Where there's smoke there's

Delusion.


True story: A journalist sits across the desk from a high-ranking Communist party official in Hungary in @ 1955, tall windows revealing a broad view of the city of Budapest.

"Where is the fire?" asks the journalist, pointing to dark thick smoke across town.

"What fire?" the official responds. "I see no fire."


Kati Marton writes a disturbing new book, Enemies of the People, describing her parents' arrest on trumped up charges of spying for the U.S. during the early days of the Cold War. It could be about Poland too, or Czechoslovakia or East Germany. The rampant paranoia that seems almost silly to us now, certainly outrageous, overblown, hysterical was common.

In this passage she is writing about the absence of bad news in the news media in Eastern Europe, "behind the Iron Curtain," as she calls it, during those days. Her parents were viewed as dangerous simply because they told the truth, or sometimes only pointed toward it. One couldn't even acknowledge the reality of a fire out in the open, across town.

"Fire? I see no fire."

Delusion.

It's me again.

There are so many delightful, beautiful, lovely things to write about. Aspen, listening to an excellent orchestra play Copland while lying under gently swaying trees and a blue sky, an evening of really fun patriotic music and fireworks on the 4th of July. Waking up early for Wimbledon, and the World Cup, and now the Tour de France. I'm enjoying my tour de France very much. Good friends, loving conversations, keen insights. The pleasure of a fine glass of wine, an excellent vegan salad, watermelon, my best friend from high school's graduation from another master's program, Palm Springs, more Aspen, the thrill of finding the right words, a true sentence, for the novel. Surprises, brilliant observations. The pure dark outline of mountains against the barely light sky. An excellent report from the doctor (yes!). So much so much, so much goodness.

But here I write about the badness. Much of the time. Having discerned that for the time it is my calling to write about ugliness, to shine light in dark corners, I come to you again with this ugly story of an ugly time, a legacy of dysfunction, betrayal, and mistrust that has fall-out that continues to affect the lives of millions in Central (Eastern) Europe to this day.

Being asked to ignore the obvious. Believe the ridiculous. See the invisible. Pretend reality. Pretend pretend pretend. And maybe pretty soon it will seem true.

Marton goes on to write about her father, a sophisticated, cultured, worldly, urbane and elegant man, with a Ph.D and plenty of practical sense, nevertheless,

"that he still trusted his captors to keep their word, still trusted his cell mates with his confidences, was still shocked and appalled when they did not, is a hallmark of a man who seemed incapable of recognizing the full deceit of the (Communist) regime...He simply could not participate in their universe of lying, cheating, betraying, torturing, and subverting." (page 140)

His naivete was stunning.

It was an unreal world. One that many choose to close the door on afterward and forget completely. And in some ways, who can blame them?

But Kati Marton chooses to shine a light on this dark time, to bore down to the truth, no matter how scary it may be.

Okay, so here's the creepy part. I recognized that scene. It played out almost exactly the same in my life, yes, in Poland sometimes. "Fire, I do not see a fire."

But that's NOT the creepy part. I recognized it from the church. From my encounters with the official of the church who sat across the desk from me in his office almost eight years ago to this day and said, in effect, "fire? I do not see a fire."

What he actually said was, "I do not know of any history of clergy sexual abuse in that church."

Never mind, he was the one to tell me about the history of the congregation in the first place, three years earlier. When it seemed safe for him. When it wasn't inconvenient for him.

Why it became unsafe, inconvenient for him to live without delusion, "no fire," I honestly don't know. But it did. And his abandonment of truth pulled the rug out from under me. It felt like a slow-motion slide off the side of a cliff.

And I was likewise disbelieving, still trusting my superiors, my colleagues, still shocked and appalled when they betrayed my trust. I was likewise incapable of comprehending the full deceit of the 'regime.' I could not believe and enter their "universe of lying, cheating, betraying, torturing, and subverting." My naivete was stunning. It still seems unreal. But I took detailed notes. There was a follow-up conversation. She took notes. It happened. It really did. Unbelievable.

Stunning naivete. And devastation when I finally took it in. To say nothing of the consequences, in terms of the behavior of parishioners who knew then it was truly "open season" on Jan.


So. One learned over the forty post-War (WWII) years of communist regimes in eastern Europe to begrudgingly accept the reality of that deceit and delusion coming from officialdom.

But, in the church?

Will tomorrow finally be Independence Day in Poland?

It is about time. Beyond time. Past due.

Poland is voting for President on July 4th. And it is a deal-changing election.

Past? or Future?

Neither candidate inspires much enthusiasm. Well, maybe that's not true. The candidate of the past does stir the passions of those who wish to remain rooted in an anti-Russian, anti-European, anti-Semitic (sorry, but true), hyper-Catholic and so-called patriotic Polish lala land. He is the twin brother of the late President, Lech Kaczynski, and has made this election more a referendum about what really happened on the fateful morning in Smolensk three months ago when the president's plane crashed on landing, killing him and 96 others on board, than about what is required for Poland's vibrant, vigorous, productive future.

Firstly, let it be noted that what really happened in Smolensk when the plane slammed into a hillside in fog is most likely determined: the pilots failed to follow urgent instructions to NOT land the plane and crashed it. But, despite overtures of good will from Russian authorities, and logical analysis, Kaczynski the Brother has continued to be churlish and childish not only about this but about other issues related to Polish history and the relative bona fides of himself and his opponent. "Who's is bigger" is one take on the campaign.

Lots of sentimentality has been mucked up, to the extent that Kaczynski the Latter, whose brother the president a few months ago was most certain to lose in the upcoming scheduled election -- against almost anyone -- is running neck and neck with the candidate whose party was leading by as many as 20 percentage points or more, at the time of the crash. It has become a referendum on nostalgia or sympathy for a dead president's poor brother more than a real debate and decision about serious issues.

This is not a good thing.

The other candidate is not exactly Mr. Excitement. Lackluster, uninspiring, not yet as bold as their leadership needs to be, but at least he is oriented toward reason, toward positive relationships with their neighbors, and progressive policies at home. So, the message is, get over it, get over your boredom with Komorowski and just do the right thing.

We're not the only ones, here in the States, whose politics are thoroughly mucked up. The Poles are teetering between taking steps into the 21st century, as is their due, or wallowing in past grievances and petty gripes.

My Polish friends have mostly gone to bed now. They will be up early, as they are among those who desperately care. They will vote early (and, were they in Chicago back in the day, they could vote often). They have editorialized and campaigned and tried to bring logic and wisdom into the debate and to the decision.

The attached (I hope) link to the last editorial in Polityka in advance of this election asserts that, however one may feel, sentimentally, about the past, the former president, the church, "Poland is more important." They argue for sensible, thoughtful, forward-looking decision-making on the part of every voter. God, I hope the people come through.

I hope the voters get it right this time so that when they all wake up on Monday morning, they will be free at last from the worst of the worst of the past several years, and free to move, to move on, to grow, to thrive.

Heaven knows, they so deserve it!

My KGB file starts out like this,

"I am a lightbulb."

That is the opening line in my KGB file.

Oh yes, I have my spy stories too. Nothing intentional. Just the usual Cold War goofiness about being followed and watched and having rooms and phones bugged. And a couple of incidents that might make it, albeit altered, into the novel.

But of course I have been thinking of spies again this week. And what a crazy business that is!

And while others have been suggesting that the Russian spies could have discovered everything they wanted to know on the internet, it has occurred to me: there is an organization or two that they would do well to infiltrate.

Walmart. God help us.

And Nordstrom.

Moscow currently has the highest cost of living in the world. It is listed on a reliable cost of living index as being 50% higher than that of New York. Geneva Switzerland was only ten percent above New York, in fourth place and Tokyo was up there in the top three.

But the average Moscovite is not getting any value for their outlay. The place is still a wreck.

What they need to learn is how to produce and sell retail goods for a reasonable price.

Let it here be said, for the record, that I hate Walmart. For a number of reasons that have all to do with fairness and justice. So I really don't want Russia to emulate them. Not exactly. But perhaps some spies could figure out a better way to do it without ruining the small-time producers they court and co-op and then ditch, and the small town stores that get run out of business.

Heaven only knows, the Russians need to figure out how to get reasonable amounts of consumer goods into the hands, and apartments, of reasonable numbers of people.

And then, while they're at it, I'm thinking customer service lessons would be in order. And who does that better than Nordstrom? Thank you notes are a bit over the top but, still, I appreciate being appreciated. And the live piano is a nice touch.

For that matter, Macy's, Penney's, and Sear's would do well to take lessons from Nordstrom too. For example, when a customer is standing with a large number of clothes, the worker-person might consider asking if they need help instead of continuing a conversation with their co-worker about the restaurant they tried last night for dinner. Really. Or talking on the phone with their sister. I mean, really.

That is pretty Soviet-era-ish. One counted on rude and inattentive clerks in Soviet-era Eastern Europe. You felt honored, shocked and surprised to be waited on. This has changed entirely in Poland. It is a very customer friendly environment. But not so much in Russia. Or the local Macy's.

So, whatever they do, I recommend the neighborhood spies skip that place.

"I swear to tell the truth,"

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

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

And so I did.

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

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

Why the lawsuit?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I may have to.

Is Lightness Bearable?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If we dare.

Home, Home on the.....

range, the plains, the mountain, the desert.


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

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

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

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

Not a bad life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Let the whole world spin."

Poland Wins! Beats USSR! 0-0

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Poland 0. Soviet Union 0.

Poland won!

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

The Soviets went home.

It was a good night in Warsaw.

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

And in other news, Pigs Fly!

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

Tennis Saved Me

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

Scenes from a marriage

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

We know you're out there

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

What does bucolic mean?

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

Father Conley and me

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

Do you do windows?

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

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

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

Good Bye, Lenin

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

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

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

Radio Waves

"The radio works only when the lights are on." In the old days, we blamed it on communism. In the old days, we blamed everything on communism. My landlady in Warsaw explained the radio problem with a sigh, as if to say, "there is nothing to be done." I was struck by how quickly and completely resigned she was to the apparent inevitability of inconvenience. It was a response I remembered well from the days of communism, saying in effect, "who knows why this is? It's just another one of life's annoying and inexplicable mysteries, having music only when the overhead light is switched on." It's not that she's stupid. She simply assumes that some situations are beyond her control. The moment she walked out the door, I unplugged the radio from its socket and found an outlet that wasn't wired to the light switch. I'm an American; it's what I do. On the one hand, Poles are incredibly resourceful, doggedly persistent and downright militant in their determination never to ever give up. But, about some things, surprisingly, many Poles of a certain age are all too quick to shrug, sigh and give in with passive acceptance to inconvenience, frustrating circumstances, and even injustice. Their resignation in the face of arbitrary vexations is a sad side-effect of growing up in a system where logic was irrelevant and relevance was altogether illogical. I am still surprised, occasionally amused, and most often unsettled to see some of my old friends' unwillingness to push, to look around for solutions, and by their failure to be assertive in figuring out problems like radio power. Or government power. Conditioning. Too many people my age were imprinted too early and for too long with this devilish notion that nothing can be done. "Resistance is futile." Today's forty and fifty-somethings are too young to have caught their parents' and societies' fervor for rebuilding in the immediate post-War period. They came of age after the drama and activism of the late 1960's when, in 1968, student strikes and protests in Poland were the first to launch that tumultous year of student activism around the world, from Paris to Berkeley. They missed the moments of collective energy and the synergy for change. They tended not to be the leaders of Solidarity when it set Poland on 'tilt' and began unraveling the communist world. Many, in fact, left Poland during that period and emigrated to Australia, England, Sweden, Paris, and the United States. Not that one could ever blame them! I was surprised to return to Warsaw in 2007 for the first time in 20 years to discover that many of my old friends, once lively and resourceful, were feeling displaced and still at sea in the new world. Confused, resigned, and passive. Still living, in a way, in the old world where capricious, illogical, and dominating external powers thwarted and disabled their own capacities to make things happen. My landlady visited me once that summer and was shocked to see that I'd moved the radio, that it was on, even while the overhead lights were not. She was shocked when I explained how I solved the problem, and shook her head, as if to say (as Poles often do), "those crazy Americans!"

The Speed of Poland

I've said it before. I love to go fast. Roller coasters, planes surging toward take-off, speed boats, and yes, cars. I love the sensation of speed. I was first stopped for speeding late in my senior year of high school. Doing about 60 in a 30 mph zone on a narrow road between my home and the school. Ironically, I was in a hurry to get something to my mother. I was let off with a warning. Maybe that was a mistake. I am dutiful and careful in town, especially in neighborhoods and on city streets. But out on the road, an open road, it's easy to get into the left lane and just fly. It feels wonderful. I'm prudent, watchful and careful and have never done anything really dangerous, except for the fact that speed alone can create its own conditions, making it harder to react. I'm not aggressive or rude. I don't weave or (rarely) pass on the right. I don't sit on somebody's bumper and I signal when changing lanes. Driving from Denver to Aspen, or anyplace west on I-70 is a low-fly zone, with well-engineered highways that make it easy to go along at 80 mph and often even 90. The sensation of freedom and movement is one I've always craved. So, driving in Poland is an exercise in absolute frustration. Absolute. There are no good roads. I believe I've complained about this before. Interestingly, I just read an interview with a Polish emigre, now the director of The Macquarie Group, an Australian investment bank with assets of more than 340 billion dollars. Arthur Rakowski works from the London office and oversees infrastructure investments that include ownership of the London sewer system, airports, electricial grids, waterworks and roads. The Group also has the ownership stake in the container port at Gdansk, Poland. Rakowski, who left Poland in 1981, as martial law was declared, is the son of the late and last Communist Prime Minister of Poland and the long-time editor of the widely respected newspaper (now magazine) Polityka, Mieczyslaw F. Rakowski. He's been away from Poland for a long time and has few close ties there anymore but still has an interest in seeing his native country be successful, most certainly. In fact, The Macquarie Group tried to invest in the development of roads, of highway infrastructure in Poland for years. They worked at it for ten years. But never in those ten years were the policy makers able to overcome petty grievances and partisan grudges and make a deal, "who, how and with what to make them." Hence, there are still no good roads, no expressways, no autobahn in Poland. That does not, however, stop Polish drivers from trying to treat their two-lane, unimproved roads, where tractors and geese still cause accidents, as racetracks. And city driving is, well, not for the timid. Or the less than fleet-footed pedestrian. A week has passed since President Kaczynski's funeral. Two weeks have passed since the tragic plane crash near Katyn Forest. It's a respectable time to talk some difficult truths. "My view is that Poland is difficult to rule and the nature of the Poles is not conducive to the development of the country," Rakowski says. "The whole story shows how much we lost, we can not reach a compromise." This despite great intelligence, highly educated leaders, and a real sense of urgency to move forward. To be sure, Poland has the strongest economy of any of the former Communist countries and has made great strides in the 20 years since it accepted a "shock therapy" instant immersion into market capitalism. I have been known, myself, to go on and on and on about the marvels of Prada and Ikea and Cheetos and Nissans and Bose speakers, and everything one could hope for now available -- and almost affordable -- to Polish people. The private sector is moving along. Despite continuing bureaucratic obstacles to privatization of large enterprises, to say nothing of the bungled mess of simply trying to get a license to open a beauty salon, for example, or a car repair shop, Poles on their own have been remarkably resourceful, and successful. Resiliency at work. But. But but but. Politics. Government behavior (I don't know what else to call it) in Poland is still churlish, petty, petulant, and always always always obstructionist. Spinning their wheels. Refusing to compromise for the sake of a greater -- and attainable -- good. "They still talk about who said what in a bar on the corner 20 years ago." I danced around the matter in writing my initial posts after the tragic plane crash. It seemed a bit too crass too quick to say it out loud, to say what I said to my spouse the instant I learned the plane went down. Kaczynski didn't have to make that trip. It was churlish and, frankly, childish. And I'm the least of those who have said so. Roger Cohen in an excellent NYTimes article this week spoke directly. The President of Poland needed to make his own statement, to stand apart from any Russian overtures at reconciliation. Had he wanted, he could have been invited and taken part in the official ceremonies at the Katyn Forest memorial earlier that week, when Russian President Vladimir Putin and Polish Prime Minister shook hands and words were said that moved the relations between the two countries forward. But he would not. Politics is not "the art of the possible" for such persons. It is the act of obstinacy and vindictiveness, revanchism and vengefulness. In such a case, nothing positive can happen. And tragically, in this instance, it is fatal. So that's the reason, in a nutshell, why there are no good roads in Poland. And that's the reason why, in a nutshell, 97 people died in Smolensk. And that is the reason why some of the most brilliant people in the country, who still try to make it work, to contribute to its growth, tell me over and over, "I am irritable all the time I am in Poland." "Poland makes me all the time irritable." These are the true patriots. Not the man who was buried last Sunday in Krakow. Not his twin brother who will now try to exploit the tragedy and continue the behaviors of their political party. Whatever good they have accomplished, it is undermined by the short-sighted and tragic (there's that word again) and petty and even stupid behaviors that seek only to avenge, to obstruct, to punish their old foes. I remember a long ago speech by Australian physician, Dr. Helen Caldicott, and her warning, "If you don't like the other guy in your boat, you don't drill a hole in his end." Sadly, that's been going on in Poland ever since the country saw its Communist government wither away. Lots of drilling, lots of holes. And no roads. There are lessons in here for all of us, whether our ancient enemies are near or far, personal and private or public and political. There are lessons for Americans here, as we move toward increasingly strident and dangerous public behavior, and for us as individuals who have reason -- but perhaps not purpose -- in hanging on to our old anger, our desire for revenge. It doesn't go anywhere, fast.

Lenin For Sale

Lenin is going for practically nothing. Several volumes of Lenin's works were for sale on a sidewalk table in the university district of Warsaw recently. Just beyond the stairway of the church, where first you encounter the pulp trade -- boobs flashed on the covers of magazines and DVD's barely outside the church doors -- on Krakowskie Przedmiesce, down the street from the Presidential Palace, and across from elegant gates of the University of Warsaw, Lenin is for sale along with Winnie the Pooh. You can pick up a few of his volumes for little more than a quarter a piece. What do you do with old college textbooks? Some can be sold back to the university bookstore, or by notices on the campus bulletin board. Now we sell them online. Some we give away, others sit on a shelf, supposedly for future reference, and some we toss -- as far and as hard as possible. A popular option when I was in college was to sell them at the annual community garage sale, in the book stall. The only down side to this option was, well, the community aspect of the enterprise. Lois put out a box of her books with a sign that read, "25 cents each." She hovered close by as they disappeared a few at a time. Late in the day most of her books had been snatched up. Only a few lonely volumes languished, left in the box, rejected time after time, hour after hour. She was ready to give them away. In fact, she now rather wishes she had packed it in right then but she stood watch as a late browser wandered in. He pawed through several of the other boxes, from different donors, before turning his attention to Lois' box of leftovers. Now, let's say he was the author of one of those books. Let's say he was the president of the university. Let's say he sees his own book, the one he wrote, the one he used as a text for the one course he taught, in that box of rejects. And let's say that he wondered, "who would sell this?" He is curious. He opens the book and is about to check the inside front cover. He is thinking of the quip he will make to Lois, the joke he will make at the expense of whatever clod lacked the good sense to keep it, or, at the very least, to unload it someplace else, out of the neighborhood. "Ha, ha, is he or she in trouble now!" Lois stands frozen in place. Lois, now a junior level administrator at this very same university stands frozen in place, across a narrow table from her former professor, this man who is now her boss. She watches as he finds her name penned in ink inside that front cover. Disbelieving, he looks up at her, as if to ask, "how could you?" The blood drains from her face. She is mortified. Until. Until she recovers her wits and remembers that it was a stupid book and, anyway, shouldn't he be the more embarrassed? And so she gives him a look back, a shrug and a wry smile, as if to say, "hey, it's worth a quarter!" Lenin isn't even worth a quarter, at least not here in the market economy of post-Leninist Poland. A few days later I pass the table again and his books are still there. Winnie the Pooh is gone, a Polish edition of a Danielle Steele novel there in its place. But Lenin is stuck in the same spot, between the porn and the commonplace. Would he sell at any price? I imagine the encounter Lenin would have with the bookseller, a brawny man with a few days' beard and flannel shirt, looking, in fact, like he belongs in Brainerd, Minnesota, with Paul Bunyan. There are no plaintive looks, no pathetic gazes. No shrugs or wry smiles either. Lenin is furious. He might shoot the guy on the spot. The bookseller is adamant and dismissive. "You had your chance. It got corrupted. And it didn't work. You had your day. Now we're done. We've moved on." And so it is in Poland today. Except for me. I decided that two-bits of Lenin is a worthwhile souvenir.

Officially, There Is No.....

Problem. Officially, there is no reality, not one anyway that really happened. Officially, nothing happened. History was a problem. In 1940. 1956. 1968. 1970. So much happened. That didn't. Not officially. Officially. Everything must be official. Truth was not a matter of what really happened but only of What could be admitted. 1956. 1968. 1970. No memorials. No admissions. Why were workers shot in Gdanks? They weren't. And the Jewish intelligentsia kicked out? They weren't. The students silenced, arrested? Did that happen? I don't know, I don't think so. And Katyn. Who could say, not Agnieszka, not about her brother, not about him Who died in an open grave, shot in the back of the head by a Soviet NKVD Killer who was made up like a Nazi for forty years, impersonating a beast Of another tribe. Did it matter, anyway? Who killed him? Anyway, he was dead. Whispers, rumors, bold declarations. Prison sentences, harsh interrogations. No Grave markers told his story. Or Jozef's. Or Bronek's. Or Marcin's. It was not, officially, what it was. Their death was a lie. Created to create the myth of brotherhood. Only now, in recent years does the official and the real find a way to co-exist. And there is a great danger, emerging again, of a myth, a legend, an Official story arising to trump the real one. Lech Kaczynski was a good man, with strong ideals. He was so committed to his ideals and his mission of vanquishing once for all the old dictatorship of Communism that he betrayed those same values not infrequently in the service of his goal. He was petty and small as much as he was wise and good. He was, as one writer said, a patriot in the only way he knew how. Which is not to say, the most useful way for Poland. Only history will finally judge the damage and the success of his term in office. In death, once again in death it is the Poles find themselves caught up in the ancient act of mythologizing and ritualizing death, creating legend and official stories that become what's taught and told. How ironic. That Lech Kaczynski went to Katyn to undo the damage of decades of only official truth only to become in death the object of historical mythologizing of the same kind.

"Bringing Forgiveness"

Forgive. Forgive. "Do you want to wake up slowly or fast?" I was asked early Saturday mornnig. "Slow," I said, and the speculation began. What happened? I feared the worst, which for me would be a major terrorist attack (domestic or foreign) against our own President Obama. I decided Dave would have been crying had that been the case so my mind moved on. Nothing personal, there was no hint of that in his tone. He disappeared for a little while and after cranking open the creaky channels that flow within the frontal lobe, I picked up my iPhone, my usual source of immediate news each day. Click on mail. "Polish President killed in plane crash." News flashes from several sources. Shock. Details emerged. The mind (mine, anyway) becomes insatiable at such points. Details, facts. But lurking, always near, was interpretation. Or the temptation to interpret. To judge. And my interpretation, along with that of several dozens of Polish journalists and other leaders, as it turns out, went along these lines: churlish, pugnacious, stubborn, petulant President has to organize his own trip to Katyn, can't participate in the official one with Russians (horrors!) present. And so this happens. More or less, that's true. At a time when the theme of healing and reconciliation was being commemorated, on the 70th anniversary of the massacre of 22,000 Polish officers, professors, doctors, lawyers and other 'elite' leaders by the Soviet Secret Police, the Polish President would insist on his own terms, no compromise, no presence of the Russians who were at least moving toward owning up at last to this mass murder. The official celebration had been held days earlier. Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk and Russian Prime Minister were together at Katyn, and Putin went further than ever before in acknowledging the crimes committed by Soviet NKVD. It should be noted that he stopped short of apologizing, a sore point, but this was progress, nonetheless. In April of 1940, less than a year after the start of World War II, some twenty-two thousand Polish leaders were shot in the back of the head, execution style, at the edge of trenches into which they then fell, their bodies covered immediately by huge land-moving machines. No word of their fate was ever officially offered. They had been taken prisoners by the Soviet (Red) Army shortly after the Soviets invaded Poland on the 17th of September, 1939. Their families heard from them for several months before all communications stopped. The prisoners then disappeared into the ether. Until 1943, when the German Army (Nazi's) held that ground, near Smolensk, and discovered the mass graves, from the ravaging of wolves within them. Word began to seep back into Poland, "Katyn," "Kharkov," and other sites, filled with bodies. I cannot even begin to get my head around a loss of that magnitude or that type. Accusations went back and forth between Nazi and Soviet forces. Who did it? When the Soviet Army finally prevailed and routed the Germans, their version of the story became official truth. And there would be no challenge. Any questioning of this account brought severe penalties, imprisonment, even death. And so it was until 1990. But everyone, quietly, everyone knew the truth. Even those who were rather sympathetic toward the USSR. I don't know anyone in Poland who did not have a father, grandfather, uncle, husband who perished in Katyn Forest. No one. I realize that says something about who my friends are, from what strata of the society, but still. It was a pervasive wound. Each friend told me their family's story in hushed tones, even within their own homes, and prevailed upon me not to disclose their 'secret knowledge,' that the Soviets perpetrated the crimes. Ironically, because of this new tragedy, more people will learn of Katyn that would have had the ceremonies gone on, unnoticed in the West. That is something good to be salvaged from this catastrophe. But this word, "forgive," presses itself on my spirit. I found myself thinking, "if only," and I wasn't alone. If only the Polish President had not been so churlish, unforgiving, had been willing to accede to the Russians' hospitality, and made the trip the few days earlier. This wouldn't have happened. The problem, of course, with that logic is that it isn't entirely logical. Fog settles in. Or not. Planes crash. Or land safely. Thankfully, no one taken seriously within Poland is suggesting that this is, in any way, the will of God. It is an accident. A tragedy. But one that could have been avoided. By a spirit of humility, of forgiving. Not of forgetting, no, the two are distinct and must never be confused or conflated. The homily prepared by a bishop who perished on the plane was printed in a Polish newspaper today. In it he gently encouraged the family members of those murdered, and the Polish people, "to be about forgiving." Citing Pope John Paul II's words to a delegation of Katyn Families at the Vatican several years ago, Bishop Ploski was going to remind those present, "what is your task, the task of Katyn Families. It seems that it is just bringing forgiveness. Yes, it is the storage in the memory of this national tragedy, personal and family, but it is also, through this memory, forgiveness." How ironic. The failure to enter into that spirit was the reason for the flight on Saturday morning. And now it is left to those who live on to pause, ponder and consider this word of mercy. All around us -- who are not Polish, who do not suffer necessarily the effects of hideous, brutal war crimes, who live more or less ordinary lives -- are reminders of how "we been done wrong." I certainly live with those daily thorns. Lesson One from this tragedy. Forgive. Let go the churlish and petulant behaviors that bespeak our hurt and resentment. Reconcile. Accept the hospitality of even the most repulsive former foe. Abandon the reckless and short-sighted reactions that lead to yet again a new cycle of suffering and tragedy. As humans, we are, of course, free to interpret and see things as we will. We don't need to draw conclusions of causality in this case, or any other, to be moved to reflection. I wondered in the early hours after this tragedy if I was alone, arrogant and inappropriate, with my first thoughts, these you read above. I read in today's Polish newspapers some very similar responses. These give me courage to offer then my own reflection. Stop the cycle. Be humble. Forgive, forgive. What is our task? "It is just bringing forgiveness."

"Miracle Fair"

The commonplace miracle: that so many common miracles take place. The usual miracle: invisible dogs barking in the dead of night. One of many miracles: a small and airy cloud is able to upstage the massive moon. Several miracles in one: an alder is reflected in the water and is reversed from left to right and grows from crown to root and never hits bottom though the water isn't deep. A run of the mill miracle: winds mild to moderate turning gusty into storms. A miracle in the first place: cows will be cows. Next but not least: just this cherry orchard from just this cherry pit. A miracle minus top-hat and tails: fluttering white doves. A miracle (what else can you call it): the sun rose today at three-fourteen a.m. and will set tonight at one past eight. A miracle that's lost on us: the hand actually has fewer than six fingers but it's still got more than four. A miracle: just take a look around: the inescapable earth. An extra miracle, extra and ordinary: the unthinkable can be thought. ___Wyslawa Szymborska, 2006 Nobel Laureate for Poetry, a Polish poet.

Mercy

Is Mercy. The first word, and ultimately the last, at a time like this is mercy. And for now, all between is silence.

Stand in the wind!

Get in the way of the wind! Yep, that is the way to go. And let it blow you forward. Soar! I shocked my husband a few years back when I told him, "I'm pissed at Jesus. He makes it look easy." This rising. Getting up out of the tomb. Rising. Rising up. Now, be patient, hear me out. No heresy, honest. But honesty, yes. Rising. I believe the story of rising, of new life after death, of a new, open future after closed broken despair is hard-wired into the DNA of the universe, as I believe Carl Jung has also proposed. And I believe that whether or not we are Christians -- and whether or not we are still folks who can handle being part of the church, with all its abuse and hypocrisy -- this story of dying and rising is archetypal and paradigmatic to our human really being. And so, with e.e. cummings, I can affirm this morning, "I who have died am alive this day." It is, as it always is, a new day, "the first day," as one preacher put it. For us. For the world. This spirit of life is moving us forward, up, out, on. But, not long ago, as I lay dying, as I lay in the pit, broken, in agony, betrayed, crushed, and, for all practical purposes (not exaggerating) dead, I confess to having a empty spirit. No hope. No stirring. Abuse and betrayal can do that to a person. They have done it to the thousands who are protesting today in Germany and around the Roman Catholic church and, as we know, the Lutheran and other Protestant churches and religious traditions have nothing to brag about either in that regard; it just doesn't get the coverage. Power is deadly when it is abused. We know. As have generations going back to the dawn of time. I was an empty shell, a spectral barren ghost of myself. And then Easter came. That first Easter afterward. Ha! Easter indeed! There was no Easter in me and none found me that year. I wanted it but it just wasn't coming. Except I see in retrospect, the smallest stirring of life, imperceptible at the time, and apparent only in its effect, and barely. I was pissed at Jesus for making it all look easy. The rising, that is. Yes. He died an outlaw, a dumped on, despised and pathetic broken man. An agonizing, prolonged, cruel way to die. Strung up. And, as the wonderful mythology of Holy Saturday goes, he struggled for a day, in hell, fought mightily against the devil, against the powers of evil. For a day. For a day! One flippin' day. And then he got up. Or was raised up. It looked too easy. And folks expect humans to recover that quick, as well. Doesn't happen. Now, several years later, I still find it annoying but, well, that's Jesus. And so be it. For me, for many of the folks I know and know about, it takes longer. In fact, it goes on day after day after day. We die, we rise. we fall, we get up. We lose, we win. We lay down our lives, we are given them back again. What an amazing story. What powerful images to impel us to keep going. But. This life Spirit, God, however you wish to describe or name it, the Spirit blows us along and moves us along, into ever new and newer life. We are called to let ourselves be lifted up by the drafts of spirit life, the Holy Spirit, if you will. So, I'm not Jesus. It goes differently for me. No angel, no rock magically rolled away, no earthquake. Just a life, struggling against the powers of evil. And asking for the grace to be lifted up, risen. It comes. Yes, it does, it comes. And one of the better ways to help this process along, is to get in the way of the wind. Let out the string, and fly! I have not done a great job of that lately. Time to go stand on a cliff. And let the drafts catch me up! That is where I'm headed, in fact, this very minute. Stand in the way of the wind! Soar! And much loving lively lovely new life to you all! Peace.

True Confession

It's the dissonance that gets me. I can live with paradox, irony, contradictions. In fact, so far as I can tell, they explain life. But I'm hung up on this specific dissonance: It has been eight (yes, that would be eight) years since I've been able to listen to my favorite music, the music that stirred and lifted my spirit for more than a decade. It was the music I had on in the car, at home, in my office, in my mind. A sweet mellow folk-music type Christian music emerged in the 80's with Marty Haugen, Michael Joncas and David Haas representing my favorite expressions. It was loving, gentle, expansive, gracious. And it was altogether too Peter, Paul, and Mary like for the girls. "Not that again," was a common refrain in our car. But I loved it. The music itself is beautiful, filled with gorgeous poetry, dynamic metaphors and images of lively life, generous reconciliation, and sccoops of courage. Two of the tapes (before CD time) actually wore out from overuse. You get the idea. When I left the parish I've told you about, I left that music behind too. Sadly, we used it there, some, so I had some awful associations that recurred every time it came on. But worst, most of all, it was the dissonance. The disconnect, profound and complete, between these songs that celebrated kindness and tenderness, generosity of spirit, a concern for justice and reconciliation, of unity and taking care of one another, in the spirit of Jesus and the horrible experience I had of church that belied all of these gracious gifts was too much to bear. Excruciating. Most of all, heart-breaking. Hearing a song, All Are Welcome, while living in an official church with silver-tongued charmers who, nevertheless, could not in eight years respond to any of my overtures, requests for conversation, who chose not to reach out to me in any way --- well, it was just too much. Clearly, I was not welcome. Now, a few things. I realize that the church is a lot bigger than the officiaries in one part of the world, in one smallish community. And I am beyond grateful to the 'church' that I've found here on Facebook and as a blogger who remind me daily that I DO belong to something loving, something generous and tender, Goddish, if you will. You all out there, those of you who are followers of Jesus, are now my church. And the ELCA Board of Pensions. You are my church. My only church. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. I also realize that I can move on (I'd sure better!!!) before hell freezes over, er, I mean, before somebody from this corner of the church makes a move in my direction. I am moving on, out into a wider expression of grace. And thank goodness for that. I also realize that I can be the one to move in their direction. I have done that but I'm sure I could do it some more. "Excuse me, I'm the lost sheep. You didn't come looking for me but I'm here and I'd like shelter from the storm, please." I could batter down the doors. But this is part of my confession. Be gentle with me, okay. I am waiting. Not because I must but because I may. I am waiting for a word. It's due not to bitterness, or hurt, I figured out --- although there has been plenty of that and it swings by on a regular basis. But I am waiting. For their sakes. To give them the opportunity to feel moved, perhaps humbled, perhaps compassionate, perhaps curious, to move toward a reconciliation. Lord knows I am "owed" apologies, scores of them. But I'm beyond that. I think the experience of being humble, of apologizing, of offering contrition is life-giving. It restores the soul. And, there's this. Before I can be part of this community here in this place I need to know if it is a community that can humble itself, turn itself outward, welcome the lost home. Now. I keep saying this and it is absolutely true. Finally, this is not about me. It is about the thousands upon thousands of "me's" who have been shunned, pushed away, shut up and shut down by the official officials of the church. It is about the deaf boys who were sexually abused by their priest. It is about the hundreds of women in Protestant churches in this country, and their families, who were sexually abused by their pastors. It is about the scores of men and women who have been screwed more figuratively by the officialdom of the church. It is about us all. We need to know, is the church a trustworthy community? Can we invest our hearts and souls with you? Who are you? Mean and vindictive, or humble and generous? I spent a small fortune purchasing all my favorite music from iTunes the other night. I made a playlist on my iPod and have started taking small steps to listen to it. Oh my god, it is so so painful. It is so healing. I love it, I curse at it. I sing at the top of my lungs. I weep. The dissonance. All are welcome? "We are many parts, we are all one body..." Really? Not me. Not a boatload of other folks I know. The world is filled with warm and generous souls. Some say they are followers of Jesus, some not, many are done with the church. Some are journeying on other paths altogether. It is their loving and happy company I keep these days. And yours, many of you readers who are Jesus' people, you are Christ to me. And all of you, all of you, you're the people I want to belong with! And, as I listen to these wonderful songs I know I need still to be part of you. Whatever we call ourselves, we are about the things that make for peace. There is no dissonance as I commune here with you. True confession: I like this music and I'm not going to let the dishonorable and duplicitous behavior of some define reality altogether. Nope. Not their right. So, if not everywhere, then here, and out among you, all are welcome!