Remembering as a subversive activity

Not all memories are allowed. Not officially. Or rather, we now get to put that in the past tense. Glory Hallelujah! Twenty years ago it became officially okay to remember everything. Up until then, from 1945 until 1989, the Poles used All Saints' Day as a subversive act, an opportunity to stir up forbidden stories of Polish heroism that defied Soviet power, ignored Soviet reality, told the truth of history. As you scroll through the photos to the right of these posts, you see a cross monument to Katyn, the site where some 22,000 Polish leaders, especially its military officers were executed by a shot in the back of the head by the Soviets in 1940. Any acknowledgement at all of this travesty, even mention of the name, was forbidden during the communist era of the People's Republic of Poland. There was no memorial to the victims of the Katyn Massacre until after 1989. Likewise, you see memorials to the fighters and victims of the Warsaw Rising (not to be confused with a separate event, the Warsaw Jewish Ghetto Uprising, which took place a year earlier). It was forbidden to teach, to mention this event during the communist period. Officially, it did not happen. These memorials are also new. See the stunning memorial to the victims of deportation to Siberia, hundreds of thousands of Poles who were summarily sent off in unheated train cars to exile, forced labor in the perma-frost, the deplorable life described in the Gulag Archipelago by Alexander Solzhenizten, during the War, most of whom never returned. Those memories were forbidden, but not extinguished, during the Soviet-dominated communist period and the remembrance was a goad to action, to resistance, to defiance. There are graves of opposition leaders and critics of the communist government who have recently died, and others that have become known, and are revered. But. Even before such memorials were put up and remembrance was permitted, the Poles had their ways of finding heroes, martyrs, symbols of resistance and courage to commemorate and celebrate. And they did it as much to thumb their noses at the prevailing powers as to honestly acknowledge the significance of such individuals and events. Father Jerzy Popieluszko was a powerful opponent of the communist regime during the Solidarity period. He pastored a parish in a northern district of Warsaw and drew overflow crowds for fiery sermons. He was murdered in October, 1984 by the Secret Security police, to shut him up and stop his influence, and to intimidate the renewal movement. As these things go, of course, the plan backfired and in response to Fr. Popieluszko's martydom, the Poles rallied on a regular basis at his parish, St. Stanislaw Kostka, where he is buried. When I visited a few months after his death, the churchyard was still covered with flowers and the Solidarity banners were hung with bold defiance on the fences. They were the only Solidarity banners flying openly at the time and, because they were on church territory, they were allowed. It was a constant irritant to the Party, the government, and a constant source of inspiration to the people. The banners and flowers and candles and vigils continued there until the end of the communist regime. And they continue to this day. Say all you will about the church's faults and failures, we have to acknowledge its powerful role in the process of change in Eastern Europe during the 1980's. The Roman Catholic Church in Poland undergirded the power of Solidarity at every turn. The election of John Paul II, the Polish Pope, had an awful lot to do with the changes that followed. In fact, it is likely impossible to over-estimate the influence and correlation of the Pope's power, politically and as a source of inspiration to hearts and minds all over Eastern Europe. These memories have highlighted the moral bankruptcy and hollow integrity of the oppressors and lifted up the values that must be incorporated in a subsequent society. During periods of occupation and oppression, the Polish people have been quick to find sources of pride and success in the past and to be fired up to heroic deeds in their own times. For some, these past saints were simply a source of hope. It was not so easy to walk through all of the walkways of the Powazki Cemetery in Warsaw in the 1980's. And there were not as many monuments to see. But what was there, they found. And lit up. Lights burning in the night. The beautiful, haunting scene of red candles lit from inside and flames shooting up from time to time, lighting up the old graves and illuminating the faces of those who find in these lights a reason for future hope. Flickers of flame, leading one on and on, deeper and deeper into the graveyard, into its stories, into its depth. The authorities in the old days always breathed a sigh of relief when All Saints' and All Souls' Days were past. They dared to hope that the remembrances were sentimental. But no. They were fuel. In the days to come, we will remember the stories of the days of early November, 1989, as the "Polish disease" spread throughout Eastern Europe, became endemic, cracked open the sealed borders between Czechoslovakia and Austria, and finally brought down the Berlin Wall on 9 November 1989. Not much mentioned will be the names of those whose graves I visited, left candles, prayed. Jacek Kuron. Bronislaw Geremek. Rikard Kuklinski. Ryszard Kapuscinski. Fr. Popieluszko. Even Mieczyslaw Rakowski. And countless others. Who made a way. And those still with us. Adam Michnik. Leszek Balcerowicz. Lech Walesa. Anna Walentowicz. Bold. Clever. Brilliant strategists -- most of the time. And doggedly determined. And then, of course, the women and men whose labor is less well known or almost altogether hidden. Friends, family, colleagues, faithful servants of humanity. Is it too much to ask that as the media help us to remember those remarkable days, we give the Polish people the honor due and acknowledge and marvel at the impetus they provided for this "quiet revolution" of 1989 that finally joined Europe in freedom from West to East. Again. And may your subversive memories spur you to bold deeds. I'm thinking of what to do first.

Clouds of Witnesses

November 1st. All Saints' Day. Everybody is in motion. Nearly three million people live in the Warsaw metropolitan area and all of them are on the move. Nobody doesn't go to the cemetery on All Saints' Day. Viewed from a helicopter, the city is a ribbon of people, a mass of movement, an orchestrated and orderly procession of people in motion. Walking from high rise apartments to the bus lines, to the subway, the metro, to the trams, to taxis, to their cars, beautiful, colorful ribbons of people. Some of these ribbons, as seen from above are yellow, miles and miles of yellow-topped buses lined up, proceeding slowly from the city center and other gathering points, yellow ribbons moving away from the center like spokes in a pinwheel. Cars on every main thoroughfare, cars on the bridges that span the Vistula, ribbons of cars moving north and east and south and west, slowly, carefully, patiently. Cars loaded down with flowers and candles, entire families, bundled up in puffy coats, woolen scarves, mohair hats. Thousands of walkers move quietly through the streets, filling them to overflow, a ribbon of people moving as one, pilgrims we are, laden with bundles of yellow mums and red glass candles and bundles of roses. It feels like a massive procession, dads with toddlers riding on their shoulders, even the teenagers behaving their parents, a sober but not quite somber mass of humanity flowing like a slow-moving stream. I've never experienced anything like it! It reminded me more of a mass migration than of anything else. Not like the million strong protest marches of the 60's and 70's, not like the crowds of a million or more leaving the Chicago lakefront after the 4th of July fireworks. It was peaceful, lilting, lovely. A mass movement of infinite patience and goodwill. That might be the most important thing to say. It was a day filled with generosity and grace. Kindness and mercy, and affection and respect. Gratitude. It was a day overflowing with gratitude. So much gratitude; it is their Thanksgiving holiday, too. It was a day of communion, not creepy in the least, or caked with superstition, but of telling stories, remembering, sometimes laughing. I was surprised at the atmosphere; it was light-hearted, not heavy. Of course, there was some sadness, more for some than for others. But most of all, the spirit of the day was light. Families helped and cooperated with other families as they worked to clean around their graves, set out their flowers and candles. Some, of course, have met in this way for years and have heard each others' stories, met the relatives, welcomed daughters-in-law and babies, observed the passing of the matriarch, whom they used to meet here. There is a comraderie in this grieving. Can you imagine, an entire city, the whole population together in spirit, everyone, young, old, rich, poor, sharing the same purpose, the same space, on the move, together, as one? The yellow ribbons of buses stretched for miles, winding along back roads one behind the other, all discharging their passengers at the same places -- the entrances to the city's cemeteries. The subway was packed all day long. And everyone got off at the same stops. And walked to the buses nearby and packed in like, okay, sardines come to mind but really, more like tobacco stuffed in the bowl of a pipe, tamped down tight, so many people and carts and strollers on the buses you didn't need to hold on; if you were standing, you weren't going to move anyway. Part of the ritual is the journey, getting there. Being part of this communal mass movement, each one carrying their own existential agenda, their own private needs and prayers, but at the same time, sharing a common purpose: to express gratitude, respect, and honor to the ones who are gone now, is a moving (no pun intended) experience. It was unlike any crowd I've ever been in. It's fair to use words like surging, hordes, multitude, but not in the jostling, urgent way crowds normally move. It was relentless, but not pushy. I can't imagine how anyone could have been trampled. But we all kept moving. Moving. Moving. Toward these appointments we all had with a place, a plot, a collection of memories. Leonarda asked me to be at the Natonlin station, the end of the line of the subway on the south side, just before ten -- later than I expected we'd need to go. She was offered a ride in a car but couldn't even imagine it, insisted on the metro, and then the bus. We barely got a seat and only because we were at the doors of the train as they opened. It was packed to bursting by the fourth stop. Half the crowd got off in the city center and another half got on and we kept going until the end of the line on the north. Crammed in until there was no more air, much less room to stand. This worried me. We would all be getting off at the same stop. And then, how long would we have to queue for the bus? The logistics alone were mind boggling. Leonarda is 82. She was good enough to let me keep up with her. She knew exactly where she was headed. We walked up the line of buses until we found one that seemed to have room for more. I tried to get her a seat, she insisted on standing. We bumped along dirt roads around the back way to the first of four entrances to the huge cemetery where her husband was buried. Not our entrance. Remarkably, more people got on than off. She stood the thirty some minutes of that bus ride. And then she was off, spry as could be, down the steps and out into the multitudes of people now shuffling slowly toward the entrance, and the booths outside, scores of them, selling enormous mum plants and candles and roses and wreaths of straw and forget-me-nots. For those who waited until the last minute, no worries. Old ladies barely able to walk staggered through the gates carrying plants bigger than they were. Men carried huge shopping bags of bulky red candles. Ah, but we still weren't there, not to where we needed to go. This is perhaps (arguably) the largest cemetery in all of Europe. It is more like a town. We still had to take another bus, to queue again, because this cemetery is so vast, it would take more than an hour to walk from the first gate to the place we were going. Can you imagine? We rode for miles, stood for miles, bouncing up and down on the spongy floor of the articulated part of the articulated bus. Sometimes my two feet were riding in different directions. It was hard to find a small handhold on the yellow pole. And so we bumped along a small road around and around, a second gate, then a third, and finally, ours. The Poles seem to have developed a natural talent for keeping their balance, the way some ride a horse without their bum ever leaving the saddle. I'm not there yet. I consider it a part of my gift to the Polish people, to amuse them with my tipping and lurching. Our bus joined a long queue of buses, inching forward, until we could finally get out. And we were still a few blocks from our gate. We walked along in crowds of humanity, families with strollers, kids in bright pink and green jackets and, without fail, hats. (No matter, it was 14 degrees C. The instant the temperature once dips below 55, kids must wear a cap, it's in the constitution.) And, once more, we moved as part of a crowd, past small booths brimming with bright yellow and burnt gold mum plants, huge plants, two feet across, and fancy flower arrangements, roses, birds of paradise, amazing new varieties of flowers I've never seen before. Long tables were loaded with candles, the votive types, red, yellow, blue, green, clear. Large, small, enormous. You can buy a small candle for about forty cents. People carried bags of them. Finally, once inside the gates, the multitudes spread out. The family I was part of for the day knew just how to find 'their' graves. Paths meandered this way and that, some, thankfully, on a grid. We went past newly dug graves with the dirt still mounded high around the coffin -- kept above ground. Some had only a primitive stick cross. There were graves of those too poor to be well cared for in death. Dirt graves that never did have any markers or granite tombs to protect them. I followed Leonarda, no easy task. In her rich caramel wool coat and beret, she was a woman on a mission. She carried bags of candles and plants. I offered to carry part of her load in addition to my own and was glad she demurred. I think she is stronger in such moments than I am. Leonarda kept us going at a quick pace, as sure footed on the broken sidewalks and cobbled paths as a sheep on the hillside. I marvel. A couple of times, as she finessed her way, slipping through a knot of people, she was jumping, so light on her feet. Good grief. Slow down, lady! Please! From the gate we walked the equivalent of four blocks or so, down a wide main path, then left, up some steps, left again, and forward, then left, and the whole time my mouth was gaping. I knew what to expect. But until you're there, you don't really quite know how to take it in. Flowers on the graves, gorgeous sprays and bouquets and plants. Candles, and candles and more candles. Beautiful. And overpowering. The granite and marble graves are all above ground, or at least half above ground. Cases of marble and other stone, with headstones that give only the barest outline of a life, dates, sometimes the occupation. A few very spare graves, no stone at all, only grass growing on the top, a wood cross. Leonarda knew just where to turn, how far to go, and finally she got us there, to the grave of her husband. We got right to work. Leonarda took off her coat and hat, and handed me her handbag. She pulled out an empty plastic bag, got down on her hands and knees and started cleaning leaves from the sides of the area, pulling out last year's flower stalks, and, producing a small whisk broom from under the tented top of their grave, dusting off the area. I asked to help. No, no, you're our guest. Eventually, I did help, picking up leaves on the other side of the grave, carrying the refuse to the garbage bin. After an hour or so I wanted to sit down. But the bench had been put to use as our coat stand. Leonarda had not come here to rest. Leonarda was joined by her daughter, son and granddaughter. They figured out when we got there that they all had forgotten to bring gardening gloves and enough plastic bags to collect all the dead leaves and old candles, but a "neighbor" to them recognized their problem at once and was happy to share. These once-a-year friends, neighbors, spoke kindly and graciously for a few moments. I'm sure they're all aware that, one day, they won't be 'out here,' talking anymore, they will be 'in there.' Neighbors still. It's not an upsetting thought at all, but a pleasant one for them. Leonarda and her daughter, Barbara, got out some of the candles they brought and some of the artificial flowers (an exception among all the fresh ones) and began to set them out. Four large red votives were lit and set at the foot of the grave, the small fresh mum plant was set into a built-in planter and a big bunch of the artificial flowers were put in a built-in vase. They pointed out to me where a cross had been on the top of the grave stone, its outline clearly visible. But it was stolen some months ago by vandals, as these things sometimes are, to be melted down and the metal sold again. I knew Leonarda's husband, Pan Maciejkowicz, many years ago. He was a communist, more or less, a believer in socialism, who had a career in the diplomatic service. He was a good man, a decent man, an often absent but good father. His wife and three kids were good Christians. He had a heart attack about eight years ago and died straight away. Leonarda was with him that night, in their tiny, tiny garden house out on the edge of Warsaw, a typical place that many Poles have, no electricity, no water, no plumbing, a one-room very crude place, smaller than our girls' bedrooms, no telephone. When he collapsed, she went out and ran a few blocks to find some young girls who went to find a phone to call for help. After the ambulance had come and found their work futile, and another ambulance came to take his body away, Leonarda took the bus home. Today, she puts all her feelings into her work, cleaning, setting things straight, lighting the candles. Their offering is actually rather modest compared to many. On many of the graves there are several huge mums, sprays, wreaths. Whether or not these are all from the family, that's another question. It felt good to help. I cleaned and dusted, too. I got down and picked up leaves, and pulled out a weed. But then, it was time for me to move away just a few steps and let my friends be. Barbara and I went to "visit" the graves of other friends. She took a small candle and some of her artificial flowers to them, too. This is common. A friend's husband's grave was not too far away. We visited him. Then another. And another. While we were away for several minutes, Leonarda spoke with another 'neighbor,' who seems to be here for the whole day. We watched as first one, then another of her married children and their children come to visit and leave their flowers and candles. Many of the graves have little benches at the foot of the graves, some set into concrete to keep them from being taken, although its not the benches but the metal that attracts thieves. I see many lonely men and women sitting on their benches. Husbands, wives, children, friends. All come to visit today. And so it goes, so it went. All day long. From this cemetery, we went on to others. There are a number of cemeteries in and very near Warsaw so not everyone was headed to the same place, at least not initially, but hundreds of thousands of us were going to the same few places. Those silly enough to drive ended up parking miles away. Some Warsovians go back to the small villages or other cities where they're from. But, then, others from there come here. And, eventually, many hundreds of thousands will walk through the crowded, narrow paths of the national cemetery. On the buses back into the city center, I found Leonarda a seat. And was hoping for one too. I'm no Pole. I'm not hardy enough for this marathon. My gray hair always gives people pause. But then they look more closely at my face and decide I'm not worth their giving up a seat. I need more wrinkles. Eventually, in late afternoon, we arrive to the ancient Powazki Cemetery, stop to buy more candles to leave at the graves of venerable Polish 'saints,' and leaders. I go to leave a candle and pay my respects to Szpilman, "The Pianist," who played Chopin through World War II and barely survived the Jewish Uprising and final destruction of the Jewish Ghetto. There are already hundreds of candles near his grave, all left by people like me. Huge crowds visit the graves of luminaries, greatly respected leaders, writers, artists, teachers. Jacek Kuron, a founder of Solidarity and a great person, is honored today by the visits from thousands who leave hundreds and thousands of candles so the street-wide path in front of his grave becomes so filled it is unpassable. He has been joined this year by his good friend and old colleague, Bronislaw Geremek, another great person, as responsible as anyone else for the peaceful fall of communism in Poland in 1989. And the end of communism across Eastern Europe. Nearby, the truck-size block of granite, the grave of Poland's first communist leader, Boleslaw Beirut, has no visitors, is even hidden away by a hedge, and has only a few flowers and candles, left by his family. Ironically, I have met and enjoy knowing his daughter, a fine sociologist and professor at the university, who knows to come and go in private, a day or so before this Feast. We see the graves of Ryszard Kapuszincski, a wonderful writer, and of the man who began Narcotics Anonymous in Poland and saved many lives. Thousands of candles are lit already at their graves, too. We pay our respects to the victims of Katyn, to the young scouts who died in the Warsaw Rising, to the soldiers who fought and died in the first months of WWII, in 1939. The victims of the 1863 Uprising against the Russians, soldiers from World War I, Poles deported to Siberia by the Russians, resistance fighters in Warsaw in 1944, and Poles who fought the Russians in 1920 --- all have areas in the national cemetery, monuments. If you want to know something about Poland, you have to come here, to know these stories. They live, these stories. For better and worse, they inform and inspire Poland to this day, to tomorrow. Children light candles to honor Kuron and Geremek, the Katyn victims, the resistance martyrs. The tradition is passed on. And so Poland today is filled with thanksgiving. It is a beautiful thing. I feel really blessed to be part of it. We are surrounded by such a cloud of witnesses. We can do much worse than to spend time retelling their stories, feeling glad and grateful for their lives. What a day, what a time.

Not so simple

There were two grandfathers. But, not exactly. Not in my friend's lifetime. "My grandfather was shot in 1941 by the Nazi's." It is impossible to exaggerate the extent to which this story is repeated by grandchildren all over Poland. Three million Poles perished in World War II. In this particular family, the grandfather was fighting with the resistance, the underground Polish Home Army. He was confronted. And, as I remember hearing it, he was shot in front of his fourteen-year-old son. There was no birch cross in a quiet village cemetery near Warsaw to visit. No stories of a man grown old, teaching his grandson to play chess, imparting his wisdom about life. But he lives still, in the strength and courage of his heirs. It is not so simple, to remember them all.

Simple

We walked a long time in the birch forest. A red fox crossed our path and birds sang from the tops of the trees. The grasses along the path were vibrant from rain and the June air felt sweet and fresh. My friend had an umbrella along, more for swinging than for sheltering and he used it to swat at the tall brush that occasionally swayed too close to the path. Our talk was of serious things, history and family and war and duty. I learned about a man from a small town in the south of Poland who lost his home after the war to the Communist government and was given, in return, land in this small village where we now walked. He built a life there, retired, and savored the days with his daughters and their children. He had died. His wife, who celebrated a landmark birthday during my visit, was an ancient but lively woman who begged me to "come again next Sunday." "But she won't be in Poland, then," my friend replied. "That's all right. She can come anyway." We took time away from her to walk through the woods to the small cemetery. The lawn was vividly green. Many graves had fresh flowers. It seemed to me the perfect place for a long, peaceful eternity. Earlier that spring I had seen too many cemeteries, acres of graves, not yet peaceful places in towns and cities from Estonia and Latvia and Lithuania to Moscow and Leningrad, where thousands upon thousands of granite blocks bore the names of that city's victims of World War II, the Siege of Leningrad, the 900 Days. Many graves also had a haunting black and white photo of the deceased in a stylized oval frame. There were so many young men. Ludmilla's father had succumbed after months of getting up each morning and carrying his lunch pail to The Front, where citizens held the Nazi army from encroaching further. The daily ration of bread, I remember so clearly, was exactly the amount of wheat in a communion wafer. So much death, so much violence. And now, here, a gentle hillside, brilliant green grass, forget-me-knots and lily of the valley glistening with raindrops, the fragrance of the rich loamy earth. A different life, a different kind of death. A simple birch cross. We had come to the grandfather's grave. A simple birch cross. White papery bark cut exactly at point, two sharp angles. My friend had carved it, made it. An offering of respect, affection, gratitude, and this: love. The atheist grandson had made the cross for his Christian grandfather's gravesite. He spoke with deep feeling, kindness, fervent conviction about their relationship, and about the surpassing importance of keeping memory alive. I thought about my own grandfathers. I wasn't sure I could find their graves in the small cemetery in my hometown. I had not once visited them. My parents rarely spoke of them. The past was over. In Poland, the past is still present. It is present in the stories that must be told again and again, lest we ever forget. The sacrifice. The devastation. The devotion. On Sunday, November 1, All Saints' Day, legions of Poles will go to the cemeteries to leave flowers and candles to honor the past, the ones who have passed, to grieve again the horrors of war and oppression, to be reminded of their place in the long scheme of things, the long run of history. They will go by the thousands to their "own people" and to the national cemeteries where the great martyrs and heroes of the nation are buried. There will be oceans of light, great waves of red, votive candles on the lawns and the walkways. It is a stunning sight, a moving experience. But I will still remember that one simple birch cross. And the daisies we left there on a fresh, vividly alive June day.

To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy:

That is faith. Words of the poet, W.H.Auden that underscore a photograph that has been on my desk since 1982. Why do I love Poland? What has drawn me there again and again? It is this, the capacity, the ability and fortitude to choose what is difficult. All one's days. As if it were easy. Faith. When I landed in Poland the first time, in 1980, during the tumultous days in the Gdanks shipyards, as Solidarity was born and a careful agreement was crafted between this new social phenomenon -- a free trade union -- and the Communist government, it was immediately clear that nothing was clear. Everything was clouded, complicated. Complex. I met people who walked a thin tightrope between success and disaster, between integrity and moral illegitimacy. Nothing exemplified this more than the journalism. Poland is what it is today -- and Eastern Europe is what it is today -- in no small measure because of the crafty and clever, brilliant and incisive investigative journalism that was carried out by a weekly newspaper in Poland, Polityka. That is no exaggeration. I arrived in Poland assuming what I'd heard to be true, that there was no possibility of a free media, of any kind, to any extent, in Soviet Eastern Europe. The newspapers were all propaganda. The Polish press, I had been told, was to Poland what the L'Osservatore Romano is to the Roman Catholic Church, the official instrument, the party rag. Sadly, to great extent that was true. But. But not entirely. In 1957 there had been born a political weekly that was, officially, communist and was an organ of the ruling communist party. But. But. From the start, Polityka had an edge. Its founding editor was a clever man and he found and fostered the development of the best journalists anywhere in the Soviet bloc. This is not just a matter of opinion. It is widely recognized. These journalists were encouraged to find ways to tell the truth, between the lines, around the edges, to raise more questions than they answered. I got to be there again two years ago, when Polityka celebrated its 50th anniversary with public forums and, of course, a giant cake. Mieczyslaw Rakowski, the giant who guided Polityka through most of the communist period, and became the Polish Prime Minister and the last First Secretary of the Polish Communist Party, believed in "socialism with a human face," in the principles of democracy and justice, of fairness and also of market capitalism. He walked a thin line between "Reality," which is to say, the enormous and uncontrovertible presence on the Polish border of a nation known as the Soviet Union, ready to use its might to make Poland its 17th Republic, and the future, a different future, of freedom and prosperity and dignity. He was a pragmatist, but also a kind of idealist, in that he never lost the vision for what might be. He had aged dramatically in the twenty-five years since I'd first met him, in the Polityka offices where I was accompanying one of his journalists, a friend of mine, but he was as sharp and gracious, and witty, as I remembered. He made then and kept making those difficult choices all his days, between the possible and the preferable, with a sense of unwavering patriotism and integrity. He was not universally beloved by the time he left public life in 1989, having served as Prime Minister, having been part of the apparatus that imposed Martial Law on Poland in December, 1981,and taken a hard line against Solidarity's demands in the mid-80's. He was not perfect in walking that fine line. I can't imagine that anyone ever is. I was deeply impressed by the mission of Polityka from the day I was introduced, as you would be. Never writing propaganda (there were other newspapers for that), and always finding a clever way to insert the hidden truths behind the facts and figures pressented in black and white, smuggling in the truth -- hidden in plain sight. I admired the heck out of my good friend who did this week after week for years. I also grieved for him, the harrowing necessity of it. I've been trying to find a way to illustrate the levels of creativity, integrity, and brilliance to which he and his colleagues rose and finally found a fun story for you. In 1986, after the Chernobyl explosion, high levels of radiation were released into the atmosphere, making food products, including milk from dairy cows, in the region unsafe for human use. Officially, as you may remember, there was no crisis. No danger. The press was not allowed to report that. Wladyslaw Frasyniuk, a Solidarity leader, was in jail with other opposition leaders when Chernobyl exploded. Soon after, they began to receive rations of milk and fresh vegetables. "Hurrah!" they thought, there must be an amnesty coming, an agreement with the authorities, release. They waited for their mid-weekly delivery of news, including Polityka. Frasyniuk recalls searching carefully for some mention of a political resolution, the amnesty agreement that would bring his release. Nothing. Scoured the paper, nothing. But down in a corner, tucked into an article about something else, was mention that stores had received equipment to measure radiation in the atmosphere. It was clear -- even though it wasn't -- that Chernobyl was a nuclear disaster. And their surprise food was likely contaminated. Good enough for prisoners but withheld for the safety of the general public. "Aha!" so, no amnesty, just radiated food. The prisoners rejected these special rations, and that enraged the prison officials,who searched the cells for clandestine radios, accusing them of having learned it from Radio Free Europe. Oh no, Frasyniuk laughed, we learned it from Polityka. And so it was, all through that grim era. Truth was told. Not in straightforward reports, not with bold headlines. You had to be a skillful reader -- and that's too bad. I'm not excusing the regime's firm grip on information. Rather, in the midst of that oppressive environment, it was possible to find out what was really going on. It was a nervy, nerve-wracking existence. It involved tough decisions about personal purity -- shall I refuse to have nothing to do with this process because it is so corrupted? -- and the art of the possible, to find a way around the harsh reality of Soviet tanks still on Polish soil. I learned a great deal from my Polish friends in those days. About what it means to have faith. In something larger than oneself. To sacrifice oneself for a greater good. To be faithful. Mieczyslaw Rakowski died just a bit less than a year ago. This will be the first All Saints' Day when Polish patriots will leave flowers and candles at his grave in the national cemetery in Warsaw. I would too, if I were there. He taught me a lot. Peace to his memory. His protegees and colleagues, who continue to lead Polityka today, have been my teachers too. Such gratitude I have for them. Thankfully, they labor today in much better circumstances. And perhaps they can remind us why journalism, good, hard investigative journalism, is absolutely critical to the health and freedom of a people. The link to Polityka is on the right side of this blog, beneath the first two photos. Check it out. No matter it's in Polish, I think you'll be impressed with the way it has morphed into a successful (still!) weekly magazine, still attracting the very best journalists and the most thoughtful readers, and now free to write anything. About anything. Very cool. Very very cool. Keep it up, you guys.

You will know the truth and the truth will make you

odd. Somewhere in a file box in the basement, behind several layers of book boxes and under a pile of still-used winter ski clothes is a damn fine Reformation sermon I preached in about 1990. I know it was good because Krister Stendahl was there that day and he said so. I don't know everything I said but I do know this. Truth is awkward. But good. And when it isn't Flannery O'Connor I'm quoting, the text goes like this, "You will know the truth and the truth will make you free." What is your truth? That is, what is the truth of your life, who you are, what you are, what you are called to do? We avoid that truth sometimes for years because it is awkward or impossible or embarrassing or disturbing. Too bad. Because it does make us free. Free to be the humans really being who we are meant to be. To write if you're a writer. To sew if you're a quilter. To seek and find if you're a headhunter. To disturb if you're a prophet. To love if you're a, well, lover. To guide if you're a mentor. And so it goes. What calls to you? What is it that is in you that needs to come out? Jesus is reported to have said (in one of the Gnostic Gospels) that what is in you that needs to be given voice and form and freedom, and isn't let out to live and be in the light of day -- will destroy you. You don't want that. I don't want that. It's not one thing for all time, or for all one's life. We are called to this, and then to that, in terms of the form of our vocation. The danger is in stifling it. Dangerous for us. And for the world. I remember that day in 1990 not because Krister Stendahl was there but because it was one of those luminous moments of insight I'd had in preparing that sermon, glorious clarity then, about who I was and what I was called into the world to do. It was easier to preach it than live it. I moved into some of that truth quickly and some of it is still in process. And of course, the truth itself is always a horizon, always on before us, drawing us to it. So I'm still in motion. We all are.

Pollyanna has left the building

Some days are kittens and butterflies and whipped cream. Or, as we'd more likely put it here in Colorado, clear skies and sunshine. Like the day I described on Sunday. But even here in paradise, some days are more Sylvia Plath and Albert Camus. Life is hard. Pretty sure I read that once. Pretty sure it was in The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck. Life is hard. One of the first things that happens to people who get creamed, crushed, battered, is that very kind and well-meaning people tell them that it is going to be okay. "You'll get over it," they say. And some are more directive, "Just get over it." "It will get better," they say. And some of them even mean it. The best thing along those lines that somebody said to me was from Sue the custodian at the church, the woman who introduced me to the Lady in Red and other ghosts who lived in the church basement. She said, "You will be better than you are now. You will go through this and come out on the other side with a new mission, and you will be even stronger." Her words still come back to me. I didn't believe her at the time. I didn't believe her at all. Well, that's not true. I believed her about the ghosts. It was uncanny, how much they knew and told her, and she told me, that, so far as I could figure out, she had no other way of knowing. Who knows. Ghosts? If not 'real' ones, then for sure there were lots of injured, angry spirits roaming around the place, most of them still encased in flesh. But anyway. So Sue tells me this. And I think, no way. I'm done. I'm toast. I'll be lucky if I can remember my kids' names. My brain by this time was not working. Not in any of the ways we normally like to count on them. My brain by this time was so jumped up on an excess of cortisol that my eyeballs were swimming in it. When I sneezed, cortisol came out. Most everybody else said very well-meaning things that suggested a good night or two of sleep would fix everything, or positive thinking, and I don't actually remember but they registered somewhere and I remember thinking, "are you fucking kidding me?" Sleep didn't do it. Nor positive thinking. Nor even prayer. Not at first. Not quickly, easily. There was no magic formula. Turns out, there never is. It was agony. Scaling a fourteener, with my teeth. It was hell. But then I do get better. Not back to where I was, but better. And I start to think, okay, this is going to happen. It does. Happen. That woman in the photo I posted on Sunday is real. She exists here in real time, on this planet. I know her. People recognize her. She is not a fake or a phantom. She listens to Rachmaninoff and picks pumpkins and laughs with her daughters and eats steak on her birthday and reads a book, thinking, "no, that's a bunch of hooey." She tells jokes and makes people laugh. Sometimes even on purpose. But. But. This is a jagged road. One does not cross easily to the other side. One day she's reading Jane Austen and the next, Sylvia Plath. The tunes that run through her head are often in a minor key. The trek is through wilderness. There are monkeys. There is a madness that descends from time to time and no amount of hoping and wishing and praying will make it disappear before its time. There is a wild, whirling tornado of depression that must be given room to thunder across the landscape. It happens. In seven years I've learned something very important about those wild times. I ride them out. Don't fight. Don't rant and wail and gnash my teeth. I rarely even feel sorry for myself. I go to ground and ride it out. It doesn't work to talk myself out of it because the thing is, there is no rationality about it, none at all. It comes out of the wind, this depression, and goes with the wind. I listen to Yo Yo Ma play the Bach cello suites and Glenn Gould move through the Goldberg variations. Perhaps their patterned precision and surpassing loveliness does more for me than the Cymbalta. If you think depression is something you can talk your way out of, read William Styron's short but strong book, Darkness Visible. If you think depression is just about being "down in the dumps," or disappointed because the day didn't turn out right, read this book. If you know someone who is depressed and they bug the hell out of you because you keep telling them to 'lighten up' and they don't, read this book, and, until you do, keep your mouth shut. A guy I know, Dave Cullen, has written a book, Columbine. It is about Columbine. That Columbine. It is a brilliant book about a dark topic. He has been out touring with it, talking to groups from Grand Rapids to Nashville and the O.C. It is depressing, to say the least. But,this is what he said today after the latest round, "enough people care." Enough people care. And that is enough. Care. That's all. Not fix. Not placate. Not beg, cajole, plead. But care. I'm here because enough people cared. waited, walked through the dangerous places that Pollyanna wouldn't dare dream to go. And we go on, we stupid, self-centered, lovely, goofy humans, we go on in spite of ourselves because, apparently, enough people care.

Just another day in paradise

Just another day in paradise. It's true. The Denver paper has on its masthead, "It's a privilege to live in Colorado." It is. Oh, we have our days like everywhere else. But not very many of them. And the good ones are spectacular. Like today. Snowcapped mountain peaks pop up behind crenulated hills under a 'true blue dream of sky.' I could live in a day like today. It's the kind of day you want to share. If you were here you would have traipsed through the pumpkin patch with us, a unique and wonderful American tradition. We found two sincere and perfect pumpkins. Lots of kids explored the corn maze and a smaller straw maze, stuck their heads through cutouts of giant pumpkins and scarecrows for pictures, took a ride on the haywagon. I found an old Farmall tractor like the one my father used on the farm in LaPorte in the late 1930's. In fact, pumpkin farms are one big excuse for those of us who have rural routes to revisit our past. The smell of oats in a barn. That is a definition of childhood for me. I stepped inside and was transported in an instant, back to a musky old barn with a basketball hoop in the hayloft. What is it for you? Poland gets some days in paradise too. A year ago today I wandered for hours through Lazienki Park on a similar day in Warsaw. That defines childhood for some Polish friends of mine. Hand-feeding the squirrels. Begging for ice cream. Leaning in close, using a magnifying glass to examine the veins on leaves. Five years ago I brought a photograph of myself to my therapist and told her that "I want to be her again. I want to feel that alive, that free, that much at peace." The photograph was taken in Lazienki Park in July, 1982. I was happier and more vital than I had ever been. And it shows on my face, in the early evening sun. We can't go back. And I am not really interested in being twenty-eight again. Well, if I could be that age and this age, off and on, with the wisdom and the kids I've got now, I'd go for that. The woman in that old photo has learned alot, endured alot, loved a lot. I don't want to go back. But I do want that joy and vitality back. I got it. Not all the time (who does?) but enough. And growing, getting stronger, fuller, freer everyday. A year ago, in Lazienki Park, I got a new photo of that woman who was young and is now older and she looks pretty good. Silvery gray hair. Glasses. There's more of her than there was before. Inside and out. I'm not where I want to be but the road ahead is open.

Heartbreak, or why people like socialism

I am heartbroken. Seriously. I don't remember being this upset. Well, okay, I do remember being this upset but it was just about my own stupid shit -- the junk that happened to me and the impact it still has on my daily life. That's that. This is something else again. This is this, the big this: moral failure. This is a meteor crashing into earth. Sorry, Craig Ferguson, this is not a great day for America. Not this day. After spending three hours today watching the reality TV drama -- the real TV news story of the 6-year-old boy who was floating over local farm country in a UFO-looking hot air balloon, my heart often in my throat, truly fearing for his safety, sparing a thought or ten for the terror he might be experiencing, anticipating heartbreak in the likely event it would end in catastrophe, the real news was still coming. The kid was safe. But we're not. I first went to Poland in 1980 because I was intrigued by the Christian-Marxist Dialogue then active. Describing that more carefully is another story for another day but the jist of it had to do with the ethical teachings of Jesus and the ways in which Karl Marx had lifted up the ethical vision of the Judeo-Christian tradition and set it to (bad) music. Principles of common wealth, common ownership, common labor, common participation and reward were attractive to many who knew the teachings of Jesus and his radical call to discipleship, Jesus' call to living for others. You may be surprised -- I hope not -- to learn that I met in Poland many fine, fine people who were ardent believers in these same values, who were fine with the label "Marxist" (but not communist), and with whom I felt I shared a bedrock of common views about the world, about how to live in the world. Of course, Marxism had one big flaw (well, it had more but this did it for me): too much optimism about human nature. We're just not good enough, generous enough, kind enough to live the way socialism envisions living, and sharing life in community. Say what you want about the problems of implementing socialism. But I'll then ask you to show me how capitalism, as we practice it in this country, is working for us all so much more effectively. We're not good enough, generous enough, kind enough to live responsibly with the benefits of capitalism. We need a big-time babysitter. We are in the midst of a massive fuss about changes to our health care system. People are outraged at the costs. How can we afford it? Easy. The 129 billion dollars being paid out in bonuses to the Wall Street geniuses who brought us meltdown and disaster last year would be a strong start. In fact, it would pay for about a year of the proposed change, with a public option. It would go a long way toward paying for cost of living increases for senior citizens who have been told they aren't getting one this year. But no, the goons who screwed us last year are being rewarded. Again. Who are we? Who are we? I am heartbroken. To think we are this people. We are the people who will choose to do this and not that. We are so out-of-control greedy and so morally empty, we let this go on. This is a most disturbing indictment of this nation. If I believed in retributive justice meted out by an angry God (and maybe I do), I'd have to say we're toast. To let this happen. 129 billion dollars. In bonuses. Well, bonuses or salary, for that small pool of people, it is immoral. 129 billion dollars. Do you know how much we could do together, to care for the least among us, to provide education and health care and adequate housing, and food, for heaven's sake, to those who are unable to provide for themselves, or who have lost their jobs, lost their means of personal production? With 129 billion dollars. I wish Barack Obama was a socialist. This is unbearable. It is hard to know what to do but if you have ideas that are more effective than simply calling our congresspeople and the White House, again, I'd love to hear it. How about a mass outpouring of outrage on October 20 instead of a mere calling campaign? I'll go to the streets. Wanna go too?

Casablanca, It Ain't

"We'll always have Paris." The lucky ones had Paris. And Casablanca. And Lisbon. And a ship to America. The lucky ones weren't Polish. In the days just before the German invasion of Poland in September, 1939, Hitler directed the Wehrmacht to "kill without pity or mercy all men, women, and children of Polish descent or language. Only in this way can we obtain the living space -- lebensraum -- we need." When the Nazi's occupied France, for example, their intention was exactly that, to occupy, control. It was not to exterminate the French population. The Polish Army resisted the Nazi hordes twice as long as anyone expected, without support from their Allies, the English and the French. By early October, however, it was all but over and the German military was firmly in control of the country. The invasion itself had already claimed thousands of civilian casualties. But the real horror was only just beginning. Systematic brutality and murder was carried out throughout the country. Did you know that? On a lovely September Saturday in 1980, I walked through a city park in Bytom, a coal-mining town in the south of Poland, with Ilona and Steve and Fran and Ed and Harris. Ilona was proud to show us the sights of her city and its park was full of apple trees bearing their fruit. We could pick apples as we walked along and crunch the first of the fallen leaves. Families were out, fathers pushing prams while mothers got a brief break from their double-duty as full-time workers and primary care-givers to their children. Toddlers toddled, overdressed as always, already in their red and yellow and vivid blue snowsuits. It was an idyllic afternoon and it could have been anywhere at all, anywhere in the world with wide lawns and majestic oaks and young couples in love, holding hands, oblivious to the world around. Ilona walked us to a tower in the center of the park. It reminded me immediately of the Inspiration Tower in my hometown, set on the tallest hill, an open-beam structure that one could climb using either a ladder or, if dared, the wide beams themselves. It was maybe a couple hundred feet tall. "The first week of the occupation, the Girl Scouts of the town were called together. They were told to meet here, for a very important orientation to the new regime. They would have new duties and their parents were invited to participate," Ilona explained. The Girl Scouts gathered. In their uniforms. With their parents, sisters and brothers. It was thought to be an auspicious occasion, the girls were excited. The military then forced the girls to line up, to climb the tower, as their families and townspeople looked on, wondering what this would accomplish. "The girls were thrown off the top of the tower, one by one, by one, forced up, and, watching their friends suffer, were made to climb all the way to the top. And thrown off. As their parents watched." The families were subdued by overwhelming military force, their wailing and terror ignored by the men who pointed machine guns at them. There was nothing they could do but watch. Or cover their eyes. Or faint in horror. I honestly don't remember the end of the story -- if the families claimed their daughters' bodies there or not. I do remember Ilona telling us, without having needed to, that the town was terrified. As planned. The campaign to brutalize and wipe out the Polish population in this town was thus begun. And carried out in like manner across the country. Boy Scouts, aged twelve to sisteen, were lined up against a wall in the marketplace in the town of Bydgoszcz and shot dead. Later that week, thirty-four of the town's leading merchants, doctors and other leaders were likewise lined up in the city square and surrounded by soldiers with machine guns. And cut down. Before the end of October, 1939, 531 towns and villages in Poland were burned. Warsaw and Lodz suffered devastating bomb attacks. At least 16,376 Poles were executed (not counting soldiers who died in the battles). Most of them were Polish Christians. The systematic destruction of the Polish Jewish community had not yet begun. I had no idea of any of this when I arrived in Poland the first time, in 1980. I was a well-educated 'citizen of the world,' a graduate student, and, like most of my fellow Americans, I had no idea. When I got back to my hometown later I was relieved that our Inspiration Tower had been taken down. I could not have beared to look at it ever again. Girl Scouts. Thrown off a tower. Doesn't it make you wonder sometimes, what kind of creatures are we?

Rockies' Mountain High

Lips are blue. Snow is white. But they will play baseball tonight.

Matthew Shepherd's kin still need a safe place

It got so I knew what was coming. The phone rang. Or a young man stopped on his way out of the sanctuary after worship on Sunday. "Could I come in and talk?" I made sure to have a box of tissues on the oblong white table that sat near the front window of my church office. I tilted the blinds to provide a bit more privacy. I prayed to be surprised, happily surprised. But I never was. "My father kicked me out." "My sister won't let me see her children ever again." "My parents told me not to come home for Christmas." The details changed but the basic message never varied. Rejection. Cold, cruel rejection of a son or daughter or sister or brother or friend or neighbor or colleague. Heartbreaking realities of gay life in the late 20th century. More and more folks coming out. More acceptance than ever before but not enough. I wasn't old enough at the time to be the parent of a young adult but I still couldn't imagine what it would require of a person to reject their own flesh and blood. For being gay. It was the great privilege of my life to be pastor for several years in the 80's and early 90's to this community of brave and creative souls who came to Christ the King in the Loop Lutheran Church in Chicago. Not all of us were gay but many were and we fashioned of ourselves a faithful band of folks who welcomed as Jesus did, as Jesus would, who loved and celebrated as Jesus did, who put everybody to work, all of us doing our best to follow the One whose life was lifted up for the world. I'm thinking of these gay guys this week because it is the week that Matthew Shepherd was killed, eleven years ago, and his sweet, haunting face reminds me so much of the faces of young men who sat at that white table in my office. I'm so glad things are changing, have changed. Now there are stories of reconciliation and rejoicing to go along with the few that still come up, of rejection. Now there are stories of interventions, of people keeping other people safe from danger, of new safeguards, including hate crime laws to deter assaults like the one that took Matthew's life not far from here. Boys, young men, just like Matthew sat at that white table, under the kite I had flying across the high, open-beamed ceiling. I feared for them as much as I grieved with them. Many wonderful, joyful experiences marked those years at Christ the King (CTK). Easter Vigils that featured a paschal squid and bunnies tucked in among the tulips, demonstrations at the South African Consulate, Christmas Eve dinners together in the fellowship hall, coffee hours so bounteous there was talk of them being featured in the Sunday Brunch section of the Chicago Tribune. An annual Jazz Mass with the very best of the city's jazz musicians playing a gorgeous setting of the liturgy. Weekday chats with the best "church ladies" anybody could ever hope to know. Children coming up to the Eucharist wearing brown paper bags over their heads, eyes cut out so they could navigate to the altar and cotton balls glommed all over them to signify that they were all sheep. I loved setting the bread in their tiny hands and seeing them tuck it up and under the bag, into their sheep's mouths. Crying and singing and applause on the Sunday Nelson Mandela was released from prison. Lots and lots of weddings, some featuring readings from Deuteronomy and one where the reception came first. A tiny little voice piping up one Sunday after the communion blessing, "thank you, mommy." And, of course, the day in and day out interaction with members and friends and neighbors of CTK, including these young men who came in to sit at the white table in my office and tell their stories. These times together always, always ended with reflection and that reflection always included this, "I'm so glad to find this church, to find a place where I am welcome, accepted, embraced, given work to do and dignity for doing it. A place where I can be myself." It's a dangerous thing to do but I'm going to tell you what letter I think I cherish most, from those years. Two young men wrote to the Church Council and said, "thank you for letting us be here together. For letting us hold hands like other couples do, for letting us be ourselves." It should not be something remarkable but sadly, in our culture, it was. And probably still is. I think of their faces at the table and those of dozens more, grateful for a safe sanctuary, a home away from home. CTK was just that, a warm, safe home in the city for so many of us who found ourselves there for work, by choice, by default. I miss it still. Christ the King is closing, the last service is this coming Sunday, October 11. The reasons are complex and inscrutable. It's been eighteen years since I left that call and I don't know the in's and out's of the later history. But I'm sad. Matthew Shepherd's parents did not kick him out, he wasn't one of the boys who might have needed a place at the white table. But there were and are many more gay and lesbian folk who still need that safe haven, a welcoming home, a place that is at least as glad to have them as they are to be there. If it's not CTK anymore, there'd damn well better be someplace else.

There are so few of them left

Every year the gathering is smaller. The old fighters still make the trek up the mountain, a hillside of cement steps leading up to the gleaming monument, symbol of the Polish resistance. And each year, as it comes to the final night of annual remembrance and the bonfire is extinguished, wreaths are laid to honor the fighters who have died the past year. Every year there are more wreaths and fewer participants. Speeches are made, soldiers salute their erstwhile comrades, and a small crowd looks on as the dwindling squads of resistance army, the Polish Home Army, fighters shake hands and repeat their stories. They wear their old armbands -- more or less the only real uniforms they had, and those hand-made, crudely fashioned. Some have berets and a few wear regular Polish Army uniforms. Of course, these remembrances have been possible only in the past twenty years since the end of communism. Before that, the heroics of the Poles during World War II were hidden from view -- even from the participants themselves. It was not possible to note and celebrate these politically incorrect events. The Soviets saved Poland. All by themselves. Isn't that special. Can you imagine, having your own history hidden from you? Your own stories discredited? Told that what happened, didn't? Yes, I know. Some of us can. Distortions and omissions screw with our sense of reality. It happens. The Polish people are determined that their history not be messed with anymore. They remember, they teach it to their children. At the last night's ceremony, a group of costumed school children sing and enact the songs of the fighters, complete with a tender love story; hey, it happened. After the evening's program was complete, the children lit torches from the bonfire and stood guard on the steps down the mountain, lighting the way back into today's world.

There Is A Palm Tree In the Center of Warsaw

There is a palm tree in the center of Warsaw. It stands on the spot where Hitler should have died, blown to bits by Polish assassins on October 5, 1939. Had it gone off according to plan, thousands of pounds of dynamite would have exploded beneath him as he took his victory lap through the Polish capital in the earliest days of World War Two. Inexplicably, the plan, one of many failed attempts by Germans, Poles and others to assassinate Hitler, was abandoned – or betrayed, sabotaged, or discovered. He carried on, unscathed. I had no idea. How many times have I crossed through this intersection? Thinking of donuts. And dinner and my next appointment. How many times a day do I hurry across the wide boulevard, determined to keep pace with the old ladies and hoping the traffic stalls long enough so I can catch the tram I see coming? My mind is normally racing ahead, making mental notes, the day’s to-do list, and, often, composing my next email home to my daughters. Today I have something remarkable to tell them. Here, in the middle of this intersection where, improbably, a palm has sprung up, in the heart of Warsaw, this ancient center of a distinguished, diverse, and elegant culture, right smack in the middle of this intersection, Hitler was supposed to have died, on October 5, 1939. If only. To think, think! what if. It is hollow speculation, of course, ridiculous. But how can you not wonder, as I will from now on, if only. How differently things — lives and nations — would have turned out. Families not ripped apart, cities not leveled, shtetls not dismantled. Invasions not launched. Bombs not dropped. No genocide. Jewish civilization in Eastern Europe not wiped out. No ghettoes, no death camps. Auschwitz, Treblinka, Dachau would not be in anyone’s vocabulary of terror. No Holocaust. We know so much about the devastation of Nazi war against the Jews, more than we can bear, more than anyone should have to take in. We need to know, we must know it, remember. And learn. We know less, perhaps nothing at all about the Nazi’s savage dismemberment of the Polish nation, the systematic attempt to entirely exterminate Polish culture. Mass executions of Poland’s leading scholars, doctors, judges, artists, teachers, and military officers. Three million ethnic Poles killed. The same number as that of Polish Jews who died. Civilians and soldiers dead, traumatized, wounded, and orphaned. Futures shattered. But what if, on this spot right here, Hitler had died that day. How much might have been stopped? Stalin perhaps even stymied in his own imperialistic ambitions over Eastern Europe. To think, think! If only. What if. Perhaps. Who knows. Warsaw still inspires such melancholy rumination. This city is alive with its past. To be in Warsaw now is to be in Warsaw then. Everyone who lives here has a story, and every story is still important. These are not just memories, they are part of the manual, instructive for one’s approach to life: to living, making a living, and living with others. There is not a child alive in Warsaw today who has not learned firsthand from someone about the terrors of the war, the heroic resistance, the remarkable rebuilding, and, most of all, the amazing resilience of these good people. Hanka’s grandmother was a courier in the underground Polish resistance force, slogging through filthy and disgusting sewer tunnels, delivering messages, arms, and supplies. Marcin’s uncle detonated small explosives to disrupt and harass the German occupation troops. Henryk fought in the forests, burrowing into earthen caves to sleep by day, marauding with patrols at night, raiding Nazi depots, rescuing Polish captives, and attacking German barracks. Like thousands of other ethnic Poles, he was captured and, by dint of sheer luck, was not executed on the spot, but spent years as a prisoner in Auschwitz. Alicja, the clerk in the print shop where I get more business cards, tells me of her aunt, a sniper, who pretended to be a boy, so she could be a fighter with the partisans in the woods. Anya married a paratrooper, Lesczek was a navigator, and Wladyslaw became a radio specialist and code- breaker. Grazina’s father was a spy, slipping into German camps to overhear their plans, and blond, blue-eyed Marya insinuated herself into the affections of Nazi officers in order to gather information she passed on to the Polish Home Army, the underground collection of resistance fighters. I never have to search out these stories. They simply emerge, from everyone, everyone! in the course of conversation about family, the past, one's heritage. It's not quite, "meet my mother, she threw grenades during the Warsaw Rising." But close. The topic comes up. Always. It is as much a part of who they are as my having lived in Chicago for many years or my father growing up on a farm. Especially this time of year, as the fire burns atop the mountain of buried rubble, these days of remembering the last heroic acts of resistance. Heroic resistance, suicidal sabotage, crazy attempts to disrupt and unnerve the German occupation, these are stories familiar to every Polish child from the oral history of their own parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents. It is woven into the sinew of their bones, and now lives in the collective consciousness. The tales are as sparse as an Ernest Hemingway narrative, haunting, direct, unflinching in the face of disaster. “He found the wire hidden under the low brush. He unsheathed the tool he always carried, tucked into his waistband, snipped the wire like this, click, and went back into the forest.” “She caught the German soldier alone in the barn, she shot him in the head. “ No fancy descriptions, no “tangle of new growth,” or “gleaming silver knife,” or “ghostlike,he disappeared into the gloom from whence he had come.” These stories require no embellishment. “I hid under the pile of hay with the machine guns and grenades. I was scared to death. But they didn’t find me.” Halina waits at this crosswalk, strides purposefully to the other side, goes about her business. At the quivering edge of her 85-year-old consciousness is this sharp throb of awareness, that here, in this place where a palm tree now stands, something didn’t happen, something that could have saved her from years in Pawiak Prison, from starvation, the loss of her lover, her life. So many, so much lost, ruined, wasted. If only. To their credit, Halina and the other Poles I know don’t second guess their history as much as I do. It happened. They have made their peace with their war, not ones to wonder, pointlessly, what if. Sorrow, yes; waves of sadness wash over the city on a regular basis. Wariness, worry, yes. Regret, yes. But better still, they learn from their memories: Resilience. Resistance. Sacrifice. Courage. Recover. Rebuild, rebuild, and rebuild: lives, families, faith. Early in the twenty-first century, the Poles are creating new art. new industry. A nation. And they go on. And on. They put up a palm tree in the center of the city, in the middle of, what else: Jerusalem Street.

"Poland is not yet lost"

"Poland is not dead yet So long as we still live That which alien force has seized We at sabre point will retrieve." * By the 1st of October, 1939, Poland was an occupied country. Occupied not as France was occupied, or Belgium or Norway or Holland. Occupied as in savaged. Bombed beyond belief. Ruined. Brutally occupied. Polish citizens were shot without reason, without provocation. Civilians were as much the target of Nazi and Soviet brutality as the soldiers. Oh yes, by this time the USSR had invaded Poland as well. Even as Polish civilians were fleeing for their lives from the Germans, to the east, the Soviet Red Army kept its half of the agreement it had made with the Third Reich and crashed into Polish villages and cities on its eastern frontier. Thousands -- untold numbers well into the tens of thousands -- of Polish citizens were loaded onto trains and sent to Siberia. Did you know that? Didn't think so. A kind reader wrote to me yesterday, "Poland had it bad." Indeed. Crushed doesn't even begin to cover it. Warsaw was a mass of rubble, although not as ruined as it would be in the final Nazi campaign to level the city entirely in 1944. The Nazi regime intended to destroy, that is, wipe out, annihilate the Polish people to give room for good Aryans to expand, living room for Germans. A few Poles would be kept alive to provide slave labor. But the vast majority of Polish citizens were to be 'removed.' By the 1st of October, 1939, Polish boys and men had fled to the forests and begun forming up into rogue fighting units. The Polish Army held off the Germans for weeks longer than anyone could have ever imagined. Nazi forces suffered far greater losses than they had expected. But, finally, their overwhelming superiority of numbers and their tanks and trucks and other technological advantages had worn down the Polish Army and it was all but over, the initial blitzkreig, this first tragic chapter of the war. There was no Vichy style government in Poland. There were not Polish politicians and leaders who collaborated with the Nazis. But, in spite of all this, the Poles kept singing, "Poland is not yet lost..." Their national anthem, a defiant song if ever I heard one. "Poland is not dead yet," and by miracle and dogged determination and just plain cussedness, Poland was still alive at the end of the War. They lived to fight another day. *translation of the anthem largely from Norman Davies'.

Helmet hair

By the time she was my age my mother had had helmet hair for fifteen years. You know what I mean. Every Saturday morning she went to the salon to have Verna wash and set her hair with tiny curlers and stick her under the dryer and then shellac her head with hair spray so that it was hard as fiberglass for the next week.She used a satin pillowcase to keep it perfect while she slept. Every now and then a brushy curler would appear for an hour or two to keep her bangs rolled up tight. It stayed that way for a full week. Not a strand out of place, the whole head of it stiff as a plastic bowl. My mother's head was more or less interchangable with those of other mothers, and most other women of her age. Pat Nixon, Betty Ford, Lady Bird Johnson come to mind. Different hair colors, same helmet hair. When I step out of the shower in the morning I flop my long hair forward over my face as I towel it dry. I comb it. And flop my hair back and comb it again. I put my freshly showered head in the path of a blow dryer just long enough to fluff up my bangs, to prevent them from hanging limply in front of my eyes. That's it. That's all. Of course, I don't suppose she worried much about having a bad hair day.

Turn around

Yom Kippur. I miss the old neighborhood today. A few old neighborhoods, in fact. Men in long black wool coats, hats, walking in clusters to temple. In the building on Manhattan's lower east side, a new condominium with twenty-six stories, the elevator buttons have all been pushed so that no one needs to do that work today. My first neighborhood in Chicago was adjacent to a Hasidic seminary. I loved watching out my window as the young men gestured passionately, arguing the finer points of the law, or maybe the fate of the Chicago Cubs, I was never sure. Yom Kippur. Repent. Turn around. Heartfelt contrition. Grief, sorrow at what I've done. One doesn't need to go to temple to move through this process. Some find it harder to focus on the essentials of the occasion in the company of others. Yet, we are called to gather. I'm not one to venture into religious services these days. Distraction, disturbing memories. It is hard to get past that. So. Here I am. Repenting online. Within this small community that gathers from time to time to share reflections and ideas here where the palm tree in Poland intrigues and amuses. I am praying today, reflecting and resolving. And, I have to confess: it would be a good thing if the religious community of which I am a part (not Judaism) might consider doing likewise. Not necessarily today, it's not their occasion. But once, some time. Wouldn't that be amazing. Then again, it's taken seventy years for the Berlin Philharmonic to come to Warsaw, this past Saturday, to play a concert, an act of contrition, of reconciliation. Seventy years. I can wait. I expect I'll have to.

Lois' Closet

"Lois, why does your mother keep a baptism robe in the closet?" It wasn't a baptismal robe. My mom told me this story sixty years later and she was still ashamed, as if it were her fault that her best friend's parents had Ku Klux Klan garb in a spare room closet at their house. "I didn't understand at the time," she told me. "But I knew it was something bad." Yes, it was. Very bad. "Lois was my best friend, from the first day of school. We walked together every day for nine years. We met at the corner and walked up 11th Avenue. After that day, my mother didn't like me to go over to Lois' house anymore." They had been playing hide-n-seek when my mother discovered the KKK robes in her hiding place. Lois was embarrassed but not clear herself what the white garments were for. "They take them when they go out at night," she explained. "Let's ask my mother." Ugly, mean words were said. My mom had seen nary a Negro in her young life, in the very small northern Colorado town where they lived. She had studied history, slavery, the Civil War. But her few trips to Denver had steered clear of 'that' part of town. America in the 1920's was so segregated that it was not uncommon for a child to not have had opportunity to interact, or even see an African American, especially in the West. My mom didn't grow up in a household that harbored hate. A grudge or two, especially against the uncle who inherited the family farm and had the temerity to sell his crops -- sell them! -- not only to his poor brother who, as the younger of the two, inherited nothing, but also to his father, who gave him the farm. For god's sake. I digress. So, yes, a grudge. But hate, no. My mom went home and told her mom or, more precisely, asked a lot of uncomfortable questions. Ten year old Ethel returned as she described that day to me with a trembling voice, misty eyes, a sense of horror and shame. After sixty years. She later learned more about the activity of the Klan in Colorado during that period; prominent politicians participated. She winced and pulled away from their association whenever Lois related that her parents had been "out there" the night before. Lois herself never expressed sympathy for these unconscionable activities so my mother decided to continue their friendship all the way into high school, offering her, in fact, an alternative vision of the world. Colorado. 1920's. 1930's. The Ku Klux Klan was active in Colorado, even thriving. I remembered that today when a debate on facebook (gotta love facebook!) devolved to the point that I was put in my place, "this hate speech all started with the Clinton's." Um, no. No, not quite. Not at all. We've been in that gutter for a very long time.

Choose moose!

Where are all the mooses? In the spirit of choosing life, I spent the last several days looking for moose. A trek through North Park, the moose capital of America (obviously betraying the U.S.-centric view of America)netted no moose. Not one. I waited patiently at Moose Crossing signs, scanned every bog, slogged through thick woodlands for forty or fifty miles, rented a helicopter to conduct an aerial search and came up with nothing. Not one moose. Okay, so there was no slogging or helo-ing. But I did look hard. And long. And didn't see a moose. And you know what, I don't care. The hunt was its own reward.

Choose Life!

Happy New Year! Shana Tova, 5770 I was invited to preach on Rosh Hashanah many years ago and it was one of the great honors and highlights of my life. I am not Jewish. But I have deep, deep respect for Jewish faith and tradition and great affection for Jewish culture. It was an honor to be invited to ponder the meaning of this High Holy Day and to have the opportunity for reflection, dedication and renewal. I'm sure I got way more out of it than the congregation did! The sermon I preached is in a box in the basement with the rest of my professional materials and books. It seems more and more likely that I will retrieve them and find them a place in the upstairs mainstream of my life again soon, but, in the meantime, of course I don't remember that sermon; I don't remember what I had for dinner. I'm pretty sure it would have included something along these lines. The Jewish faith tradition is absolutely radical about this: to love mercy, do justice, and walk humbly with your G-d. To love the Lord your G-d with all your heart and soul and mind and strength. To welcome widows and orphans. To beat swords into plowshares. To love the sojourner. And this: choose life. Choose life. Choosing life. It is not so easy as crossing a field, as the Russians say. It is a roundabout, up and down, down and out, over and around and under. A lot of under, to my mind. To choose life in the midst of terror and trauma, defeat and disaster, is not so easy. To choose life after death, in the midst of death, is as difficult a thing as there is to do in this world. To do it every day. Every day. The poet said this, "To choose what is difficult all one's days, as if it were easy, that is faith." W. H. Auden Those words are inscribed under a photo I keep on my desk of a friend whom I believe has embodied that difficult choice every single day. Truth is, it could be inscribed under a lot of people's photos. It's never easy, okay, rarely easy, to choose life, not when one can choose garbage instead. Or gossip. Or deceit, or the couch, or giving up. Giving up. The gravest temptation. Devastating and total traumatization, "complex trauma," it's called, has made me afraid of the world, of life. Danger: unpredictable, capricious, irrational, from here, from there, everywhere, especially when I least expected it. Nobody jumped out from behind a bush at me; I wasn't walking down drug-dealers' streets. I was in a church, for G-d's sake. I was dealing with the people who taught Sunday School, made mission quilts, took casseroles to shut-ins. With folks you trust your teen-agers with, and with officials who have taken vows of charity, of all things, and service. These past seven years (SEVEN flipping years! That is a long time!) have required me to make that choice for life every single day. It's as stupid as my being afraid of the grocery store and making myself choose to go there anyway. As enormous as being unnerved (and not in a good way) when I hear the Lutheran liturgy and traditional church music. As silly as being fearful of taking a shower (don't ask, that's a very odd one), and as sad as being terrified to drive in Littleton. You would not believe how far out of my way I will go to avoid the streets within Littleton city limits (we live just beyond). I still flip out when I hear the classic melodies of the liturgy. My brain screams: DANGER! Isn't that sad? Day by day, I choose, one must choose life. To get out of the tomb where it is safe and check things out in that big wide world. It's now to the point that I need sunglasses. That's a good thing! I'm out that much. New year, new life. New commitments, new choices. It is a gift, to be given this new year. A new year in which to have one's name written in the book of life, and to choose life not only for oneself but for others. I have always been drawn to this high and holy day as my new year's beginning. I suppose as a Gentile I can fly below the radar and make my dedications and commitments without all the fuss and falderal of the onlooking, co-celebrating Jewish community, much less the secular world on New Year's Day, January 1. Rosh Hashanah has not been corrupted by the retail world. It is still is a sacred, holy day without all the goop and gobber of the Today Show bloviating about resolutions to walk more and stop speeding (oh, that's me!) and little black dresses and champagne toasts and morning-after hangovers. That's all fine in its place but it also takes away the holiness, the sense of making a solemn commitment, of preparing to be renewed. I think New Year's Day and I think Rose Parade. I think Rosh Hashanah and I think, be new, be renewed. Renew purpose. Prepare to live. Choose life. Blessings and shalom as you choose life again and again and again in this new year.

Heaven help us! We have to stop doing this!

This is what bothers me. Read on, I'll get to it. A small group of people, a powerful minority, took exception to my leadership at the congregation I served in Littleton. They voted against my initial Call, and stood apart from the beginning. They had another candidate, one who, incidentally, had left his previous call after allegations of sexual harassment and abuse. They opposed me on every level, in every venue, about everything. Everything. I was assured they would come around eventually and I confess to spending an inordinate amount of time seeking to know them and to help them know me right from the start. It was not out of my need to be liked or popular but because every leader knows how important it is to have broad understanding and, if possible, support. Whether or not they liked everything I did, every initiative, I believed it was important to be transparent and forthcoming about reasons, background, and expected outcomes. Again, simply what all good leaders do. In a congregation that numbered roughly a thousand souls, these folks got more than their fair share of my time and energy. But it was never enough. You know what I'm talking about. It happens to all of us, in any setting. As the old saying goes, "you can't please all of the people all of the time." So it goes. You've been there. Somebody suggested once that I walk on water. But then, of course, the complaint would be that I couldn't swim. Sadly, though, there were a small number of folks whom I could never please, not any of the time, no matter what I did. Because, finally, it was not about that. It was not about anything visible. It was about something secret. I was not a perfect leader, not there, not anywhere. But, if I can quote a number of colleagues who were on top of the situation from start to finish, I was "damn good," "as good as they're going to get." And most definitely, "good enough." But it wasn't good for them, not in their view. Because I knew. Official sources had broken our confidentiality agreement and disclosed to these church members that I knew the unknowable, the taboo. They were anxious enough when I arrived, what with my background and expertise as the churchwide director of the ELCA Strategy for Responding to Clergy Sexual Misconduct. But when it was confirmed to them that my knowledge was not simply theoretical, topical, and that I was aware of their history, the anxious behavior flew off the charts. Unfortunately, I did not know my trust had been broken. That is, I didn't know they knew I knew. At that point,I was not sure what to do yet, wanting to be careful and considerate of the painful array of experiences within the congregation, wanting to be, first and most of all, compassionate and kind toward any who were victimized. But during this time of prayerful consideration, these members of the congregation received information that could not but make them extremely anxious. They also received untruthful information (which is to say, they were lied to)about my intentions as to what needed to be done with respect to that dangerous knowledge. So of course they were scared. Can you blame them? I proved to be impervious to run of the mill tactics, tactics that had been successful for them in the past, to intimidate and run pastors off, they ratcheted up the stakes. I enlisted two well-known national experts in congregational conflict, health,and organizational dynamics as guides and resources. Speed Leas has been a giant in the field for decades. Richard Blackburn of the Lombard Mennonite Peace Center is widely utilized and respected for his useful applications of a variety of methodologies, including that of Rabbi Friedman and other systemmic approaches to congregational conflicts. They spent hours advising me, behind the scenes, along with friends who were former bishops in my church and leaders of other denominations. Unfortunately, my bishop was not helpful, inasmuch as I soon discovered that I was not receiving honest information and reports from him. That betrayal was devastating to me. To a person, these advisors made this observation about life in our times. We begin with the stance that if you disagre with someone, you tell them. You express your views. Then, if you disagree or don't like someone, you express your view to them and seek equal respect for your point of view. You want to be heard, considered. Next, one works to impress upon them the rightness of your perspective. From that it escalates to one's needing to persist and prevail. Mutual tolerance is not enough. One has to win. Then, the need to dominate. Then the need to exclude. To humiliate. To ruin. Then the need to destroy. These experts suggested to me that our society has become less tolerant of difference and that this need to win, to prevail, to dominate that has always been with us, has become increasingly a need to ruin, to destroy. Whether or not its new, its true. As time went on, the hostility against me escalated to these alarming proportions. Even though only a small minority of members of this congregation had these fears and intentions, their behaviors disrupted the mission and daily routine ministry to the point that it became a consuming reality that surrounded and pervaded my daily life and that of the entire community. The harassment, hostility, stalking, threats, and sabotage I experienced pulled my energies away from healthy positive activity. Because I could not count anymore on getting honest information, I was constantly off-balance. On the second September 11, in 2002, one year after the most horrific and dramatic death I had ever encountered as a pastor, the bishop's office issued a "report," by which the bishop sought to evaluate the conflict and advise the congregation and me of steps we might take toward a healthy future. I forwarded a copy of that report to Mr. Leas and Mr. Blackburn and several other leaders around the church. Again, to a person, their response was, "he put a target on your back, Jan." "He did everything but kill you himself." "Jan, it's open season. He's given the greenlight for anybody to do anything to you." "You are the sacrifice, the scapegoat for all that has gone wrong in this congregation in the last thirty years." "He took every complaint these folks had and wrote it down. And calls that a report." The report made no mention at all, gave no acknowledgement whatsoever that the majority of those who expressed their views to the bishops' office took exception to the behavior and the perspectives of this minority. From that evening on, after I distributed the report to the congregation, sure enough. The hostility escalated. I was warned to not be at the church building alone. I was advised to be careful, to watch my back when driving. I confess, as much as I continued to be prayerful, to be mindful and to meditate, I was scared, more and more as the days and weeks went on. No, that's not quite true. I was terrified. It was a green-light to violence. I was hanging out there on my own. "Go and get her," the report was interpreted to have said. At some point, I dissociated and became a high-functioning zombie. Now, back to what bothers me. Certainly I'm bothered by what happened to me, to this congregation, by the abuse I encountered. But what is bothering me today is the disturbing pattern that has been building over the past several months, of demonizing President Obama. It is an old axiom in the anti-war and non-violence movements that "any attempt to dehumanize my neighbor is a step toward war," toward violence. The current discussions about racism expose the ugly under-belly of this country. Of course, we are still racist. Some of us less than others. The steam-roller of hatred that continues to gather force is disturbing on so many levels. President Obama has back-up that I never had, not officially, not when it counted. He has protection that we can only imagine how desparately is needed. That grieves me. It grieves me that his focus can be distracted, that he should have to be fearful, that his family is fearful. I see the looks on Michelle's face sometimes, as he moves into a crowd, and I cringe. I can only imagine what she feels. We need a President who is free to give his full energies to the challenges that lie before us. We need a President who is criticized but not demonized. Even if it is only a small minority who are spurred on by this belittling and demonizing rhetoric and activity, even if it's only 50 out of a 1000, it's enough to do terrible damage. To impose a grave danger. I hear the likes of Rush and Glenn and Sean with painful sensitivity. Their extreme and ill-considered words, the exaggerations and lies, the demonizing is an invitation to violence. I know. And that is why I share my story. During the days from mid-September until the attack that finally levelled me in late October of 2002, I lived in fear, unable to focus. There was already enough cortisol flooding my system to fill a reservoir. I lived on high alert. The experience of facing hate and hostility on a daily basis was exhausting. I had no idea.

Drama

Poles have a reputation and they do a good job upholding it. Polish politics are fractious. To put it mildly. Polish politics are a contact sport. The level of name-calling, petty muckering, silly and vindictive obstructionism is without parallel in the universe. That's what my Polish friends will tell you. They have no idea. In an article in this week's Polityka, on the 20th anniversary of the commencement of Poland's first non-communist government, its first post-communist Prime Minister, Tadeusz Mazowiecki, spoke to journalist Jacek Zakowski about these past twenty years of democracy. "It was very hard to fight for freedom over the years," he said, "and then it turned out that the building up of freedom was not easier." [crude translation mostly mine] Jerzy Baczynski, chief editor of Polityka, wrote this week of "verbal aggression," and the excesses of popular opinion, putting party above all else, and "not only in Poland." Oh, preach it brother. There has been an awful lot of drama during this peaceful transition. So it goes. "The quality of Polish politics, and Polish politicians has broken down during these past 20 years," he writes, and then, in a truly Polish touch, celebrates that, in fact, this is only normal, "normality." This is how it goes in times that are "not extraordinarily serious or romantic," like too many times in the past, WWII, the Partitions, failed insurrections. This is normal, is the message. And an important one. This is what democracy looks like, acts like, sounds like. Nevertheless, all three men lament, we can do better, we have missed opportunities because of our failures to work together. But, in spite of the missed opportunities and deterioration of the quality of public debate and leadership, the Poles -- and the journalists credit Mazowiecki especially -- have "disrupted the fate of Poles over two hundred years" that rarely succeeded and stopped the run of "heroic failures and big initiatives that ended in tragedy." "Poles have argued forever," he writes. Of course. Fractious. Contentious. Shoots self in foot. But they have made something out of, well, not out of nothing but out of not much. Their transition from communism to market capitalism and democracy is nothing short of a miracle, especially that it has come to pass without any road map, no precedents, and no violence. And believe me, the dangers were not absent. They've done enough, listened enough, reformed enough. You will hear me complain -- on their behalf, of course -- of Poles not getting their act together sufficiently to build a decent national highway system. The process of privatization lags. And the current President has been known to send Polish foreign policy entirely off the rails in the course of an afternoon. It's not always a pretty sight. But, they did it. They do it. Somehow. So. Here we are. I'm thinking we have sunk beneath the level of normal. We Americans have, without question, grabbed the trophy out of the Poles' hands, the trophy that is for stupid, reckless, self-defeating politic rhetoric. "Verbal aggression," and "slander of the state is incredibly harmful," Mazowiecki says. Amen. We are all drama all the time. Never mind substance, let's go for theater. Children's theater, at that. As I listen to the discourse about our need to reform health care I am distressed almost to the point of complete despair and cynicism by the lack of respect that I hear coming from the red side of the aisle's populist supporters and, to an extent, the political leaders themselves. How on earth are we going to get something this complex figured out if we don't listen to one another? How can we succeed if we don't stop repeating as fact those things that have been proven false, beyond a reasonable doubt, or even, to use the lesser standard, by a preponderance of evidence? How can we make something good for ourselves and all our citizens if we do nothing more than hurl accusations, inflame passions, and misrepresent and malign the goodwill of those who have different proposals? To paraphrase Steve Jobs in his bid to recruit John Scully to Apple, "do you want to keep selling sugared water" -- in this case, poisoned water -- "or do you want to change the world?" We need respect. We need restraint. We need fairness and honesty. And, if it's not asking too much, I'd even like to request some good humor. We need to be worthy of this great gift we've been given, this history, this treasure of democratic freedom. We are in the gutter. And we're rolling around in mud. Can we stop now? I'm not sure who in this country has the moral authority anymore to call us to account, as Mazowiecki does, as an institution like Polityka does. Let's take a lesson or two from the new Polish democracy. They will be flabbergasted we asked. {And speaking of trophies, we were, weren't we, how about we send Caroline Wozniacki home with the big one from the U.S.Open.}

No drama

We don't even have a wheel cover on the left front tire. "Not too many '97 Voyagers come down this street," Dave remarked as we turned around in a cul de sac after leaving the mongo house where Annika is having dinner with friends before they all head over to the Homecoming dance. "Oh, I disagree," I said. "Their cleaning people drive them. And maybe the fish people. And the pool people. And the light-changing people. And the flower people. And the yard service." Actually, my good friend's cleaning lady has a much nicer, newer minivan than me. It does occur to me when I visit my friends in neighborhoods just a scootch bit different than mine, when I drive through the gate the sentry probably assumes I'm a service person rather than a friend. Doesn't bother me none, just makes me smile. And feel glad my friends aren't put off by the difference in our economic status. Or, I hope, the lack of a wheel cover. Damn things keep falling off. We're back from the ritual picture-taking, just up the road, at her friend's house, about two miles and two million dollars from here. Annika asked me this afternoon about how we did the picture thing when I was in high school. We didn't. A boy came to the house with an orchid or a mum corsage. We awkwardly exchanged greetings with my parents. He fumbled with the flower, not wanting to touch me there, at least not in front of my father. I honestly don't remember ever taking pictures. And, thank heavens, none survived. I think there was a photo booth at the prom but not everyone availed themselves of it. You went out to dinner with, maybe, one other couple. You went to the dance. You went out 'parking.' You came home. No limos. No reservations for thirty-five, or sixty. No excursions to the Botanic Garden or an especially beautiful hotel lobby for photography. When my older daughter was a freshman in high school I discovered that we parents were invited to show up at 5:00 at one of the girl's home for pictures. It seemed like overkill for both Dave and me to take a few snapshots so I went off with the camera and showed up in whatever I'd been wearing that afternoon. Oops. I walked in to join a group of parents looking dressed for dinner at the country club, sipping wine and dipping celery into a low-fat dip. It was an event. After pictures on their terrace overlooking the lake, we were invited for to stay for cocktail hour. I fit right in. Or not. Eight years later, I've mastered the drill. When time came for my younger daughter's first Homecoming, we spent more hours looking for the best place to take pictures than for her dress. And it wasn't my idea. Just so you know. In fact, great drama was created by some of the other mothers around this very issue. Sigh. Sometimes the kids go out to eat and more recently, they have been having dinner together at somebody's home. The house is chosen for its photogenic qualities. We've got a gorgeous backyard but our house is not deemed suitable for inside pictures: ceilings too low. Tonight we had our choice of two staircases. The circular one in the entry hall won out. Of course, the initial plan was to pose the kids outdoors with the Scottish style golf course, its berms and bern, in the background. Too bad it was pouring rain. Our younger daughter is now a senior and she is SO done with all this. For the first two years there were hair appointments for updo's, manicure and pedicure appointments, make-up appointments, matching shoes, a wrap, flowers, jewelry. Today she came home from the football game and parade and lounged around in sweats until, oh, about an hour before departure. She took a shower, dried her hair, put on the dress she wore to another dance last year, found some shoes, decided they were too uncomfortable and left the house wearing flip flops. Don't tell Michael Kors. I wore jeans and a no-great-shakes shirt. Too bad. We drove the '97 minivan. It fit right in. Or not: among the SUV's and Audi's and Beemers and a lowly old Jeep Wagoneer. I'm sure the guard at the gate wondered what we were doing there. The hosts were lovely and we had wine and cheese and stood around waiting for everyone to arrive, the boys looking beyond uncomfortable in their dress shirts and ties, girls in adorable strapless, flirty dresses and, except for one very special young woman, glittery, matching shoes. Updo's and stunning, subtle jewelry, and a little glitter on the cheeks were de rigeur. They looked gorgeous! They're seniors now so the girls and boys don't separate as they used to, into tiny knots several feet apart; the awkwardness is gone. I found myself wondering..., oh, never mind. We parents stood in another room and shared small talk which, this year, has devolved into a theme and variations on, "my how time flies." Next September these kids will be scattered from East Coast to West and everywhere in between. I wonder what they all think of that. Everything is the last time for these kids, their last Homecoming, last first day of school, last football season. I wonder how many of them will ever see each other again. So it goes. I can't tell you how pleased I am that my daughter wore flip flops. She looked great!