"I swear to tell the truth,"

"I swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth."

Under penalty of perjury, I was sworn in and promised to tell the truth, not to cover up what was inconvenient or unfortunate, to answer all questions truthfully without intent to deceive.

And so I did.

One of the hardest things I've ever been asked to do was testify, under oath, against friends, valued colleagues, a community I respected. But I had to tell the truth.

The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America and one of its seminaries and members of its faculty were being sued in 2003 by the families of young boys who had been molested by an ELCA pastor. The pastor had already been found guilty in criminal court and was in prison.

Why the lawsuit?

Because his sexual misconduct while on an internship during seminary had been reported. Because the church ordained him anyway and turned him loose, gave him access to reoffend. Had the warnings been heeded, he would not have been granted pastoral authority and access in a small Texas town to lure teen-age boys into relationships where they were vulnerable and were then molested.

As I remember (I was deep into my own early days of PTSD at the time), I was primarily an expert witness. Which is to say, called upon to testify about the plans and policies put in place by the ELCA, of which I was an author and had been director during the time period in question, which were not followed in this case.

Essentially, the question was, did we know better? Did the seminary and the faculty and the church know better when it ordained and sent this pastor into an unsuspecting parish and town?

I had to say, yes. They did. I knew they did. I was there when they heard, and learned and discussed it.

It was awkward at best and painful as well to have to testify, essentially, against good friends and colleagues who had, frankly, blown it. Blown it big time.

What is the higher value, loyalty? Or, as the Scriptures tell us again and again and again and again (which is to say, all the time), to protect the vulnerable, the weak, the lost?

What is our highest responsibility? Safety. And, as the Hippocratic Oath demans of physicians, to do no harm.

It was a wrenching day. Eight full hours of testimony. It stirred up a lot of current shit. I'd recently been attacked for being disloyal to "the team" and dangerous to an ongoing cover-up elsewhere in the ELCA. I had already suffered, and suffer still, for threatening the status quo.

The colleagues who had most to lose on that day were classy and mature enough to understand that I did what I had to do. I did what was the right thing to do. I told the truth. And I'd do it again.

I may have to.

Is Lightness Bearable?

Much as we say we love light, we often don't.

Bertold Brecht wrote, "Mankind cannot stand too much reality."

I'm not always a big fan of reality myself. Harsh realities intrude on our summer moments, ugly truths rear their ugly heads and we're back in the thick of it.

I can't believe how much, how penetrating, and how important is the media coverage of clergy sexual abuse these days. Of course, we who are not Roman Catholic read with a certain illusory comfort: this is not our problem.

But, oh, friends, it is. It is it is it is.

My seventeen-year-old friends get it. Adults having sex with children, even adolescents, is wrong. It is even more wrong when those adults are persons with positions of trust and authority viz those young people. It is even worse when those adults are clergy, or preparing to become clergy, as we have acknowledged standards about sexual behavior, and about the appropriate use of our power, that are explicit. And at the heart of what we do.

It is wrong, so they tell me, for persons in positions of trust, power and authority to use that power for their own personal pleasure and benefit. Whether their victims are children or adults. It's all about power. The abuse of power. It is wrong. Like I said, seventeen-year-olds have this figured out. Why is it so difficult for church leaders? The behavior is wrong. Harmful. Manipulative. Contrary to our promises to respect and build up the people of God.

And it is even worse when the behavior is covered-up.

The Vatican is finally feeling the weight of all these failures to protect the innocent, by allowing offenders, perpetrators continuing access to vulnerable parishioners.

Their problem is ours. Our commitment has "eroded" in recent years, as one journalist put it recently. We have continued to cover up the sexual abuse, misconduct, harassment -- call it all of those things -- of our clergy. And allow them access, power, authority and access to persons who can become vulnerable to their sexual overtures, advances, and behaviors.

We do it. We do it. We keep fucking doing it. When will we learn? What will it take?

Meanwhile, when clergy are finally 'outed,' whether specifically for their sexual or covered over by references to other misconduct, the church rallies around them with good wishes, prayers, and strong warnings to avoid judgment, given that "we all sin." I have no problem with praying for broken persons, be they clergy or not.

But it is wrong, it is immoral and a failure of our Christian calling and unity as the body of Christ to not also lift up those who have become victims of that 'fallen' behavior. I find that completely absent from any recent news about clergy who are experiencing addictions and emotional distress.

Let's remember the emotional distress of their victims. Let's lift them up and make sure they are receiving the same level of expert psychological care we extend to the offenders. Let's lift them up, hold them close in our hearts, and, while protecting their confidentiality, make clear that the main problem is what happened to them.

Is lightness bearable? Not yet. Not in this church, not in a lot of places. When can we find the courage to tell the truth? When will we find the courage, and the compassion, to expose our whole lives to the light of God's grace (and the community's awareness).

Let's trust the laity of the church, let's respect them. Let's let the light shine.

If we dare.

Home, Home on the.....

range, the plains, the mountain, the desert.


It's time to stay home for awhile. Or at least until Friday.

The past several weeks have been filled with travel. Long road trips. Three trips between Denver and Minneapolis. Quick flights. Minneapolis, Denver. Long flights. Denver, Las Vegas, Palm Springs. Short Drives. Aspen.

I've watched World Cup Soccer games in Denver, Las Vegas, Palm Springs, and Aspen. That's just weird.

It's not normal, not for me. It's just the way things have gone since the early part of May. Graduations. Kaia's move back to the Twin Cities. My brother's 50th birthday in Palm Springs. And a writing week in Aspen.

Not a bad life.

Meanwhile, the Poles have failed to elect a President, Isner and Mahut played the longest tennis match in history, the Polish women are still in it at Wimbledon, albeit not always in Polish 'uniforms,' and two Poles scored the first goals this morning for Germany in their crucial knock-out football match against England.

It's a funny thing. If you want to cheer for the Poles, you have to look for them. They have emigrated and play for Denmark (or Monte Carlo, depending upon if you count official or tax-purposed residence), Canada, Australia, Germany and, rarely, even the country of Poland itself.

So it goes. These days it is not for political purposes but economic ones that Poles continue to leave home. But Caroline Wozniacki is a perfect example of what has drained some of Poland's best talent in the past.

Caroline Wozniacki, she of the beautifully fashionable lavender outfit in last year's U.S. Open, is the daughter of two Polish atheletes. They left Poland in the 1980's, during a still-repressive political era and one in which they had few opportunities to shine. They found their way to Denmark. Where Caroline was born and raised. She speaks Danish and Polish fluently. She plays under a Danish flag, but within her beats a still partly Polish heart. She is so typical.

A diaspora, of sorts, of East Europeans have found their way around the world. Poland, meanwhile, could really use them. But doesn't make it easy for them to thrive. Regressive tax and other business regulations make it difficult for many. The long slog toward privatization of major business lumbers on. And labor / work opportunities are not always plentiful. It can be so difficult to begin one's own business that many give up.

Mind you, it is so much better than it was. But not yet enough.

So, as I'm back at home, suitcases put all the way away in the basement for now -- at least until Friday -- I can see Poles in action for teams around the world.

And, if National Book Award winner Colum McCann, a very cool and brilliant, delightful, humble, classy man, whom I met this week in Aspen, is right, we're all becoming "mongrels," people who belong to many places and nations at once.

Moving back and forth, with dual citizenship and multiple identities, we shrink the world even as we enlarge it. And that's not weird. It's just pretty dang cool. I'm home in so many places. And even when I'm standing in a slow queue to board an airplane, or bumping over the desert mountains (that really ought to become full of wind turbines!)in a tiny plane, or stopping at four a.m. at an Iowa truck stop, or lurching in rush hour traffic on Hwy 82 toward Aspen, or here again "in my room," on a lazy Sunday morning, I think that is amazing. Lucky. Blessed. And very very cool.

"Let the whole world spin."

Poland Wins! Beats USSR! 0-0

Let's try to get back on track here, Jan: remember Poland?


I was staying with someone who didn't know a soccer ball from a frisbee, and whose radio was so permanently set to BBC and a Polish news station that it was impossible to get the dial to budge.

But not to worry. I heard the play by play from every game Poland played anyway. Through the open windows. And in case I missed something, the communal cheers or groans coming from every building in the neighborhood told me what I needed to know.

It was my first World Cup. 1982. Warsaw. I remember it like it was an hour ago. In fact, as I sit watching this World Cup match between the US and England, and saw the match yesterday between South Africa and Mexico, I am reliving the highs of those weeks in June, 1982.

Out of the television now I hear the familiar buzz of the noise-makers (what DO you call them?) and I'm back again in Warsaw, alone in the afternoon in the apartment on Czestochowska street, sitting at a table with a brown checked table cloth, silent radio sitting against the wall, an old-fashioned brown Polish pottery (empty) sugar bowl and a glass of tea in an elegant metal holder, in the old Russian fashion, set before me. The kitchen windows are wide open on this warm sunny afternoon, matching checked curtains blowing in the breeze. I've opened the windows in the other two rooms for stereo advantage. I sit on the opposite side of my usual spot, closer to the outside, my listening post two precious feet closer to the neighbors' radios.

We didn't have a TV. Nobody had a TV. Well, almost nobody, and those who did had special privilege. The soccer, or really, I should be calling it football pitch was all in our minds, the faces of the players imagined, the open field, the quick footwork, the long passes, the clever manuevering. The afternoon passed in a noisy succession of cheers, sighs, groans and palpable silences.

This was THE game. Poland had won their first match, 3-0, against Belgium. I'd heard that game while out and about, every window in Warsaw open, every block with its own chorus of cheers (there was a lot of cheering that day) and excitement. Afterward, horns had blown and honked and the beaten down, weary, hungry Polish people felt their spirits lifted, after a long, tense winter and spring of martial law.

The militia still patrolled the streets in three's (one to report on the other two, went a joke) with rifles carried stiffly upright in their hands, at their sides. We crossed the street to avoid them, not out of fear but for disgust. It was humiliating, demoralizing to feel like an occupied country, especially when the occupation army was your own.

The stores were empty. We queued for bread. Butter was rationed. The best meals were made of fresh produce, especially tomatoes and cucumbers, sold at the farmers' markets. Did I see a piece of meet?

As a foreigner, I was entitled to shop in the Pewex stores, "dollar stores," where I could use hard currency, western currency, which was the only money with any value in all of Eastern Europe. I traded it, my hundred dollars, on the black market, with various friends (never my host) for a small fortune in zlotys that enabled me to buy whatever I wanted.

What I really wanted was food. But there wasn't any, not in the Polish shops. So I used my valued dollars at the Pewex store in the Victoria Hotel. So we had a few sources of protein, sardines, for God's sake, and my favored Coca Cola, cashews, crackers. Chocolate.

The zlotys I used to buy leather bags, briefcases, purses, jewelry, exquisite carved boxes, a bit of fragile pottery. And magazines for my friend who was rightly proud and agonized at being a recipient of charity. I had to be extra clever and careful to not make it seem that way.

Anyway, the World Cup. Next game up: the Soviet Union. Maybe the Poles and the Soviets fought on the football pitch so they didn't end up on the real battlefields. No, probably not, that's a bit histronic. But it was a highly charged, emotional, high stakes, all out engagement. Especially from the Poles' side. I almost got my sports' agnostic host interested.

So it went, the afternoon, the long afternoon. Ninety minutes of back and forth. I could only imagine all that went on in that stadium. The tension in our neighborhood was almost unbearable. I'd might as well have been in a stadium, for all the noise that poured out of windows above and below and across from my kitchen chair. During half-time I recorded some of these impressions and then settled in for more.

More local commentary, colorful and otherwise. Even the breeze stopped blowing,the day itself held its breath. And then, a final whistle. Game over.

Poland 0. Soviet Union 0.

Poland won!

Holding the Soviet athletic machine scoreless was a moral victory. Stopping the Soviets was an emotional victory. And by virtue of total tournament points scored, Poland won. Poland won the right to advance to the next round.

The Soviets went home.

It was a good night in Warsaw.

And even at home. I opened a bottle of Pewex-purchase Hungarian wine. My host-friend, always more tightly wound than a battery spring, indifferent to the sport, nonetheless, let himself unwind just a little bit.

And in other news, Pigs Fly!

Polish filmaker, Andrzej Wajda, will receive the Russian Federation State Award of Merit for his outstanding contributions to the struggle for human rights. The award was established in 2005 and aspires to be an equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize and carries a cash prize, the equivalent of two hundred thousand dollars. Previous winners include former French President Jacques Shirac and Alexander Solzhenitzen. The award ceremony will take place on June 12, the national day for the Russian Federation. In order words, this is a big honking deal. Wajda is being honored for his devastating film, Katyn, which was shown on Russian television earlier this spring, both before and after the plane crash near the Katyn Forest that was carrying the Polish president and other high officials to an official ceremony honoring the 22,000 or so Polish leaders who were summarily killed by the Russians in 1940. Given that Wajda has given his entire career to telling the stories of criminal abuse of human rights within Soviet-dominated Poland, this award is a startling turn of events, to say the least. Like, holy shit! Okay, the official press reports aren't quite so colorful but the subtext is not terribly hard to find. "Can you believe it?" is the gist of their message. And no, almost not quite. On days when other conflicts seem intractable, the Middle East comes to mind, it is good to take in the magnitude of such a step. Maybe there is hope for us all, after all. And who cares if it is partly a PR bid, on the Russians part. I say run with it!

Tennis Saved Me

Was I eight? I was. Early summer. I had to get out of the house. Away from home. As much as possible. Time gifts us with forgetfulness of mundane memories thus I can't tell you exactly what it was the unnerved and upset me so, but the ongoing craziness in my family prompted me to look outside for options. There was, of course, Mrs. Shadle, down the street, my true savior. She paid me a dollar a week --- a fortune --- but best of all she gave me the most precious gift of her time and attention every single day except Sunday, as I came like clockwork to sit next to the piano bench with her son Charles to help him with his piano practice. I don't think he needed me but she knew, intuitively, that I needed her and this 'job,' the time away from home, and most of all, her friendship and kind attention. She listened to me, she valued my opinions, she told me stories about her world --- growing up in Oklahoma. It was heaven. It was nothing at all like home. But I couldn't stay at the Shadle's all day, even though I often stood in her doorway for forty-five minutes, wrapping up the converstion. Did I stall, or do I remember rightly that sometimes she was the one to prolong our time together? It seemed she truly valued me. And I believe she did. It was heaven. Beyond her twinkling eyes that matched her pale blue carpet and immaculate home, her infectious laugh, her charming accent and her saying at least once every day, "you cain't win for losing," I had to find other sources of escape. There was the pit trampoline in the neighbors' back yard, where I was welcome anytime to practice back drops and front flips, and there was the tetherball in our backyard where I could batter out my frustrations. But, as time went on, I needed to wander farther and farther afield. The city offered free tennis lessons every morning. I read about them in the newspaper and persuaded my mother to let me try. Within the week I was hooked. I had my lesson at nine. Then stayed around like a gym rat to hit on empty courts. I hit against the backboard, I hit with other students, I hit with the teachers. I started coming early, by eight, then stayed all morning, walked home for a quick lunch, played all afternoon, went home for supper, and was back at night to hit until we couldn't see the ball. I'd hit with you today if you were willing to hit it right to me -- I'm a lazy slug -- and you would discover I still have a wicked forehand. And so it went for the next seven summers. All day every day and a return trip in the evenings, to hit with whomever showed up. I walked back and forth the mile and a quarter two or three times a day, that is, until boys began to drive me back and forth. My first dates grew out of tennis play. I saved up and bought my first Davis racquet, the one I still have, restrung a dozen times over the years, and still use from time to time. I remember the first day a kid, the number one singles in the 14 and under division, showed up with a metal racquet. A marvel. Few of us ever got them; we were purists. I remember the change from white to florescent yellow balls; we were suspicious of them, too. I became devoted to Rod Laver and Ken Rosewall and Yvonne Goolagong and Billie Jean King. I developed a tennis tan, socks and all. Hitting the tennis ball was a kind of zen for me, the repetition, the thwack of the ball cleanly hit, back and forth, back and forth. I frankly preferred hitting against the wall, more predictable returns. I could hit it a hundred times, two hundred, in a row, and hard, too, I might add. It was catharsis, it was meditation, it was pure heaven. I was invited to join the tennis team and have the trophy to prove it -- alas, only one, but a source of satisfaction I've yet to put away. Later, in high school, our team invented a punishment for losing a league match: eating frozen brussel sprouts. Don't ever serve me brussel sprouts. I don't eat them. It was my world, a sane, orderly, and fun world. We became a team, we bonded, we supported each other, laughed and cheered each other on. Such a startling, and welcome change from my life at home. I developed self-esteem, confidence, self-reliance, and a clear sense of having power to make my world better or worse. Something within my control. It was my world, away from my family. How different things are today. Did I miss one of Kaia's soccer games over the years? Maybe, one. One of her basketball games? Maybe, one. Did I miss one of Annika's concerts, plays, musicals? Maybe, no, I don't think so. My mother came to exactly one of my tennis matches, in high school, the regionals, when we had to be driven by a parent and she was the only one available. My dad never saw me play. That wasn't so extreme as it sounds, few parents paid attention. But, still. The good news: tennis was my world, my haven, my home. And, through all those crazy years, my salvation. So ask me why I arrange my life, as much as possible, around watching the Grand Slams today. God, I love it.