Be a Real Patriot. Love Your Neighbor. Get the Vaccine.

"I am of the opinion that my life belongs to the whole community and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can.” --George Bernard Shaw

I got vaccinated so I could win $1 million from the state of Massachusetts and its VaxMillions giveaway.

GET A SHOT! GET A CHECK! O.K. Not really. 

But it is telling to note the lengths to which, even in a state like our own, with the second highest rate of COVID vaccinations in the country at 63 percent of the population; even here we still have to beg, entice, cajole, and tempt our fellow neighbors to just get a shot.  Makes me wonder…maybe if they offered a $1 billion prize in, say, Alabama (33.85 percent vaxxed) or Georgia (38.02) then perhaps more of our friends down south might get in line too.

I did not get a vaccination to win $1 million, though if chosen I’ll take it! I received the Moderna vaccination back in January, and my second injection in March, for one key reason.

I don’t want to die.

I don’t want to end up in the hospital hooked up to a ventilator for weeks or even months. I don’t want to get so sick from COVID that the effects last for months, maybe years. I don’t want to lose my senses of taste and smell, give up the joy of a pepperoni pizza or the scent of fresh cut grass in the summer or the tang of cold summertime lemonade.  I don’t want to have to stay home from my community choir that is starting up again in the fall after almost two years of being voiceless. I don’t want to lose my ability to preach because COVID steals my voice or breath, maybe permanently.

All good reasons. All good and legitimate concerns but they are about self-interest.

So, here are some of the communal reasons I got vaxxed. 

I want to love my neighbor, as God asks me, by protecting myself from COVID and thereby also protecting others from the virus too. Vaccinated, chances are I won’t spread it to someone unvaccinated, so they won’t die or fall ill. There are now a small handful of breakthrough COVID cases among the protected, yet overwhelmingly these folks rarely get seriously sick or are hospitalized. Getting vaccinated isn’t just about “me”; it is also about “thee”. It is a choice you make (or do not make) for your community. For your family. For people who go to church or mosque with you.  For the guy behind you in line at Dunkin’ Donuts. For your elderly Dad and your immune-compromised sister.

I understand some of the reasons folks give for not yet getting vaccinated. People of color who are wary of a medical system that has so often mistreated them. People who just can’t because of a medical condition. People who worry about long term health implications, though nothing yet has been proved.

But here are some of the reasons I do not get. Some are all about skepticism and even paranoia, as in I don’t trust the scientists and I don’t trust the government. There is rolling the dice, as in I’m basically a healthy person so I’ll be fine. There is wackiness, as in I heard Bill Gates or Anthony Fauci is behind COVID and there is a microchip in the injection, to track us. But the one that drives me the craziest as a person of faith?

God will protect me from COVID.

Newsflash: I believe the God I know and love is protecting us not in some miraculous or supernatural way from COVID, no. Instead, I believe God protects us because God gave special knowledge to scientists and courage to researchers and selflessness to test subjects and organization to federal and state governments, all so a COVID vaccine could be discovered and then distributed, the fastest vaccine breakthrough ever, in history. Vaccines that provide up to 95 percent protection.

But for the unvaccinated? The Centers for Disease Control’s COVID numbers bear out one chilling statistic. Last month, 99.2 percent of folks who died from COVID were unvaccinated.  And all the growing panic now about the delta variant and its spreading like wildfire?  That’s overwhelmingly happening in the places with the lowest vaccination rates. This is such a tragedy. Thousands hospitalized, hundreds die, needlessly. There is a price to be paid for saying “No” to the vaccine.            

The reason for vax rejection that I find the saddest is that of fearing that the government has some “Big Brother” plan through COVID and vaccinations, that Uncle Sam is trying to “take my rights away”. That to be vaxxed is to make some political choice. Goes along with how many anti-maskers and anti-lockdown folk feel too. The strange thing is that these protesters often cloak themselves in the language of patriotism and the flag, claiming liberty, but in fact are acting selfish. Telling their fellow citizens: sorry. Not gonna get vaxxed, even if it helps not just me, but you as well.   

I think the most patriotic and moral thing each of us can do to fight COVID is in fact to get vaccinated. Take responsibility for how our lives as citizens effect the lives of other citizens, for the bad, or God willing, for the common good.  I think it is patriotic to put others’ health and safety before our own. I think true patriotism is about more than partisanship or a flag lapel pin or flying the stars and stripes. True patriotism always makes sacrifices for the greater good.

But if you need a $1 million reason to get vaccinated? Be my guest.  But please, please, PLEASE: if you’ve yet to receive the COVID vaccine, think of yourself and your own life and think of your fellow Americans too. 

Be a patriot. Do the right thing. Get vaxxed.

                   

             

 

We Are Returning to Life. So Is Rudeness.

“A person who is nice to you, but is rude to the waiter, is not a nice person.” --Dave Barry

It was a little thing. It was not a little thing. Years ago, just days after Christmas, when my nieces were still young, their handwritten notes of thanks would always show up in my mailbox.

“Dear Uncle John, Thank you so much for the books. I love them.  It was also good to see you on Christmas. Love, Caroline”

I think the thing that most touched my heart in those youthful missives, beyond the earnest scrawl of kids just learning to write, was the thought behind the note. The thoughtfulness behind the note. The fact that the girls, yes, no doubt strongly encouraged by their Mom, took the time to be thankful, to be kind and to be polite.

Politeness is the kind of human virtue some of us might be tempted to brush off as mere behavioral window dressing, nice but not crucial in life. Or we might imagine that politeness is about Emily Post’s book of etiquette and what fork we’re supposed to use for the salad. Or we might even excuse our own occasional rudeness because: well, we’re so darn busy! In these post-COVID days, in our rush back into life, who has the time…to write a thank you note or hold the door for the person behind you at the grocery store or give up your seat to a person in need on the T or say, “Thank you” to the clerk who serves you your coffee at Dunkin’ Donuts?!

Well, I should. You, too.

I hope we all have the time and the commitment to be polite. Politeness is the glue that holds together all human relationships, especially between strangers. Politeness is a recognition that the world is made up of many more people than just “me’, that much of the time community needs are more important than individual needs. Politeness is like a cold drink of water on a hot day: it soothes, it meets our thirst for human decency, and it teaches us that any act of kindness makes this world a better place. Politeness is love in a way, showing others that we care. 

I’ve had politeness (or rather a lack of politeness) on my heart lately because of the seeming outbreak of rudeness and mean-spiritedness on the part of so many folks in our world right now. Folks screaming at flight attendants if reminded to wear a mask. Diners rudely berating a waiter or waitress because the food took so long to arrive at the table. Drivers once again hunkered down on the highways, driving rudely and recklessly, as if participating in Death Race 2021!

The numbers bear this out. Take rudeness in what are supposed to be the friendly skies. According to research by Allianz, a global corporate insurance company, in a typical year in the United States, there are often no more than 150 reports of serious onboard disruption [or air rage]. In 2021, that number had already reached 3,000 by June of this year, including 2,300 incidents involving passengers who refused to comply with the federal mandate to wear a mask while traveling.

I’m not sure why such boorishness is blooming so widely right now. Maybe we all forgot how to be nice in public after all those months cooped up in private. Maybe we are still recovering from an Oval Office occupant who regularly berated people in public, shamed his “enemies” with tyrannical tweets, and used language more befitting a thug than a statesman. When any person with such power and influence is rude, it gives seeming permission for everyone to be unkind.  Wonder why our civic discourse is so crude and nasty?    

The part of such rudeness that most vexes and saddens me is the personal fallout, the damage it inflicts on the one receiving such thoughtlessness. The restaurant servers who are just trying their best and watching out for our safety while also wearing their mask. It’s not their fault for staff shortages and long lines. Flight attendants who already have a hard job, now forced to referee drunk and obnoxious passengers. They too are just doing their profession, being professional in the best sense. 

Rudeness always hurts. Rudeness is most often shown by the more powerful upon someone they see as “less than”. Rudeness views the other, not as a child of God or a neighbor, but instead as an “it”, an object to be scorned. Rudeness puts your own wants above and beyond anyone else’s needs. Rudeness is just plain wrong.

One of the gifts of all faith traditions is that we are actually taught that it is our moral and ethical duty to love one another. That we are to treat others as we want to be treated. Do we always get that right? Absolutely not and yet: that’s the hope, and not just for religious believers, but for everyone. What would life be like if in every social interaction, we simply thought of the other person, and of their feelings and of their humanity, first?

To be polite. To live by, “Thank you. Please. How can I help you? No, you go first: I can wait. I really appreciate what you did for me.” Simple and easy acts of kindness to live by, oh so important. We are all in this life together, so let’s make it a polite and kind and loving journey.

And don’t forget to write that thank you note.

       

 

In This Summer of Return: Where Will Your Pilgrimage Take You?

 "To love is to return to a home we never left, to remember who we are."  

--Sam Keen, American author/philosopher

It’s being called the summer of the great return.  This summer of 2021, when so many of us are returning to our favorite places in this world, to visit our favorite people in this world, to experience again, that which we lost to COVID.

Sometimes the return won’t be so dramatic or even obvious.  After wearing a mask for so long in public, in everyday places like the grocery store or Starbucks, after just one visit back to these familiar haunts, maskless, it felt normal for me to not have my nose and mouth covered. To not have to phone ahead for a contactless pick-up. To not rush through a store to minimize my contact with the potentially infected.

Nope: I slid right back into those routines easily.

But some other returns I’m finding weird, profound, emotional even.  Take the airport.  After having been grounded from air travel for almost a year and a half, my return to Logan Airport in late June was surreal and even a bit foreign. As a travel junkie I hadn’t missed being on a plane for such a long stretch of time since childhood. One of my favorite feelings in the world is the moment the airplane’s tires leave the earth and the plane tilts upwards and the ground drops away and I know I am free somehow. Removed, if only for a little while, from all my problems on the ground.            

So, to walk into the airport, my rolling luggage in tow, mask affixed, to see all the folks lined up for a security check, to feel the buzz and excitement that marks a transportation hub, well, I got a bit teary.  I hadn’t realized just how much I missed the gift of going away, getting a change of scenery, kicking the dust off my sandals, and leaving town. I even gave thanks to God for my cramped, narrow seat that I’d paid $30 extra for! (How much more stacked up could the seats be? Bunk seats perhaps?!) At least for my next few plane trips I’ll put up with the hassles of flying. I was just so overjoyed to be back, look out the window, watch as mother earth flew by.

The ritual of pilgrimage is central to many faiths: to travel to a holy place for the first time or for an annual time, a sacred space where we experience the divine. Muslims claim Mecca. Christians Jesus’ birthplace, Bethlehem. Jews the Western Wall in Jerusalem. But you don’t have to be a person of faith to know the gift of pilgrimage, of returning to some blessed place that blesses you back.  In its familiarity. Its unique geography. Its special place in Creation. The folks there you love and who love you.

Think of all the wonderful returns this summer: to a sandy beach we’ve missed or a family cabin that’s been empty or a family reunion with folks we’ve not seen for so long: these too are absolutely pilgrimage. To stand again on holy ground. For me, it was my return just weeks ago, to Minnesota, a place I’ve visited every single summer, and many springs too, since 1993. I return because of my many old friends there and I return because it suits me: the hundreds of miles of bike paths and the farms and fields that stretch out to the horizon and the loons on the lake that cry out at sunset and even the Minnesota Twins, who have broken almost as many baseball hearts as the Red Sox!

When I am there, it just feels like home and so to miss that second home of mine for two years: well, that absence made my return to the North Star state so much sweeter. As I sat at table with loved ones I’d not seen since 2019, we went around and each of us shared in prayer, something we were thankful for. We all thanked God for one another and then the tears started.  As Joni Mitchell sings, “Don’t it always seem to go, that you don’t know what you’ve got ‘til it’s gone?”

You are right Joni.

So, my prayer and hope for all of us, is that in the days and weeks and months ahead, we might each savor the returns that we will make. The pilgrimages that call us forth: to return again. Return to…the old friends we’ve missed. The family members we will hug even harder in the knowledge of how much they mean to us.  And the special places that call forth to us, heaven on earth, some space that for us, embodies the holy, the transcendent, and the good.

Hello old friend. I’ve missed you.

 

 

 

  

 

     

 

 

O Say Can You See...It May Be Time for a New National Anthem

“O beautiful, for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesties, above the fruited plane…!”        --"America the Beautiful”, Katherine Lee Bates, 1913

 I think it’s time for America to consider singing a new national anthem.

(Well, I hope that got your attention!)

But seriously: last week after two years of being away from baseball, I attended a game live and in person and sang the national anthem with the rest of those assembled. That ritual has a very local connection. The first time “The Star-Spangled Banner” was performed at a game in modern times was at the 1918 World Series, between the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs. It being wartime, a military band in attendance played the song during the seventh inning stretch and from then on it became a Word Series tradition. During World War II, the playing of the anthem spread to all professional baseball games, a way to unite people in that very patriotic time. And so, it continues to this day.

Don’t get me wrong. I like well enough our current national anthem, written by Francis Scott Key in 1814. Originally a poem and first-hand account in the War of 1812, of the British bombing Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor, his words were later married to the tune of an old British drinking song. Congress confirmed its status as our national song in 1931. I do enjoy singing it, though you need quite a range to hit all the notes.  It just makes me wonder if there might be a better song to capture who we are as America in 2021, and how we live together in this democracy, this amazing, frustrating, and fragile experiment in government, first declared and begun some 245 July 4ths ago.

We’ve got several alternative songs to choose from.

How about “This Land is Your Land”, written and performed by the folk singer Woody Guthrie, first penned and performed in 1940? The refrain “this land was made for you and me” certainly speaks to the hope that our nation is not just a collection of self-interested individuals, but is in fact founded in community, a community of folks who all should be able to equally declare: this land is made for you and for me. Together. That America finally belongs to no one class or race or ideology or group but instead is the province of all of us, no one left out.  I like that dream and its aspirational quality. It’d be fun to sing it in a big crowd at a ballgame, that’s for sure.

Put your hand up if you vote for “This Land Is Your Land”.

Some might advocate that “God Bless America”, written during World War 1 in 1918 and then revised in 1945: maybe that should be our national song. As a person of faith, I’ll confess I’m a bit nervous about asking that “God Bless America!” without also making sure to remember that God in fact, blesses the whole world. No exceptions.  What I do love about the song is the backstory of its author, Irving Berlin.  He was a first-generation Jewish immigrant whose family fled the violent anti-Semitism of the Russian empire. He and millions of other immigrants came here for freedom and new lives, just like so many immigrants do today. His unabashed love for America, reflects the kind of joyous and grateful patriotism that marks the immigrant experience.  After all, other than the Native Americans, we all came here from somewhere else, right?

All those in favor of “God Bless America” say “aye!”

But I’ve got a soft place in my heart for a song we don’t sing much anymore. In large part it’s been forgotten by our country. It’s “America, the Beautiful” written in 1895 by Katherine Lee Bates, a professor of English at Wellesley College. Born in Falmouth, Massachusetts, Bates was the rare woman then who received a first-class college education. She went to Wellesley College, was a schoolteacher, and a worker for women’s rights and the vote. While on a cross country trip in 1893, traveling with her lifelong companion Katherine Coman, Bates traveled to the top of Pikes Peak in Colorado.

As she noted in her diary, “Near the top we had to leave the wagon and go the rest of the way on mules. I was very tired. But when I saw the view, I felt great joy. All the wonder of America seemed displayed there, with the sea-like expanse.” What I love about her song is that it calls America to live up to the greatness of the ideals it proclaims.  “America! America! God mend thine every flaw. Confirm thy soul, in self-control, thy liberty in law.” Maybe we need a national anthem that doesn’t ignore our flaws or celebrate a military victory but is instead humble in its patriotism. A song that recognizes our imperfections but then challenges us to always work to be a better people and citizenry. To take words like freedom and liberty and justice for all seriously.

Anyone agree with my vote for “America the Beautiful”?

It’s important to think about America this post July 4^th week. How we sing about ourselves. How we see ourselves. Who are we and who do we want to become as America and Americans? That’s a question being asked a lot these days, and rightfully so.  

And so yes, may God mend our every flaw. I’d sing that.  How about you?

 

 

 

       

 

Once Again Enjoying the Thrill of Going AWAY!!!!!

"Twenty years from now, you will be more disappointed by the things you didn't do than by the ones you did. So, throw off the bowlines, sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover." --Mark Twain

It’s a little thing, a trifling personal loss, compared to all the big losses folks have had to deal with during life in COVID times. Yet it is something I’ve missed so much, a ritual that signals to me summer is here and I am about to depart. Leave. Vamoose. Exit. Vacation. Travel. Yes, travel again! Leave the confines of my Zoom laden dining room table and my 24/7 home and my little town and state and go somewhere farther away than the Massachusetts border.

The travel ritual I am so happy to practice again? Planning. Preparing. Packing. PPP for short.

I told you it was a small tradition but oh my goodness: what a joy it is to do something I once so easily took for granted. Planning: and so I book a plane flight and pick out my seat. Always by a window so I can see how high up in the friendly skies I am and how fast we are jetting over this beautiful country. Once again I can examine a map of my destination and dream about the explorations that lie ahead for me in my rental car. Discovering small town Main Streets and off the beaten track antique stores and hidden away book nooks. Tracking down a place that still sells postcards and then writing about my adventures to a loved one and then stamping it and then mailing it at a tiny little post office.

I put “baseball game” near the top of my summer 2021 vacation planning to-do list. Last summer was the first since my age was a single digit that I did not attend the sandlot.  This summer I will track down a game—ANY GAME! Major league, minor league, it does not matter. I need to sit in the stands on a balmy summer night, surrounded by the chatter of fans and listen to crack of a bat on a ball and watch the sun go down and the lights come up. I need to eat many a mustard and onion bedecked hot dog. I am so excited to watch my 12-year-old Goddaughter BJ play on her travel team. Cheer with pride as she scoops up a foul ball while catching or gives a mighty swing in the batter’s box. To watch her play is the best game I could ever, EVER, attend. I’ve missed this simple pleasure for two years now.  But no longer.

Then there is the preparing for a trip.

Stop the Sunday newspaper and mail. Find someone to water the plants and watch my house. My go too good friend for this chore passed away recently. It’s bittersweet to imagine someone else doing this for me. Then there is trying my best to tie up all the loose ends at work, so that when I leave and when I am gone, I will be really gone. No emails to open. No calls to answer.  After almost sixteen months of unrelenting work and scrambling to adapt and learn new skills and work with the dedicated folks I serve to carry on for God and with God, I am exhausted, like so many folks are right now.  Life put the pedal to the metal in March 2020 and is now finally easing up. Whew! It’s time to go. GO! To enjoy a change of scenery and put away the calendar and the work list. Maybe even turn off the phone.

Finally, there is the packing.

As a travel nerd I always make a detailed list. I’m as exacting and fastidious as a traveler can be,  and so I list out every single item to be packed…socks and shorts and computer (don’t forget the power cord!) and extra pencils and a pencil sharpener for writing then I print out two copies of my boarding pass and car rental info and then I pack it all and then I recheck the list one last time. This year I’m even bringing a copy of my COVID vaccination record. Can’t be too careful! Told you I was persnickety when it comes the art of packing.

One of my favorite invitations spoken by Jesus is this: “Come unto me all ye who are weary and I will give you rest.” I am weary. I do need a rest. We all do as shell shocked COVID folk. I wonder if Jesus ever took a vacation. If Moses booked an Airbnb before setting out for the promised land or if Abraham and Sarah had a favorite cabin getaway on the shores of the Mediterranean. Something tells me that the wisdom of taking time off from daily life and work and retreating to a place of rest, is as old as humankind itself.

And so, I am getting away in this summer of return and freedom. I hope you do too.  Maybe we’ll see each other on the road.  I’ll be the guy wearing a Boston Red Sox cap and a grin a mile wide.     

Happy trails.