Monday, February 27, 2012

"Give up" (repeat by request)

Give up?
I'm not giving up.

It is Lent. And even people who aren't particularly religious talk about what they are giving up for Lent. Ice cream, alcohol, shoe shopping.

I'm not giving up for Lent. That's right. I'm giving up giving up. For Lent. Forever.


The old old word that became Lent means "lengthening." There are lots of things in my life that need lengthening. And strengthening.

So I am adding rather than subtracting. Muscles. Discipline. Time to concentrate.

Some of us have already given up a lot. And not always by choice. In fact, I'm still grieving all that was stolen from me.

When so much has been taken, I honestly don't know what else I've got to give up.

I'm not giving up anything more.

Bring it on.

"a foolish consistency"

"a foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." __Emerson


Point well taken.

I said "no politics" but do you truly expect me to shut up about the deceit and absurdity of the present moment. No. That would be a foolish consistency.

But that is not what my title has in mind.

Does Rick Santorum know from facts? Does Romney? Will they ever tell truth? They have stretched the license for a little inconsistency to its most absurd extreme.

Lies. If you're going to quote the President, get it right. If you're going to quote a former President, get that right and, by the way, remember the Constitution.

And if you're going to insist on intrusive vaginal probes for women wanting to exercise their reproductive freedoms, and you happen to own the company that makes those probes, let us know.
And drop it, for the love of God.

This is what I don't get. The GOP is the party of small government. But everyday I wake up and discover them in my bed, in my prayer life, in my family life, my kids' college plans.

At least what the other party wants to do is be helpful. Not to be my mother. I had one. We worked out our issues. Sadly, she died. I don't need another one. The GOP wants to be my mother. The Democratic Party wants to stand in the gap when things are going south. That I can take.

Santorum, Romney, and Mr. Aspirin-Between-Your-Knees, get it right if you're going to be Right. And still, you're wrong. Wrong.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Show me the money!

I know where the money is!


David, my spouse, works from a luxury appointed office (well, it has rich paneling and an oversized inherited desk, lovely art and a comfy recliner for when I visit) on the first floor of our home. What this means is that I know better than many spouses just exactly what he is working on. His voice carries and so does the vacuum and I occasionally wonder what clients think of the background noises on this end. (I try not to vacuum when he's on the phone.)

It is pretty interesting and important what Dave does every day.

He finds people.

Not the ones whose pictures are on the post office wall (do they even do that any more?) but the right people to lead organizations who have come to him and said, "Find us a new CEO."

Dave does not find people for Fortune 500 or 200 or even 1000 companies. He finds people for community based organizations --- the very life blood of our cities and rural communities --- who provide the basic services that the market, in its mission to make money, does not serve. There is no money to be made in providing health care in the Bronx, for instance.

Dave's primary niche in the Executive Search field is CDFI's --- Community Development Finance Institutions. It's a bit like KIVA on a larger scale.

You and I invest in a local CDFI, as we would in GM or Microsoft or Apple or T-Bills. Say we invest $5,000. Hundreds of other people like us do the same. Then, the CDFI, for example, the Chicago Community Loan Fund, takes our money and loans it with interest to a small community organization that needs capital to build low-income housing, or open a grocery store in a neighborhood that Jewel doesn't care about. Your money, our money is building houses or running a community health clinic or providing housing for seniors or running an after-school program.

That's where the money is. Some big money. Altogether in this country, over $3 billion is invested, maybe more, in about 500 of these organizations around the country.

The money is a loan to the organization. Some even provide loans to small neighborhood businesses.

The remarkable thing is, the investors like you and me get a return of 3% on average, some a little higher. It's not like getting in on the ground floor of Facebook's IPO but it's better than putting money in a savings account. AND it is as safe, if not safer than the stock market.

That's what Dave does all day. He finds people to run CDFI's, community health clinics, non-profit affordable housing developers, like South Dakota Voices for Children and St. Ambrose in Baltimore, trade associations for these folks and, wow, it makes a difference in the world.

I'm pretty jazzed about it. He is too; he's been doing this for twenty years and is one of the best of the best in the country. In fact, he's never had a failed search!

These are the gap-fillers, these organizations. Where government, private enterprise, and churches don't go, local entrepeneurial spirits say, "Hey, we could do that!" Open a day care center, a charter school, take care of their elderly, provide health care.

And Dave finds the people to run them.

It's not big money on our end but it is richly satisfying and it makes a big difference in the world. Think of that difference. This is the fabric of America. This is the hidden fabric of America. All of these small organizations run out of storefronts or better, serving their communities for the common good.

When you feel cynical about politics (for good reason) and discouraged about humankind, think about all these organizations, and about that three billion and more dollars being loaned out to change the world one kid at a time. Pretty darn cool if you ask me.

That's where the money is.

Thursday, February 23, 2012

Blessing to blessing

Verdant.


Life. Brilliantly verdant verve of liveliness.

We are born to life. To be brilliant, verdant, to dance and sing and to bear in our face
the Creator's grace.

I do get the need for humility. Ashes to ashes. We are mortal. We are not god.

But we are told in Scripture, for whatever that means to you, that we are made in the image of God.

When is the day on the calendar that we celebrate that? Just that. No qualifications. No "buts," just blessing.

I want a mark on my forehead -- every day -- that signifies that I am blessed.

It is so easy, too easy to forget. We got the smudge thing down. We know we're shit. But not only. And not first. And not last. That is the interruption.

Let's celebrate who we are. Gold stars are lame. Rainbows, butterflies, all cliche. But can we, after all these eons of life on this planet, find a symbol, a means, a way to make this happen: a day, a way to claim our most primal identity?

Or. Would that be Christmas. Easter.

Just don't make me put a bunny on my face.

Wednesday, February 22, 2012

Stuck in the muddle with you

We're stuck.


This is the good thing about Ash Wednesday.

We are reminded to own our own shit.

We don't get to simply externalize all the junk that goes on and say, "Oh, those other guys."
We are part of the other guys.

It'd be kind of cool to pick and choose who gets smeared with ashes today. I have a list. You do too.

But this is the thing: I'm on my list. And you are, however much I love you. Even my daughters; one of the most hideous things I had to do as a pastor was to smudge their foreheads with ashes and say those words.

But this is another thing. There is no list. No lasting list. No eternal list. That's what I think. Disagree if you wish but I don't think we're meant to live under this curse.

What I believe is that we need a "breathe of heaven" day. Whether or not you believe we come from and go somewhere after this life, I do believe that we are all endued with blessing and the "breathe of heaven" as we enter this world. When is the day for that?

Not Baptism. Baptism is all about claiming us for God, saving us by God's mercy and all that other stuff we talk about. Fine. But that is still not the first word.

The FIRST word about every one of us is "It is good." The first act upon every one of us is blessing.

I'm down with taking my turn being smudged and reminded of my mortality and my sinfulness. That's a reality check worth getting.

And I'm probably in line right behind and before the schmucks I think deserve the ugly gashes on their faces way more than I do. (Hardee har har). Figures.

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

I see an Everlast punching bag in my future

You have to pay extra at my gym to use the boxing equipment. Who cares?


I need to punch something. Soon.

My therapist saw the homicidal glint in my eye this afternoon and asked if I had an outlet for my anger. "Oh yeah," I said. "I have an outlet in mind."
,
We then had our regular conversation about how I know better than I even want to that vengeance is not mine. Even though my regular prayer is, "Send me, Lord, send me."

When great evil has occurred, when you have been the victim of a great and diabolical evil, a pathologically evil event, ongoing anger can be a problem.

It has, in fact, been quite a while since I've been so angry, so clear about the behaviors that were aimed at me, determined to inflict great harm. And I am raging furious.

So yes, there is a punching bag in my future. Otherwise...

Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday. There is a bowl of ashes I would so like to hold in my,hand. After being marked with the cross of Christ on my forehead with the sooty sign of grace, there are some other people I would love to mark as deeply and as darkly as I could. Big dusty signs of sin - before grace - and oh, how I would love to make those marks myself. "Dust you are and to dust you will return."

Of course, this is the thing. If it is a sign of grace for me, then of course it is a sign of grace for all. Sociopaths, mean bullies, terrible terrible behaviors, abuse, attack, harassment, sabotage...you can imagine how infuriating this can be. My consolation is that, if they are in touch with their consciences, even occasionally, they have themselves to live with. That is their hell. My other consolation, oddly enough, is that grace is sufficient for them too. Do I think in my human animal brain they deserve grace? No. Does my heart warmed by God's grace think they need and should receive grace, yes. (If not for their sake then for the rest of us. We can hope: Grace will warm them too.)

Go get smudged. It's a good reminder that we all need mercy.

And, if you would, help me imagine my adversaries with ugly dark marks messing up their pristine well-groomed visages. It will sate some of the anger.

Meanwhile, there is a punching bag with a certain few names on it. Boom!

I'll calm down tomorrow.

Sunday, February 12, 2012

"Reality" excerpt by Wislawa Szymborska

Reality


Reality doesn't vanish
the way dreams do.
No rustle, no bell
disperses it,
no cry or thump
rouses from it.

Images in dreams
are blurred and uncertain,
open to many
interpretations.
Reality denotes reality,
and that's a greater puzzle.

Dreams have keys.
Reality opens on itself
and won't quite shut.
It trails...."

Monday, February 6, 2012

"Miracle Fair" an excerpt

Miracle Fair

"The commonplace miracle:
that so many common miracles take place....


....A miracle, just take a look around:
the inescapable earth.

An extra miracle, extra and ordinary:
the unthinkable
can be thought."

___Wislawa Szymborska


Just think, the unthinkable can be thought.

Do it!

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Wislawa Szymborska, an homage

Poets give us a voice, theirs, to express our own wonder, curiosity, longing, piss-off-ness, love.

Poets give us the courage to find our own voice, ours, to use to express these same human inclinations.

In a course last year on Wislawa Szymborska's poetry, we were challenged to use her work as inspiration for our own creation. In the next days this blog will carry her own poetry, inviting us to wonder, to be dextrous and elegant in expressing our responses to the world. But for today, a poem inspired by her poetry, from the course last year.



Podkowa April 10, 2010


He is shooting clays in the forest.
His cell phone turned off in his pocket,
no messages of death can find him here.

"You like to shoot, why?" she asks.
"There is no reason," he tells her.
"Why do you ask so many questions?"

"No reason," she answers back.

No reason.
For the shooting.
For the questions.
A lie.

The sky is blue, the day is fresh, no cloud to put its shadow in their place.
They walk.
A red fox runs across their path.

"Danger!" he warns,
"Red foxes are outlawed now."


He bats his umbrella at the brambles grown brittle over the winter,
brush lines the path.

They skirt a giant ant hill --- taller than their waists ---
closed in by a wire fence.

"Zomo prisons for zomo ants," she jokes.

A master wordsmith, he won't use any of them on her.
They walk on, silent.
Forest sounds distract, the calls of birds, the chatter of squirrels.
Rustling.
In the far distance, back on the shooting range,
a sharp report.

The cell phone in her pocket buzzes.
Using simple Polish, she answers, "I'm here."
"It's for you," she hands it to him.

He listens long
then snaps it shut.
The umbrella slides off his wrist, the phone falls to the ground.

He finds her face with his hands.
"Live, just live."


By the end of the day he has used his words
to do the kind of work he demands of them.
Seven obituaries.
One long newstory about a plane crash.