Scenes from a marriage

Never mind the plan. We hoped to greet the guests to our wedding on the front steps of the church but a driving rainstorm kept us inside all day. The rehearsal picnic was not at Dawes Park in Evanston but in the quickly prepared home of family friends. But after that, our wedding celebration went exactly as planned. And an interesting plan it was. I cared not one whit about the reception. It was all ceremony, all music, down to every piece Dagmar played for the prelude, mostly Bach. Claude, Marabeth, Dan, and Charlie (all Facebook friends!)played favorite (and unusual) hymn tunes on recorder. I was mortified later to learn that my father had paid each of them all of five dollars for their work! In 1976, it was all a bit new. We processed to a congregational hymn, Now Thank We All Our God, each of us escorted by both of our parents. There was no giving away the bride -- a novelty at the time. We wrote a brief rite for each set of parents to affirm the marriage. There was no "and obey" in the vows. We wrote our own, also almost unheard of then. These and the service order soon became one of the options for vows included in (then) "modern wedding services" guidebooks. Our theme, if there was one, was engagement in the world, for justice and peace. Steve Elde, also here on Facebook, designed the bulletin cover, based on an unexpected wedding text, of Jesus, the Vine. And the congregation sang, Thou True Vine That Heals the Nations. The wedding was strikingly not about us, at least not about us looking in at each other, but about the world, our commitments to be agents together of change, healing, justice in the world. It was probably the least romantic wedding most folks there had ever attended. All of my energy, and I do mean all of my energy as a bride-to-be went into planning the liturgy, the music, the prayers, the readings. And the vows. We recessed to another congregational hymn and made our way to the church basement for the reception. These were my plans and instructions for the reception: there probably needs to be a cake. And nuts. And Aunt Ruth wanted to bring her special, old-fashioned (even then) mints. I lovingly chose aunts and uncles, cousins and friends to serve the cake and punch and coffee, a big tradition at the time. And that's it. I didn't give a care to decorating, to creating a festive party atmosphere. As far as I was concerned (and Dave, too), the event was over. The church had apologized to us for the ugly appearance of renovation work in the social hall and we said we really didn't care. We didn't. Having our college friends and our family surrounding us was the main issue, and that was immensely gratifying. But we did nothing to entertain or lighten the mood, to create a joyous celebration at the reception. No wonder all of our friends made a quick exit and headed to their favorite downtown Chicago clubs and restaurants for a real evening's entertainment! My first clue that perhaps I had underthought the whole reception thing was when a crowd was finalizing plans for a trip to Gino's for pizza and I found myself really wanting to go along! It was all bread and no circuses. That's the way we were. All about the substance, none about the celebration. I had to fill out a form for my hometown newspaper, in which, in response to their request for a description of my wedding dress I simply wrote, "white." In fact it was a lovely dress and they did a fine job of describing it based upon the accompanying photo. Instead, I detailed the list of music. In many ways, the wedding has set the tone for the marriage. Flexibility in the face of rain and adversity, earnestness to the point of obsession, purposefulness, an astonishing degree of mutuality and respect, lots of beautiful music in our lives but otherwise not so many circuses. That is, not until later. I missed the circuses, so to speak, the out of the box, out of control moments of delight and wonder and hilarity. We were altogether too serious. So we learn, thanks especially to Kaia and Annika! But along the way, the grand new adventure, a 'modern' marriage has proven true. We had an implicit and explicit commitment that both our careers would have equal value and all decisions would be made mutually and with no one's interest automatically trumping the other's. And so it has gone. Going to graduate school together, hyphenating our last name, perhaps the very first in our circle and one of very few anywhere at the time. Moving from one school to another based on mutual needs and desires. Changing 'home' bases altogether, from the Covenant Church we'd been immersed in since birth to the Lutheran Church. Graduating together, setting off on different but compatible, if not disorienting, new adventures. I went off to study in Poland for several months while Dave stayed in Chicago. He chose to work in the non-profit secular world while I continued to prepare for ordination. We supported each other, working to make it easier for the other to pursue their goals. We wandered a bit, always earnest, always focused on goals beyond ourselves. And, I have to say, we were one hell of a partnership. I can not imagine how anyone could be more supportive of my hopes and goals than Dave. And I sense he would say the same. We made a few difficult decisions and were not always sure at the time they were the right ones but then, in hindsight, we found the upside everytime. We rather regretted leaving Princeton to return to Chicago but then, if we hadn't, we likely wouldn't have ended up in the Lutheran Church, at least not until much later and after a lot more professional frustration. That opened doors we could not have imagined. Even as it closed others. So, in the long run, no regrets. Dave moved into a new profession, taking a chance on an unknown career path and has prospered, thrived! He is easily, arguably one of the very best in the country at what he does. I dare you to find someone better. Seriously. (No gratuitious praise from me.) Meanwhile, he has graciously balanced his commitments to sharing equally in the responsibilities of caring for our home and then, happily, our daughters. He was never afraid of my using the "F" word (that would be feminist) not only for me but for himself. He has never, not once, made the assumption that his work, his career, his needs were more significant than mine. I believe the same is true for me. Ten years ago we moved here, to suburban Denver, after twenty productive and happy, successful years of professional life in Chicago. During those years, I managed to be the one more responsible for the house, the girls, our family life. But not because he presumed I should, rather, it was a conscious division of attention that both of us, each of us wanted at the time. Then, in a major switch, he moved, some would say "followed" me here, so that I could take on an exceptional challenge that made sense at that point in my professional career. He became the primary stay-at-home parent, working from a home office, part-time, and never did the girls lack for attention, help, and all the love they needed. I fell into an 80-hour work week and he kept life sane and functional at home. He supported me unfailingly, and became the rock I counted on for daily support. As things fell apart at the church, he sheltered me from the worst of the storms and was tireless in caring for the girls while I gradually, then finally, catastrophically, became undone. In the end, he helped to protect me as much as one could even though, in the end, no one could've protected me from the worst. Frankly, no one could have predicted the worst as it unfolded in the final months of 2002. In these past several years, Dave has been more gracious than I could ever imagine in promoting my recovery and well-being. All the while carrying on with his commitment to caring for the girls and our home. It has got to the point that, while no one could wish for the horrors we all experienced while I served as pastor at Holy Trinity, we have all found the good, the growth, the generative energy that has come from this time since. It was all such a vast unknown 34 years ago. We had no idea. If anything, we had some different visions for our future. Not all has gone well. Not all has been wonderful. As with anything, there are regrets that are just, and only, that: regrets. Some of our failures can be remedied and redeemed. Some not, that's just the way life is. "You learn. You live, you learn. You lose, you learn. You love, you learn." The one thing we have no trouble affirming, that our daughters are the greatest gift we've given one another, and the world. Those are the scenes from this marriage that have brought the most fulfillment, delight, and hilarity to us. So we spent this anniversary with them last night. First, the breathtaking John Adams' composition, The Transmigration of the Souls, and then Beethoven's Ninth Symphony at our world class Colorado Symphony Orchestra. How very very cool that we all love to enjoy that music together. (Which is not to say that Kaia wasn't also checking on the Rockies baseball game during intermission, Annika was making plans via text for today, and I checked my email.) Then, a nightcap at Racine's. And there was no end to the hilarity around the table. To say nothing of the drive home. We somehow got hooked on singing the Veggie Tales songs, the Silly Songs with Larry. "Not everyone has a water buffalo... Where's my water buffalo?" We are a really fun team, goofy, ridiculous, silly, and also kind. I'm not sure the girls know yet how good it is but we trust that, in time, they will look back, too, and see how special this is. The scenes from this marriage don't resemble Bergman's vision. Thank God. They are not all happy, not all good, but ultimately they are generative and, given everything, really rather remarkable. Thanks everyone for being there for us way back then, putting up with our rather smug earnestness and our cluelessness about throwing a good party, and thanks to all who entered our lives, for being with us all along the way. Thanks Kaia and Annika for all the joy you've given us. And thanks, Dave, for everything.

We know you're out there

and we know who you are. I've been having so much fun lately but it's time to get back to work. One of the few times and one of the last times the broader media did a story that even mentioned the reality of clergy sexual abuse involving male clergy and an adult woman parishioner was in 2002, the New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2002/04/13/us/abuse-by-clergy-is-not-just-a-catholic-problem.html?pagewanted=all "Abuse by Clergy Is Not Just a Catholic Problem" by Jim Yardley rehearses the sordid details of a pedophilia case in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA)and adds a note that the ELCA generally has less than one (reported) case of clergy abuse of a child per year but five or so (reported) cases involving adult women who are abused by clergy. It also quoted me as saying that our ELCA intentions are to make the church a safe place. We have always been appalled by and hold a zero tolerance policy for the abuse of children by clergy. And more and more of the abused children have been coming forward from the past, and more and more children are being explicitly empowered to resist and report abusive behaviors today. The church -- all of it, all of them -- is beginning to be responsible about child sexual abuse within the church. About time. But as regards women, not so much. As the former churchwide staff person in the ELCA responsible for directing our response to clergy sexual abuse, who left that posiiton ten years ago, I am disturbed by the church's failure to continue to be assertive in its teaching, its public statements, and, in some instances, its response to specific allegations of abuse. The new resources published since I left are slim to none. The emphasis on preparing bishops to respond appropriately to victims is not what it was. And clergy who have engaged in clergy sexual misconduct with adult women are still roaming free, serving parishes and in other forms of public ministry. Why? Callous bishops. Indifferent bishops. The old boys network, cover-ups. But another reason is the absence of real stories, faces of victims, allegations that become public. And this is complicated. And, frankly, I'm altogether sympathetic. Young children are immmediately sympathetic victims. Adult women, not so much. Most of us don't really understand, haven't had the impetus to understand the perverse dynamics that create victims from vulnerable adult female parishioners who are preyed upon by their opportunistic pastors. These are not "affairs." It is sexual abuse. But the women are not received as victims. They are generally blamed for seducing the clergy, even when the opposite is true. So the women don't come forward. At all. Or, when they do, the church is generally good about protecting their identity. All to the good. And leaving us with no faces. No stories. And no coverage. That's why I try to shine a light, using this blog for now, on the ugly realities that dare not show their face. I don't want adult women victims coming forward, coming "out" because I know what will happen to them. So I hope to remind you of their presence. And perhaps, in time, as the churches come to better understand the dynamics of clergy sexual abuse, women victims will feel emboldened to become known. And the perpetrators will be identified too, their behavior will become known. And it will be harder and harder for bishops to keep moving them around. Meanwhile, read this article from NOW. And forward it to your newspaper editors, writers, publishers. Ask them to cover it. The statistics are shocking. And appalling. It is a conspiracy of silence that protects these perpetrators. Perhaps we might tell them from time to time, we know you're out there. We know who you are. http://www.now.org/issues/violence/clergyabuse_unsafe.html

What does bucolic mean?

Aha! There is still something I know that my brainy college graduate doesn't. I honestly had no idea that could be possible. "What does bucolic mean?" she asked, and before I answered I did a little dance. You'd think I'd be mortified. All those dollars, four years at a prestigious institution of higher learning. And she has to ask what bucolic means? But I know that she knows all the things that count in her world. Things I can not even begin to list, much less comprehend. Stuff about proteins and protons and neurons and the nature of natural life. So I can't begrudge her a little word, but I can feel smug for a split second, perhaps for the very last time in my life. She's graduated from college. The toddler with chubby thighs (okay,I'm sorry, but they were very cute) who could not go from one room to the next without Betty and Betsy. "Betty and Betsy are here." "Betty and Betsy are coming too." She was a slugger on the Little League team and threw a mean pitch right over the plate in softball. Her basketball shot was so sweet a former pro player told her so. She was always polite to Fergie, the elevator man, as she got lost in the legs of a car full of neighbors who rode with us to the 10th floor and beyond. She once said, "thank you, mommy" at the end of the eucharist at worship and the whole room smiled. "We go outside NOW." It wasn't a request or a demand, it was simply the way things would go, of course. Somedays, when I was in a hurry and she wasn't, she made me crazy by stepping up on the stoop of every doorway we passed all the way down Dearborn Street, past the bookstore, the pharmacy, the deli, the doctor's office, and Moonraker, the restaurant. Up down up down up down. She knew that sometimes I went to meetings at the "cinnamon office." And we went together on Thursdays to picket the South African Consulate. "Free Mandela! Free Mandela!" She played Barbies and once had her doll winning the Miss America pageant by singing "Here Comes Stephen Biko" for the talent competition. Kaia and Jenna. The day of the flood. Seventeen inches of rain fell in a matter of hours. The Johnson's basement filled with water. We adopted Jenna for the day and for the few years after, and her family adopted Kaia back. Roller-blading, biking, Girl Scouts, basketball. And the science fair. The girls were back-to-back winners, two years in a row in the local junior college science fair. I wonder if Jenna still has her plaques too? Camp, movies, and lots of just goofing around. Being kids. All the books. From Teddy Bear's Picnic to Goosebumps and Tolkien and C.S. Lewis and Mr. Popper's Penguins. From those days to this, thousands and thousands of books. Battle of the Books. The big trophy. P.I.Plus and piano recitals. Soccer, so much soccer, World Cup Soccer. The baseball caps, the pink glasses, the "we go swing and slide" all mix together. It's been one hell of a ride! It was a great time, for me, and I think for her. A growing sense of the world, from Estonia to South Africa to Darwin's workshop, the Galapagos Islands. Issues of fairness and kindness expanded to take on political qualities, of justice and equal rights, human rights, dignity, freedom. From creek walks and measuring alkaline (or something, I have no idea!) in the water to the sophisticated chemistry she does now. From the first plastic toy doctor kit to the real tools she'll take up soon in a hospital ER. She still won't actually be treating the patients but she'll be a lot closer than she was back in the day when Betty and Betsy got plastered with band-aids. Yep, this little girl who I still picture on the fuzzy carpet learning to roll over walked down a grassy aisle on Saturday looking confident and sassy, proud as all get out, claiming her well-earned college diploma. People said after her baptism 22 years ago that it was a four-hanky service. I was worried about this. But the tissues stayed in my pocket. I sniffled a bit but was too happy to cry. It was too much fun! And the setting, well, it was so lovely, idyllic, the green green grass, the canopy of leafy oaks, ivy-covered walls, clear blue sky. Truly, a bucolic setting.

Father Conley and me

The nightmares are back. And not at a good time. The tarnished silver tea service is on the kitchen island, surrounded by an engraved crystal bowl, pottery vases, the antique china coffee cups etched in gold and painted by my great aunt, and the hand tooled Estonian leather book I was given by a friend fresh from the far reaches of Kazahkstan -- not by choice, his trip -- in 1984. Three silver lamps with multiple arms stand like soldiers in chainmail guarding the kitchen table. The room is crowded with antique tables, dining room chairs, an old parking meter, a pile of oversized pillows, and the wood hexagon table I remember my parents buying on a tense Saturday afternoon when I was a child. The kitchen and the hallways nearby are crammed full of everything that could be moved out of the dining room, living room, and family room in order for them to be steam-cleaned yesterday. I suppose it will be a good idea to put them all back when the carpet dries. Our two amazingly fantastic daughters are graduating in the next two weeks, one from college, one from high school. The graduation photo collage was due yesterday, AP tests wrap up tomorrow. Prom is Saturday night: the dress ready, shoes ready, accessories ready, hair appointment set up and nails to be done. Kaia has had her last classes and is taking her very last test at this hour. (She was going to study this morning but decided to take out the trash instead.) Now she is off to enjoy Twins games (how is that possible?) and play frisbee with her friends. There are parties to plan, a big house to clean and make ready for guests. A week from today we drive across South Dakota to St. Paul to the aubergine-painted house for one last college visit and a weekend of awards ceremonies, brunches, commencement and parties. And then a fast trip home to repeat the sequence in honor of Annika's graduation. Announcements, invitations, food orders, slide shows (because I cannot commemorate anything without the requisite slide show), and balloons, party hats (what? no party hats?!) and all of the paraphenalia that is part of the festivity. So far, 178 kids have said "Yes" to the party invitation. A yard to prepare, new badminton racquets to buy, the deck to be repainted, a garden to clean out and flowers to plant, and dog poop to pick up. At least I got the sofa made already. And on top of all that, Annika is speaking right now to her classmates on a schoolwide podcast about teen suicide prevention in view of the seeming rash of suicides and suicide attempts at her school this year. A heavy burden that she's carried now for weeks, preparing the presentation, being the liaison from the Principal to the students on this concern. She wears it with grace but it sure weighs her down. So this is not a great time for mom to fall apart. And during the daylight hours, I don't. But these nightmares..... Today's New York Times (attempt at link above) reports on the American Cardinal who has replaced Ratzinger, now Pope something, as prefect of the Vatican's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith. Which is to say, top dude in charge of priests and just about everything else. He was Archbishop of Portland and San Francisco prior to this elevation. He's not done a consistent, great job of protecting the faithful. It's hard to read about clergy sexual abuse. It's hard for anyone to read about clergy sexual abuse. Anyone with something resembling a pre-frontal cortex, a human intelligence can plainly tell that priests sexually molesting boys is despicable. Everyone, that is, except the higher-ups in the church. Go figure. I'm serious. Go, try to figure that out. Figure out what that is about. Power. Abusing power. Guarding privilege. Holding on. And covering up. Nobody outside that small privileged elite has any problem understanding the magnitude and the depth of damage done to the personhood, the psyche, the trust, and the faith of a child who is used sexually by a person in power over them. Who is manipulated, twisted, and left to feel guilty -- because the one violated is always the one left feeling the acute guilt. That, I suppose, is because the one who is violated is not a sociopath. There have been advocates within the church, on behalf of victims. Priests, even some archbishops. One in particular stands out in this article. And it's his plight, or rahter my own, like his albeit with a different twist, that has been giving me the nightmares lately. The Rev. John P. Conley, a former United States Attorney who became a priest, discovered, literally, the abuse of a flustered young boy in his parish and the senior priest "crawling away." Father Conley also learned that priests had not been briefed about a new state law establishing priests as mandated reporters of child sexual abuse. "Instead of imposing restrictions on Father Aylward [the perpetrator of the abuse], Archbishop Levada suspended Father Conley...." Father Conley, more at home with the courts than I, filed a defamation lawsuit against the Archdiocese, arguing that he had been punished and slandered for reporting the abuse, and he eventually won a settlement. Stunning. The church. In its arrogance, its sheer stupidity, its failure of Christian charity and faithfulness. Stunning. To everybody not sheltered by its marble towers and corporate offices. I'm still stunned --- though well on the way to recovering! --- that I too was defamed and then set up by the officials who threw me to the mob. If you are still wondering about my story, this one goes a long way toward explaining it. And my nightmares. It's also that time of year. I'll get through it, I'm getting over it, past it, and growing stronger because of it. But still, ask me how likely it is that I'll be paying a visit to the offices downtown anytime soon. There is life out here, life beyond there, those well-carpeted and tastefully decorated, and sterile offices, beyond their closeted and fearful failures. This is where the grace is being poured out. This is where mercy and kindness and "the peace of the Lord" is being shared. Freely. Without abuse. Without dissembling. Without terror. The terrors of the congregation, the official bullshit and, well, I want to call it misconduct, is past. Except in these occasional nightmares. And even those are being resolved. There is life to choose! Life! And so it goes. There are 178 hungry mouths to feed!

Do you do windows?

Colorado has long, langorous Springs. Crocus buds pop in early February, daffodils and grape hyacinth poke up and tempt us to expect their flowers in early March. Jonquils, trillium, phlox poke from behind their rocky perches. Bird songs and earth smells, of living things emerging, flirt with our senses. Flirt is the word for it, though, because they all come and go. I don't think we've ever had crocuses (crocii) that aren't smothered at some point by snow. Daffodils bloom through it. Birds get swept off their course by our high winds. The signs of springtime tempt and distract us, we sit in the hot sun for morning coffee. We bask in the still warm late afternoon rays. Last year we welcomed a family of foxes to nest under our deck (did we really have a choice?). They overstayed their welcome, by the way, so we fenced them out this year. Cute little kits romping up and down, on and off the benches and the sofa, chasing around the posts and pouncing from the hot tub cover were cute -- once -- but they pooped all over the deck, they munched on the furniture cushions, and they kind of freaked out the dog. And they stayed until July, for heaven's sake! Enough. Woodpeakers in the neighborhood, thankfully not on our house, and yellow jackets are not the most welcome signs of spring but they do remind us of change in the works. And then, after this back and forth, of warm days and wet, sloppy snows, one day enjoying a barbeque, the next day shoveling twelve inches of snow, after all this flirtation, finally, the buds pop! Forsythia, and red bud and apple and plum and pear and every variation known to nature burst out and the fragrance is intoxicating. This year, we're lucky! The blossoms weren't snowed out or quickly ruined, no late freeze ruined their bloom. And now we have all the fruit trees and red bud and the lilacs have joined the party. And they're everywhere. Everywhere! I don't remember so many blooming trees when I was growing up here. But now they have become part of the pathways through every neighborhood and along every street. And oh, my. Oh, how wonderful! This prompts me to do two things. I go way out of my way to drive through the prettiest neighborhoods, down the loveliest streets and past the most gorgeous trees. Life is made for this: to get drunk on the sweetness of blossoms. The other thing I do, roll down the windows. (And open the house windows.) As I drive around this time of year, as the fragrances permeate the air, I keep the windows down in the car. I do windows. But this is what I've noticed. Take this morning as a case in point. I had a dozen errands to do, all up and down several main streets and along a number of quieter side streets. Remembering that I'm also on the lookout to drive past the most lovely scenes, there were plenty of fragrant trees and a nice warm breeze to enjoy. And nobody else had their windows rolled down. We live insular and insulated lives. Especially in suburbia. We keep ourselves to ourselves. I drive around with my iPod plugged in and the volume turned up. I never really have to worry about disturbing other drivers because they're in their cars, completely cut off from me. We pass without being engaged with one another. We pass through the natural world without letting its fresh air touch us. It's well known that I arrive wind blown wherever I go. It's well known that I do windows. Do you?

Congrats, Kaia! You woke up in a classless society!

That's right. Kaia woke up this morning for the first time in nineteen years in a classless society. No more PChem, BioChem, Physics. No more required core courses, elective education classes, creative writing, Russian literature. She's done. Beginning at two and a half, Kaia has been in class all her life. Dance classes, art classes, Pre-School at the New City Y, later at Little Shepherd, then grammar school at Naper School, and the PIP (Gifted and Talented district program) at Mill Street, whose Naperville students continue to be featured on a regular schtick on The David Letterman Show, Science Kids. A move to Colorado and middle school classes at Powell Middle School, and an early graduation from Heritage High School in Littleton. She's had summer enrichment classes and piano classes/lessons, basketball and soccer classes, and has even taught classes the past three summers through the Breakthrough Collaborative -- a national program with "Students teaching students" in a summer program for gifted middle school students at risk for falling through the cracks due to poverty, recent immigration or families at risk. Her life has been filled with class. Kaia has always had a lot of class! Today for the first time since Sunday School 'classes' in Chicago, where she first made the brown paper bag mask covered with cotton balls that turned her into a sheep showing up to receive communion through the sheepish mouth hole not quite attuned to her actual mouth, for the very first time in all these years, she's done with classes. Kaia woke up today for the first time in a classless society. No more classes. Theoretically, no more classes, ever. She could be done forever. There is no application in process, no enrollment forms on her desk. She's done! Now, theory is not always practice. Just ask the folks who attempted to bring us the first classless society. She is done. But for now. She does have a plan. And serious intentions to return to class. And she will. Medical school awaits. But not for a year. She's got a job ---- yes! a 2010 college graduate with a job!!! ---- in the medical field, an interesting, good one. She's going to use her education and her skills and interest to work for a year while she prepares for the MCAT and earns a little money. She's attended her last class. At least for now. And she's excited. Amazed. And appropriately proud of herself. She did it! Yeah, Kaia! Commencement will be Saturday, May 15 at "half after one o'clock on the lawn." There is a Baccalaureate degree waiting, with her name on it. Kaia, I'd welcome you myself to the classless society but I've got some lined up for this summer, myself. Enjoy this interlude. You have SO earned it! (old photos to follow when I get time to scan them in -- don't hold your breath; we're kind of busy at the moment! It's party time!)

Good Bye, Lenin

Dreams die slowly. Illusions even more so. We want to believe what we want to believe. We want to hold on to functional lies and implausible explanations for as long as possible. So goes a part of the premise of "Good Bye, Lenin," a German film I only, finally watched last night. Looking in from outside, or looking back in hindsight, it is impossible not to notice the false foundation upon which East German Socialism was constructed. And yet, when it is the reality in which you're stuck, the world where you must make your way, find a place, utilize your talents, entrust your idealism, when it is the only place to live, when there are no choices, no apparent or attainable options, you find a way to rationalize, to construct your own reality within the external one. You find a way to make sense of what can't make sense, to understand the inexplicable. Not unlike growing up in a dysfunctional family. In fact, we've often observed that all of Eastern Europe and the USSR were just one big crazy collection of dysfunctional families under the umbrella of an uber-family, also nuts from its core. In a world that makes no sense, you must make sense of it for yourself. That's what I did as a child in a nutso family and that is what millions of citizens within Socialism did their whole lives. To be sure, some dissented, opted out, became resisters. That community in Poland, which I know best, came together just enough to lead that country beyond State Socialism (or as sometimes, more honestly known, State Capitalism). In East Germany, later in 1989, emboldened by the success of the Solidarity movement and free elections in Poland, thousands eventually took to the streets and by sheer force of will, broke down the Berlin Wall. Good Bye, Lenin tells the story of one family, one woman who had made her uneasy peace with the system, invested her all in it, captive to its ridiculous premises and most high-minded ideals. This is not a movie review. But what I'd like to suggest is central to the plot. It is hard to give up even the most unhealthy of illusions. They become us. We wed ourselves to ridiculous strategems as the only means of moving through the world with any kind of success at all. Becoming a low level civil servant or bureaucrat in the German Democratic Republic (East Germany, DDR) was one such path of least resistance. One could still feel pride in personal accomplishment, in one's larger contributions to society. That's how we get stuck. Feeling our way along a narrow path, densely forested on both sides, one set of messages, one way only for viewing what comes next, where we're headed. I personally don't view it so much as stupid, or immmoral, as pathetic. Overflowing with the pathos of limited vision, limited energy, limited opportunities. Which leads me back once more to an expression of immense respect, admiration, and gratitude for those who saw the forest and the trees and yet again, what lay beyond. The dissidents like Michnik and Kuron in Poland, the clever journalists, the quiet unsung heroes who resisted in place, who refused to "take this hell for their heaven" (as Dante said), the journalists who found ways to tell the truth: for all who insisted on embracing an expansive view. Today, May 3, is Constitution Day in Poland. Their constitution is almost as old as ours. Granted, they weren't given the sovereignty to exercise its provisions for democratic self-rule, being carved up for over one hundred years by Russia, Germany, and Austria from the late 1700's until 1918. And then again, by the Nazi's during World War II and by the USSR from 1945 until 1989. Celebrating Constitution Day in Poland must also include paying respects to these more recent courageous and visionary, and expansive, generous-hearted individuals who chose not to respect the reality of their reality during the communist period, who looked beyond themselves and the present moment, who were always drawn by an horizon rather than limited by the known world. Those dissidents who made today's holiday a real celebration again. To you, to you, I lift my glass today and trust that thousands of others do too. Do you even realize what all you've done? Changed history. Yes, I think you know it. Now, drink it in!

" Workers of the World........

....Forgive Me." ___Karl Marx So went the joke making the rounds in Poland in the 1980's. Karl Marx is famously quoted as rallying the "Workers of the world, unite!" It didn't turn out as he planned. But frankly, it didn't start out as he planned. It never does. And therein lies the problem. Nothing ever goes according to plan. Scientific socialism depended on things going right. It assumed, yea, it asserted, that history would move as expected. Oh well. Today is May Day, International Workers' Day, a holiday that is rarely noted in the U.S. but has been celebrated with great fanfare around the world for eons. The Soviets celebrated with an annual parade in Red Square that featured the latest military weapons and technology. Missiles were mounted on flatbeds, that's what I remember most. So, Happy May Day! And workers of the world, it really sucks, doesn't it. How many jobs have been lost in the past two years? How many families have lost livelihoods and homes and relationships due to the economic stress caused by greed and stupidity? Not a very happy workers' day for too many of us. Marxism fascinated me. It hit all the notes that mattered. Fairness. Justice. Equality. But it couldn't be imposed. Certainly not in a Leninist-Stalinist manner. There is this pesky little thing called human nature. And it is always the wild card. The variable. "Saddling a cow" is how Stalin described trying to rule Poland. Frankly, the image seems apt in describing Marxism as imposed Communism all over Eastern Europe. Not a pretty sight. And just not possible. But is it possible, could we, might we consider the values lifted up by Marx as we continue to tinker with our own economy?