Pausing Long Enough to Simply Cry

Could we please just stop talking for minute?  Can we declare a moratorium on the use of our brains for a moment -- even a second; a moratorium on arguments about the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, who we are voting for and whether they actually meant what they said?  Not forever; just for a time.  Could we possibly press “pause” on all the moral posturing, all the righteous indignation, all our Bible thumping, trash-talking, Pontificating, problem solving, philosophizing and fear-mongering long enough to simply...

...cry?

Fifty human beings -- fellow countrymen -- just got slaughtered in a matter of moments, plus a like number injured.  People with whom we may have everything in common or nothing save the only two things that matter:  the Image of God, and a pulse.  Can't we simply grieve the fact that in a horrific act of terror that precious pulse was stilled?

Or have we become so mired in our opinions, our partisanship, our positions, our fears and our machismo that we have completely lost the capacity to feel?

To empathize?

To know ourselves to be part of the human race?

To weep?

Let this be an "issue" some other day.  Today, allow it the privilege of simply being a tragedy. 

How has it come to be in this country that in response to any word, any act, any idea -- whether hopeful or hurtful -- we are immediately driven to mount our horse, scale the mountain, plant a flag and defend it?

I say let’s agree to disengage our brains for a moment -- quieting all the “head chatter” -- and quietly remember how to feel something again besides anger and fear.  

If we can.  

If it's not too late.

If we haven't already become so metallic in mind and soul that we no longer have the capacity to be human.

I don't care right now about all the hypothetical solutionceuticals -- those simplistic little pill-like fixes that are suddenly, laughably being proposed that if ”swallowed” would instantly cure such cultural ills.  For one thing, I deeply doubt they will work.  For another, it's all just making my head hurt.  And my heart.  Fifty human beings just lost their lives in our back yard, and the hospital wards are full of that many more.  It shouldn't matter right now who they were, where they were, if they voted like us or didn't bother to vote at all; if they were Christians, Muslims, atheists or Zoroastrians.  It should -- at least for these staggeringly grief-filled moments -- only matter THAT they were, with air filling their lungs one moment and blood pumping through their veins, and all of a sudden, violently, tragically, it wasn't, that blood in an instant loosed everywhere except where it needed to be.

If that kind of sobering tragedy no longer has the capacity to silence us and drive us collectively to our knees in heartbroken solidarity then God help us all.  If, that is, God can even any longer recognize us as the humans once created in that Divine Image and therefore worthy of help.

Please, can we just stop yelling at each other for a moment and simply grieve?  If for no other reason, we need to remember how.

We can get back to analyzing, cursing, politicking and posturing in a day or two.  That, I am sure, we'll never forget how to do.

We can talk tomorrow.  The only fitting thing to do just now...

...is cry.

Wondering Aloud Toward a "Death with Dignity"

During this legislative season, Iowa lawmakers considered and then abandoned a proposed "Death with Dignity" bill.  It received some attention along the way, punctuated by a lead editorial in the Des Moines Register last week supporting passage.  I was hopeful that an extended conversation would ensue, and toward that end contributed a guest essay for possible publication.  Alas, as I indicated, the bill died in the funneled legislative session -- with or without dignity -- and the news, along with the Register's attentions, have moved onto other subjects. 

Still wishing for a serious and extended conversation, and since the Register passed on my essay, I opt to post it here and invite responsive participation.  You will search in vain for solutions in what follows.  The reason is that I don't know what they are.  What you will find instead (vetted and approved by the subject's family) is my passionate sense that among the unacceptable solutions is the status quo. And so read, reflect, consider and, if you wish, contribute your own wise thoughts.

On a bright but sobered October Friday morning 5 years ago my wife and I drove our beloved Welsh Corgi of twelve years for a final time to the vet.  Several months earlier he had been diagnosed with lymphatic cancer, and through the ensuing weeks had submitted to chemotherapy and acupuncture, along with the discomforting miscellany of deep sickness and constant handling.  Eventually, however, it became obvious even to us who were blinded by our affection for him that continuing on might be in the best interest of our sentimentality, but not to his well-being, comfort and quality of life. He was, to sharpen the point on it, dying whether or not we chose to admit it.

After conferring with the doctors, we scheduled that next day’s heart-heavy final drive to the clinic.  The staff had prepared the room – softened its otherwise clinical appearance and feel with blankets and quietness.  We cried, the doctors cried, the front desk staff cried; we held him, spoke to him, caressed him, until with the medicines’ help he relaxed in that final way and breathed his last.  As miserable and grief-filled as it was, it was beautiful. It was tender, loving, and gently peaceful.

Meanwhile, within days of these precious moments, a dear friend and parishioner mere blocks from that animal clinic was struggling with her own diagnosis.  A physician in her earlier years and later a medical librarian, Barb was coolly and methodically rational.  She had cared attentively for her husband who had gradually declined first through Parkinson’s Disease and then deeper and deeper into dementia before dying a few years earlier.  Now given a similar diagnosis herself, beginning to experience its symptoms and clear that she didn't want her children and grandchildren to go through her own agonizing decline, she put her medical and analytical researcher’s skills to work exploring alternatives.  She studied the laws in those few states that permitted physician assisted suicide and concluded that she could not reasonably qualify.  She broached the subject with physicians nearer at hand, knowing deep down that they could not help her.  Throughout, Barb kept her thinking and her inquiries secret from her kids – contrary to her nature and their usual family patterns -- since both were involved in medical careers that would have obligated them to intervene in ways contrary to her wishes.  She began to advocate for a change in the law.  In the end, however, she calmly and rationally reached an unenviable conclusion:  time was not her friend.  She would not live long enough, with faculties enough, to effect a change in the law.  The laws that did sympathize with her were inaccessible to her.  So, out of options, after writing an extensive letter of explanation  to her children whom she charged with continuing her advocacy , she stepped off the 9^th floor balcony of the retirement community apartment where she lived; taking matters into her own hands.

I know, this is a complicated subject.  As a minister I am fully mindful of the moral and spiritual issues that routinely and necessarily trouble such discussions, and I am sympathetic to those tormented by the medical ethics brought into question by considerations of physicians assisting with the death of a patient.  These, and I am not oblivious to the thorny and complicated public policy issues at stake.

But what haunts me is the juxtaposition, by a matter of days, of the tender and lovingly beautiful death of my dog in the hands of those who loved him, and the jarring plunge to her death of a dear and beloved mother and grandmother, carried out in secret isolation, whose options she deemed to be too few and untenable.  I don't know how to resolve the complications; I don't know how to rewrite the laws.  I only know that together we have to figure it out.

Because it's unconscionable that our pets have a better death than our parents, our spouses, our grandparents and our children.

Beware the Omniscient, Righteously Indignant Fan

I know, I know, the New Year is pressing on.  Other events are clamoring for our attention.  There is fresh tension in the Middle East, along with a bizarre standoff in Oregon and racial frustration in Cleveland.  But I am still reflecting on the Alamo Bowl and TCU's stunning come-from-behind victory.

In the interest of full disclosure, I must count myself among those who had given up.  It wasn't until after the fact that I learned of the outcome and heard the details and rushed from the rear to catch up with the bandwagon.  More embarrassingly, count me among those who had counted them out before the game had even begun.  They had no more arrows in their quiver.  One by one the potent athletic weapons had been laid aside by injury or stupidity.  It was, I anticipated, going to be a long night.  On that point -- and on that point alone -- I would prove to be correct, just not in the way I expected.  The length turned out to be literal -- three overtimes.  And the result, at least for TCU fans, was something to savor.

I insist, however, that my pessimism is forgivable, born as it is from long experience with defeat.  I grew up in the days -- and was a student in the days -- when the Horned Frogs simply didn't win; when keeping gridiron opponents out of triple digits was considered to be a victory.  Suffice it to say that back then no one "Feared the Frog.”  It still feels strange for my alma mater to be a contender.

Strange, to be sure, but good.  It's more fun to win than to lose.  Even more fun to win like this, with a team rather than a couple of franchise players; with underdog backup players that the coaching staff tenaciously believed in, replete with heartwarming back stories and due justice.  The team, the coaches and the university behind deserve all the accolades coming their way.

The backseat driving, capriciously moralizing fans?  Not so much.  Throughout the seasons of quarterback Trevone Boykin's stardom, purple fans came out of the woodwork.  We fawned over him, hero-worshipped him, touted him for national awards.  We were ready to name buildings after him, and probably our children.  We were Horned Frog proud.  And then he made a selfishly dumb choice -- hardly the first time a heady 22-year-old bullet-proof college kid made a stupid choice, but a stupid choice nonetheless -- and a line formed at the exit.  Suddenly, erstwhile fans were indignant, offended and “embarrassed to be an alumnus”, never mind that it was a student who had embarrassed himself while the institution and its representatives responded commendably and admirably.  There is nothing quite so mercurial, I observed, as a football fan.

But not to worry.  Embarrassment -- and righteous indignation -- are apparently easily assuaged.  As soon as victory was achieved -- you know, that victory that had been pronounced by fans and “experts” to be “impossible given the circumstances” only hours before -- the world was once more tilting with steadfast Horned Frogs fans awash in their purple who “always knew they had it in them.”

Which leaves me wondering who caused the most whiplash in this wonderful and troubling story:  the team in their win, or the fans in their duplicity.  Let the saviors beware -- and the disciples who clamor for them:  watch your back and lighten up, respectively.  We’re just people here, trying to do the best we know how to do; sometimes getting it right, sometimes getting it wrong, but even then still capable of pulling out a win with some integrity intact.

Oh, For Want of a Little Collective Adulthood

I owe the various Presidential candidates an apology.  I have been thinking them nut jobs, Roman candling off one monstrous position after another, becoming increasingly cartoonish in their absurdity.  Listening to their public pronouncements they are by turns “outraged”, “defiant”, “disgusted” in the most outrageous and disgusting, reason-defying displays imaginable in a pall mall race to even more egregious extremes.

But I have been wrong.  The truth is that I have no idea what these candidates stand for.  I only understand what we, their constituents, have come to stand for.  Because we have made -- and are making -- them who they are.  They are simply trying to get elected -- that, as it were, is their only job. Attract votes.  And they no doubt recognized a long time ago what I have only recently grasped:  that anytime and every time they say something outrageous, their poll numbers go up.  We seem to love it!  Why, then, should I be surprised at this Pavlovian reciprocity that spawns ever more outlandish pronouncements?  It’s as cunningly mathematical as it is disturbingly emotional, and the result is a picture of the American people that isn't very pretty.  In fact, it's downright embarrassing.

Leafing back through the pages of our national history, our practices have not always lived up to our high ideals, but that is to be expected when one aspires to nobility.  Indeed, it is inevitable and certainly forgivable. At least we aspired to something higher.  But somehow those high aspirations have degenerated in recent years -- or generations -- into a delusional addiction to the myth of our own superiority and entitlement.  In his current television ads, one of our illustrious candidates fervently asserts, with the clear conscience of a sociopath,  that “I will never apologize for the United States of America.” Presumably because we are incapable of being wrong, the rest of the world be damned.

Actually, that isn't quite true.  We need -- and fully expect -- the rest of the world to supply our needs (cheaply), staff our dirtiest jobs (inexpensively), purchase our products and excess commodities (profitably), defer to our every whim (compliantly), aggrandize us to their own deprivation, be pleased at the privilege of doing so, and otherwise, like a good restaurant waiter, stay quietly and unobtrusively out of the way.  Otherwise, we will crush you like a bug.

Meanwhile, within our sacrosanct borders we are increasingly inured, albeit not quite comfortably, to violence, incarceration, polarization, disparagement, wealth extremes and xenophobia, with the confident self-assurance of religiosity that God, out of some inexplicable favoritism, blesses us.

Perhaps this is what depth psychologist Bill Plotkin is referring to when he describes a “culture dominated by adolescent habits and desires” in which “true adulthood...has become an uncommon achievement.”

It's tempting to say that more than ever before the world needs the church.  But as the country’s leading manufacturer of bigotry, hatred-with-a-patronizing-smile, narcissism and militarized zeal, I’m not sure how much more of today’s church the world can stand.  To be sure, there are quiet and precious exceptions -- congregations who still remember that patriotism and Christianity aren't synonymous, who valiantly and sacrificially exhibit genuine community, who eschew a merely self-congratulatory gospel in preference for one that actually sounds like “good news”.  But they sadly have more pews these days than people to fill them.  Love is simply too out-of-fashion.

Maybe what we pray for, then, is that the church remember who it is and who it is suppose to follow and emulate, and that the rest of us simply grow up.

The Cooking Is Part of the Gift

It's hard to know what to do with the received Thanksgiving mythology about pilgrims and natives throwing a big potluck dinner and singing "Kum Ba Yah” -- before returning in subsequent days to their respective strategies for exterminating each other.  World-weary, hardened and more than a bit cynical about such ideals, it's a story harder to swallow than dry turkey.  Such things happen, of course, as when German and British troops set aside their weapons, climbed out of their trenches and exchanged food and carols one Christmas Eve during World War 1; but we are more accustomed to bombings and beheadings than demonstrations of humanity and extensions of grace.

And though the food and survival’s requirement of it was likely at the core of whatever else may have happened on that first Thanksgiving gathering, it has taken a more and more perfunctory part of the celebration ever since.  I don't mean that the feast is irrelevant -- indeed, “Thanksgiving” and “overeating” have become virtually synonymous in our tradition.  No, I mean that the food has become the backdrop for the occasioning of other things -- family gatherings, football, the creation of shopping lists for Black Friday, blockbuster movie releases, dragging up decorations from the basement, and melancholy for “what was but now isn't” or “wished for but hasn't yet happened.”  As for the menu itself, restaurants and grocery store catering kitchens increasingly do the heavy lifting, and guests are greeted by the scent of Lysol, Pledge, and the newest Glade scent instead of roasting turkey, simmering giblets and baking pies. 

Count me among those who considers that a loss.  Yes, I know that the relationships and the conversations matter more than the food, and I recognize that through the years far too few have borne the weight of preparations for far too many -- weary grandmothers and long-suffering housewives and surely a few culinarily adventurous men from time to time. And I know that there are plenty of individuals and couples dining alone who see little point in dirtying every dish and pan in the kitchen for themselves and the insurmountable mountain of leftovers that would surely result.  

But of course these exceptions call attention to the very relational deficits this holiday was set aside to contradict.  We have this tendency to dump on each other, and to neglect each other. The point of the holiday was never about incubating gout, or sleeping off the weight of too many carbs; “excess” was never the point.  Whatever else may have been the centerpiece of that fanciful intersection of “Indians” and pilgrims, I'm guessing the main course was their discernment of the real abundance present in the very little they had -- evidenced by relational risk and generosity and the shared fruit of lessons learned and hard labor invested.  It wasn't merely a table that was set.  It was a table set with food that meant something, set by leathered hands that had sacrificed something real to get it there.

There is an old and well-worn story about an African boy who brought his teacher a beautiful seashell  from a remote bay as a gift.  Recognizing that her student had to have travelled a great distance to find the shell and taken various risks along the way, the teacher exclaimed, “Why, it's gorgeous and wonderful, but you shouldn't have gone all that way to get the gift for me.”

His eyes brightening, the boy answered, "Long walk part of gift.”

...as I would argue about the dishes on a Thanksgiving table.  “The hard work is part of the gift.”

I recently heard a chef describe every act of cooking as an act of faith -- faith that the recipe had been well and accurately written, faith that the raw ingredients are good, and faith that our particular marriage of ingredients and recipe and labor and time will result in something good.  Sharing that act of faith with others in this peculiar vulnerability is, I believe, part of the gift.

And so I am grateful to my mother who labored all those years making Thanksgiving Dinner for a household of males who hadn't yet figured out that we had gifts we could have brought to the table as well, beyond our eager appetites.  I am grateful for the friends who recently joined us around a table with gifts to merge with our own.  And I am grateful for the circle of siblings and spouses and parents and children willingly and lovingly committed that gastronomic act of faith in their kitchens and shared the gifts around a common table.  

It was good -- the food, to be sure, but infinitely more than that.  And I appreciate the effort.

Happy Thanksgiving, indeed.

Taken by the music and the smiles

I was taken by the smiles.  

We had gathered at the Norfolk Music Center in Norfolk, Connecticut; disparate threads to be woven into a tapestry of celebration by the shared affection for two friends who were exchanging vows and rings.  Having travelled from New York and D.C., California and Oregon, Iowa and Canada and Turkey (just to name the ones I know about), convened by their love in this magnificent setting, we shared meals, cottages, a mansion, and a stage.  All that, plus of course common cause.  

And so we rehearsed -- first for the wedding and then for the celebratory concert that would follow it.  The former was easy compared to the latter, though emotions might have run higher practicing the procession and the vows even if the kiss came effortlessly enough.  For the concert there was the orchestra run through, followed by a second run through with the soloists, and always the sound checks and tweaks and maneuvering of the mics. There were cues and corrections and suggestions and replays.  There was glorious music, and laughter, hard work, and always those smiles...

...as if we were having a ball.  I certainly can't speak for everybody, and it's always dangerously presumptuous to generalize from one's own experience, but I think I'm safe to say it:  we were.  Hard work?  Yes.  Important?  Breathtakingly so.  Exhilarating, inspiring, soaringly beautiful?  Absolutely. Fun?  Faces don't light up that way for any other reason.

But here is the wonder.  The officiant notwithstanding, the people assembled on that stage were stars -- Grammy award winners, YouTube sensations, chart-topping recording artists, leads from Broadway, London, the Met; veterans of Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, Presidential Galas, movie soundtracks and more; vocalists, instrumentalists, tap dancers, composers, arrangers and a groom/conductor.  Yet there was a selfless collegiality that transcended the individual star power.  There was playful banter.  Breaks were filled with laughter.  And when the songs were being played, delight was in the faces.  The grins were everywhere as they played.  Soloists took their spotlight moments, and then effortlessly receded into harmony role or backup chorus as another took the lead.  No assemblage of peacocks, this was an artful community manifesting the homily's message that we need each other.  From the tinkling wind chimes to the piercing trumpet, from the lush strings to the haunting flute, the tapping feet to the Hammond B3, from the rhythm of the drums to the intoxicating voices, we need each other.  In this case we could hardly get enough of each other.

And as evidenced Saturday night, when we give the gifts we bring...

...we make music.  Goose-pimpling music.

And I suppose we just can't help it:  we smile.

Especially me.

Ride on Buckaroo

I've always been drawn to September.  Whatever the distinctive allures of the summer months, their overriding heat has long since leaned me longingly toward September’s moderating mercury.  Even as an adult, long out of the classroom, the resumption of school bells feels like an inner pitch fork recalibrating life back into tune.  All that, plus two marital births for which I am eternally grateful – my parents', on the 12^th, and my own, on the 20^th. 

And then, of course, there is my actual birthing – 59 years ago today.  Never mind the more recent negative connotations thrust upon September 11, I prefer not to associate my birthday with terrorism but with the raindrop’s  unspeakable gratitude for the privilege of joining the ocean.  While certain theological perspectives might take a different view, in a purely existential sense it is better to be than not.  So, here I continue to be – a sentient, reasonably intelligent, lovingly related, essentially healthy, purposefully and productively occupied and profoundly happy guy. 

It has been a pivotal decade, these 50’s now entering their final lap.  Raucously begun in a rented hall surrounded by family and friends and the celebratory music we exuberantly made, its midsection was marked by a vocational shift from preaching to farming, accompanied by a functional shift from work for which I had been technically trained and had practiced for decades to work about which I knew absolutely nothing, and the requisite residential shift from a townhouse in the city to 10-acres in the country.  Here, with my ear to the ground to listen for what the soil might teach me, I have toiled along with seeds and weeds, deep breaths and wide curiosities, chicken coops and the still-surprising harvests – cumulatively negating the reality of less money with the experience of greater wealth. 

All that, plus the intuitive sense that, as with our previous endeavors,  we are scratching around out here on something that is important.

Which is to say that I am blessed beyond merit and measure.  I am confessionally confident that I too-seldom inventory and acknowledge the real gifts that are my blessing’s raw materials – nurturing parents, a bolstering brother, a loving and sustaining wife, forgiving and inspiring kids, buoying mentors and colleagues and friends – but I am determined to get better at that.

In the meantime there is good work to do – seeds to sort, tomatoes to pick, compost to turn, chickens to feed and eggs to gather…

…59 years to celebrate and remember…

…and life still yet to live.

Happy birthday, me.  Blow out the candles and then giddy up, buckaroo.  Get back out on the trail.  Time's wasting and there are miles to ride before you sleep.