For a Happy and Happier New Year...How About Love?

"Five-hundred twenty-five thousand, six-hundred minutes…. Five hundred twenty-five thousand moments so dear….how do you measure, measure a year?”         

 --“Seasons of Love” from “Rent” by Jonathon Larson, 1996

In the end, in the beginning, it is all about love. Love. It will be all about love, too.  At least that’s what I believe as each of us, as our world, stands on the edge of an old year about to exit and a new year about to enter. 

Love. If we know it, if we practice it, we will be saved. If we ignore it, if we reject it, we are doomed in a way, as children of God and as God’s world too.  The cliché is true—love is the answer. Love marks the best year of all.  

I mean there are many other things, of course, I could use to measure a year, to fixate on it, in these final hours of 2023.  Things I could use to quantify the past 365 days. Like coffee. I probably drank something like 800 cups this year, probably more. Some good and smoky and dark, and some not so good, tepid, weak, brown hot water. Some were solo as I looked out the bay window in my house and watched an orange sun rise above the horizon at dawn. Some cups came in very good company, with an old friend at a downtown coffee shop, or in a church basement at a 12-step meeting. 

I could take a pretty typical way of measuring a year, the way our society often uses to measure whether or not we are “successful.” How much money did I make, starting last January 1^st up until now? Cash. Loot. Mammon, to use an old-fashioned bible term.  According to some that is the ultimate measure of my worth,  as a human, as a worker, as a cog in the machine of the economy. The more money I make the better I am and the less I make the lesser I am.  God help me if I live, or die based upon my 2023 W-2. 

How about Amazon? That could tell me about how I lived this year, using consumption as my yearly yardstick. You know, he who dies with the most toys wins. Right?  As of today I placed ninety-two Amazon orders in the past fifty-two weeks.  My first was “The Farmer’s Almanac 2023 Edition” on January 3^rd, along with a carton of thirty Swiss Miss Hot Chocolate packets.  My final order of this year was for a Bose Bluetooth speaker.  Not sure what these purchases say about me. I have a sweet tooth? I love music? I’m a weather freak? Yes and yes and yes. But that is not the whole of me. Is Amazon you? Are we ultimately what we buy, what material things we collect in a year? I sure hope not.

So many ways to analyze one year. How about Spotify? The song I listened to more than any other in 2023 was “Movin‘ Right Along” by Kermit the Frog and Fozzy Bear.  Ok, so I’m not some music aficionado but I like what I hear and I smiled a lot to that song. There was the miles I rode on my bike—something like 600 or so. The miles I put on my car—in the neighborhood of 13,000.  The miles I put on my body.  It’s about time for me to get another new hip.  I think I’ll wait until next year.

How about prayer to mark one year? How many times did I pray? “God grant me the serenity…” or “Our Father….” or just plain old, “God please help me with…” I know I prayed an awful lot and know I wish I’d prayed even more. Just because I am a paid Christian, in a way, doesn’t make me a better pray-er than other folks.

I think that “Seasons of Love” gets it right when it makes its claim for the best way to measure a year, and moments so dear, 525,600 minutes. It proclaims, “How about love? Love. LOVE?! Seasons of love!”  Moments of love were me at my best last year and will certainly be the best of me in 2024.  The best of all of us as humans and citizens and neighbors and family folk and friends too.  As I leave this year and get ready to enter a new year, I hope I can resolve to ask God to help me to love more in 2024. Love my loveable acquaintances, yes, but also love folks it is hard to love. Love others, absolutely, but also love myself.  Love this world and seek to heal it to of so much hurt and pain. Jesus got it right when he condensed the whole collection religious laws to just three items.

Love God. Love neighbor. Love self.

I can always use more love and God knows Creation needs so much love, maybe now more than ever.  God’s love that can actually end war and cease poverty and stop us boneheaded, stubborn humans from hurting and hating each other.  Of that, I am sure.  I have to have that hope to move into what feels like a very fraught 2024.

How about love? 2024—bring it on. Bring it on, in love. All 525,600 minutes of it.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

The Forced Humility of Finally Getting COVID...WHO, ME?!!!

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else. --Jim Wright, journalist, 1971

I was a “NOVID” for 1,318 days.

“NOVID” as in one of those rare folks who’ve never had COVID. Since March of 2020 I wore a mask when necessary and prudent and I washed my hands regularly and I got vaxxed on schedule and I followed all the rules, and I was COVID free. UnCOVID. Anti-COVIDED. NOCOVID/NOWAY.

Until I wasn’t.

Until one night last week when I was up much of the evening with a nagging cough, something I attributed to a bad cold (or so I wanted to believe).  I arose the next morning early, drove straight to a nearby CVS at 7:05 am, bought an overpriced test kit from a sleepy-eyed clerk, swabbed up and then waited for my results. Ten minutes later it said I was COVID free! WHEW!

But still, I was very cautious that day—I didn’t want to give anyone else what I had—whatever it was.  Then another night of hacking and sniffing and an itchy nose and triple sneezes, and up again at 7 am and I retested and then….

$%^#@! NO!

Two lines, one blue and one pink, on my antigen test, gave me the verdict. I was infected. I had it.  After more than three and a half years of avoiding getting sick from the disease that gave our world its worst pandemic in more than 100 years, I was ill. With COVID: the virus that’s infected 717 million people worldwide, according to the World Health Organization, and killed almost seven million people. At the height of COVID’s virulence and power, it was the third leading cause of death in the United States. It took the lives of 340,000 Americans in 2020, 475,000 in 2021, and 244,000 lives in 2022. 

Until last week I’d kind of forgotten (and yes, probably on purpose) just how disruptive and awful and scary COVID was, for a long time. I forgot about the pages and pages of obituaries in  December editions of The Boston Globe. Morgues overflowing in New York City. The Thanksgiving and Christmas I spent all by myself.  Memory is malleable. It can keep us happy by editing out what we recall, excluding the traumatic stuff. But memory can trick us too, let us imagine that sure it happened to others, but it won’t happen to me! Right?

I think I actually believed that somehow—with extra care, Irish luck, or by plain old fate--I could elude COVID. Then life taught me otherwise and I got infected.

I’m not looking for sympathy. I am realizing an important life and spiritual lesson from my serendipitous escape from COVID for so long. I hate to admit it, but I was kind of cocky about my seeming bullet proofness when it came to COVID. In my sometimes too big ego, I guess I was privately proud of myself. I was more careful than others, that’s it. My immune system was supercharged, no doubt. Or my genes kept me safe: thanks Mom and Dad!

I suffered from terminal uniqueness.

That’s the phrase used in recovery circles to describe those addicts who think that the rules might apply to others, but not to them. That they are instead “special” in their addiction, maybe even better than fellow addicts, both when it comes to using and to getting clean and sober. But then, inevitably, they spend some time in the rooms of 12-step groups and realize their story isn’t so one of a kind. In actually similar to the stranger’s story right next to them. Then they get humbled: by the hard work of recovery, and by one inescapable truth, taught in the crucible of forced humility.

We are all just bozos on the bus, most of the time.

We are no better or no worse than the other.  We are a part of the human condition just like everyone else. We put our pants on one leg at a time, as the cliché proclaims.  We are not the first in line nor the last. Nope—we are smack dab in the middle along with most of the rest of humanity.

I write this the day before I get to go back out into the world after five days of isolation at home, resting and recovering and savoring the good food my circle of friends so graciously provided to me.  And so, I remember this: I am just like any other bozo on the bus. Like any other child of God making their way in the world. 

You are too. We all are. 

I’m not grateful I got COVID, no. I am grateful to God for the health strengthening medicine I took and the miraculous vaccines that shielded me and the kind people who checked in with me every day I stayed in isolation, who prayed for me, and sent me a card. Thank you.

Yes, I am just another bozo on the bus. Welcome to the club, John.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

         

I HAVE A COMPLAINT! Our Exhausting World of Grievance...

"The whole congregation…complained against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness….‘If only we had died…in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the fleshpots and ate our fill of bread; for you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.’"             --Exodus 16:2-3

Humans have been complaining about as long as, well…as long as there has been something or someone to complain about. Take the ancient Israelites.  Please!  But seriously….

According to the bible story, Israelites were enslaved in Egypt for 400 years until God, with help from Moses and Aaron, freed them. The liberated community fled into the desert to find a new home.  So far, so good.  But then, seemingly, in little time on that journey, the complaining started and not just complaining but world class kvetching, to use a favorite Yiddish word.  The Israelites were so complaint-filled that they told their leaders they’d rather have been enslaved again, back where they came from, even dead (!), for at least in Egypt, their bellies were full.

The whole of the Exodus story is chockful of complaining. We’re hot! We’re cold! We’re out of food! There’s no water! God doesn’t listen to us! Billy took my football! Okay, maybe not that last one but aggrievement does mark our human story. 

Because, I guess, to be human is to complain and to complain is to just be human.

Yet, lately in our culture, I think we’ve raised the art and the practice of complaining to a whole new level, especially on social media and in our political life. For example…have you ever read a public neighborhood online forum, ala “Next Door ______”? (Fill in your town or city.) 

Spend a few minutes scrolling thereon and it can seem as though the main thing that folks do in “our town USA” is complain.  About the neighbors. About town services. About animals. About Amazon trucks. About town meeting. This week I read one complaint by a patron of a local burger joint. He was livid that the restaurant closed five minutes early! The writer upbraided the establishment and even noted how the employees made silly faces at him from behind the locked door. I kid you not.  

But then the commenting by commentators on the complaining comment, began and yes, you guessed it, they complained too, about restaurants that had left them unhappy.  A local pizza joint. A fast food place. An upscale mall establishment.  It was a pile on, a complain-a-thon. Who could top the other by being more miserable and more outraged? And all because someone couldn’t get a late-night burger.   

Oh, the horror!

It’s not just locally that some wear resentments like badges of honor. Many candidates for high office are complaint factories too, folks who base their whole “platform” on complaining.  About how if they lost, someone must have cheated. About how if they won, someone must have undercounted the votes for them. They complain about the press if the media does not offer fealty to their overblown egos. They complain that their opponents just hate America and want to destroy it. 

We are living in an age of grievance politics. Whiny politics and whiny candidates and whiny voters. To win, I guess all you must do is talk about how terrible the other guy or gal is, how corrupt, how perverse, etc., etc.

I am exhausted by all this negativity and complaint. It’s forced me to look at all the ways I fall into the trap of complaint in this life. That person isn’t driving fast enough! They are out of my favorite diet soda at Marketbasket! And how ‘bout those Red Sox!? Patriots?! They stink!

But here’s the truth about chronic complaint and complaining. It’s toxic. It can ruin relationships. Who wants to be around someone who is constantly tearing things down? Not me. Compliant make us see only the bad and not the good. Complaint make us weary and cynical. Complaint is a spiritual killjoy. Do it enough and it will parch your spirit and exhaust those around you.

Except, I suppose, folks who can’t wait to jump on to Facebook or X (can I complain about Twitter’s new name?!) or Next Door to lodge their latest complaint. And our leaders, the one’s addicted to complaint and anger. All aggrievement, all the time. Who can I attack now?

When I fall into the habit of haranguing and harassing, I lose gratitude for the life I live.  Which for all my temptation to complain is in fact a good life. I have enough food to eat. A safe and comfortable home. I have wonderful job (most days) that pays me to do good in the world. People to love and who love me. And all through the grace of a generous God, who dares me to look for the good each and every day, share that good with others, and always say, “Thank you!”

Kvetching. Complaining. Whining. Grumbling. Murmuring.  Nit-picking.

It’s human nature, heck, my nature, but there is a deep spiritual and communal price to pay for a life built upon grievances. Life’s too short to spend it aggrieved.

Instead, let’s look for the good. Thank God for the good. Leave complaint to others.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

            

 

 

 

 

Nazis In My Hometown?! They Came to Attack the Stranger.

“On only one occasion does the Hebrew bible command us to love our neighbor, but in 37 places it commands us to love the stranger. The stranger is the one we are taught to love precisely because he is not like ourselves.”                --Jonathan Sacks, rabbi, philosopher, theologian

One hundred years ago to be exact. 1923.

That’s the year my grandfather, Armand Bolduc, and his brother, Mark, immigrated from Quebec, Canada to rural, Vermont, looking for work and trying to find a new home. To make their way and to make a living in that strange place where folks spoke a different language and had different customs and culture, but also where those strangers were welcomed by those already there.  Someone took my grandfather in and gave him work. Welcomed him.

My mom told me that story just this week, as we drove by a small Christian college in Quincy, in the Wollaston neighborhood, a school called Eastern Nazarene. It was founded by Christians in the early part of the twentieth century to provide affordable and high-quality education. That college then and now is intentional about grounding its mission in the life and person of Jesus Christ, the one who taught many good things.  But the one who famously (or infamously) said, “I was hungry and you fed me. I was a stranger and you took me in.”

That’s just what Eastern Nazarene is doing right now. Welcoming strangers. Helping to feed hungry kids. Providing safe shelter. It’s partnered with the state of Massachusetts to open up a Welcome Center on its campus for migrants.  At present 58 immigrants, mostly from Haiti, are staying at the college in a dormitory. All are in family units with children or expecting a child.  Their stay is short-term; in days they will be moved to more permanent housing.

Now back to the “stranger” part.  As reported by the Patriot Ledger and Quincy police, “[Last] Saturday, 25 to 30 white men in khakis and face masks marched to the site housing the families and ‘stood on a public sidewalk while holding flares, a banner and chanting for the migrant families to 'go home' and that they 'were not welcome.'"  Those men were members of NSC-131, a neo-Nazi white supremacist group based in Massachusetts.  (Why do they never have the guts to show their faces?!)

Never thought I’d have to write these two words together in one sentence. Nazis and Massachusetts. Never thought those fascists would show up in the neighborhood where I grew up, a place of modest homes on narrow streets, nearby to a beautiful beach, home to lots of folks who also have immigrant roots. Irish. Chinese. Brazilian. Canadian. The point being that until that group showed up at the college to intimidate and harass those women, men and children fleeing poverty and violence, I never imagined such hateful and racist storm troopers could be right next door. Ready to reject any who dare to come to America.

Yes, there is a huge migration and illegal immigration problem in our country right now. Actually, there’s been one for more than a generation.  The fault lies not with any one political party—its lies with both sides of the aisle and a handful of demagogues more interested in scoring political points than reaching consensus on sane, compassionate, and prudent immigration policy.

The problem is that folks at the extremes control the debate right now. The ones who want to build a wall. The ones who want wide open borders.  The answers lie in the middle, but not many politicians are staking out space there right now.

Which is a shame and a dereliction of their duty as our elected officials. The odd part is that some of them also claim to be people of faith, even followers of Jesus. They pray on the one hand and then slam the door in the face of the suffering on the other hand. They see no contradiction in this either. I guess for them, politics trumps faith. That sentence is true in more ways than one.

At present there are migrants staying in short term shelters in eighty Massachusetts’ cities and towns.  I hope the Nazis aren’t planning some kind of sick road trip around the Bay State.  No.  It’s up to us, I’d argue, we, the ones who overwhelmingly can trace our roots back to an immigrant, to now stand up for these people in need. Who come to us from a strange land, seeking the promise and challenge of life in the United States.

I don’t think that is too much to ask. And I give a lot of credit and kudos to the people of Quincy for being so welcoming. The night after the Nazis showed up, a group of counter protesters came to campus with signs about love, welcome, and mercy. Kind of like Jesus did when he came upon a stranger, especially one hurting and lost.

I was a stranger and you took me in.

Count me as a supporter of that ethic. May the people of Massachusetts and the rest of the country remember our immigrant roots and care for the one on the road, who is just looking for a new home and a new life.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

    

 

 

         

Please Summer: Stick Around Just a Little Longer...

“Bye-bye, so long, farewell…See you in September, See you when the summer's through….”      --recorded by “The Happenings”, written by Wayne and Edwards, 1966

I already miss the summer.

I miss…having little need for an alarm clock much of the past two months or so. I miss oh so sweet corn slathered in butter and oh so juicy tomatoes fresh off the vine. I’m already missing hot dogs at the ballpark and soft serve ice cream melting on my hand. I miss early morning bike rides as the mist rises off the meadows when the roads are so quiet, so deserted, so safe. I already miss a schedule that is not jam packed. I want to continue enjoying summer with space and time to just be, to breathe, to not feel like life is so chock full of so many things to do and to do TODAY. No time to waste!

I miss writing postcards from places on my road trips. From Bethlehem, New Hampshire, a gem of a town, just around the corner from where the Old Man in the Mountain once lived. How about Ithaca, New York, with the Baseball Hall of Fame just around the corner or Kennebunkport, Maine, and its down east charm. Don’t forget Cleveland, Ohio and Elizabethtown, Kentucky too. So many destinations on summer road trips.  Many miles to go before I sleep on a balmy summer night, fireflies lighting up the evening and stars strewn across a dark August sky.  

This is what happens to me as the end of August looms large. Every year I end up missing summer even before it is over.  Call it August anxiety or a late August lament.  On the one hand I am so grateful to God for coming up with summer in the first place (nice job!) but on the other hand I’m also asking (ok begging) God for just a few more precious summer days to enjoy.

I know that if you want to get all technical, summer 2023 is not close to over. It doesn’t end until Saturday, September 23^rd, and that’s three weeks and change away.  Yet calendar and schedule wise, for many of us, summer will actually conclude at one minute past midnight, on Tuesday, September 5^th, the day after Labor Day. One last long weekend in the sun. The day after the last true summer cookout. Then there are families with kids who mark summer’s end with school’s start.  Some kids return to classrooms pre-Labor Day and some post-Labor Day.  But when the children and college students hit the books, summer is absolutely, positively, completely kaput. The return of yellow school buses to the streets and orange U-Hauls jamming up downtown Boston are signs that summer is gone, gone, gone.

Yes, I know that there are some in this world for whom summer’s demise is not so bittersweet. Like the retired, the ones freed from the 9 to 5 routine. Or folks who no longer must go to school or whose offspring have graduated and moved away. Also, the happy go lucky ones who actually enjoy the coming cold and chill of a late September evening with frost just around the corner.  That’s okay for them but for me, summer is always the bees’ knees.

As I write this kvetch on the 25th day of August, I should not be so quickly anticipating the end of my favorite season. I should be reveling in the time left for summer 2023, right?  Time for one more sweet sausage sandwich at Fenway Park and yes, this year the Sox may still be relevant and in contention come September. We can only hope and pray…God: please don’t let our Red Stockings turn into manilla folders come the 9^th month.

So, my advice (that I should also heed) is simple and direct. Get out there and summer however you can and do it quickly. The divine gift that is the fair season may be fast dwindling away, but still, there are a few sips still left in the August bottle, sips of cold beer after mowing the lawn. Wearing flip flops or better yet, going barefoot. Rocking in the hammock. Reading a book on the beach ‘til the sun goes down. 

September is surely on the way, but for now? Let’s savor summer.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

 

 

         

 

 

A Ride Proves We Can Make the World a Better Place. TOGETHER!

“Be a good ancestor. Stand for something bigger than yourself. Add value to the Earth during your sojourn.”  --Marian Wright Edelman

I always cry at the end of the ride. Tear up. Get choked up when I finally arrive at the finish.

Let me start at the start. In a little more than a week, August 5^th to be exact, me and about 6,000 other cyclists will ride up to 211 miles in two days, as we all participate in the Pan Mass Challenge (PMC). If you’ve noticed more bikers on the road these past few weekends, many of those are PMC folk getting in their final training miles before the big day or days. For more than forty years, the PMC has raised almost $900 million for the Dana Farber Institute, Boston’s world class cancer treatment center in Boston. Our 2023 goal is $70 million, and every dollar goes to the cause.

It is a ride of amazing numbers.

At its longest point it stretches all the way from the rolling hills of Sturbridge to the rolling dunes of Provincetown, more than 200 miles. I’m cycling one day from Wellesley to Bourne, about 82 miles. It takes a good while to get from here to there. I’ll start out at 7 am or so in the morning and arrive at the bridge (God willing and good weather!) by 3 pm or so. And yes, by the end my backside is pretty sore. One metric I found estimates that me and the folks on my route will circle our pedals some 55,000 times that day.

I do the PMC for lots of reasons. It gets me off the couch and on to my bike, forces me to get back into shape each spring and summer. I ride for the people I love and at the church I serve who have cancer or who have succumbed to cancer. I always carry their names with me: Scott, Uncle Billy, Uncle Mark, Nora, T. Michael, Sue, Dorothy, Lynne…that list is a long one.

But hope lies in the truth that in the 13 years I’ve ridden, the advances in cancer care have been almost miraculous. The PMC has been a big part of those breakthroughs at the Dana Farber.  I also ride for the thrill and the fear of actually riding a bike that long a distance. Each year I wonder: can I do it? I ride for the discipline it forces me to have every summer.  Can’t fake it. Either you can do it or can’t and the day of the ride is always crunch time. I ride because the life I have is a pretty darn good one and so my faith and my conscience tells me that it is my responsibility and call to help others. To do some good while I am here. To share the abundance of my life with others.   

One of the biggest reasons I ride is to just be a part of something bigger than myself.  To be involved and in the thick of a great cause, a bold crusade and to do that with thousands of other amazing people. While out on my training rides I inevitably see at least one other PMC’er and we nod in recognition and sometimes we even yell out encouragement to one another. “Have a good ride!” “Be safe!” “Good luck!”  There is a power and a grace to being a part of such a world changing group of people.  All of us pedaling and straining and working and trying our best to achieve these simple goals.

To beat cancer once and for all. To find a cure. To give hope to those who are sick and to their loved ones.

So, if I may do so, on behalf of all the PMC riders and volunteers and staff: if you are a praying person please pray for our rides. For safety. For cool temps and maybe even a cloudy day! (Last year was almost 100 degrees and full sun.) Pray for the folks in your life who have cancer, and those who have passed on, and those who grieve and those who are still fighting.

We are living in very toxic times in a very toxic world. It’s even fashionable, especially among the political elite and media, to be cynical about the world.  To tear down others without a thought. To talk not of the good but instead to always focus on the bad. To look out into God’s Creation and feel not hope, but instead despair. 

But when you get to be in community with almost 10,000 people for the weekend, people who want to be a part of the solution, people who want to do good, people who smile through the sweat, people who just keep pedaling…you get to see the world can be a beautiful place too.

If you see us on our bikes in the days ahead or on PMC weekend, please give us a wave and we will wave and smile right back at you. Maybe that might make you feel more hopeful for the world. Imagine having the faith that a small group of committed people, working together, can absolutely can actually make a difference.

Change the world. Heal the hurting. Comfort the afflicted. And all on two wheels and under human power and grit. Nothing more.

It’s for all these reasons that I cry each year when I get to the foot of the Bourne Bridge and then cross the finish line and remember and celebrate that I am a part of something bigger than myself. That all of us can make this world a better place, if we believe and if we get to work.Together.

That’s how I’ll be spending the first weekend in August. See you on the road!

(If you’d like to donate to my ride, go to: https://profile.pmc.org/JH0352)

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

    

"PLAY BALL!" and America's Aspiration to Truly Be 'For All'

“Put me in coach, I’m ready to play, today.  Look at me, I can be, center field.”    --from the song “Centerfield” by John Fogerty

Baseball for everyone. No one left out.

It’s called “Baseball for All” a movement and a nationwide organization. Its mission embodies for me two things in this world that I absolutely love. First, baseball, that most American of pastimes whose holy season is peaking right about now, as major league teams are in the thick of pennant races, even our own Boston Red Sox! And then there is the “…For All” declaration, for all, as in everyone is invited to play the game and no one is ever left out.  All God’s children have a place at the plate and in the field.

I love that vision.  To play a game where no one if ever left behind, where everyone has a chance to get picked for the team.  In baseball. In life.

“Baseball for All” was formed by ball player and coach Justine Siegal in 2010 with one simple goal: to promote the participation of girls and young women in the game of baseball at all levels of play. In the words of their founder, “Too many girls are told they can’t play baseball because of their gender. We’re here to change that. I want girls to know they can follow their passions and that they have no limits—that their dreams matter.”

I’ve been witness to this “Baseball for All” movement in the life of my 15-year-old Goddaughter Bridget, whom I’ve watched grow up in life and yes, grow up on the baseball field too.  I’ve seen her play ball, from the days in her backyard, when on tiny toddler legs she stood at the plate and swung her plastic bat with mighty gusto, at a wiffle ball I’d thrown. Days on the local ball field when in T-ball, she ran down the first base line with such joy, a huge smile on her face. I’ve watched her play in Little League, the only girl in the dugout, who played with such passion and purpose, squatting behind the plate as a scrappy catcher. 

And then I got to watch Bridget, just this past week, as she played for an all-girls team in the National Girls Baseball Championship. Upwards of 400 girls and young women played, from 8 to 18 years old, on more than forty teams, from the United States and Canada. They were the Florida Bolts and the Boston Slammers, the New York Wonders, and the Toronto Cardinals. They all came together to play ball and that they did. Hitting with power, fielding with finesse, and running like the wind.  That’s the baseball I saw as I cheered in the stands on a hot baseball field in Elizabethtown, Kentucky.

All those girls and young women want, is to be able to play, to be welcomed to compete on the field, just as surely and as clearly as boys and young men are invited to play.  Then baseball is truly “for all.” Kind of makes me think how wonderful it would be if all of life worked that way too.  You know.

For all.

As in for all of us to share in both the fruits and the challenges of this God-given life, none of us left behind or looked over or rejected or kept out.  That phrase ‘for all” is in fact found in the 31-word pledge of allegiance, the one you and I used to recite in the classroom before we went off to our school for the day. Remember? It’s not just “for all” but “liberty and justice for all.” For every single American. For you and for me and for the rich and the poor and the gay and the straight and the boy who plays baseball and the girl who plays baseball too. Christian and the Muslim and the non-believer as well.

“For all” has been an aspirational ideal of our country for a long, long time.  We struggle and we stumble to make this nation “for all” and then someone like Rosa Parks comes along and the door of equal opportunity and access to rights and privileges opens up a bit wider.  We are living in strange times, times when many politicians in our country aren’t expanding “for all” but are in fact diminishing the ranks of “all.”  Like if you are a trans kid in need of medical treatment. Or if you are a same sex couple looking for a graphic designer to help with your wedding. Or if you are just trying to vote but the government keeps making it harder and harder. These are times that can be discouraging for many of us, we who are a part of the “for all” too and want to see “for” actually become “for all.”

I find my hope, still, in the witness of all those girls and young women who have fought for so, so long for the chance to pick up a baseball and play the game. Play on a level playing field. Play just as hard as the boys and play to win, and play for the joy of competing, and play to just…play.  Way to go Bridget and all your baseball loving sisters too! Thank you.

You remind us that “for all” actually means for all.  No exceptions.  No one forced to sit out on the sidelines or in the dugout. Everyone invited to “PLAY BALL!”

God give us the courage and the resolve to realize this ideal and hope. For me. For you. For all.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.

 

 

    

 

 

 

    

 

 

 

         

 

 

Can't Love God and Hate a Neighbor. God Is ALWAYS Love.

“I have decided to stick to love...Hate is too great a burden to bear.” –the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Who will we next choose to hate? What group? What tribe? What community?

In twenty U.S. states it is now a matter of law or public policy that gender affirming care is banned for young people 13 to 17 years old. Even if their doctor believes that it is medically necessary. Even if their parents agree that this is good for the mental health and well-being of the child they love. Even if for these young people such care represents the chance for them to finally become the person they believe they were meant to be, created to be, as a child of God.

I think I might be a little less angry about these anti-LGBTQ laws if the insincerity and calculated politics of the legislators and governors who so often favor such actions, was not so clear and obvious. You see by hating the LGBTQ community, you can actually win votes, at least in some parts of the country. Hate the so-called “woke” crowd and you can run for President. Use your faith to justify such mean-spirited and soul crushing public policy and you even get to go straight to heaven.

Really?!

I know some might see my use of the word “hate” as over the top or exaggerated or strictly for effect.  I use that word “hate” intentionally but not lightly. Here, “hate” fits. Hate is defined in the Merriam Webster’s Dictionary as (in part), “intense hostility and aversion usually deriving from fear, anger, or sense of injury.” Works for me.  We humans tend to hate that which we fear; tend to hate that which we do not understand; tend to hate people we perceive are somehow making it hard for us to be who we are supposed to be.  It’s that last reason to hate someone or a group of “someones,” that most confuses me. 

How is someone following American Medical Association (AMA) approved guidelines for medical care a threat to anyone? In the words of the largest professional medical organization in the country, “The AMA opposes the dangerous intrusion of government into the practice of medicine and the criminalization of health care decision-making,” said AMA Board Member Michael Suk, MD, JD, MPH, MBA. “Gender-affirming care is medically necessary, evidence-based care that improves the physical and mental health of transgender and gender-diverse people.”  

Trans folks aren’t telling straight folks how they are supposed to live. Who they are supposed to love. How they are supposed to constitute their families. The last time I checked, my trans loved ones actually think it is my own business (and their own business too) about how to understand and then live into gender. You know. Live and let live. Privacy.   

It is kind of odd that so many of the same folks who worship at the altar of small government and libertarianism then also advocate for laws that represent government intrusion into private lives and medical care. And to tell a parent how they are supposed to make medical decisions for their kids? To dictate to people how they are to care for and understand their own bodies?

And the whole faith angle? Using the Christian faith as a philosophical justification to hate? To see trans folks as somehow less than human and to claim that God feels that way too? Pastors preaching contempt for LGBTQ folks from so many pulpits across America?

Look. I’m a Christian too. Have been for 62 years.  Have served the church as a working professional clergy person in the United Church of Christ for almost thirty-four years. Nothing in the Bible I read or the faith I practice or the religion I try my humble best to teach tells me that I have the right or the duty to hate someone else just because of their status as a trans person. As the author of the First Letter of John writes, “Those who say, ‘I love God,’ and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen.” (1 John 4:20)

I get that for some people the changes in our cultural understanding of gender can be hard to understand. But instead of derision, what would it mean for more and more of us to just be curious about this issue and not so threatened?  What would it mean for us to actually talk to trans people and ask them to tell their story and then to listen in love and respect? What would it mean for us to honor the bodily autonomy of folks and not presume to tell someone else what they can and cannot do? What would it mean for us to just be a part of the conversation and not the condemnation?

Who is the next class of citizens to hate?

The thing is, once we give ourselves permission to dislike another because they are different than us, well then, the flood gates of intolerance, disdain and discrimination open wide, letting forth a torrent of self-righteous belligerence.  Which I think breaks the very heart of God.  Because the one faith truth I believe with all my heart and soul and mind and that I hold to with all my might is this simple declaration. God is love. God is love. And if God is love then God’s children are supposed to always lead with love too. No exceptions.  Maybe a little humility too. After all, who are we to stand in judgment of another human being for just trying to become who they truly are? 

Who is the next group to hate? 

How about this instead? Who is the next group to love? Who needs to be shown mercy? Who could use a little kindness?  I like those questions much better. How about you? Love? Hate?

I choose love. Love. LOVE.

The Reverend John F. Hudson is Senior Pastor of the Pilgrim Church, United Church of Christ, in Sherborn, Massachusetts (pilgrimsherborn.org). He blogs at sherbornpastor.blogspot.com and is a resident scholar at the Collegeville Institute at Saint John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota. For twenty-five years he was a columnist whose essays appeared in newspapers throughout Massachusetts and Rhode Island. He has served churches in New England since 1989. For comments, please be in touch: pastorjohn@pilgrimsherborn.org.