To My Whirling Bride and All Her Blessed Interruptions

It was chilly that morning morning, too, fifteen years ago today -- so much so that reassurance of Lori's grandmother was necessary in subsequent days who was sure that Lori's sleeveless wedding dress had invited a cold.  No such concerns distracted us, however, as the morning matured in that backyard garden.  "Brisk" we might have thought it, but glorious all the same.

The appointed hour was 10:45 a.m. -- the 1-year anniversary of our second date which had been a Saturday morning brunch at my apartment.  That earlier occasion had been a memorable, even pivotal morning meal; breaking the ice for a relationship in which neither of us had been interested, though nudged by mutual friends.  Now twelve months later, that earlier reticence superseded by a deepening devotion, family and a few friends were gathering with us in front of an evergreen tree for the exchange of cementing vows.

Why the initial hesitation?  For Lori there were multiple reasons, chief among them a new job with all the incumbent responsibilities and a towering learning curve.  For Tim it had been the emotional residue of a failed previous marriage and the shared parenting of two active teenagers.  Neither the bride nor the groom had been eager for added complications...or risks.  Better to simply focus in and tend to the business at hand.  In agreeing to my first invitation to dinner Lori had kindly but firmly set the tone that was signal relief to me:  "I am happy to go out for dinner, but I just want you to know that I am not interested in a relationship."

How, then, had it come to be that a scant 12 months later we were gathering family, fitting rings and exchanging vows?  The honest answer is that I don't know.  David Wilcox has a song recommending the wisdom of "starting with the ending," and with that out of the way two people can go forward on more honest terms.  Perhaps that is part of it -- ending it before it began, we opened the door for authentic threads to interweave without expectation or foreshadowing.  All I know is that months past and before I knew it I could not comprehend nor abide the prospect of life apart from this one who had become for me the very incarnation of happiness and promise, kindness and grace, height and depth and shivering joy.

"I do," we each said in turn on that sun-drenched September 20th, 1997 at 10:45 a.m., and her whirling in her playful dress only emulated what was happening in my head.  Moments later, in a foretaste of all that I have come to experience and love about her exuberant appetite for life, my new bride interrupted the officiant who happened to be my Dad, whispering, "Isn't it time for the kiss?"

Fifteen years later, looking forward as well as back, I can say with confidence that I don't suppose I will ever tire of that kind of interruption.

Happy Anniversary my beloved!

A Most Expensive and Perplexing Breakfast

"And how's that 'Arab Spring' working out for you?" she asked.  Of course I wasn't quite sure how to answer.  It hadn't occurred to me that the "Arab Spring" was suppose to "work out" for me one way or another -- it being, after all, an "Arab" spring.  Moreover, she seemed to be suggesting that we would all be better off if we could just turn back the calendar and go back to the way it was -- you know, with tyranny, despotism, and heavy-handed political abuse.  The "good old days" I suppose she meant.  Presumably the recent killing of the American Ambassador and staff in Libya were fresh on her mind and she was framing a response in the only way she knew how, but I found it an inscrutable perspective.

We had found ourselves eating breakfast with this hostess of declarative, if conflicting, political views, and the eggs were growing increasingly tasteless.  On the one hand she condemned "CEO's" as the most abusive, cash-sucking blight on the economic system, while on the other hand is, of course, voting for Mitt Romney whose own campaign sells him as the "uber-CEO."  She speaks in ominous tones about the evils looming in "ObamaCare", while simultaneously decrying her family's inability to find affordable health insurance.  Lamenting how bad the economy is in one breath, she gloats in another about how good her business has been this year.  She skewers the city officials in her community for tearing down dilapidated houses in a flood plain adjacent to her property and denigrates "those kind of people" who will likely move in through redevelopment efforts, while castigating the "gays" who will someday have to answer to God for their conduct. Trying my best to process her rapid-fire shotgun blasting prejudiced condemnations I began to hunch that there will be lots of "answering" to go around.

It was the goofiest half-hour of whiplashing contradictions I have been forced to sit through in a long, long time.  Our own contradiction -- for which we will have to answer in our own way -- is that we were paying for the privilege.

As we paid our bill and made our hurried exit, I said without thinking -- as a kind of automatic nicety -- that we would see her again.  But the truth of it is we won't.  The breakfast carried too high a price.

On Reinventing Reward

After spending a few hours watching her tend the small herd of jersey cows, walking along as she lead them from the pasture, one by one into the milking room, and finally into the "treat" room, we listened as she talked about her work, her lifestyle, her simple pleasures and deep laments, and finally her passionately voiced political points of view on the subject.  "We incentivize the wrong thing," she asserted.  "All our problems [we were talking primarily about health and obesity rates] would be solved if we shifted the governmental incentives from corn to grass."

I think she is guilty of hyperbole -- over-speaking to make her point -- although deep down I suspect she has genuinely been convinced by the argument.  Frankly, I don't believe in "silver bullets."  I have no confidence that "all our problems" -- whether they be church problems, economic problems, agricultural or socio-political -- would be solved by doing any ONE thing.  That said, her larger point is well-taken:  just as what we measure matters, what we reward makes a difference.

I recalled her observation recently while reading about permaculture -- that emerging set of strategies for creating a self-sustaining world.  Reflecting on the health care system of Britain, the author, Graham Bell, notes that, "Britain has a very special approach to health, with its public access to a free National Health Service.  It has often been suggested that the NHS is succeeding because of the increased case load which it has carried over the years.  This is debatable -- a successful 'health' service would treat fewer people as the population got healthier.  The NHS is a major asset to Britain, but not by making us healthier as a nation, rather as a necessary tool for people divorced from a wholesome way of life" (The Permaculture Way, p. 38)

All the recent attention to "wellness" strategies and issues notwithstanding, how much of our own culture's view on "health care" is geared toward illness mitigation rather than the prospering of healthy living?  And isn't the former but a more systemic example of the kind of enabling more particularly condemned in other behavioral venues?  Who knows how extensive the cultural benefit might be if we retooled and re-aimed our incentives  away from the invention and production of better crutches to help us limp along with and prop up our myriad bad habits, toward the habitualizing of behavioral tools for building that "wholesome way of life" of which the author spoke?

I understand the difficulty.  The former -- treating sickness -- merely takes the ingestion of a pill.  The latter -- incentivizing wholeness -- requires real change.  The cynic in me supposes that "change" will lose every time.  The dreamer in me wonders aloud, "well, who knows?  Maybe it's not too late." 

May It Hopefully Accomplish the Good That Was Intended

So let the posturing begin.  This morning the United States Supreme Court announced their ruling that allows most provisions of the healthcare reform act (I'll not dignify with use the pejorative term more commonly applied to it) to stand.  Already, conservatives are declaring that the sky is certain to fall -- that life as we know it (or at least health care as we know it) is coming to an end and "ain't it awful."  Liberals, meanwhile, certain that the Promised Land must be near, agree:  health care as we know it is, indeed, coming to an end, and "ain't it wonderful."  Something better, they trust, can now take its place.  My guess is that neither has it quite right.

I'll stipulate that there are many details of the law that I have not taken the time to dissect and understand.  There may well be onerous elements in it that will need some second thought.  If Congress' track record on major policy initiatives on virtually any topic is any predictor, this one almost surely is not a perfect bill.  That said, I lament that access to health care for all people finds itself such a controversial topic, and am mystified how it has come to be parsed as a liberal/conservative debate. 

The Supreme Court ruling now in hand, perhaps conservatives might learn something from their liberal counterparts -- as distasteful as that may be.  A little over 10 years ago, liberals were equally sure that the sky was falling when the draconian provisions of the "Patriot Act" were passed into law.  How, they asked, did curtailed freedoms and government-intervention-on-steroids constitute "patriotism?"   Liberals spit, blustered, fumed and decried this terrible inversion of everything American stands for, and predicted the worst.  And in my humble opinion, there are indeed onerous -- even egregious -- dimensions to the law that have, in honoring them, made us slightly less "American."  But has the sky fallen?  No.  And liberals have had to live with the muffled thud that took the place of the cacophonous explosion they expected. Conservatives, now the ones predicting certain calamity, will almost surely experience the same kind of disappointing disaster.  Just it won't be as good as the liberals insist, neither will it be as bad as conservatives forewarn. 

Meanwhile liberals might want to temper their champagne cork-popping celebrations.  The ruling gives them a victory -- although only in the political alternative universe of parallel reality where anything that isn't an outright defeat is chalked up as a victory.  The Supreme Court decision is, to say the least, a backhanded validation.

I am reminded of the decision, several years ago now, that allowed nativity scenes to remain in public spaces.  Certain Christians rejoiced at the seeming victory.  A more careful reading of the decision, however, revealed that the justices' rationale rested on the interpretation that nativity scenes had become a secular symbol in our culture rather than a religious one.  That didn't seem to me like a decision I wanted to celebrate -- for all kinds of reasons.  Today's decision on health care reverberates through me in a similar way.  The Supreme Court said "yes," but for reasons that liberals will quite likely find repugnant.  Instead of truly celebrating, they might find themselves merely holding their nose and moving forward.

For opposite reasons, conservatives might do well to do the same.

In the meantime, the law was passed in the first place as an effort to do something helpful and good.  I know this is naive, but maybe we can now simply get together and hope that it actually does.

Too Busy Being Grateful to Disapprove

I will admit to being something of a purist when it comes to religious and civic celebrations, preferring to keep them disentangled and at some remove.  Mother's Day and Father's Day, for example -- important observances for greeting card companies, florists and families, to be sure, but not so much the liturgy of the church.  Yes, I am aware of the mandate to "honor your father and your mother," but Moses was speaking of a lifestyle disposition not an annual recognition.  July 4th, to cite what is often a more controversial example, is, in the same way, an important anniversary for a citizenry to observe, but I haven't yet discerned its relevance to the church.  And while in my personal life I swing open the Christmas music vault on the day after Thanksgiving, at church I held to Advent hymns during that four-week period (much to the disapproving whines of our members) and reserved the Christmas carols for the Christmas Eve service and subsequent Sundays. 

For similar reasons I have tenaciously reserved remembrance of the beloved dead for All Saints Day -- November 1 -- that ancient designation in the liturgical calendar for precisely such attention, never mind that the rest of American culture is doing so Memorial Day weekend.  Memorial Day, again, is a significantly important discipline for a citizenry, created as it was to honor those relatives and neighbors and total strangers who gave their lives in service to their country.  As I have heard their sacrifice described, they are those who left the comfort of their home to serve their country and never returned.  All Saints Day represents the church's discipline of remembering its dead, and the place of those deceased in the larger gospel story.  Memorial Day is the country's day to honor its dead and to remember their sacrifice in the nation's larger story.  It isn't that those stories are necessarily in conflict with one another; it is simply to sustain the clarification that they are, after all, separate stories.

That said, it was somehow comforting that this particular Memorial Day inserted itself into our family's grieving a scant week after the death of Lori's father precipitated it.  We couldn't help but remember -- to "memorialize".  It was still more touching that the congregation with which we have been worshiping, opting for this day rather than November's, included Jim's name in their recitation of names to be remembered, solemnized in the blossom of a rose that, retrieved for home, now graces our mantel as a petaled personification of the beauty, elegance, and fragrant bloom we have lost.

To my liturgically fundamentalist way of ordering time, they did it wrong, but it's hard to be judgmental when you are too busy being grateful.

The Bittersweet Cocktail of Gratitude and Grief

It is, of course, a privilege to be welcomed into a family voluntarily.  It happens all the time, I know, but its commonality does not diminish the wonder of it.  While the lottery of genetics and birth is the first means of family expansion -- creating a non-discretionary bond of blood and obligation for which I am equally grateful -- there is something incredibly generous about this secondary benefit of marriage.  And I was blessed to be such a beneficiary.  In exchanging vows, it turns out that I not only married a wife, but in humbling ways, her family as well.  So it has been that for almost 15 years I have had the privilege of eating Thanksgiving turkeys, tearing off Christmas wrappings, singing "Happy Birthday" and sharing ordinary life with Lori's siblings and their parents.  They share, I have learned over the years, much in common with my family of origin -- albeit in larger numbers.  Married 62 years, the Alexanders not only raised 5 children of their own, they have willingly opened their arms to 4 spouses, 10 grandkids and 1 great-grandchild.  It hasn't been often that we have all been together, which is probably good.  The conversational animation of the assembled multitude routinely threatens the noise ordinance, and there are rarely openings into which to wedge a word of your own, but the parents love the chaos.

It was, however, quieter this weekend.  Grief had gathered us this time rather than celebration.  On Thursday evening, sitting in his Lazy Boy recliner, watching the Minnesota Twins beat the Detroit Lions, holding his beloved partner's hand, Lori's Dad passed away.  Our bodies, of course, aren't engineered to last forever, and he had had some health issues in recent years that reminded us all that life is fragile and precious.  But that said, this particular moment was a surprise.  The children by birth arrived first; the rest of us trailing to tend to our own details.  Eventually in each others' keeping we told stories, shared memories, made plans and, each in his or her own way, grieved. 

And gave thanks for more blessings derived from Jim than we could count, augmented in the ensuing days by neighbors, former colleagues, friends of long-standing and random community members who passed through our fellowship with their own stories of blessing.  He was, as was affirmed in the funeral, "an encourager...a mentor...a devoted and attentive friend, son and brother; a person of elegance, integrity, trustworthiness, professional excellence, and a great sense of humor."  Not a bad list.

Even though it didn't start out to be a celebrational gathering, in the end I suppose that's the way it turned out:  a celebration of a life well lived; a stone of grace tossed into a pool of relationships with ripples we are all still feeling and appreciating.

And now limping along, we get about the work of recalibrating our orbits in the absence of one of our orienting planets -- new work for most of us, and as always commenced under duress.  The celebration, however, mingles with the grief and the resulting emotional cocktail is, if not sweet, at least nourishing.  To have been known -- loved, embraced, and affirmed -- is a precious gift, indeed.  And simultaneous with our ache is our grateful,

...silent...

...awe.

Looking Back, and of course, Forward

It has been a year -- a good and tearful, exciting and anxious year.  Last year, the week after Easter, I announced my plans to leave my pastoral position at the end of August.  The small group conversations and congregational letter set in motion a series of shifts and turns and momentous new experiences that have brought us to this vantage point for looking back. 

How has it been?  Blessed.
Has it been hard?  Of course.
Do I miss anything?  Lots.
Do I regret my decision?  Not for a second.

I had an important advantage:  I wasn't merely moving away from something; I was simultaneously moving toward something different.  Like Job, I had helpful and expert friends who were sure they understood.  "You are simply burned out.  Step aside, relax, and then move to another church."  Rest and relocation, they counseled with certitude, would fix me up in no time.

The only problem was I didn't feel broken.  Tired?  Guilty.  Burned out?  Well, I don't think so but I'm not the expert.  All I know is that all I found myself thinking about in my free time was this new direction -- and my "free time" was starting to encroach on the rest of my time.  I was eager to pursue this new passion.

Do I miss anything?  Yes, the relationships both professional and social.  I haven't moved that far away, but it's different -- as it should be.  We talk occasionally, various ones from the church; we have socialized a bit.  But those I used to see multiple times in a week I now connect with once every couple of months.  That is a hole that hasn't been filled.  For 19 years these people were my life.  I miss them.

I didn't miss undertaking a stewardship campaign, or nominating officers and ministry chairs; I didn't miss budget negotiations or the annual plea for help "undecorating" the sanctuary after Christmas.  But I was surprised at how much I missed planning an observance of advent in December, and much easier Christmas Eve was than I had expected.  I missed planning special lenten services, and Holy Week services were especially poignant in a way that Easter surprisingly was not.  Part of that might be that for 30 years I struggled -- largely unsuccessfully -- to persuade congregants to enter into the fullness of the Passion story instead of simply skipping from Palm Sunday to the Resurrection.  Easter, on the other hand, always struck me as too much pressure to generate too many fireworks for too many people for whom the breathtaking Good News of the Resurrection ought to have been splendor enough. 

And I don't miss the anticipation of the post-Easter and summer slumps.  My anticipation now is getting asparagus crowns planted and the garden tilled and divining how to get the rain water from the barrels conveniently to the furrows.  Those challenges seem, frankly, infinitely more fun.