A Good Life Always Demands Sacrifice for Others

 "Sacrifice is a part of life. It’s supposed to be. It’s not something to regret. It’s something to aspire to.”         --Mitch Albion, author

If you want to see the true character of a person, a community, or a nation, just watch how they respond when times are tough. 

That’s a truism I’ve come to believe in and witness in my thirty plus years as a helping professional. When you do work like I do—when you walk through the valley of this shadow of death with a family facing illness or accompany a couple through the wreckage of a divorce or stand by an addict as she seeks to escape the grip of her obsession, you often see humanity at its very best.

In hard times, you see people step up and sacrifice.

Like a single parent who sacrifices their own needs so their kids will thrive. Or a citizen soldier who, when the call goes out, leaves home, and loved ones to fight for the common good, to give even their life, so others might live. Or a teacher who gives up financial gain to work in a district where the pay is low, but the need is high. When sacrifice is called for, giving up something in the short term for a long term good; these ordinary people do extraordinary things.

But there is also the opposite corollary of this truism. I’ve also seen that sometimes when times are tough and demand the best of our humanity, the worst instead comes out. Our more selfish impulses. We can focus on trivial concerns that pale in comparison to what really matters. Or our instinct is to follow this moral path: every person for themselves!

Two weeks ago, when a federal judge struck down the Center for Disease Control’s mask mandate on public transportation, videos went viral showing passengers on airplanes cheering at the moment they found out they could take off their masks. As if some kind of communal challenge had been achieved or some war had been won or some difficult sacrifice was no longer needed when the judge acted. When the masks come off. 

VICTORY! HIP HIP HOORAY!!

C’mon. Really?

Was it ever all that hard to wear a mask in public? While shopping at the grocery store or pharmacy? Or while watching a ball game or going to a movie? While riding a bus or taking a three-hour flight? I’m sorry but the notion of “celebrating” not having to do something anymore that was and is in fact so easy, so simple, so basic, and so clearly needed for the common good: it makes me sad. 

Makes me think about the people in our nation who had to make real sacrifices during COVID, who had to do so much more than a person like me, to get through COVID. Some of whom are still sacrificing, still giving up, still suffering from so much more than having to don a mask and stay six feet away from a neighbor.

Real sacrifice.

Health care professionals that are still working so damn hard. Students and teachers who had to mask up for whole days at school. Young families who are still in lockdown because there is no way yet to vaccinate their child and keep the kid safe. Sacrifice? Loss? Think of all the families and the loved ones of the almost 1 million Americans who have died from COVID. All that grief. All that hurt.

And we complain about having to wear a mask or being required to be vaccinated to keep others safe. To just do our part for the common good. In March of 2020, I so wanted to believe and hope that the overwhelming majority of Americans would step up. Would give up whatever was needed. Would gladly contribute to the common good of uniting and fighting against COVID.

But that did not happen. We faced the worst, and, in some ways, it has shown what deficits we face as a community. It embarrasses me to say it, but we are civically flabby and out of shape as a nation. We’ve been led for more than a generation by a class of politicians who far too often appeal to the very worst in us and tell us we do not have to ever sacrifice anything for the common good. Social media, instead of uniting us, too often sows seeds of disinformation and tribalism.

My faith teaches me one basic lesson over and over and over and over.  God makes us to be for and with one another. The life God gives to one and all is never ever meant to be a solo affair, to be lived for self alone. No.  We are created to be in community and to do what we have to at times, and yes even sacrifice, for the common good we all need and the common good we all enjoy. 

Sacrifice. The common good. We are all in this together America. God help us to remember that when the next crisis hits. 

 

 

 

 

April: Time to Get Back on the Bike!

“[The bicycle] is no longer a beast of steel… no, it is a friend… It is a faithful and powerful ally against one’s worst enemies. It is stronger than anxiety, stronger than sadness. It has all the power of hope.”          --Maurice Leblanc, French novelist

The first ride of spring. 

There’s no other ride quite like it on the rest of my cycling calendar. I cycle from mid-April to mid-October or so, six months on the bike and then six months off. Yes, I’ve got hardcore cycling friends who will pedal until the very first snowflake falls and then break out the bike in early March, leaning into a biting cold wind as they brave the elements. Not me.

Cycling, and my return to it each and every year: for me it marks the birth of spring and the promise of summer. Cycling is like my secular Easter in a way, both my bike and my body somehow resurrected on a hopeful April afternoon. The bike hangs where I placed it in the garage last fall, dangles from an oversized hook, as if it is in some mid-winter’s mechanical slumber, just waiting to be awoken. I gently take it down, dust off the cobwebs and pump up the tires, spin the wheels and listen as the “click, click, click” of the gears tell me that my machine is ready for another year.

My body? Well, we will see. But that old truism about never having to learn how to ride a bike more than once: each new year that inevitably is proven true. Though it’s been a half a year since I spun these pedals, almost as soon as I mount up and begin the journey my muscle memory kicks in. My cycling shoes clip on to the pedals after just a try or two. I feel the breeze on my face and go into my lowest gear as I approach the long steady climb of Ivy Lane, just around the corner from my driveway. Almost every time I go out on a ride, this familiar hill is both a great way to start and warm up and also a not-so-great way to start, my cranky thigh muscles burning and my huffing lungs puffing away.

“I think I can, I think I can!”

Finally, after several minutes of stubborn and determined work, I’m at the apex of the hill, and am about to experience one of the best gifts of cycling. If you go up a hill, you then get to go down a hill on the other side! HOOORAH! First ride, first downhill.  Later, at ride’s end I will absolutely know that spring is here again. Warm summer nights aren’t far off, when the sun hangs around and I am out on a bike ride until early evening, with its soft light and the sound of peepers. I glide home aware of how good life is, especially when seen from two wheels at 12 miles per hour.

Not a cyclist? I bet you have some other spring alarm clock, some April event, which marks the beginning of the season for you. Your first ride, in a way, when it feels like life is about to be renewed and winter is finally put into the rear-view mirror. What is it?

First baseball game and first hot dog. First day in the garden, hands thrust into the cold ground, preparing mother earth for a new cycle of life.  First real barbeque on the back yard grill. First sighting of a crocus pushing up from the soil. First trip to the garden center to haul away bags of musky smelling mulch. First time wearing dock shoes or sandals or flip flops. First ice cream cone, its sticky remains dribbling down your chin. First night sleeping with the heat off.  First night snoozing away with the window open. First time mowing the lawn and hearing the familiar loud whine of the lawn mower.

One of the social and spiritual casualties of the past few years living in COVID times has been the loss of seasonal touchstones, things that mark our movement from one time of the year to another time of year and all timed by familiar activities. The year I sat alone at table on Easter and ate that ham solo? That did not feel like spring. The year there was no baseball, not for several months? That was not a real April, at least not for me.  The year my Mom and I could not make a trip to our cherished Clam Shack restaurant on the beach?  That was so weird to miss that ritual.

But this year, 2022, God willing for the time being: we can celebrate the arrival of spring with almost all of our cherished rituals and rites intact.  Celebrate resurrection. Celebrate Passover. Celebrate Opening Day. Celebrate tucking that winter coat into the farthest recesses of the hall closet.

First ride. Nothing else like it. Thank you, spring. Thank you, God.

     

Living In an Angry World: Change Begins With Me

“Bad temper is its own safety valve. He who can bark does not bite.”         --Agatha Christie

Some advice: don’t drive cranky.  If it can be avoided, don’t do anything else cranky either. But especially the driving cranky part.

To explain--last weekend I was behind the wheel of my almost brand-new car, one I enjoy more than any other vehicle I’ve ever owned. Since I purchased it two years ago, I have been very, VERY careful with it. No tailgating. No tight parking spaces where someone can “ding” my door.  Always garaged at the first sign of snow.  I’ve babied it in the hopes of making it look good for as long as possible and to last as long as possible too.

Back to that doomed drive. Someone I was doing business with did not come through, did not keep up their end of the bargain. His failure to meet what I perceived to be my oh so important desire; it so angered me that without thinking, I got in my car, and did the quickest U-turn ever, so fast that I failed to see a pile of dirt and rocks in my path and my car slammed right into that debris, smashing in my front bumper. 

OUCH!

I didn’t realize the damage until later, when I noticed the front lower bumper was warped and twisted, that large scratches marked its exterior and that it had been pushed in by a good two inches. Oh, and that business transaction gone bad? Within minutes of my ill fated auto exit, that merchant had reached out to me to apologize and came through, even throwing in a bit extra as an apology of sorts.

Making my anger pretty stupid, a waste of my spirit and resulting in only one thing. Damage. To my car. To my psyche. To my ego. And all for nothing. But that is how it is with such anger and crankiness, at least most of the time when I express it.  My angry response is often way out of proportion to what has happened.  My anger makes me look at the world in a warped way, through the eyes of victimhood as in “WHY ME!?”  It makes me focus on what I don’t have rather than remember what I do have, how blessed I am this life if only I’d pay attention.  My anger separates me: from the best part of myself, from others in my life and finally from God.

But my anger also reminds me that I am only human. That everyone gets vexed at times: is cranky, ornery, irritated, irate, even outraged and I think especially in these emotionally heavy times that we are living in.  There is so much to weigh down upon us in 2022—everything from the war in Ukraine to the latest threatening COVID variant. Crankiness is pretty widespread among the populace these days.

From anger at a clerk who hasn’t served us fast enough (it’s not their fault the store is understaffed), to umbrage at school committee members (folks who volunteer for the common good!), crankiness is rampant. Anger on airplanes. Incivility among lawmakers. Vexation in the family around the dinner table.  And yes, getting behind the wheel and driving angry.

It’s not that our anger is always misplaced or wrong. There are a lot of things going on right now that are high stress and high pressure and so it makes sense in a way that more of us are in foul moods or feeling at the end of our ropes.  There is injustice to protest and wrongs we want to right. When anger is channeled constructively and expressed non-violently, it both acts as an emotional safety valve and can lead to change for the good.

It's the unconstructive, violent, and selfish anger that worries me. Anger that in fact masks other emotions, like our sadness, grief, or fear.  Anger at the state of the world: getting mad is much easier than feeling heartache at how the world is right now. Anger at another person for their “faults” is much more tempting than to honestly look at our own faults.

Anger takes its toll.

In really angry driving: across the United States automobile accidents and fatalities are spiking back up after years of decline. Drug overdose and alcohol related deaths are at all time highs as well, so much of that being about folks seeking to soothe their roiled emotions and broken hearts with mind altering substances. Long term anger hurts the body, causes high blood pressure, and strains the heart.  And of course, anger expressed in violence is the worst anger of all. What is a war finally, than anger expressed at the national level? Anger of one people against another people.

Whew!

Thank goodness that my faith teaches me ways to temper my anger, to tame it, even to transform it into something positive.  Anger fades when I remember I am doing my best right now and so is almost everyone else.  Anger cools when I realize how selfish it can be, putting myself at the center of all things in the universe. Maybe what I want is not the most important thing right now. Anger channeled into action empowers me to work for justice, for the best for my fellow children of God.  Anger offered up in prayer teaches me that there is a power so much bigger than myself holding everything together. It’s not my job to be in charge of everything.

I probably won’t get my car bumper fixed right away.  When I look at it, may it teach me the price of anger and the cost of crankiness.

Have a mellow week.

 

     

 

                     

 

The Amazing Grace of Being Shown and Showing Grace

"Through many dangers, toils and snares, I have already come; 'Tis grace has brought me safe thus far and grace will lead me home."       --Amazing Grace, by John Newton

 

We interrupt this sharp elbowed, kind of wacky, certainly bumpy, world right now to bring you…. a little…. grace.

Yes, grace. 

No, not the prayer said at your Thanksgiving or holy day or holiday table, though God knows we could all use some prayers right now. Grace, but not the kind we see from a talented ballet dancer, or nimble gymnast, though I am amazed at how some folks are just so physically graceful.  

The kind of grace I speak of us is about how we are treated by others and how others treat us, especially when we’ve screwed up or made a big mistake. It’s the quality of grace folks of faith often attribute to the God they know, as in a God who loves them unconditionally and forgives them absolutely. It’s the feeling of grace we experience if someone just gives us a break when we really, really need it. When we are at our worst for whatever reason yet still, a friend or a family member, maybe even a stranger, stays by us and helps us to return to our best.

Grace.  

To say that our world, and Creation, need grace right now…. that’s an understatement.  We are living in sharp and scary, stress-filled, and sometimes traumatic grace-less times. We all know the list, right? Pandemic. Civic separation and conflict. War. Inflation. Nasty politicians fighting in the sandbox.    

In a recent Atlantic magazine article, “Why People Are Acting So Weird,” author Olga Khazan gives us the laundry list of today’s current social ills, seemingly everyone acting out. Rage in the skies and on airplanes as the masked and unmasked square off.  Culture wars around issues like banning books. Public displays of incivility and downright meanness on the rise. Record numbers of car crashes.  Increased drinking and drug use and overdose deaths, more than ever before. A national murder rate that’s increased in the past two years by almost one-third, the largest uptick ever recorded.  

As Khazan asks in exasperation, “How did Americans go from clapping for health-care workers to threatening to kill them?” That’s not hyperbolic. Just last month white supremacists protested outside of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, with a sign that ominously read, “BW Hospital Kills Whites.” 

WHAT THE…….!!!???     

Time out people! Take a chill pill. Just breathe, ok?  And maybe, most important of all, let’s try and treat one another with grace and show one another grace, in these high emotion, high stress, high fear times.

So, perhaps, don’t be so judgy about folks and their politics—I know I need to give some of my fellow citizens a break. I don’t know what it is like to walk in their shoes or to live in their lives. I’ve no idea what keeps them up at night, the challenges they are facing right now. They need some grace. Some space. Some kindness.

Grace: shown to the people I work with and the people I work for.  They are worried about their bills, and they are worried about their kids and their health, and the health of their loved ones and they are exhausted from being whipsawed with all the changing health news and COVID news and war news that comes pouring out of their phones that they just can’t put down. WHEW!  They must be spiritually exhausted after the past 104 weeks or so. They absolutely need a little grace and understanding.

And yes, grace needs to be shown to ourselves by ourselves.  Like when you get cranky with the family because everything is so worrisome right now. Or when I beat myself up over the fact I’ve yet to lose that COVID extra poundage or I am watching too much TV to blow off steam and relax.  Or how some days are just so hard---to wade back into the world, this very hard world and very sharp world. Give yourself a break!

Grace. When we receive it, there is nothing else like it.  The grace of God comforts us. The grace of a neighbor heartens us. The grace of a loved one soothes us. Grace given, grace received just makes life softer, gentler, more beautiful and filled with hope for better tomorrows.

Grace: we all need it. Amazing grace.

 

    

 

   

      

 

COVID: Still a Pain Even As It Wanes

“Pain [is] the touchstone of all spiritual progress.” --Alcoholics Anonymous

“Tell me if it’s going to hurt.”

That’s my one rule for pain, at least physical pain.  If you are going to give me a shot or stick a needle in my arm to draw blood or do anything to my body that is going to cause pain, just give me a heads up. Okay?

I’ve been thinking about this personal maxim as our nation has started to emerge from COVID lock down and masking up and moved now to a time for COVID slow down and masking off. It’s like the spring of 2021 all over again. I’m as into it as the next mask wearer but then, this happened to me. After one of the very first big social situations I went to without a mask in almost a year, the next day I got a text letting me that a close contact at the meeting was sick with COVID and had tested positive. They hadn’t known they were infectious but that is often how things work when it comes to COVID. 

Everything is okay until it is not okay. You are safe until you are exposed. You are healthy until you become sick. You get sick and maybe it is mild and you recover fast or maybe it is worse and you are laid low, even hospitalized, or maybe you’ll always have long COVID or maybe it will take your life. I try and remind myself of these possibilities on a regular basis, especially now that folks are shedding their masks so fast and so joyfully.

Heck, that’s what I did!   

I want to get rid of the masks forever and everything else that accompanies COVID, all the pains, all the ways it has inflicted very real pain: physical, economic, social, and emotional. COVID is a pain! I wish it would just go away! Shoo! But in reading the news and listening to the scientists and epidemiologists, perusing government websites, heeding the folks who actually know what they are talking about, the message I’m hearing is…we are okay for now but, it could come back. There could be another wave. Or another variant. The need for another shot. But we don’t know if or when.

Pesky virus! Ugh.

But at least I know that the pain might make a return engagement. That the hurt may return. HEADS UP! I’d rather remember this possibility is real. Because the notion that right now, is actually the time, FINALLY, when we all get to go back to “normal” for good….Maybe normalcy is back. Maybe it isn’t.

This I do know. COVID is still a pain. A pain in the…. well, you get the picture.

I suppose the one piece of goodness I can still take from the badness is this: pain almost always makes me spiritually grow and grow up.  Pain, for all the struggle: it usually changes us. Deepen us. Make us return to our faith or recommit to our sacred beliefs. It can make us more powerful and more resilient. Pain—physical, mental, or spiritual—I know this is the thing that has most forced me to change in this life. 

I don’t seek pain out, no. No one does. And the God I love doesn’t inflict pain either. But when pain shows up—and it always shows up in every human life--we can’t negotiate away this truth. When pain stops by and when times are tough and when the valley we walk down into is dark and full of shadows, I often kid myself. “GREAT! Another blasted growth experience!” But there is truth to this.

The pain of COVID has taught me just how much I need and I love my family and friends. I hope I never, ever, EVER again take them for granted again.  The pain of COVID has taught me what a deep responsibility I have to care for the most vulnerable, the very sick, the very old, the very poor, the uninsured, because they certainly suffer more than me. The pain of COVID and almost getting it (knock on wood!) reminds me how lucky I am to have access to quality health care, and it moves me to work so that one day all folks have decent health insurance. The pain of COVID and its isolation has made me more fully appreciate doing things live and with real breathing, living human beings. Going to a baseball game or the movies or choir practice. Yes, it’s a risk still but I’ll take it.           

Will this hurt? If you have to ask the answer is probably, “yes.” But thanks for the heads up!