Chaos leads us on!
Chaos gets a bad rap. Not with me, though.
Chaos is the raw material that makes life move. Without chaos we would be static, stuck, left with only the materials and experiences we have at hand. Without chaos we would have only what we were given at birth and only what we have already had.
Chaos brings the vitality to our lives. Chaos is the swirling mass of messy stuff that gives us new chances, changes, growth.
I love chaos, in theory. I create it wherever I go. It is that 'out of the box' oddball question that pushes the conversation beyond its boundaries. Chaos is the moment when the mad mix of unexpected possibilities swirls into position and something new is born.
That is my "brand." In this world where all of us are asked / expected to have a brand, to be one thing and not another, to be cold-eyed laser focused on a topic, a place, a worldview, my view is chaos.
For those of you new to the blog, you will discover a variety of topics here: Poland, history, spiritual life, sexual abuse, and daily life. It may seem a disparate hodge-podge but I invite you to see what is below the surface: Chaos. It started with a laser-focus on Poland but so much more feeds it. And it all adds up to this, the roiling and rollicking mix of life adds up to this wonderful, if sometimes vexing, reality. We are born in and from chaos and we live in it. The trick is to make it work for us. I hope your chaotic day adds up to something really cool for you.
Monday, June 18, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Space for rent
I am not renting out space in my head.
I am giving the grey matter away for free.
Disrespect is hard to tolerate. And I got dissed today, big time. It doesn't much bother me when I'm disliked (okay, I mind but it doesn't rankle the same way). But disrespected. Oh, look out.
What about you? What is it that gets under your skin the most?
I have to thank for my real estate problem an editorial agent who didn't bother to read my material and then proceeded to tell me what was wrong with it. I like critics who carefully engage and give constructive criticism. But this was a level of disrespect I had almost forgotten.
My consolation, as always when dealing with ass-holes, is knowing that he has to live with himself. I wouldn't exactly mind it if his plane got delayed in Cleveland overnight, either.
How do you keep idjuts from renting space in your head -- or getting it for free?
I am giving the grey matter away for free.
Disrespect is hard to tolerate. And I got dissed today, big time. It doesn't much bother me when I'm disliked (okay, I mind but it doesn't rankle the same way). But disrespected. Oh, look out.
What about you? What is it that gets under your skin the most?
I have to thank for my real estate problem an editorial agent who didn't bother to read my material and then proceeded to tell me what was wrong with it. I like critics who carefully engage and give constructive criticism. But this was a level of disrespect I had almost forgotten.
My consolation, as always when dealing with ass-holes, is knowing that he has to live with himself. I wouldn't exactly mind it if his plane got delayed in Cleveland overnight, either.
How do you keep idjuts from renting space in your head -- or getting it for free?
Sunday, June 3, 2012
"Losing my religion"
It is interesting to be out in the world incognito.
For whatever it is worth, I don't make a point of telling my hairdresser, my friend's parents, folks I meet in writing class and random people in the world that I am a Lutheran pastor.
I sure learn a lot that way.
The conversations I have, and overhear, are both enlightening and ear-splitting. Most are heart-breaking.
People hate the church. Let's be honest about this. People don't feel neutral or indifferent. They're either in it and of it or they really really hate it.
The reasons for hating "organized religion" are often personal and various but they generally come round to one basic, grounding point. As the poet and playwright wrote, "Somebody almost walked away with all of my stuff."
Abusing power takes many forms. I spent years fighting against and responding to the scurge of sexual abuse, which seems not to have abated, just gone underground again.
But the abuse of power can be subtle and all the more dangerous. A recent news story tells of a Catholic hospital refusing HIV meds to a patient because, well, you know. The controversy around contraception continues.
Freedom from, and of religion was articulated as early as the ancient Greeks. They knew the danger of messing with power and the spirits of persons.
Spiritual life can not be imposed or implied. It cannot be enforced. The human spirit will go its own way.
Which leads to a multitude of abuses all their own. Anarchy in the spiritual realm is as potentially dangerous as dictated spiritual life.
Which leads me to this: life asks a lot of us. It asks of us respect, carefulness, kindness. It asks of us a brain -- to not fall for anything. And a heart -- to not push our experience of the divine down anyone else's throat. It asks of us decency, to speak truth as we know it. And to challenge one another.
It asks us, god forbid, to be intelligent. Much of what I hear from outside the church is mush. It is intellectually nonsense. It is reactionary and shallow. To my mind. And yet I respect the experience that is searching for articulation.
And it comes back around to this: Somebody messed with me, with my mind, my spirit, my body and I didn't like it so I quit. They might not be able to explain it to the satisfaction of the great minds of our time, or any time, and so we ridicule them. Not fair at all.
They are on to something. It is the abuse of power. Messing with folks. Using the gift of divine grace to impose, manipulate, screw with. In whatever fashion.
If the church wants to survive -- and maybe God has new plans for getting the word out, it has become that serious -- we are going to have to clean up our act. And first of all, we are going to have to own up, humbly without excuse or self-exhonoration, to our badness. We are not what Jesus wanted. Not always and maybe even not often enough. It is not just odd balls who screw up. It is the institution itself. We have to apologize. And be open.
We must listen more than we speak, which is why I sit there while Ty puts stuff in my hair to make it come out looking lighter and let him rant and rave. He has a real beef, a real story. Then I ask a few questions. Gentle, respectful. He could like Jesus. He might even follow Jesus. But he is not going to be going to any of our churches anytime soon.
What are we going to do about that?
For whatever it is worth, I don't make a point of telling my hairdresser, my friend's parents, folks I meet in writing class and random people in the world that I am a Lutheran pastor.
I sure learn a lot that way.
The conversations I have, and overhear, are both enlightening and ear-splitting. Most are heart-breaking.
People hate the church. Let's be honest about this. People don't feel neutral or indifferent. They're either in it and of it or they really really hate it.
The reasons for hating "organized religion" are often personal and various but they generally come round to one basic, grounding point. As the poet and playwright wrote, "Somebody almost walked away with all of my stuff."
Abusing power takes many forms. I spent years fighting against and responding to the scurge of sexual abuse, which seems not to have abated, just gone underground again.
But the abuse of power can be subtle and all the more dangerous. A recent news story tells of a Catholic hospital refusing HIV meds to a patient because, well, you know. The controversy around contraception continues.
Freedom from, and of religion was articulated as early as the ancient Greeks. They knew the danger of messing with power and the spirits of persons.
Spiritual life can not be imposed or implied. It cannot be enforced. The human spirit will go its own way.
Which leads to a multitude of abuses all their own. Anarchy in the spiritual realm is as potentially dangerous as dictated spiritual life.
Which leads me to this: life asks a lot of us. It asks of us respect, carefulness, kindness. It asks of us a brain -- to not fall for anything. And a heart -- to not push our experience of the divine down anyone else's throat. It asks of us decency, to speak truth as we know it. And to challenge one another.
It asks us, god forbid, to be intelligent. Much of what I hear from outside the church is mush. It is intellectually nonsense. It is reactionary and shallow. To my mind. And yet I respect the experience that is searching for articulation.
And it comes back around to this: Somebody messed with me, with my mind, my spirit, my body and I didn't like it so I quit. They might not be able to explain it to the satisfaction of the great minds of our time, or any time, and so we ridicule them. Not fair at all.
They are on to something. It is the abuse of power. Messing with folks. Using the gift of divine grace to impose, manipulate, screw with. In whatever fashion.
If the church wants to survive -- and maybe God has new plans for getting the word out, it has become that serious -- we are going to have to clean up our act. And first of all, we are going to have to own up, humbly without excuse or self-exhonoration, to our badness. We are not what Jesus wanted. Not always and maybe even not often enough. It is not just odd balls who screw up. It is the institution itself. We have to apologize. And be open.
We must listen more than we speak, which is why I sit there while Ty puts stuff in my hair to make it come out looking lighter and let him rant and rave. He has a real beef, a real story. Then I ask a few questions. Gentle, respectful. He could like Jesus. He might even follow Jesus. But he is not going to be going to any of our churches anytime soon.
What are we going to do about that?
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Nazi Death Camps
My Polish gentile friends' fathers and mothers were not incarcerated in "Polish death camps." They were Nazi camps. Nazi from the start to the finish.
Because the Nazi's put their death camps -- Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Birkenau -- out of their way on Polish soil,, it has become common to speak of the "Polish death camps."
Let's say this altogether: Nazi death camps. Nazi death camps. Nazi death camps.
The Polish experience of the death camps was death, not authority. They did not administer, run, rule or in any way have responsibility for what the occupation German forces did on their territory.
President Obama made the mistake again yesterday and we're up in arms. It has been such an uphill slog to gain respect for the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews, who paid with their own lives. There was as much, and as little, anti-Semitism in Poland as in Spain, France, Norway and most certainly in Germany, but this does not broad-brush the Polish people with the blame for these hideous wreckers of humanity and challenges to the human condition.
The camps were conceived in Germany, executed by Nazi officials, and set on Polish soil only for proximity to the victims (and to keep from offending the German sensibilities).
I was shocked to find my Polish gentile friends and their parents with the same blue tattoos on their arms as my Jewish friends in Chicago. Poles were kept in the death camps as long as they were useful for hard labor. Then they were summarily killed too.
The Nazi's --- I am so tempted to return evil for evil and simply call them German's --- had a plan to annihilate the majority of the Polish population to leave it as "living room" for their own people.
So let us be clear: The Polish people, Jewish and Gentile, were victims of the Nazi plan of genocide. The Poles were victims of the war, not (any more than elsewhere) collaborators.
If you want to talk about collaboration, let's sit down and talk about Vichy France. Why are we not still outraged and preoccupied, prejudiced about that? It is time for history to tell its story with integrity and honesty.
Peace to the memory of the victims of the Shoah, and to all those Polish gentiles who also died at the hands of the Nazi's and their death camps.
Because the Nazi's put their death camps -- Auschwitz, Treblinka, Majdanek, Birkenau -- out of their way on Polish soil,, it has become common to speak of the "Polish death camps."
Let's say this altogether: Nazi death camps. Nazi death camps. Nazi death camps.
The Polish experience of the death camps was death, not authority. They did not administer, run, rule or in any way have responsibility for what the occupation German forces did on their territory.
President Obama made the mistake again yesterday and we're up in arms. It has been such an uphill slog to gain respect for the Righteous Gentiles who saved Jews, who paid with their own lives. There was as much, and as little, anti-Semitism in Poland as in Spain, France, Norway and most certainly in Germany, but this does not broad-brush the Polish people with the blame for these hideous wreckers of humanity and challenges to the human condition.
The camps were conceived in Germany, executed by Nazi officials, and set on Polish soil only for proximity to the victims (and to keep from offending the German sensibilities).
I was shocked to find my Polish gentile friends and their parents with the same blue tattoos on their arms as my Jewish friends in Chicago. Poles were kept in the death camps as long as they were useful for hard labor. Then they were summarily killed too.
The Nazi's --- I am so tempted to return evil for evil and simply call them German's --- had a plan to annihilate the majority of the Polish population to leave it as "living room" for their own people.
So let us be clear: The Polish people, Jewish and Gentile, were victims of the Nazi plan of genocide. The Poles were victims of the war, not (any more than elsewhere) collaborators.
If you want to talk about collaboration, let's sit down and talk about Vichy France. Why are we not still outraged and preoccupied, prejudiced about that? It is time for history to tell its story with integrity and honesty.
Peace to the memory of the victims of the Shoah, and to all those Polish gentiles who also died at the hands of the Nazi's and their death camps.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Decoration Day
My mother taught me to drive in the cemetery.
It was the one place, she said, that I could not kill anybody. Also, she joked (she actually made a few jokes from year to year) that if I made a terrible mistake, well, we were already in the place where we would end up after all. She did not make me laugh often but this was her scandalous joke and she told it often, to anyone who would listen. I sometimes wonder if there was some secret humor she was keeping to herself, her last laugh at the dead.
At any rate... Generations of Andersons, Swansons, and Ericksons were buried in Linn Grove Cemetery. In Colorado we mean, by generations, at the most four or five but we went all that way back. My great-great grandfather August was out here for the post-gold rush gold rush by the 1860's. He was a miner in Gilpin County, Central City, long before Colorado became a state and he is listed with his brother in the 1870 census. Fortune failed them in gold country so they became "sod-busters" on the dry, desert plains north of Denver and were attracted later to the county north of Greeley between the Cache le Poudre and South Platte Rivers. Irrigation was invented and farms began to spring up.
C.V. and August wrangled the earth successfully, had bushels of children and children's children and managed to yield fine crops of sugar beets, potatoes, corn and hay.
When I was a kid, before learning to drive, we went to the Linn Grove Cemetery on Memorial Day and it was called Decoration Day. We put petunias on some graves and geraniums on others. If you want to know the truth, my cousins and I wandered around and played. As years went on, I became amazed at just how many Andersons and Swansons and Ericksons had been laid carefully to rest forever in this dry clay dirt.
I don't go to the cemetery anymore. I have learned to drive. I don't need it for that. And I have lost the sense of connection with all those ancestors too. Some I would just as soon forget forever. I inherited some weird DNA, there are some petty stories that bother me, and I just don't feel like I belong.
Some day this summer, though, I will find myself drawn to Linn Grove and stand over those graves and wonder about the ancients who came west on horseback and in wagons and on primitive trains. They came with guts and pick axes and shovels and Singer sewing machines like the one in our dining room. They could have stopped but they kept on coming. They could have found an established city or town to settle in but they kept on moving.
So maybe that line of connection is unbroken after all. I don't forge new ground with a pick ax or dig up much dirt with a hoe -- my garden is modest -- but that impulse to forge new adventures, push into the unknown, break new ground is still alive and compelling.
So maybe I'm no dirt farmer. But I belong.
It was the one place, she said, that I could not kill anybody. Also, she joked (she actually made a few jokes from year to year) that if I made a terrible mistake, well, we were already in the place where we would end up after all. She did not make me laugh often but this was her scandalous joke and she told it often, to anyone who would listen. I sometimes wonder if there was some secret humor she was keeping to herself, her last laugh at the dead.
At any rate... Generations of Andersons, Swansons, and Ericksons were buried in Linn Grove Cemetery. In Colorado we mean, by generations, at the most four or five but we went all that way back. My great-great grandfather August was out here for the post-gold rush gold rush by the 1860's. He was a miner in Gilpin County, Central City, long before Colorado became a state and he is listed with his brother in the 1870 census. Fortune failed them in gold country so they became "sod-busters" on the dry, desert plains north of Denver and were attracted later to the county north of Greeley between the Cache le Poudre and South Platte Rivers. Irrigation was invented and farms began to spring up.
C.V. and August wrangled the earth successfully, had bushels of children and children's children and managed to yield fine crops of sugar beets, potatoes, corn and hay.
When I was a kid, before learning to drive, we went to the Linn Grove Cemetery on Memorial Day and it was called Decoration Day. We put petunias on some graves and geraniums on others. If you want to know the truth, my cousins and I wandered around and played. As years went on, I became amazed at just how many Andersons and Swansons and Ericksons had been laid carefully to rest forever in this dry clay dirt.
I don't go to the cemetery anymore. I have learned to drive. I don't need it for that. And I have lost the sense of connection with all those ancestors too. Some I would just as soon forget forever. I inherited some weird DNA, there are some petty stories that bother me, and I just don't feel like I belong.
Some day this summer, though, I will find myself drawn to Linn Grove and stand over those graves and wonder about the ancients who came west on horseback and in wagons and on primitive trains. They came with guts and pick axes and shovels and Singer sewing machines like the one in our dining room. They could have stopped but they kept on coming. They could have found an established city or town to settle in but they kept on moving.
So maybe that line of connection is unbroken after all. I don't forge new ground with a pick ax or dig up much dirt with a hoe -- my garden is modest -- but that impulse to forge new adventures, push into the unknown, break new ground is still alive and compelling.
So maybe I'm no dirt farmer. But I belong.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Memorial Day 1982: New Fantasies
The afternoon was warm and gentle and I walked for hours among groves of graceful, whispering birches, listening to the joyful songs of birds well nurtured by nature, soaking up the warm restoring rays of an early summer sun.
All of this elegant beauty shouted aloud to me of the promise of God's goodness, the promises of new life, of resurrection. It was the presence of a new creation and the sure, constant presence of God's "fresh every morning" love.
Only one thing was wrong with this scene: I was walking through a cemetery. And not just any cemetery at that. 470,000 bodies lay in the ground under those gentle birches, most all of them in mounded, unmarked graves -- huge mounds of verdant fresh green grass as far as the eye could see. They were marked only with plaques that gave the year of death: 1942, 1943, 1944.
What began as an ordinary city cemetery became, in the years of World War II, a bloody shrine of Russian pain and humiliation. Leningrad, as it was then, was surrounded by Nazi troops for 900 days. Hitler's plan was to lay siege to the city and to starve and shell it into submission. At that he did not succeed. But for those 900 days, through two bitterly cold winters, the people of Leningrad endured daily bombings and struggled to survive and feed families on rations of two grams of bread -- the equivalent of one communion wafer -- a day.
In the end, hundreds of civilians died. More died from starvation and disease than from the bombs. All of them were victims of war. They were buried together, sometimes 5000 a day, a tangle of pain and loss under those mounds of now fresh earth. Now it was eerily quiet except for the song of birds and breath of breeze, and, ironically, beautiful except for those ugly grave markers.
Among my companions on that day long ago, a German friend. Three others were Soviets. Udo was in the most poignant position. Not only was he German, from Nurmberg, the designated 'enemy of the day,' his own uncle, a conscripted Nazi soldier had died on the other side of the lines at Leningrad. His body was buried who-knows-where in the countryside outside the city. Or was he buried here too? German blood mixed with Russian? He confessed his sense of guilt, even as a member of the new, young generation, the children of the war soldiers. He also expressed fear -- that we would blame him. And frustration, that the war ever happened, and dread: could it happen again? In those Cold War days, THE WAR was not so far behind us and yet another loomed as Europe filled up with warheads pointing every direction.
The moment came as Udo poured out his vulnerable soul to his friends, to us, that our Soviet friends came to surround him and put their hands first, tentatively, on his shoulders. Then it became a hugging, tears all around, and reconciliation. One generation forgiving the child of another. It was a moment I will never forget. Of forgiveness.
Forgiveness. Reconciliation. New thinking. Memory, not forgetting. But memory not beholden to the past.
As I look out on this Memorial Day, I remember that walk in the cemetery, Piskarovskoye. It is a hopeful memory. Poignant and tragic as it is, none of which can be washed away, it is yet a place where a new reality took root. A "new thinking" of peace, of understanding, letting go.
Beginning anew. We who are Christians call this resurrection. All of us who are human call this new possibility, fresh every day. We can wake up and be different. We can wake up and forgive. Let go. We can all be new.
The Soviets eventually, under Gorbachev, gave it a new word, "Perestroika." Remember those heady days? It is easy to lose heart but it is still possible, every day, each one doing our bit. Perestroika. New thinking. New fantasies of how it can be.
New doing.
May the memory of all who died be blessed and redeemed. And may we find a new fantasy that catches fire so the killing will end.
Peace.
All of this elegant beauty shouted aloud to me of the promise of God's goodness, the promises of new life, of resurrection. It was the presence of a new creation and the sure, constant presence of God's "fresh every morning" love.
Only one thing was wrong with this scene: I was walking through a cemetery. And not just any cemetery at that. 470,000 bodies lay in the ground under those gentle birches, most all of them in mounded, unmarked graves -- huge mounds of verdant fresh green grass as far as the eye could see. They were marked only with plaques that gave the year of death: 1942, 1943, 1944.
What began as an ordinary city cemetery became, in the years of World War II, a bloody shrine of Russian pain and humiliation. Leningrad, as it was then, was surrounded by Nazi troops for 900 days. Hitler's plan was to lay siege to the city and to starve and shell it into submission. At that he did not succeed. But for those 900 days, through two bitterly cold winters, the people of Leningrad endured daily bombings and struggled to survive and feed families on rations of two grams of bread -- the equivalent of one communion wafer -- a day.
In the end, hundreds of civilians died. More died from starvation and disease than from the bombs. All of them were victims of war. They were buried together, sometimes 5000 a day, a tangle of pain and loss under those mounds of now fresh earth. Now it was eerily quiet except for the song of birds and breath of breeze, and, ironically, beautiful except for those ugly grave markers.
Among my companions on that day long ago, a German friend. Three others were Soviets. Udo was in the most poignant position. Not only was he German, from Nurmberg, the designated 'enemy of the day,' his own uncle, a conscripted Nazi soldier had died on the other side of the lines at Leningrad. His body was buried who-knows-where in the countryside outside the city. Or was he buried here too? German blood mixed with Russian? He confessed his sense of guilt, even as a member of the new, young generation, the children of the war soldiers. He also expressed fear -- that we would blame him. And frustration, that the war ever happened, and dread: could it happen again? In those Cold War days, THE WAR was not so far behind us and yet another loomed as Europe filled up with warheads pointing every direction.
The moment came as Udo poured out his vulnerable soul to his friends, to us, that our Soviet friends came to surround him and put their hands first, tentatively, on his shoulders. Then it became a hugging, tears all around, and reconciliation. One generation forgiving the child of another. It was a moment I will never forget. Of forgiveness.
Forgiveness. Reconciliation. New thinking. Memory, not forgetting. But memory not beholden to the past.
As I look out on this Memorial Day, I remember that walk in the cemetery, Piskarovskoye. It is a hopeful memory. Poignant and tragic as it is, none of which can be washed away, it is yet a place where a new reality took root. A "new thinking" of peace, of understanding, letting go.
Beginning anew. We who are Christians call this resurrection. All of us who are human call this new possibility, fresh every day. We can wake up and be different. We can wake up and forgive. Let go. We can all be new.
The Soviets eventually, under Gorbachev, gave it a new word, "Perestroika." Remember those heady days? It is easy to lose heart but it is still possible, every day, each one doing our bit. Perestroika. New thinking. New fantasies of how it can be.
New doing.
May the memory of all who died be blessed and redeemed. And may we find a new fantasy that catches fire so the killing will end.
Peace.
Sunday, May 20, 2012
"And I think to myself, what a wonderful world"
Trees of green, skies of blue
And that is only the beginning.
Gratitude.
Today.
Walking into our funky untraditional church holding hands, a minute late because of the spectacular tennis match we had to finish watching first.
"Jesus prays for us."
Realizing how far I've come, through hellfire and damnation and I'm still here.
A survivor. Thriving (some days).
But not overcome with bitterness or hate. I may have got angry and I still fantasize the best pranks on the planet but I don't hate and I'm not preoccupied with evildoers.
I'm recovering from the trauma.
Still a bit perplexed at the power of evil unleashed in this world but not beholden to it.
Plus, an amazing partner who stood by me through ten years of hell and fear and threat.
He didn't have to have stayed. Most partners don't, I've learned. Most marriages break up.
And two daughters who, despite it all, are healthy and whole.
I have not become an addict --- also an exponential likelihood for folks like me.
I love to watch too much tennis and I don't exercise enough but that is fixable.
Besides all this, I have a closet full of clothes I love to wear.
And earrings and jewelry I like.
I like my hair.
I look better than I have in years.
I have a beautiful home to be steward of and share with whomever will come over.
I have books and books and books to stretch and tickle my mind.
I have a computer that works. And I know something of how to use my iPhone.
My world is full of gorgeous music all the time.
Our yard looks wonderful and gives us something to tend and nurture.
I have a piece of Polish china that thrills me more than it should.
I saw a moose --- three, in fact --- the other day.
I have a car that I love and loves me back as it takes me on terrific adventures.
I have a piano with almost all of the notes that play just fine.
And, as of today, I even have a leaf-blower, the sign of being a true grown-up.
I have an extended family, brother, sisters, in-laws that love me for who I am.
I have a community that is fragile but fresh and inspiring.
I am learning a completely new skill at this advanced stage of life and doing not half bad.
I have something meaningful to do with my time and skill and imagination.
I have time.
I have laughter.
I have lots of love in my life.
I could go on and on and that alone is something to say "Yay!" about.
But most of all is this, I have a grateful spirit.
Today. And hopefully, tomorrow.
I am a blessed woman, so very lucky, fortunate.
That is what fills my mind and my heart today.
It's not all perfect. It never will be. Like an amputee, I lost something important. But like a survivor, I am learning how to live without what is gone and to be joyful about what is here. I am learning how to cope with nightmares, panic attacks, memory loss. I am learning that I may be traumatized but I am also strong enough to manage it, if not immediately, then ultimately.
Jesus prays for me. I like that. He prays that I not succumb to hatred and a hard heart. He prays that I not return evil for evil. He prays that I have courage and kindness and peace. And he prays that I will be free. Free indeed.
I find Jesus' prayer taking shape within me, every day, up and down, over and out, around and around. But some way or another, Jesus' is still taking shape within me.
And for that, most of all, I am very very grateful.
And that is only the beginning.
Gratitude.
Today.
Walking into our funky untraditional church holding hands, a minute late because of the spectacular tennis match we had to finish watching first.
"Jesus prays for us."
Realizing how far I've come, through hellfire and damnation and I'm still here.
A survivor. Thriving (some days).
But not overcome with bitterness or hate. I may have got angry and I still fantasize the best pranks on the planet but I don't hate and I'm not preoccupied with evildoers.
I'm recovering from the trauma.
Still a bit perplexed at the power of evil unleashed in this world but not beholden to it.
Plus, an amazing partner who stood by me through ten years of hell and fear and threat.
He didn't have to have stayed. Most partners don't, I've learned. Most marriages break up.
And two daughters who, despite it all, are healthy and whole.
I have not become an addict --- also an exponential likelihood for folks like me.
I love to watch too much tennis and I don't exercise enough but that is fixable.
Besides all this, I have a closet full of clothes I love to wear.
And earrings and jewelry I like.
I like my hair.
I look better than I have in years.
I have a beautiful home to be steward of and share with whomever will come over.
I have books and books and books to stretch and tickle my mind.
I have a computer that works. And I know something of how to use my iPhone.
My world is full of gorgeous music all the time.
Our yard looks wonderful and gives us something to tend and nurture.
I have a piece of Polish china that thrills me more than it should.
I saw a moose --- three, in fact --- the other day.
I have a car that I love and loves me back as it takes me on terrific adventures.
I have a piano with almost all of the notes that play just fine.
And, as of today, I even have a leaf-blower, the sign of being a true grown-up.
I have an extended family, brother, sisters, in-laws that love me for who I am.
I have a community that is fragile but fresh and inspiring.
I am learning a completely new skill at this advanced stage of life and doing not half bad.
I have something meaningful to do with my time and skill and imagination.
I have time.
I have laughter.
I have lots of love in my life.
I could go on and on and that alone is something to say "Yay!" about.
But most of all is this, I have a grateful spirit.
Today. And hopefully, tomorrow.
I am a blessed woman, so very lucky, fortunate.
That is what fills my mind and my heart today.
It's not all perfect. It never will be. Like an amputee, I lost something important. But like a survivor, I am learning how to live without what is gone and to be joyful about what is here. I am learning how to cope with nightmares, panic attacks, memory loss. I am learning that I may be traumatized but I am also strong enough to manage it, if not immediately, then ultimately.
Jesus prays for me. I like that. He prays that I not succumb to hatred and a hard heart. He prays that I not return evil for evil. He prays that I have courage and kindness and peace. And he prays that I will be free. Free indeed.
I find Jesus' prayer taking shape within me, every day, up and down, over and out, around and around. But some way or another, Jesus' is still taking shape within me.
And for that, most of all, I am very very grateful.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
To wait, perhaps to putter
Waiting is not an empty time.
I am writing this with some fear and trepidation, to reveal the inner life of a family waiting for a holy and good death. We wait. We are waiting. We are simply waiting.
How do we wait? The one who waits for death is quiet, acquiescent, kind, humble, and exceptionally gracious.
I want to write honestly about this. He knows we are hovering around, busying ourselves with many things, mostly for his comfort, yet we are just waiting. How can he be so kind, so loving, so merciful to the ministrations of a family that is existing simply to serve him?
I see him in his chair, as comfortable as one can be in the circumstances, and listen to his measured answers, "that would be good;" "yes, that would be nice;" "Okay, it is okay." He answers questions with an equanimity that would fail me completely.
As I, the daughter-in-law, the 'spare part,' as I jokingly called myself, watch these loving ministrations and hear the considerate questions, I am stunned by his grace.
"Go away and leave me alone," is what I feel I'd be likely to say.
He waits, knowing he waits, knowing we are waiting, knowing he knows we know he knows we are waiting, waiting, for one inevitable outcome. There is but one.
He waits, knowing that we who are a thousand miles from home are here for one reason, to wait. To watch. To make the most of the time we have. But finally it comes down to this, we are waiting. Time out of time.
It feels like holy time. And it feels like ordinary time. We are busy with things like flower arranging, baking, cooking, the ongoing press of business. Yet it all stops to wait at least once an hour. We look for signs.
It all feels morbid. And it all feels sacred. And there we have it. As the sages have said, there is no divide. All of life is holy. And, frankly, all of life is at least a bit morbid.
Those of us who plan to go on living for awhile are worrying about blood pressure and growing moles on our cheeks. Morbid, if you ask me. Long-term care insurance, morbid. Reminders of our morbidity. But we wonder too about college choices and shoes and soccer matches and savor the exquisite flavors of Luce's artichoke dip. We play the piano. We sing.
Waiting is a holy ordinary time. There is no other.
I am writing this with some fear and trepidation, to reveal the inner life of a family waiting for a holy and good death. We wait. We are waiting. We are simply waiting.
How do we wait? The one who waits for death is quiet, acquiescent, kind, humble, and exceptionally gracious.
I want to write honestly about this. He knows we are hovering around, busying ourselves with many things, mostly for his comfort, yet we are just waiting. How can he be so kind, so loving, so merciful to the ministrations of a family that is existing simply to serve him?
I see him in his chair, as comfortable as one can be in the circumstances, and listen to his measured answers, "that would be good;" "yes, that would be nice;" "Okay, it is okay." He answers questions with an equanimity that would fail me completely.
As I, the daughter-in-law, the 'spare part,' as I jokingly called myself, watch these loving ministrations and hear the considerate questions, I am stunned by his grace.
"Go away and leave me alone," is what I feel I'd be likely to say.
He waits, knowing he waits, knowing we are waiting, knowing he knows we know he knows we are waiting, waiting, for one inevitable outcome. There is but one.
He waits, knowing that we who are a thousand miles from home are here for one reason, to wait. To watch. To make the most of the time we have. But finally it comes down to this, we are waiting. Time out of time.
It feels like holy time. And it feels like ordinary time. We are busy with things like flower arranging, baking, cooking, the ongoing press of business. Yet it all stops to wait at least once an hour. We look for signs.
It all feels morbid. And it all feels sacred. And there we have it. As the sages have said, there is no divide. All of life is holy. And, frankly, all of life is at least a bit morbid.
Those of us who plan to go on living for awhile are worrying about blood pressure and growing moles on our cheeks. Morbid, if you ask me. Long-term care insurance, morbid. Reminders of our morbidity. But we wonder too about college choices and shoes and soccer matches and savor the exquisite flavors of Luce's artichoke dip. We play the piano. We sing.
Waiting is a holy ordinary time. There is no other.
Monday, April 23, 2012
Blog suspended temporarily due to family illness
It is impossible to pretend to be back in Poland and write about those wonderful adventures when we are all feeling concerned about the health of my husband's father. It is where my mind is and will be for awhile. Don has a form of leukemia/lymphoma and it is serious.
We find ourselves feeling surrounded by loving friends and family -- and I'm going to leave you with that for now. Keep Don in your thoughts and prayers.
Peace,
Jan
We find ourselves feeling surrounded by loving friends and family -- and I'm going to leave you with that for now. Keep Don in your thoughts and prayers.
Peace,
Jan
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Life always happens when you're not quite ready
The flight was due to leave Denver at 4:50 p.m. on Thursday.
On the day before, Wednesday, at 4:50, we learned by accident that our flight had been rescheduled and we'd be leaving on Thursday morning at 10.
Procrastination is not a good strategy for those who are preparing to travel.
A quick trip to the pharmacy to complete errands we'd planned to accomplish on Thursday morning. Discovered a prescription called for a medicine that didn't exist. Emergency call to physician. Gentle, reassuring, patient and persistent pharmacists who worked overtime to take care of things. Prescription filled. I could proceed.
Back at home to finish packing. And a short night's sleep.
And we were off.
Going to Poland is always emotionally fraught for me. So many memories, so much expectation, so many disappointments, heartbreak, exhilaration.
But this time Dave was coming along. And what a joy that was.
We hurried up and waited. Discovered that TSA missed some forgotten liquids in our carry-on luggage.
Flew off into the clouds and through the night, watched three movies to stifle the nerves, a long lay-over at Heathrow, excellent French Onion Soup in terminal three, and then...
do Warsawaw, to Warsaw.
A city bus to our Five-Star Hotel and a gracious, elegant Old World welcome.
Arrival. Settle in. Go exploring. Settle nerves. Gawk with amazement.
Warsaw. A city of utter devastation in 1945. Nothing, nothing but rubble. And now, here we are, living again on the rubble of the past and finding a thriving, forward-leaning city.
Warsaw is not just its past anymore. It is its future. And that is all around! Especially in the university students that are our neighbors.
Poland is not built on rubble anymore. It is built on dreams.
On the day before, Wednesday, at 4:50, we learned by accident that our flight had been rescheduled and we'd be leaving on Thursday morning at 10.
Procrastination is not a good strategy for those who are preparing to travel.
A quick trip to the pharmacy to complete errands we'd planned to accomplish on Thursday morning. Discovered a prescription called for a medicine that didn't exist. Emergency call to physician. Gentle, reassuring, patient and persistent pharmacists who worked overtime to take care of things. Prescription filled. I could proceed.
Back at home to finish packing. And a short night's sleep.
And we were off.
Going to Poland is always emotionally fraught for me. So many memories, so much expectation, so many disappointments, heartbreak, exhilaration.
But this time Dave was coming along. And what a joy that was.
We hurried up and waited. Discovered that TSA missed some forgotten liquids in our carry-on luggage.
Flew off into the clouds and through the night, watched three movies to stifle the nerves, a long lay-over at Heathrow, excellent French Onion Soup in terminal three, and then...
do Warsawaw, to Warsaw.
A city bus to our Five-Star Hotel and a gracious, elegant Old World welcome.
Arrival. Settle in. Go exploring. Settle nerves. Gawk with amazement.
Warsaw. A city of utter devastation in 1945. Nothing, nothing but rubble. And now, here we are, living again on the rubble of the past and finding a thriving, forward-leaning city.
Warsaw is not just its past anymore. It is its future. And that is all around! Especially in the university students that are our neighbors.
Poland is not built on rubble anymore. It is built on dreams.
Sunday, April 1, 2012
Most this amazing day
There is no way one can say I didn't squeeze the very most out of life on this planet today.
Simple pleasures. All.
Coffee on the back porch looking out at the apple tree loaded with white blossoms and another that is brilliant pink. Birds going nuts in the warmth. The sound of the breeze in the tall fir trees and rustling the aspen. Warmth on my face, my arms, my toes. A true blue blaze of sky. The spiritual breeze gently stirring around and on and within me. Clear bell wind chimes singing the song.
There is a very special Colorado whirring fresh brush stroke that moves through the air and it kept me company all morning. The aspen are leafing out even as I watch. A time lapse camera would reveal their progress from morning until late afternoon. Likewise the apple tree: I sit and watch as they literally open up one-by-one-by-a-dozen.
Dave's company when he gets home from church. We sit and sigh. And watch the aspen metamorphosis. Then time for tennis. A great championship match. A trip to the garden store for a few more supplies. And a trip to the book store -- can it be better?
Then pie. And home for a late afternoon date with trees and bees and a lone white butterfly, lemonade from girls on the corner (50 cents for a medium) and a visit from Lola the pup across the street.
It hit 80 degrees but felt more like 75 all day and we soaked it all in --- the neighbors' forsythia, our busting-out tulips, the lone daffodil. And a big bouquet of pink popppies.
And now it's NCAA Women's basketball; time to text-chat with Kaia and decapitate my chocolate bunny.
These is more to life, I suppose. But I don't need it. This is the life. This.
Simple pleasures. All.
Coffee on the back porch looking out at the apple tree loaded with white blossoms and another that is brilliant pink. Birds going nuts in the warmth. The sound of the breeze in the tall fir trees and rustling the aspen. Warmth on my face, my arms, my toes. A true blue blaze of sky. The spiritual breeze gently stirring around and on and within me. Clear bell wind chimes singing the song.
There is a very special Colorado whirring fresh brush stroke that moves through the air and it kept me company all morning. The aspen are leafing out even as I watch. A time lapse camera would reveal their progress from morning until late afternoon. Likewise the apple tree: I sit and watch as they literally open up one-by-one-by-a-dozen.
Dave's company when he gets home from church. We sit and sigh. And watch the aspen metamorphosis. Then time for tennis. A great championship match. A trip to the garden store for a few more supplies. And a trip to the book store -- can it be better?
Then pie. And home for a late afternoon date with trees and bees and a lone white butterfly, lemonade from girls on the corner (50 cents for a medium) and a visit from Lola the pup across the street.
It hit 80 degrees but felt more like 75 all day and we soaked it all in --- the neighbors' forsythia, our busting-out tulips, the lone daffodil. And a big bouquet of pink popppies.
And now it's NCAA Women's basketball; time to text-chat with Kaia and decapitate my chocolate bunny.
These is more to life, I suppose. But I don't need it. This is the life. This.
Thursday, March 29, 2012
Adrienne Rich: Soundtrack of my life
"Let us return to imperfection's school, no longer wandering after Plato's ghost."
....Adrienne Rich
Daily. Every single day. Some phrase of Adrienne Rich goes through my mind or I use it to clarify a point in conversation.
"She [Marie Curie] died a famous woman denying her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power."
"Truth is not one thing or another but an ever-increasing complexity."
Rich died yesterday at 82 and I feel as though a companion has gone away. But the lovely thing about poets is that their wisdom is timeless and always accessible. I will continue to ponder these truths and so so many others for the rest of my days. They are as imprinted in my mind as my name. I view the world through these eyes, of ever-increasing complexity. I have learned that our wounds come from the same source as our power And that we do well to stop wandering after Plato's ghost. And so much more.
There are songs, too, that make up the sound track of my life but I have to say that Adrienne Rich's poetry is more constant than any one song. I'm so grateful for her wisdom and her courage.
God did a real good thing when She partnered with Adrienne to teach the world its truth.
....Adrienne Rich
Daily. Every single day. Some phrase of Adrienne Rich goes through my mind or I use it to clarify a point in conversation.
"She [Marie Curie] died a famous woman denying her wounds
denying
her wounds came from the same source as her power."
"Truth is not one thing or another but an ever-increasing complexity."
Rich died yesterday at 82 and I feel as though a companion has gone away. But the lovely thing about poets is that their wisdom is timeless and always accessible. I will continue to ponder these truths and so so many others for the rest of my days. They are as imprinted in my mind as my name. I view the world through these eyes, of ever-increasing complexity. I have learned that our wounds come from the same source as our power And that we do well to stop wandering after Plato's ghost. And so much more.
There are songs, too, that make up the sound track of my life but I have to say that Adrienne Rich's poetry is more constant than any one song. I'm so grateful for her wisdom and her courage.
God did a real good thing when She partnered with Adrienne to teach the world its truth.
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Cleaning out the closets
Closets need fresh air
That's the trouble with closets.
Closets are almost always small, closed off, interior rooms that have no access to fresh air or light. They get stale and messy and they are always filled with dark corners and, in fact, the closet itself is generally dark unless there is an artificial source of light that is turned on. Most of us know our way around our own closets so well that we can stumble around in the dim light and find our shirts, the checked one, and shoes, the stinky ones. Closets need exposure.
My gay and lesbian friends talk about coming out of the closet. Hurray!
My issue is a bit different. It is a different closet and a different set of issues. But then, not altogether different, I guess.
My closet needs some fresh air, natural light. My closet needs me to get out of it, too.
My closet is shame.
It is shame from a terrible experience that happened to me that seems to be nobody else's concern, that is, not beyond my faithfully wonderful family.
My closet is PTSD. I am not a war veteran. I don't get pages in the New York Times or coverage in Newsweek. I remember when the first war vets were being diagnosed with PTSD and I was so very glad they were getting the public attention and care they deserved. Now it seems the pages are filled with stories -- as there should be -- of PTSD suffering and war veterans.
But nobody writes about me. Not that I am a narcissist. That is not the point anyway. The point is to have a fellowship of suffering, a community of folks who see the world as you do, who freak out when you do, who cower in their closets of shame like you do. Community. Solidarity.
Clergy. Clergy who have been battered and beaten. That is my community. And nobody writes about us. We are the church's dirty little secret. That we happen. That terrible stuff happens to us. No one wants to know. Any articles written about us are sanitized beyond the point of our recognizing ourselves and what happened to us.
There is power in community. But nobody knows -- or has said -- how many ELCA clergy are disabled due to PTSD, depression, battering. We don't know one another. And, frankly, we are so shuttered in our own silos of depression and mistrust that we are not the ones who are most likely to reach out and find one another.
Well, this is a start. A modest proposal. If you trust me, let me know. We will continue to live without recognition, respect for our struggles, concern for our condition until we ourselves ask for it, maybe even demand it. No one, no bishop is going to come looking for us. We are their worst nightmares. In some cases, they are ours. But we need to find a way to clean out our own closets of shame and depression, of shell-shock and shattered trust.
And the way to do it is the way the military has begun its work with veterans: by drawing the victims together.
Can we do that? We can.
That's the trouble with closets.
Closets are almost always small, closed off, interior rooms that have no access to fresh air or light. They get stale and messy and they are always filled with dark corners and, in fact, the closet itself is generally dark unless there is an artificial source of light that is turned on. Most of us know our way around our own closets so well that we can stumble around in the dim light and find our shirts, the checked one, and shoes, the stinky ones. Closets need exposure.
My gay and lesbian friends talk about coming out of the closet. Hurray!
My issue is a bit different. It is a different closet and a different set of issues. But then, not altogether different, I guess.
My closet needs some fresh air, natural light. My closet needs me to get out of it, too.
My closet is shame.
It is shame from a terrible experience that happened to me that seems to be nobody else's concern, that is, not beyond my faithfully wonderful family.
My closet is PTSD. I am not a war veteran. I don't get pages in the New York Times or coverage in Newsweek. I remember when the first war vets were being diagnosed with PTSD and I was so very glad they were getting the public attention and care they deserved. Now it seems the pages are filled with stories -- as there should be -- of PTSD suffering and war veterans.
But nobody writes about me. Not that I am a narcissist. That is not the point anyway. The point is to have a fellowship of suffering, a community of folks who see the world as you do, who freak out when you do, who cower in their closets of shame like you do. Community. Solidarity.
Clergy. Clergy who have been battered and beaten. That is my community. And nobody writes about us. We are the church's dirty little secret. That we happen. That terrible stuff happens to us. No one wants to know. Any articles written about us are sanitized beyond the point of our recognizing ourselves and what happened to us.
There is power in community. But nobody knows -- or has said -- how many ELCA clergy are disabled due to PTSD, depression, battering. We don't know one another. And, frankly, we are so shuttered in our own silos of depression and mistrust that we are not the ones who are most likely to reach out and find one another.
Well, this is a start. A modest proposal. If you trust me, let me know. We will continue to live without recognition, respect for our struggles, concern for our condition until we ourselves ask for it, maybe even demand it. No one, no bishop is going to come looking for us. We are their worst nightmares. In some cases, they are ours. But we need to find a way to clean out our own closets of shame and depression, of shell-shock and shattered trust.
And the way to do it is the way the military has begun its work with veterans: by drawing the victims together.
Can we do that? We can.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...."
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!
"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.
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.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Team spirit
We could at least start with name tags; I hate name tags.
But I suppose I might be persuaded to wear one if everyone else did.
I was thinking tonight about pulling together instead of ripping apart.
The President's reference to uniformed soldiers got me to thinking, maybe we should all wear uniforms.
But my friend went to North Korea and that's what they do there and it creeped her out. So, never mind. But.
What if we wore name tags, so we at least could be known by name to one another? Would that help? Am I grasping at straws? I just want us to pull together. To get in the mindset that we need to find common ground. To all pitch in and work in some semblance of cooperation.
Not in lockstep, like the North Koreans. No!
But can we find a way? Calling one another names, calling one another stupid --- what does that accomplish?
My friend, Carole, pastors a blue collar congregation near Chicago. Its members used to work in manufacturing. Now, 9 - 15 new families per week are showing up at the church's food pantry.
We have a lot of hard work to do. If we all wore boy scout or girl scout uniforms, or football uniforms or cheerleader uniforms or streetsweeper uniforms, would we feel more united?
We sure need to do something.
But I suppose I might be persuaded to wear one if everyone else did.
I was thinking tonight about pulling together instead of ripping apart.
The President's reference to uniformed soldiers got me to thinking, maybe we should all wear uniforms.
But my friend went to North Korea and that's what they do there and it creeped her out. So, never mind. But.
What if we wore name tags, so we at least could be known by name to one another? Would that help? Am I grasping at straws? I just want us to pull together. To get in the mindset that we need to find common ground. To all pitch in and work in some semblance of cooperation.
Not in lockstep, like the North Koreans. No!
But can we find a way? Calling one another names, calling one another stupid --- what does that accomplish?
My friend, Carole, pastors a blue collar congregation near Chicago. Its members used to work in manufacturing. Now, 9 - 15 new families per week are showing up at the church's food pantry.
We have a lot of hard work to do. If we all wore boy scout or girl scout uniforms, or football uniforms or cheerleader uniforms or streetsweeper uniforms, would we feel more united?
We sure need to do something.
Monday, January 23, 2012
If I Hate You Will You Just Go Away?
Or do I have to kill you to make my point?
I am not by nature an alarmist. I take chances. I generally assume the best of people.
But I am seriously concerned.
The hateful rhetoric in this country has been racheted up to a frightening degree. There is too much hate.
NEWS FLASH FOLKS: Barack Obama is a Christian, JUST LIKE ME. Barack Obama is a capitalist, JUST LIKE ME. Barack Obama is a generous and kind human being who is undeserving of the horrid rhetoric that circulates around the internet and shows up on talk shows and even by presidential candidates in their debates.
These attempts to dehumanize "the enemy" are the first on a slippery slope that goes nowhere but down. Down, Down, Down. For you too. You are what you hate. It's opposite, but the same.
Please, stop. Think. It grieves my heart that you circulate this hateful tripe. It is without basis, it is mean, it is dangerous.
As the recipient of a potentially deadly attack motivated by baseless hysteria, I speak with some authority. It is far too close from Hate to Action. Don't be among those who stir up the lunatics to outrageous behavior. They are waiting to know you sanction their acts. Don't do it.
I am so grateful for my parents who taught me tolerance. They weren't perfect but they taught me that people around the world are the same, only different. That no one deserves to be hated and no one deserves the kind of vitriol we hear now.
You are Christians, just like your President. Please rise to the standard of your call in Christ; as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him.
Peace and grace to you all!
I am not by nature an alarmist. I take chances. I generally assume the best of people.
But I am seriously concerned.
The hateful rhetoric in this country has been racheted up to a frightening degree. There is too much hate.
NEWS FLASH FOLKS: Barack Obama is a Christian, JUST LIKE ME. Barack Obama is a capitalist, JUST LIKE ME. Barack Obama is a generous and kind human being who is undeserving of the horrid rhetoric that circulates around the internet and shows up on talk shows and even by presidential candidates in their debates.
These attempts to dehumanize "the enemy" are the first on a slippery slope that goes nowhere but down. Down, Down, Down. For you too. You are what you hate. It's opposite, but the same.
Please, stop. Think. It grieves my heart that you circulate this hateful tripe. It is without basis, it is mean, it is dangerous.
As the recipient of a potentially deadly attack motivated by baseless hysteria, I speak with some authority. It is far too close from Hate to Action. Don't be among those who stir up the lunatics to outrageous behavior. They are waiting to know you sanction their acts. Don't do it.
I am so grateful for my parents who taught me tolerance. They weren't perfect but they taught me that people around the world are the same, only different. That no one deserves to be hated and no one deserves the kind of vitriol we hear now.
You are Christians, just like your President. Please rise to the standard of your call in Christ; as you have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so live in him.
Peace and grace to you all!
Monday, January 16, 2012
Colorado Dreamin'
a dream deferred is a dream denied
___Lorraine Hansbury
Today we are all about dreaming. Specific dreaming. "I have a dream today..."
We are so far from fulfilling that dream.
It is hard not to lose heart, become apathetic, depressed.
I confess to all the above.
Is there something we can do? Always. Always. Big, little, stupendous, simple.
What can you do?
For starters, listen or watch the Tavis Smiley special on Poverty tonight, tomorrow, and Wednesday on PBS. It is a sparkling, fire-cracker, stunning conversation between Cornel West, Suze Ormann -- that's right, a Suze Ormann like you've never heard her before! Barbara Ehrenreich, Roger Clay,
Roger Moore and others. Very profound discussion.
What else can you do? It's a beautiful day for dreaming.
___Lorraine Hansbury
Today we are all about dreaming. Specific dreaming. "I have a dream today..."
We are so far from fulfilling that dream.
It is hard not to lose heart, become apathetic, depressed.
I confess to all the above.
Is there something we can do? Always. Always. Big, little, stupendous, simple.
What can you do?
For starters, listen or watch the Tavis Smiley special on Poverty tonight, tomorrow, and Wednesday on PBS. It is a sparkling, fire-cracker, stunning conversation between Cornel West, Suze Ormann -- that's right, a Suze Ormann like you've never heard her before! Barbara Ehrenreich, Roger Clay,
Roger Moore and others. Very profound discussion.
What else can you do? It's a beautiful day for dreaming.
Sunday, January 1, 2012
First of all, it's "pundit," right?
We spent the evening, pre-bubbles, wondering what a pundent was.
Great speller, am I not? What is a pundent? Someone should create one.
But the real question for today is, "Why is there air?"
"To blow up volleyballs with."
___Bill Cosby
I like simplicity. I like it a lot. But life is not simple. Complexity is a gift.
Cosby's humor may remind us that there are a lot of answers, some quite simple, some simplistic, to life's biggest questions. Or to our most urgent questions.
I'm wrestling with a few big ones. And simple answers would be wonderful. But they all ring false. Perhaps there are true, simple answers to some important questions. But the most of the time, we have work to do.
Questions don't beget answers; they give birth to other questions.
As you walk, run, plunge, waddle or scoot into this new year, what questions do you need to ask, to guide you to where you may be going?
Great speller, am I not? What is a pundent? Someone should create one.
But the real question for today is, "Why is there air?"
"To blow up volleyballs with."
___Bill Cosby
I like simplicity. I like it a lot. But life is not simple. Complexity is a gift.
Cosby's humor may remind us that there are a lot of answers, some quite simple, some simplistic, to life's biggest questions. Or to our most urgent questions.
I'm wrestling with a few big ones. And simple answers would be wonderful. But they all ring false. Perhaps there are true, simple answers to some important questions. But the most of the time, we have work to do.
Questions don't beget answers; they give birth to other questions.
As you walk, run, plunge, waddle or scoot into this new year, what questions do you need to ask, to guide you to where you may be going?
Saturday, December 31, 2011
What is the question?
What is the question?
Waddling in to this new year (hey, I had pasta for dinner), it is time for a new approach to this resolution business. No resolutions, questions instead.
A pundent on television last week suggested that we find those things we are drawn to, perhaps know we should do, want to do, hope to do and find questions to ask ourselves about them.
So, What do you want in your life this year? What might you do to bring it closer?
Rather than resolve to lose weight, I am asking myself what steps I can take to be healthy?
My greatest hope for this new year is to continue to be covered with grace and to extend grace to others so they feel covered by it, too. What shall I do tomorrow to put myself in the pathway where grace might find me? What can I do to share the grace of unconditional acceptance and forgiving energy with others?
So, as you approach this new year -- waddling, running, skipping, sleeping or otherwise -- what are your questions of yourself?
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Milestone marks momentum
I forgot to notice the anniversary of the the Declaration of War in Poland.
On Sunday, December 13, 1980 -- thirty years ago -- Poland declared war on itself. We called it Martial Law. They called it war.
I woke to the news and was traumatized like everyone else in and in love with Poland. Tanks on the streets, three-man patrols marching in lock-step on the sidewalks. It was the start of a terrible last chapter of Moscow-heavy, thug-driven rule in Poland.
Most significantly, it shut down Solidarity, the rogue labor and social movement that had been growing through the past months. It was viewed as a serious threat to Communist rule. Hundreds were sent to prisons and draconian regulations were imposed on society. Months later, my good friend told me, "I don't think at all."
Those are the words of a man suffering from a traumatic distorder. I recognize those words, and know them all too well.
This year is the 30th Anniversary of Martial Law, or Poland's war on itself.
And I was so busy celebrating Sancta Lucia on that same time, I forgot!
I count this a victory. In an odd way, it feels like I'm moving on. It takes away nothing, none of my empathy for Poles. But it is a positive sign of looking forward, looking and diving deeply into life, rather than looking back and focusing on trauma and sadness.
For the first time in 30 years I didn't feel it in my bones, in my senses, my body. I was too busy living. I hope that we never forget the sacrifices others make but I hope the Polish people can get to where I am, so deeply in love with living that death doesn't hold as much power as it did.
The light returns!
Belated, and sincere, Happy Lucia! Happy Light!
On Sunday, December 13, 1980 -- thirty years ago -- Poland declared war on itself. We called it Martial Law. They called it war.
I woke to the news and was traumatized like everyone else in and in love with Poland. Tanks on the streets, three-man patrols marching in lock-step on the sidewalks. It was the start of a terrible last chapter of Moscow-heavy, thug-driven rule in Poland.
Most significantly, it shut down Solidarity, the rogue labor and social movement that had been growing through the past months. It was viewed as a serious threat to Communist rule. Hundreds were sent to prisons and draconian regulations were imposed on society. Months later, my good friend told me, "I don't think at all."
Those are the words of a man suffering from a traumatic distorder. I recognize those words, and know them all too well.
This year is the 30th Anniversary of Martial Law, or Poland's war on itself.
And I was so busy celebrating Sancta Lucia on that same time, I forgot!
I count this a victory. In an odd way, it feels like I'm moving on. It takes away nothing, none of my empathy for Poles. But it is a positive sign of looking forward, looking and diving deeply into life, rather than looking back and focusing on trauma and sadness.
For the first time in 30 years I didn't feel it in my bones, in my senses, my body. I was too busy living. I hope that we never forget the sacrifices others make but I hope the Polish people can get to where I am, so deeply in love with living that death doesn't hold as much power as it did.
The light returns!
Belated, and sincere, Happy Lucia! Happy Light!
Friday, December 9, 2011
In honor of Kaia's birthday, call your Congressman
Kaia is lucky: Keith Ellison is her congressional representative.
He will vote on behalf of the 160 million who will be devastated by the failure of Congress to act on the payroll tax, and for the 6 million who are about to lose their unemployment benefits.
Kaia came to this world 24 years ago already an activist. She was here at her time, on her own terms and she has made an impact wherever she's been. An impact for kindness, justice, equality, education, and goodness. We saw it in her as a young child. We saw it grow and become more sophisticated, nuanced, developed, confirmed. She always looked for the "least of these" and always sought their best interests. She gave herself, her time, her sacrifices to love and care for sweet children in Estonia, young girls in South Africa, and immigrant kids in Denver.
Now she is committing herself to a lifetime of medical service among the poor and underserved.
Let me be blunt, if you care of such matters, as I do, "what would Jesus do?" Jesus would not be acting as we're seeing the GOP act right now. It is partisan because they have made it so. Anything to make Obama fail. Jesus would not be about that. He would be with the poor. He would be forceful in his payroll tax fight.
I'm sure Kaia will love to receive your greetings. But I'll bet she would rather we all do right, make those calls, and pray for a compassionate Christmas for God's people. Compassion has a clarity of focus that takes the form of legislation, tax cuts, benefits. Compassion is Christmas.
And Kaia loves LOVES Christmas!
Kaia, Happy birthday, wonderful woman! I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for all you've taught and challenged me to do. Love you lots!
He will vote on behalf of the 160 million who will be devastated by the failure of Congress to act on the payroll tax, and for the 6 million who are about to lose their unemployment benefits.
Kaia came to this world 24 years ago already an activist. She was here at her time, on her own terms and she has made an impact wherever she's been. An impact for kindness, justice, equality, education, and goodness. We saw it in her as a young child. We saw it grow and become more sophisticated, nuanced, developed, confirmed. She always looked for the "least of these" and always sought their best interests. She gave herself, her time, her sacrifices to love and care for sweet children in Estonia, young girls in South Africa, and immigrant kids in Denver.
Now she is committing herself to a lifetime of medical service among the poor and underserved.
Let me be blunt, if you care of such matters, as I do, "what would Jesus do?" Jesus would not be acting as we're seeing the GOP act right now. It is partisan because they have made it so. Anything to make Obama fail. Jesus would not be about that. He would be with the poor. He would be forceful in his payroll tax fight.
I'm sure Kaia will love to receive your greetings. But I'll bet she would rather we all do right, make those calls, and pray for a compassionate Christmas for God's people. Compassion has a clarity of focus that takes the form of legislation, tax cuts, benefits. Compassion is Christmas.
And Kaia loves LOVES Christmas!
Kaia, Happy birthday, wonderful woman! I'm so glad you're here. Thanks for all you've taught and challenged me to do. Love you lots!
Thursday, December 8, 2011
Ralph Waldo Gingrich, no, Perry, no, Palin, no Romney
My poor head has been banging against this piece of paper all week.
It's an article from last Sunday's New York Times Magazine by Benjamin Anastas. If I weren't so damn determined to be self-reliant and refuse to ask for help, I could find how to post the link. But look it up on Google, how's that. Great article: "The Foul Reign of 'Self-Reliance'."
Ralph Waldo Emerson is the ultimate non-conformist, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." The movement with which he was associated is known as Transcendentalism and is generally viewed with grave suspicion by those who might be known as the Religious Right for its emphasis on the primacy of the individual's conscious and desires, even happiness, at the cost of following the tenets of their claim of the Bible's supreme truth.
Now the irony. The behavior and ideological orientation of the GOP and the Right looks an awful lot like "foul self-reliance" and individualism. Emerson wasn't big on responsibility to the community, or to one's neighbor, for that matter. Take care of yourself. Love yourself above all others. NIMBY.
The issue raises its pesky head especially as we grapple with "the issue of our time" (Pres. Obama), that of the inequality of wealth in this country (to say nothing of the rest of the world). The traditional transcendentalists, those Harvard liberals, would be expected to say, "Who cares?" about the poor. Or, in other words, "Let them eat cake." Some say that.
But what is surprising? The Bible Belt says "Let them eat cake." And, "who cares?" Newt Gingrich this week sounded just like old Ralph Waldo himself as he proposed having poor children go to work. And he appeals most to religious (Christian) voters.
Go figure.
What makes your head spin?
It's an article from last Sunday's New York Times Magazine by Benjamin Anastas. If I weren't so damn determined to be self-reliant and refuse to ask for help, I could find how to post the link. But look it up on Google, how's that. Great article: "The Foul Reign of 'Self-Reliance'."
Ralph Waldo Emerson is the ultimate non-conformist, "Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your own mind." The movement with which he was associated is known as Transcendentalism and is generally viewed with grave suspicion by those who might be known as the Religious Right for its emphasis on the primacy of the individual's conscious and desires, even happiness, at the cost of following the tenets of their claim of the Bible's supreme truth.
Now the irony. The behavior and ideological orientation of the GOP and the Right looks an awful lot like "foul self-reliance" and individualism. Emerson wasn't big on responsibility to the community, or to one's neighbor, for that matter. Take care of yourself. Love yourself above all others. NIMBY.
The issue raises its pesky head especially as we grapple with "the issue of our time" (Pres. Obama), that of the inequality of wealth in this country (to say nothing of the rest of the world). The traditional transcendentalists, those Harvard liberals, would be expected to say, "Who cares?" about the poor. Or, in other words, "Let them eat cake." Some say that.
But what is surprising? The Bible Belt says "Let them eat cake." And, "who cares?" Newt Gingrich this week sounded just like old Ralph Waldo himself as he proposed having poor children go to work. And he appeals most to religious (Christian) voters.
Go figure.
What makes your head spin?
Wednesday, December 7, 2011
I like grown-ups (Alec Baldwin listen up)
I am in favor of grown-ups.
I am in favor of grown-ups behaving like grown-ups.
Alec Baldwin comes to mind.
I confess, I found his rants funny; snarky humor is right up my line. And so I covered my mouth and quietly laughed while those around me were appalled by his irreverent raving.
But, I believe we call this "indoor speech," that is private, rather than public. And I believe a bit of anger management is called for.
There are other grown-up behaviors that I've noticed lately, as in noticed them lacking.
Like owning up for one's behavior. Honesty. Kindness. Courtesy.
The non-grown-up behaviors pop up in the most peculiar places. Even in familiar places (I'm not referring to any family, just in case you're wondering).
Yeah, grown-ups. I like when they act as if they have figured out what that means. And do the hard work, or not always so hard work to be responsible, kind, honest.
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying deleting annoying spam. And I'm waiting.
What bugs you?
I am in favor of grown-ups behaving like grown-ups.
Alec Baldwin comes to mind.
I confess, I found his rants funny; snarky humor is right up my line. And so I covered my mouth and quietly laughed while those around me were appalled by his irreverent raving.
But, I believe we call this "indoor speech," that is private, rather than public. And I believe a bit of anger management is called for.
There are other grown-up behaviors that I've noticed lately, as in noticed them lacking.
Like owning up for one's behavior. Honesty. Kindness. Courtesy.
The non-grown-up behaviors pop up in the most peculiar places. Even in familiar places (I'm not referring to any family, just in case you're wondering).
Yeah, grown-ups. I like when they act as if they have figured out what that means. And do the hard work, or not always so hard work to be responsible, kind, honest.
Meanwhile, I'm enjoying deleting annoying spam. And I'm waiting.
What bugs you?
Monday, December 5, 2011
How far is it?
The part that gets me every time I think of it is the three-month-old baby.
My grandmother was three years old when her family sailed to Amerika from Sweden in 1886. They spent at least two weeks in steerage, with just a few meters each for themselves and their stuff. Hannah, my grandmother, was three and she had four older brothers all under eleven. I suspect they were not content to stay quietly and still within their few meters. My poor great-grandmother, can you imagine? Riding herd on five restless children in quarters that, let's just say, were less favorable than flying coach.
But the part of the story that gets to me every time I think of it is that Hannah's mother had a three-month-old baby along too. Nursing. Was there milk enough? How did she manage to keep track of the boys, and little Hannah, and nurse a baby all at the same time? Holy mothers.
Of course, she had a husband to help and I'm sure he did. But mothers feel it, that lock on the heart, that stretching out of shape, that radar that makes them crazy.
All that and now, here we are. I fly to Sweden in a few hours. I drink Starbucks enroute. I am in a reasonable chair, even in coach. I get a warm washcloth as we approach Stockholm to soothe my brow. And we eat pretty well.
How far is it, from Sweden to Amerika? From America to Sweden?
My grandmother was three years old when her family sailed to Amerika from Sweden in 1886. They spent at least two weeks in steerage, with just a few meters each for themselves and their stuff. Hannah, my grandmother, was three and she had four older brothers all under eleven. I suspect they were not content to stay quietly and still within their few meters. My poor great-grandmother, can you imagine? Riding herd on five restless children in quarters that, let's just say, were less favorable than flying coach.
But the part of the story that gets to me every time I think of it is that Hannah's mother had a three-month-old baby along too. Nursing. Was there milk enough? How did she manage to keep track of the boys, and little Hannah, and nurse a baby all at the same time? Holy mothers.
Of course, she had a husband to help and I'm sure he did. But mothers feel it, that lock on the heart, that stretching out of shape, that radar that makes them crazy.
All that and now, here we are. I fly to Sweden in a few hours. I drink Starbucks enroute. I am in a reasonable chair, even in coach. I get a warm washcloth as we approach Stockholm to soothe my brow. And we eat pretty well.
How far is it, from Sweden to Amerika? From America to Sweden?
Starting over over and over again
It is almost time to start over, over again.
Or, as the great philosopher says, "It's deja vu all over again."
We are waking to darkness. We walk home in darkness. The sun is a stranger. Night is long. Twilight is about as good as it gets.
Not here, of course. On behalf of the Colorado Tourism Bureau or Department or Agency, I must remind you that our days, short though they be, are spectacular with sun so bright one can drive a convertible with the top down through a foot of newly fallen snow.
But, apart from that, it is the season that is the reason someone invented Prozac. Light is missing.
Now there is a truth for the ages. Light is missing.
We wait for the light and while waiting we create diversions to remind us that reality is not always real, not always the same, that things cycle and change and light returns.
So we Swedes celebrate Lucia. Our family started the Lucia season yesterday with cousins here laughing and telling stories and maybe even making up stories of ancient lore that bind us together and point us to something coming, to a future of light -- even if it is a past with its darkness that connects us most primally. Dreams that set families out on boats across wide oceans to settle in barren valleys and find life harder than they bargained for.
We are heirs of these immigrants who walked in darkness and waited for the light. We begin the cycle over, and over again, again, now in these days of waiting for the nadir of the year and the slowly arising gift of new light.
I am a sucker for new beginnings. I celebrate them all. Chinese New Year. Rosh Hoshanah, Opening Day, Easter. But most of all, this solstice and its reality of darkness, dim twilight, a descent into a depressing (for me) place of gloom, this is the real beginning of a new time.
I know I know, it is not here yet. We have a ways yet to descend. Even here in Chamber of Commerce perfection Colorado, I will go kicking and screaming. (Not literally; there is Prozac for that.) But I will be waiting. And in these days of increasing darkness, of short days, twilight, I will plan and dream and think of the promise that is as sure as the rotation of the planet.
Light will come. And boy, howdy, do we need it.
I do, at least.
Or, as the great philosopher says, "It's deja vu all over again."
We are waking to darkness. We walk home in darkness. The sun is a stranger. Night is long. Twilight is about as good as it gets.
Not here, of course. On behalf of the Colorado Tourism Bureau or Department or Agency, I must remind you that our days, short though they be, are spectacular with sun so bright one can drive a convertible with the top down through a foot of newly fallen snow.
But, apart from that, it is the season that is the reason someone invented Prozac. Light is missing.
Now there is a truth for the ages. Light is missing.
We wait for the light and while waiting we create diversions to remind us that reality is not always real, not always the same, that things cycle and change and light returns.
So we Swedes celebrate Lucia. Our family started the Lucia season yesterday with cousins here laughing and telling stories and maybe even making up stories of ancient lore that bind us together and point us to something coming, to a future of light -- even if it is a past with its darkness that connects us most primally. Dreams that set families out on boats across wide oceans to settle in barren valleys and find life harder than they bargained for.
We are heirs of these immigrants who walked in darkness and waited for the light. We begin the cycle over, and over again, again, now in these days of waiting for the nadir of the year and the slowly arising gift of new light.
I am a sucker for new beginnings. I celebrate them all. Chinese New Year. Rosh Hoshanah, Opening Day, Easter. But most of all, this solstice and its reality of darkness, dim twilight, a descent into a depressing (for me) place of gloom, this is the real beginning of a new time.
I know I know, it is not here yet. We have a ways yet to descend. Even here in Chamber of Commerce perfection Colorado, I will go kicking and screaming. (Not literally; there is Prozac for that.) But I will be waiting. And in these days of increasing darkness, of short days, twilight, I will plan and dream and think of the promise that is as sure as the rotation of the planet.
Light will come. And boy, howdy, do we need it.
I do, at least.
Friday, November 18, 2011
The best thing I ever did
The best thing I ever did as a pastor was to kick a guy out of the church. Pastors are generally in the business of bringing in the sheep. It's what we do.
Bring 'em in and care for the flock.
So I did.
And, ironically, in this one case, caring for the people of God meant asking a young adult man to leave.
"Bud," (not his real name) I said, "you gotta go. Our church is not safe with you in it."
This is the thing. I watched him spending too much time with a couple of young boys, barely adolescent, from single-family households, vulnerable and isolated in a variety of ways.
I spent ten years working full-time professionally in the sexual abuse field. I knew what it looked like, as many of the experts you've heard this week on TV have testified. There is a pattern. Grooming. Setting up a situation where the person becomes even more isolated and dependent upon the predator. Flattery. Sometimes blackmail. Bud was already at work when I arrived on the scene. A couple of folks mentioned to me that it felt "off" -- the way he interacted with these boys. So I paid careful attention. And agreed.
"Bud," I told him, "you gotta go. And if I could, I'd call the police now." But there were no actionable crimes I could report. He told me he was moving to another state. A few weeks later I got a letter requesting his transfer of membership. I didn't sign it. But I wrote a letter. "Watch. Like a hawk."
Keep your eyes open. Watch. And, as they say, when you see something, say something. Ask a friend to watch with you. Don't prejudge but be wise. Be careful. You can save a child. You can save a child.
You are part of the team that our kids count on. You. Don't let them down.
Bring 'em in and care for the flock.
So I did.
And, ironically, in this one case, caring for the people of God meant asking a young adult man to leave.
"Bud," (not his real name) I said, "you gotta go. Our church is not safe with you in it."
This is the thing. I watched him spending too much time with a couple of young boys, barely adolescent, from single-family households, vulnerable and isolated in a variety of ways.
I spent ten years working full-time professionally in the sexual abuse field. I knew what it looked like, as many of the experts you've heard this week on TV have testified. There is a pattern. Grooming. Setting up a situation where the person becomes even more isolated and dependent upon the predator. Flattery. Sometimes blackmail. Bud was already at work when I arrived on the scene. A couple of folks mentioned to me that it felt "off" -- the way he interacted with these boys. So I paid careful attention. And agreed.
"Bud," I told him, "you gotta go. And if I could, I'd call the police now." But there were no actionable crimes I could report. He told me he was moving to another state. A few weeks later I got a letter requesting his transfer of membership. I didn't sign it. But I wrote a letter. "Watch. Like a hawk."
Keep your eyes open. Watch. And, as they say, when you see something, say something. Ask a friend to watch with you. Don't prejudge but be wise. Be careful. You can save a child. You can save a child.
You are part of the team that our kids count on. You. Don't let them down.
Inspiration Point
I remember that his car was light blue, a Volkswagon bug. It was 1968. A big election year.
My picture was in the paper. A very big deal. My dark page boy behaved for once, the weird wave hair-sprayed into compliance. For once I wasn't wearing tennis whites but a respectable outfit and my impossibly long legs and big feet were nowhere in few. The only humiliation was my geeky glasses. They even airbrushed my acne. Copies of the photo and the article were collected and sent to far-away relatives and I was proud that for once I seemed to have done something to please my parents. And most certainly, Aunt Elsie was over the moon.
Time to get down to work. The adult sponsor of TARS, an up and coming attorney in town whose name wasn't Ron but we'll call him that for now, invited me for an afternoon of orientation and milkshakes. He drove up to the top of Inspiration Point, quiet on a late summer afternoon. He parked and began to tell me about my new responsibilities. Running meetings: piece of cake. Working on agendas and deciding on the issues we would take on: I got that.
And then he explained the realities of the upcoming State Convention. I had to go. I was the Chairman. It was my job to see that the issues our chapter wanted to be included in the State Platform would be affirmed. Okay.
Well, he said, there is always some horse-trading, if you know what I mean. I didn't. Bargaining. I'll give you this and you give me that. Oh, I said, I'll support your issue if you'll support mine. Hmmmm, possible.
Well, he said again, no. That's not exactly how this works. You see, sex is the currency of choice. You sleep with Brad (not his real name) and he will support you.
My milkshake slowly melted and my hands trembled.
He put his hand on my bare knee. My thigh. And offered to help me "prepare" for the convention. He could condition me, give me lessons. In other words, we could have sex. Me and Ron. Not right then and there but he would work it out. That week. He touched my page boy. He looked beyond my geeky glasses into my dark brown eyes. I was supposed to be moved.
I felt sick.
I told him I had to get home. The light blue VW bug slowly wound its way down Inspiration Point. He dropped me off and winked, I'll see you tonight. We can make some plans for the convention, if you know what I mean.
What happened next was what often happens when a child --- I was very much a child, however old I was --- is sexually propositioned by an adult. I went inside and played perfect to my parents who were so proud. I told them I had a fine time and commenced the process of denial. Second-guessing myself. How dare I presuppose he had stooped so low. Surely it didn't happen.
I got ready for the evening's meeting, the first over which I was to preside. I had printed agendas, nametags, folders for all the returning members and information sheets for prospects. I was ready!
I got to the meeting, my mom dropped me off. I felt an out-of-body sort of experience as the other kids arrived. I play-acted my role, pretending an enthusiasm I didn't feel. I faked it well.
Then "Ron," the sponsor arrived, he of the light blue VW bug and the offer of sex lessons.
Without even thinking, I ran into the bathroom and vomited. And vomited some more. And more. "I'm sick," I told a friend. I asked her to call my mom to come pick me up. I made sure the materials and the responsibility got handed off to the duly elected Vice Chairman and, as I was being formally installed I answered "no" instead of "yes." And quit the whole operation on the spot.
My mother came and got me. I told her nothing. I was too humiliated. And distraught.
And that was the end of my career as a Teen-Age Republican.
I don't even remember how I explained it to Aunt Elsie but you can bet real money that I went no where near the truth. Are you kidding? My word against his? Not even close, not a chance.
I wonder these days how many stories like this one are re-surfacing for people, who were once young people and sexually harassed and abused by adults they trusted and admired. It all comes back.
To you who remember, peace be with you. Real peace, healing, comfort. It comes. It does. In time.
Meanwhile, it doesn't hurt to vomit again if you need to.
My picture was in the paper. A very big deal. My dark page boy behaved for once, the weird wave hair-sprayed into compliance. For once I wasn't wearing tennis whites but a respectable outfit and my impossibly long legs and big feet were nowhere in few. The only humiliation was my geeky glasses. They even airbrushed my acne. Copies of the photo and the article were collected and sent to far-away relatives and I was proud that for once I seemed to have done something to please my parents. And most certainly, Aunt Elsie was over the moon.
Time to get down to work. The adult sponsor of TARS, an up and coming attorney in town whose name wasn't Ron but we'll call him that for now, invited me for an afternoon of orientation and milkshakes. He drove up to the top of Inspiration Point, quiet on a late summer afternoon. He parked and began to tell me about my new responsibilities. Running meetings: piece of cake. Working on agendas and deciding on the issues we would take on: I got that.
And then he explained the realities of the upcoming State Convention. I had to go. I was the Chairman. It was my job to see that the issues our chapter wanted to be included in the State Platform would be affirmed. Okay.
Well, he said, there is always some horse-trading, if you know what I mean. I didn't. Bargaining. I'll give you this and you give me that. Oh, I said, I'll support your issue if you'll support mine. Hmmmm, possible.
Well, he said again, no. That's not exactly how this works. You see, sex is the currency of choice. You sleep with Brad (not his real name) and he will support you.
My milkshake slowly melted and my hands trembled.
He put his hand on my bare knee. My thigh. And offered to help me "prepare" for the convention. He could condition me, give me lessons. In other words, we could have sex. Me and Ron. Not right then and there but he would work it out. That week. He touched my page boy. He looked beyond my geeky glasses into my dark brown eyes. I was supposed to be moved.
I felt sick.
I told him I had to get home. The light blue VW bug slowly wound its way down Inspiration Point. He dropped me off and winked, I'll see you tonight. We can make some plans for the convention, if you know what I mean.
What happened next was what often happens when a child --- I was very much a child, however old I was --- is sexually propositioned by an adult. I went inside and played perfect to my parents who were so proud. I told them I had a fine time and commenced the process of denial. Second-guessing myself. How dare I presuppose he had stooped so low. Surely it didn't happen.
I got ready for the evening's meeting, the first over which I was to preside. I had printed agendas, nametags, folders for all the returning members and information sheets for prospects. I was ready!
I got to the meeting, my mom dropped me off. I felt an out-of-body sort of experience as the other kids arrived. I play-acted my role, pretending an enthusiasm I didn't feel. I faked it well.
Then "Ron," the sponsor arrived, he of the light blue VW bug and the offer of sex lessons.
Without even thinking, I ran into the bathroom and vomited. And vomited some more. And more. "I'm sick," I told a friend. I asked her to call my mom to come pick me up. I made sure the materials and the responsibility got handed off to the duly elected Vice Chairman and, as I was being formally installed I answered "no" instead of "yes." And quit the whole operation on the spot.
My mother came and got me. I told her nothing. I was too humiliated. And distraught.
And that was the end of my career as a Teen-Age Republican.
I don't even remember how I explained it to Aunt Elsie but you can bet real money that I went no where near the truth. Are you kidding? My word against his? Not even close, not a chance.
I wonder these days how many stories like this one are re-surfacing for people, who were once young people and sexually harassed and abused by adults they trusted and admired. It all comes back.
To you who remember, peace be with you. Real peace, healing, comfort. It comes. It does. In time.
Meanwhile, it doesn't hurt to vomit again if you need to.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
What then shall I buy?
Nothing to buy?
That's what I heard the other day from a woman who was feeling sorry for the top 1% because they have nothing to buy anymore.
Hello?
I am billions away from that demographic but even I have a long list of things to buy. Shampoo. Scallops. More books (well, duh). Oh, and the mortgage.
I have thoughtful, kind and generous friends who live in or close to that top 1% of Americans. This is not about knocking them. This is for the lady who felt so sorry for her peers. Buy turkeys for the Rescue Mission. Buy clothes for the women trying to get back into the job market and need more than sweatsuits to wear to interviews. Buy books for urban libraries. Buy dog food for the animal shelter.
"We have nothing to buy."
I don't quite get how that is an argument against raising her taxes. But it is. Maybe she's worried about the rest of us choosing to use her money to buy turkeys for the Rescue Mission.
In the likely event she gets to keep all her money, there was a yacht for sale in the Nantucket Harbor with her name on it.
That's what I heard the other day from a woman who was feeling sorry for the top 1% because they have nothing to buy anymore.
Hello?
I am billions away from that demographic but even I have a long list of things to buy. Shampoo. Scallops. More books (well, duh). Oh, and the mortgage.
I have thoughtful, kind and generous friends who live in or close to that top 1% of Americans. This is not about knocking them. This is for the lady who felt so sorry for her peers. Buy turkeys for the Rescue Mission. Buy clothes for the women trying to get back into the job market and need more than sweatsuits to wear to interviews. Buy books for urban libraries. Buy dog food for the animal shelter.
"We have nothing to buy."
I don't quite get how that is an argument against raising her taxes. But it is. Maybe she's worried about the rest of us choosing to use her money to buy turkeys for the Rescue Mission.
In the likely event she gets to keep all her money, there was a yacht for sale in the Nantucket Harbor with her name on it.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
KAIA ACCEPTED TO MEDICAL SCHOOL
That's it, all the news that matters. Kaia is accepted, ACCEPTED, to the medical school of the University of Minnesota. First choice, first try, first go 'round.
She SO deserves this!!!!!!! What a wonderful day!
Mom is thinking back to the pre-schooler with her toy stethoscope around her neck, doing exams on Betty and Betsy. And to the stellar science and math student in PIP in grade school. And winning the science fair award with Jenna two years in a row. I'm thinking of how happy her grammar school teachers will be. And how thankful I am to them for teaching my child well.
Kaia has been accepted into med school.
If this is over-the-top, pardon me. But reaching a long time goal is well worth yipping and yowing about!!!
Let the parties begin!
She SO deserves this!!!!!!! What a wonderful day!
Mom is thinking back to the pre-schooler with her toy stethoscope around her neck, doing exams on Betty and Betsy. And to the stellar science and math student in PIP in grade school. And winning the science fair award with Jenna two years in a row. I'm thinking of how happy her grammar school teachers will be. And how thankful I am to them for teaching my child well.
Kaia has been accepted into med school.
If this is over-the-top, pardon me. But reaching a long time goal is well worth yipping and yowing about!!!
Let the parties begin!
Wednesday, September 28, 2011
Leaping Greenly Spirits of Trees
i thank thee god for most this amazing day
for everything...
Rosh Hashanah has come to us once more, the day of beginnings, summing up and bringing together our reflections for living more graciously, more freely, more deeply in the new year.
Happy New Year!
What are your new year resolutions? What do you want to do to live more fully?
I always wondered, not being a Jew, why Yom Kippur followed Rosh Hashanah when it seems more logical the two would be reversed. We would confess and then make our new plans. But now I see how it is and I love it.
Today is the day to begin to articulate our goals for the coming year, to walk more, to be kinder, to share more of what I have with others, to not use the "F" word so much, etc. And we are reminded of the freedom to walk into this new future. It is possible.
Then, on Yom Kippur, we gather up our contrition, we confess aloud all we have not done, all we have done that is harmful to others, to the planet, to our culture and the world, and to ourselves. Sounds like a pretty long day for me.
But in this intervening period of about a week, we are also reflecting about the tension between who we are and who we will be. And finding real strategies, articulating measurable, visible ways to bring into life that which we intend. Intentions aren't enough. Action plans are where it's at.
And as a part of the Yom Kippur reflection, we commit ourselves to these new solemn intentions. We will do them. And, frankly, not doing them will bring us back here next year and be a basis for what we must confess, our failings to be what we promised ourselves and the world and the Spirit that is "I AM" we would do and be.
I wish you a meaningful day of reflection, of looking forward, not back. A day and a week of making plans and finding strategies to enact them.
I'm starting with a promise I made earlier. In a few minutes I shall enter the doors of the Art Institute of Chicago, making my way between the majestic lions and up the stairs, and I shall revel in the genius of the painters I most love. The Chagall Windows are back up and have been restored - a fitting image for today - so that's where I'll start. And, likely, be back to complete the day.
Peace be with you in this New Year! Happy Roshanah and may you find joy in the leaping greenly spirits of the trees as they give up that color and become gloriously red and gold. It is the way of nature. It is the way of the world! Be glorious! Show your color!
for everything...
Rosh Hashanah has come to us once more, the day of beginnings, summing up and bringing together our reflections for living more graciously, more freely, more deeply in the new year.
Happy New Year!
What are your new year resolutions? What do you want to do to live more fully?
I always wondered, not being a Jew, why Yom Kippur followed Rosh Hashanah when it seems more logical the two would be reversed. We would confess and then make our new plans. But now I see how it is and I love it.
Today is the day to begin to articulate our goals for the coming year, to walk more, to be kinder, to share more of what I have with others, to not use the "F" word so much, etc. And we are reminded of the freedom to walk into this new future. It is possible.
Then, on Yom Kippur, we gather up our contrition, we confess aloud all we have not done, all we have done that is harmful to others, to the planet, to our culture and the world, and to ourselves. Sounds like a pretty long day for me.
But in this intervening period of about a week, we are also reflecting about the tension between who we are and who we will be. And finding real strategies, articulating measurable, visible ways to bring into life that which we intend. Intentions aren't enough. Action plans are where it's at.
And as a part of the Yom Kippur reflection, we commit ourselves to these new solemn intentions. We will do them. And, frankly, not doing them will bring us back here next year and be a basis for what we must confess, our failings to be what we promised ourselves and the world and the Spirit that is "I AM" we would do and be.
I wish you a meaningful day of reflection, of looking forward, not back. A day and a week of making plans and finding strategies to enact them.
I'm starting with a promise I made earlier. In a few minutes I shall enter the doors of the Art Institute of Chicago, making my way between the majestic lions and up the stairs, and I shall revel in the genius of the painters I most love. The Chagall Windows are back up and have been restored - a fitting image for today - so that's where I'll start. And, likely, be back to complete the day.
Peace be with you in this New Year! Happy Roshanah and may you find joy in the leaping greenly spirits of the trees as they give up that color and become gloriously red and gold. It is the way of nature. It is the way of the world! Be glorious! Show your color!
Saturday, September 10, 2011
"Moments of rest, glimpses of laughter are treasured"
Moments of rest, glimpses of laughter are treasured along the road.
"Cursing the quest, courting disaster, measureless nights forbode."
In Dan Fogelberg's song those two lines are reversed. But I am so taken by the gifts of laughter and rest, I have to use that as the title for this post.
I take risks. I drive through blizzards. I get up when I should stay down. I persevere when I should get the hell out of Dodge. So it may not surprise you that I left on this long trip without all of the necessary funds in place. The proverbial check was in the mail. It really was.
But it wasn't. And it isn't. That was not the motivation for staying with people. The people, these very ones, were the motivation for staying with these people, to learn from them more about the gifts of grace and graciousness. These wonderfully gracious hosts and friends were the point and the impetus for the trip.
I did not, however, have arrangements for every night. I wanted it that way. Indecision is the key to flexibility. A lack of planning creates open space.
Flexibility, I've got it! Open space, open indeed.
This is a good thing and a bad thing. I couldn't live with it all the time. But I'm living with it some of the time and it is reminding me of the power of synchronicity -- of recognizing the magical mystical quality in an unexpected moment, a new friendship, chaos. The power of putting two unpredicted people or qualities or moments together and seeing something totally new, absolutely brand new! come to life and grow.
My life has been changed irrevocably already in these two and a half weeks. And not in the ways I might have anticipated. I have cursed the quest: the empty wallet, the skipped meal, spending the night in a Service Plaza/truck stop and my car. And I have courted disaster: driving in Boston! taking all the roads not taken, normally.
What have I learned? It's more fun if you have the money to play mini-golf, or watch the whales, or sleep in a bed (or sofa) every night. But I've also learned that it is survivable to just sit on the bench and watch the golf, to anticipate whale-watching on the next trip, and to become one with my car.
And most important, I've learned that people are kind. Generous. A guy just gave me three quarters yesterday to park in Harvard Square instead of trading me for my times. I left Nantucket with one mongo cinnamon roll to last for days. Friends missed work, drove across town, complicated their own lives in order to enrich mine.
After experiencing great evil, this is no small thing: to learn that people are kind, more than kind, generous. That people will go far out of their way for you. That even though you learned to not be trusting, there are more trustworthy people in the world that you ever dreamed.
When one encounters great mercy, gutsy generosity, and pure grace, one relaxes, leans into life in a more trusting way, gives away more because more is coming in. And then, it is simply inspiring.
Pretty cool.
This is an advanced degree program, if you want to put it that way.
"Cursing the quest, courting disaster, measureless nights forbode."
In Dan Fogelberg's song those two lines are reversed. But I am so taken by the gifts of laughter and rest, I have to use that as the title for this post.
I take risks. I drive through blizzards. I get up when I should stay down. I persevere when I should get the hell out of Dodge. So it may not surprise you that I left on this long trip without all of the necessary funds in place. The proverbial check was in the mail. It really was.
But it wasn't. And it isn't. That was not the motivation for staying with people. The people, these very ones, were the motivation for staying with these people, to learn from them more about the gifts of grace and graciousness. These wonderfully gracious hosts and friends were the point and the impetus for the trip.
I did not, however, have arrangements for every night. I wanted it that way. Indecision is the key to flexibility. A lack of planning creates open space.
Flexibility, I've got it! Open space, open indeed.
This is a good thing and a bad thing. I couldn't live with it all the time. But I'm living with it some of the time and it is reminding me of the power of synchronicity -- of recognizing the magical mystical quality in an unexpected moment, a new friendship, chaos. The power of putting two unpredicted people or qualities or moments together and seeing something totally new, absolutely brand new! come to life and grow.
My life has been changed irrevocably already in these two and a half weeks. And not in the ways I might have anticipated. I have cursed the quest: the empty wallet, the skipped meal, spending the night in a Service Plaza/truck stop and my car. And I have courted disaster: driving in Boston! taking all the roads not taken, normally.
What have I learned? It's more fun if you have the money to play mini-golf, or watch the whales, or sleep in a bed (or sofa) every night. But I've also learned that it is survivable to just sit on the bench and watch the golf, to anticipate whale-watching on the next trip, and to become one with my car.
And most important, I've learned that people are kind. Generous. A guy just gave me three quarters yesterday to park in Harvard Square instead of trading me for my times. I left Nantucket with one mongo cinnamon roll to last for days. Friends missed work, drove across town, complicated their own lives in order to enrich mine.
After experiencing great evil, this is no small thing: to learn that people are kind, more than kind, generous. That people will go far out of their way for you. That even though you learned to not be trusting, there are more trustworthy people in the world that you ever dreamed.
When one encounters great mercy, gutsy generosity, and pure grace, one relaxes, leans into life in a more trusting way, gives away more because more is coming in. And then, it is simply inspiring.
Pretty cool.
This is an advanced degree program, if you want to put it that way.
We have to know these stories
Memory is a fickle partner in the keeping of our life's book.
Certain facts can be observed, verified, written down. What time it was. What was said (and that is not always reliable memory). But history messes with us. And we mess with it.
I spent September 11, 2001 in a room that I remember being dark, with a revolving group of sometimes only three, sometimes a crowd of fifteen, two of whom were, I believe, in official uniforms but maybe they weren't and maybe it was three not two. I remember parts of conversation, whole bits at times, and I remember spending time walking around in a fenced back yard trying to comprehend what was going on.
That is a part of the history I remember. But what is more important is not what I remember -- though it is not unimportant either -- but how this history is connected to larger history, ancient history, future history. And what is that?
Stories. Always we are connected by stories. Stories that remind us and join us to other actions, stories that link our lives to those of women and men who paid a similar price or responded in a likewise courageous manner or assessed reality so quickly and with such devastating precision that they, too, could and did act to change history. Stories that teach, inspire, challenge, light a way.
Matthew, if I were your pastor today as I was ten years ago, I would affirm your quickness to link your father's story to that of other heroes who struggled against evil and, in their own way, won. You knew already on that morning what was at stake in your father's death and in the last moments of his life. You know what he did, what he chose.
His life is linked to that of others who, as the poet said, "choose what is difficult, as if it were easy, that is faith."
To choose what is difficult -- as if it were easy -- that is our common test. And our common task.
But our story is not just our own, or Jason's or Mark Bingham's or the others on Flight 93 whose courage inspires us. Their acts are almost, if not entirely without precedent in this country but they are not unprecedented in human history. In fact, one of the waves that washes over all of us is this call to "incalculable" acts of sacrifice and salvation. We are part of a long story of giving and giving it all, and in so doing, saving. It is a rich and deep part of who we are as humans and who we are always being called to be.
"To choose what is difficult, as if it were easy, that is faith."
And so we live on.
(W.H. Auden's poetry)
Certain facts can be observed, verified, written down. What time it was. What was said (and that is not always reliable memory). But history messes with us. And we mess with it.
I spent September 11, 2001 in a room that I remember being dark, with a revolving group of sometimes only three, sometimes a crowd of fifteen, two of whom were, I believe, in official uniforms but maybe they weren't and maybe it was three not two. I remember parts of conversation, whole bits at times, and I remember spending time walking around in a fenced back yard trying to comprehend what was going on.
That is a part of the history I remember. But what is more important is not what I remember -- though it is not unimportant either -- but how this history is connected to larger history, ancient history, future history. And what is that?
Stories. Always we are connected by stories. Stories that remind us and join us to other actions, stories that link our lives to those of women and men who paid a similar price or responded in a likewise courageous manner or assessed reality so quickly and with such devastating precision that they, too, could and did act to change history. Stories that teach, inspire, challenge, light a way.
Matthew, if I were your pastor today as I was ten years ago, I would affirm your quickness to link your father's story to that of other heroes who struggled against evil and, in their own way, won. You knew already on that morning what was at stake in your father's death and in the last moments of his life. You know what he did, what he chose.
His life is linked to that of others who, as the poet said, "choose what is difficult, as if it were easy, that is faith."
To choose what is difficult -- as if it were easy -- that is our common test. And our common task.
But our story is not just our own, or Jason's or Mark Bingham's or the others on Flight 93 whose courage inspires us. Their acts are almost, if not entirely without precedent in this country but they are not unprecedented in human history. In fact, one of the waves that washes over all of us is this call to "incalculable" acts of sacrifice and salvation. We are part of a long story of giving and giving it all, and in so doing, saving. It is a rich and deep part of who we are as humans and who we are always being called to be.
"To choose what is difficult, as if it were easy, that is faith."
And so we live on.
(W.H. Auden's poetry)
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