ruse that, “if you have seen one you have seen them all.”  Tir let us know in myriad ways that you hadn’t seen Tir until you had seen Tir; insisted that we comprehend that each one is unique, a particular personality, a discreet bundle of endearments and aggravations that, in snowflaked singularity, does not and will not exist again - only one of his life lessons we could afford to generalize in among our wider interactions.

 

Already we miss him, and the way he filled the space he carved in our lives and hearts – bite marks, tear drops, cuddles and his insistent stare-downs when it was time for us to do whatever it was that he wanted.  And forever we are grateful – to each other for wanting him and agreeing to have him; and to him for, well, being him.  

 

I suppose we will have to learn how to keep watch our own driveway from now on.  

In Gratitude for the 25th Sequel

It is August 31 – a day that always makes me smile.  Through a few grateful tears.  

 

It was on this date, now 25 years ago, that I timidly, anxiously, knocked on Lori Alexander’s door to pick her up for a date.  Later, we would refer to it as our “first date,” but on that particular evening it was merely a date.  There were to be no sequels.  It was a “one-off” obligatory outing to which both of us had agreed in order to get Phyllis, our erstwhile matchmaker, off our respective backs.  We had met at a wedding almost a year before, but life and complications had prevented any trailing interaction.  Until that subsequent August when I finally got up the courage – or suspended my resistance – and called.  

 

Calling, of course, wasn’t a simple matter.  After numerous attempts and getting no answer, I finally and reluctantly left a message.  “You probably don’t remember me, but…”  She had been screening her calls, but courteously called me back.  We talked.  We chuckled at Phyllis’ persistence.  In the course of it all, Lori gently but firmly made it clear when accepting my clumsy invitation that, what with starting a new job and trying to finish a PhD (and, I was to learn sometime later, a general weariness with romantic entanglements), that she wasn’t “interested in a relationship.”  Myself recently divorced, I breathed a sigh of relief.  The last thing I needed was a relationship.  And the last thing I could afford.  I was utterly broke – able to pay the rent on a humble apartment only through the supportive and charitable largesse of my parents.  Weeks shy of 40, and I was dependent on handouts from my parents.  It was, indeed, a bleak and precarious time that made no allowance, psychologically or financially, for dating.  And yet here I was driving a beautiful and evocative young woman to a restaurant that I must have searched between the sofa cushions for coins to pay for.  

 

Let’s just say that it had been a long time since I had been on a date.  I was awkward; equal parts tongue-tied and blathering.  I remember, in response to some probing, “get-acquainted” question, mentioning how much I love words, and how they can paint images.  To her credit, she didn’t immediately ask to be taken home.  In fact, the evening extended.  The server cleared our plates and refilled our water glasses.  Again and again.  Over two hours later we departed the restaurant and I dropped her back off at her apartment.  

 

There are no accompanying pictures.  As I say, it was to have been a one-time, forgettable event – the kind that neither warrants nor provokes photography.  Which is fine with me, because I recall the mental image just now with a smile and more clarity than any picture could contain – the two of us at that table-for-two in that dimly lit restaurant; her in her navy shorts and me in my khaki pants, talking and smiling; first hesitantly and awkwardly and then with increasing ease and vigor and enjoyment.  I called my brother the following day and confessed, “I’ve had a way better time than I really wanted to have at this point in my life.”

 

Indeed.  A “way better time” that continues to this day.  

 

We will return to that dimly lit restaurant tonight, as we have on this night each of the ensuing  years; reliving and celebrating now for the 25^th time that single, one-off date that in the alchemy of love became, for us, a “first date.”  

 

We will no doubt have words to speak; words that will paint images of both memory and imagination.  Memory, because we have made them aplenty.  Imagination, because, of course, this will hardly be the last.

 

Electrifying our Addiction to Short-Sightedness

Of course, I am disappointed.

 

We are firmly in the camp with those who believe in the value and wisdom of encouraging alternative energy sources.  Migrating to more environmentally friendly and sustainable sources won’t happen overnight, but shouldn’t we be intentional about nudging forward that movement?  Yes, our entire way of being right now is organized around fossil fuels – our infrastructure, a large segment of our employment, a major pie wedge of our economy – but we have learned some things about fossil fuels.  For one thing, we are using them up.  They are a finite resource.  True, exhausting the reserves might theoretically take decades, or even centuries, but not knowing when it will happen does not obviate the fact that it surely will happen. Surely prudence demands forethought.

 

That, plus the thorny fact of their environmental destructiveness.  We know this, even if the knowledge is inconvenient.  The dots have been connected.  Burning fossil fuels is environmentally degrading.  That would be the environment on which we depend; that keeps us alive.  It isn’t in our interest to poison or degrade it.  It makes sense to look for healthier alternatives.

 

All that, plus the stimulating intrigue of horizon-seeking ingenuity.  We should always be incentivizing creativity.  We needn’t penalize possibility by privileging present tools.  There can only be better options than the ones we currently employ.  The “big two” available to us now are wind and solar energy.  Those two aren’t likely to exhaust the possibilities.  Decades from now, wind turbines and solar panels will likely seem like the horse and buggy of energy.  It will be fascinating to see what advances beyond them.

 

But for now, they are the alternative tools at our disposal.

So I was disappointed when the local City Council last week put a leash on the installation of solar panels in our community.  Unanimously, according to the news report, which is more disappointing still.  No one among them spoke up for our children.  Their only concern was for how they “look.”  Among the other restrictions, ground-mounted systems were banned entirely.  As the proud owner of a ground-mounted system, I felt the slap.  

 

The consideration focused on property values and those perennially mythical factors that hypothetically impact them negatively, and aesthetics.  Concern was expressed about the “look and feel” of neighborhoods, should such arrays be permitted.  “There is not one person who is dying to live next to a ground-mounted solar (system),” one Councilmember was quoted as saying.

 

I appreciate the complexities of municipal governance.  I am not standing in line to be elected.  I don’t want their job.  The needs and desires of the many quite often conflict with the wants of the few, and juggling the competing interests is as perilous as it is acrobatic.  And I understand the concept of rhetorical hyperbole.  We say extreme things to make a point.  That’s the nature of public discourse and debate.  But I wish the Councilmember had, in this case, been more restrained.  I’ll accept that the “dying” he refers to in his assertion is intended as a synonym for “desire,” but the rest of the claim is logically specious on the face of it.  He didn’t ask me, and I, alone, would have scuttled his claim.  Nor did he presumably survey any of those citizens who wanted to install ground-mounted systems but are now prohibited from proceeding.  I think it’s safe to say that 100% of them would be happy to live next door to such an installation.  

 

And this notion of property values and aesthetics.  Ephemerality and subjectivity made into talismans.  As the ancient Romans would say, “De gustibus non est disputandum” – there is no disputing taste.  I, for one, don’t wish to live next door to a purple house, but I’m not sure that gives me cause to prevent my neighbor from choosing that color.  Never mind the current fad giving rise to a proliferation of wall murals, I wouldn’t want to live next to one of those, either.  It’s not the “look and feel” I prefer.  But I’ll not stop you from adding one if such a spectacle voices your particular aesthetic.  

 

Paint colors and murals, after all, will neither help nor hinder us.  But solar panels might well be one of the ways that help us survive, wherever we put them.  And not every rooftop is workably situated.  I value aesthetics as much as the next person – quite likely more than the next person.  And aren’t we always making exceptions to our aesthetic sensibilities when outweighed by functional benefit?  As the teenaged Ursula observed to her friend Kim in the Broadway play,
“Bye, Bye Birdie”, “Some things are more important than very important.”  Like how our descendants seven generations from now will look back upon our choices. I pray for the time when we don’t succumb to our preternatural tendency toward short-sightedness.

 

Maybe someone could figure out how to paint a mural on ground-mounted panels.  I suppose I could get use to that.

 

In the meantime, I’ll give thanks for sunny days, and the clean, renewable energy they occasion.  I’ll do what I can to enlarge public awareness – and a broader sense of collective and far-reaching stewardship and responsibility. 

 

And beg our neighbors’ indulgence that all this marvelous benefit apparently comes at their aesthetic expense.  

 

Perhaps the Elevation Enabled us to Hear More Clearly

The church I last served had an actual “upper room.”  It was a simple, open space on the topmost floor of the building just beneath the chime tower and the cross, where youth of a different era had once roller skated.  With a simple linoleum floor, portal windows and a sloped, painted wood ceiling it exuded the feel of an attic, far away from the sidewalks and trafficked streets five floors below.  It was the perfect location for Maundy Thursday services through years.  

 

In the Christian calendar, “Maundy Thursday” is the Thursday of Holy Week – the last week of Jesus’ life. Thursday, the evening of the “last supper,” after which Jesus was arrested by his friend’s betrayal, the effluence of which was Good Friday and its crucifixion.  “Maundy,” from the Latin for “mandate” or, more commonly, “commandment.”  

 

Neither Matthew nor John among the New Testament writers ascribes elevation to the setting for Jesus’ last evening with his disciples, simply referencing a borrowed “room” in which they gathered.  But Christian imagination through the years has been sparked by the notation in both Mark and Luke of “a large room upstairs.”  Since we, in our situation, had the architectural assets to take those writers literally, we eschewed the sanctuary on those annual occasions in favor of that humble space at the top of our building.

 

As the appointed hour approached, the smallish crowd would travel up the elevator, find our seats among the folding chairs arranged in a square, facing inward around a simply set table set with a filled chalice and a stark loaf of bread, flanked elsewhere in the open clearing by a couple of stools and basins of water.  The format of those experiences varied, but always the tone – established as much by the room as by the liturgy – was intimate, almost hushed.   There would be simple songs – unaccompanied, or supported by a guitar or accordion; there would be spoken words, responses and prayers.  Eventually the bread would be broken and the cup would be shared.  And then bare feet, stripped of their shoes and socks and all pretensions of sophistication, would be entrusted into hands that would tenderly bathe and dry them in awkward quietness, until the silence was broken with the familiar words of Jesus:

“I have set you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you…I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”

I loved those services, and I’ll confess, miss them.  I loved that room and the Spirit it could invite.  Sure, more glorious music could easily be found, and more poetic liturgies could be shared.  But there was, for me, something profoundly inspiring about those simple and austere gatherings on the 5^th floor.  

 

Something both provocative and evocative.  

Something grounding; centering.

Something awe-filling.

Something…holy.

 

There was something about the unadorned, artless, stripped-down elementariness of the moments that enabled us – enabled me – to plainly hear and receive afresh the routinely choked-out but elemental definition of discipleship; that to which the motions and the words, the loaf and cup, the basin and towel all point:  love.  “Love one another.”  This, according to Jesus, is how people will know who you are – not by your creeds or your piety or your confessions or your sacraments; not by your buildings or your pronouncements; not by your liturgies, your blandishments of scripture, nor your songs. 

 

By your love.  By the way that you love like Jesus loved.  

 

Bare feet, received by unoffended hands, and tended as if they were one’s own.

 

Because in every way that ought to matter, they are.

 

The service would end, and that upper room would empty.  But something had changed among us.  There never was much chatter in the elevators on the trip back down to ground level.  We were “cleaner”, I suppose, in more ways than one; “clearer”, at least, about who we were and what lay ahead of us, and chitchat didn’t seem to fit.  We had, as it were, work to do.  

 

The work of discipleship.

 

The work of stripping down and leaning over.

 

The work of this “new commandment.”

 

The plain, ordinary, unglamorous, foot-washing sort of work, in a word, of love.

 

Falling in Love With Lent

 “Always fall in love with what you're asked to accept. Take what is given and make it over your way. My aim in life has always been to hold my own with whatever's going. Not against; with.”

         —Robert Frost

 

No one needs to point out one more time that it hasn’t been an easy year, or enumerate the experiences and ones we’ve lost in the course of it.  I’ve heard many spiritually devout mutter, upon washing the ashes off their foreheads, that they didn’t feel like giving anything up for Lent this time around – such a discipline being redundant amidst enduring quarantine precautions. We’ve been “giving things up” for the last 12 months.

 

It’s true, of course.  Lent took hold a year ago and never let go.  We may have taken a few determined moments to hum a hallelujah when the calendar announced that it was Easter, but it was a forced refrain.  It didn’t feel like any stone had been rolled away, and so we settled back into our Wednesday ashes.  Here we are now, twelve months later, still in the throes of Lent.  Sure, one after another silly politician tells us that the sun is shining and the water’s warm and we should jump right in.  But as a friend of mine recently observed, once you’ve grabbed a live wire, it’s hard to approach, let alone put your hand again on, an electric fence regardless of who might be assuring us that it is turned off. 

 

The season of Lent continues…

 

…which is a richer, more generative observation than it sounds.  Though Lent has largely been reduced, in our understanding, to an onerous and obligatory season of sacrifice, its real purpose is examination, clarification, and realignment with the core of who we are and are called to be.  Jesus was driven into the wilderness – the biblical story that informs the season of Lent – not to subject himself to deprivation “because it would be good for him,” but to distill and clarify the values by which he would live out his life.  The prophet Jeremiah would say that Jesus was setting a personal plumb line. 

 

If Jesus went about that reflective work of his own volition, we have had the wilderness imposed upon us.  One day we were laughing and playing and going about our routines.  The next day the doors were closed and we were working from home.  One day we were healthy and slaying the dragons.  The next, we were constantly taking our temperature, wearing masks and lamenting the loss of those whose death we couldn’t gather to solemnize.  But along the way we have done more than grieve and take precautions and feel afraid.  Like Jesus in the wilderness, we have sorted through our circumstances and selves and separated into piles the “essentials” to keep and the “unnecessary accretions” to set aside.  We’ve baked more bread, made more meals, planted more gardens, and talked with one another about important things.  

 

Not entirely, of course.  Overlaying all this has been a poisonous political season that made a global pandemic seem like a bedtime story.  In the conduct of it we have learned that it will take more than a deadly and paralyzing calamity to break up the sedimented thinking and behaviors that have hardened portions of our hearts and lives and the spaces between us.  

 

Still, in breathtaking ways the Lenten pandemic has sifted us, stripped us, stilled us, worked on us, clarified us; pushed us, of necessity, to reevaluate, reimagine, and innovate.  Not everyone, to be sure.  Some have never ceased to kick and scream and whine.  Countless shops and bars and eateries have closed, the victims of financial starvation.  

 

But there are others who channeled the resilient spirit of Robert Frost – who may not have “fallen in love with” what we’ve been asked to accept, but have accepted it, nonetheless, and worked with it rather than against it.  I think of the restaurants that have found new ways to set virtual tables; businesses that created new pathways to serve their customers; musicians and theatre groups who have created new “stages” on which to perform; churches who have done more than point a jerky camera at a talking head and have created altogether new and beautiful experiences of worship that are more than makeshift, and which evocatively, aesthetically connect with the spiritually hungry far beyond their immediate neighborhood or town.  These, the resilient among us, have leaned into working “with” instead of “against.”  And my guess is – my prayer is – that much of who we have become and much we have trained ourselves to see will endure.

 

We’ve learned some things, in other words, about ourselves and each other, pried away from the present to attend to the possible.

 

Precisely what the season of Lent is supposed to accomplish in and among us.  And if it has taken a year to accomplish it instead of the requisite six weeks, well, the garden was worth planting and the bread was worth baking; the meals were worth preparing and the conversations were worth having.  And who knows what else about all we've been forced to accept we will discover we've come to love.  Surely that warrants a modest pre-Easter "Hallelujah".  

The Greatness of Large Ideas and Noble Ideals

I think now that I was wrong about the slogan.

 

For the past several years we have collectively been regaled with the enjoinder to “Make America Great Again.”  The phrase has energized the populace – thrilling some, while nauseating others.  Count me among the latter.  But I am having second thoughts.  

 

I know this is dangerous.  Such a reconsideration requires a careful, close reading of ourselves and our history – indeed, our collective soul- and Americans aren’t known for subtlety.  Nuance has not been our gift.  We draw with bold strokes – with jumbo crayons on a wide-lined tablet.  We know well the three primary colors, but can’t be bothered with the shades and hues.  So it is that we talk of capitalism and communism, law and order and anarchy, morality and corruption, patriotism and treason, Christianity and atheism, government involvement and personal liberty as if such binaries were the only options.  They aren’t, of course.  There are vast spaces and limitless possibilities between any such polarities, but exploring them, teasing them out and considering their potentialities requires an intellectual patience and labor that, for the most part, we aren’t willing to invest.

 

All that acknowledged, I accept the risk.  Never mind that the progenitor of the phrase in question is someone I experience to be a despicable blight on the American consciousness, I don’t want to turn a blind eye.  We should, indeed, strive to make America great again.  By that I do not mean that we should endeavor to resurrect some mythical moment in our past when all was right with ourselves and the world.  This country never has been “great” in the jingoistic ways that politicians trumpet.  America never has been remotely close to embodying all that it aspired to be.  There surely is no prior period in U.S. history to which women would want to return, or people of color, or indigenous peoples, or those differently abled or sexually oriented or aligned. The past, for all but the narrowest elite and privileged, was defined by constraint, invisibility, or outright repression.  That hardly sounds like “greatness.” There never was such a wondrous and idyllic season in our history that was somehow punctured when voting rights were extended, when marriage equality was recognized, when women gained agency over their bodies, when prayer was supposedly removed from schools and access to affordable health care was expanded.  We did not lose our greatness by liberalizing immigration policies or making room for different religious expressions or reevaluating words in our vocabulary that can exclude and offend.  

 

What once made America great was not our actualization, but our aspiration.  We thought big, we reached high; we had sprawling dreams.

 

Like “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. 

 

Like “liberty and justice for all.”

 

Like the pursuit of “a more perfect union.”

 

Among other lofty, aspirational goals.

 

But somewhere along the way we gave all that up.  We reduced our tools to nailing down rather than prying open; to whittling away rather than building on.  We fell in love with “no” instead of “why not?”  Our large and noble ideals were reduced to puny ideological prejudices.  Our statecraft became obstructionism.  Victory became more compelling than wisdom; maneuvering became more practiced than persuading; coercing more than inviting.  Any potential greatness we may have known has given way to a runty petulance that ought to embarrass us all – liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat or any of the other silly jerseys we have come to wear.  We have become miserably small not because we have grown weak, or because we lost manufacturing jobs or signed treaties, or because of any terrorizing or threatening or morally corroding “them”.  We have shrunk politically, morally, economically, and globally because our interest in big ideas has atrophied, our sense of the whole has narrowed to the individual, and our inquisitive patience with wonder has fossilized.  Content with what we think we know, we haven’t the time or the tolerance for what we might yet learn or comprehend or apprehend.  

 

And it is a smaller and smaller place to be.  

 

We used to be grander than that.  We used to be greater than that.  And I miss that.

 

So let us abandon this village of Lilliputian petulance and thought, and indeed make America great again – not the America that ever actually existed, but the America we once-upon-a-time aspired, together, to be.