On Leaves and Leaving As Autumn Settles In

“Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable...the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street...by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.”  --Hal Borland

Leave. To depart, to exit, to migrate, to go away from, to put in the rear view mirror, to part, to retire, to go on to something new.

Here's the odd thing I notice every year about the autumn. Spring, summer, winter: these seasons arrive with a bang. They pull up to the curb and bound out of the car and extend a hand and say, "Hello! Glad to be back!" They show up, often very suddenly. In April on a miraculous morning when the buds on the trees seem to have exploded forth overnight. In June when sultry heat arrives and so we drag the air conditioner out of the attic and prepare for the dog days. In December when the sky turns slate grey, and the sun's rays are so diffuse and then we look up and notice the first white flakes, lazily falling in circles to the cold ground.

But not fall.  Fall is about leaving.

Fall gets into the car and says to us, "It's time to go. It's time to leave. Get in."  Fall is always about leaving and leaves, of course. Red and yellow and purple and orange and pink and brown. These spread like a lush technicolor carpet over the mountains, circle a quiet suburban backyard, hang from trees that bend over city streets.  The leaves are so beautiful and yet we know that even as we enjoy this amazing God show, the painting of Creation by the master artist's hand, we know it is all temporary. That soon those same leaves will leave. Fall to the ground. Decay into the soil or get sucked up by the legions of leaf blowing landscapers who invade these parts every November.

Fall is about leaving.

I used to regret, push back against leaving. Who wants to face into the loss of someone or something, this going away? A son or daughter leaves for college and so even as we celebrate that rite of passage, we mourn too, aware of how much we miss the sound of their voice, the footfall of steps as they come down the stairs in the morning.  At the church I serve we recently gave leave to a couple who were members of our community for more than fifty years. The Sunday we said goodbye was bittersweet, filled with gratitude for all they had done for and among us, sure, but grief too, at their departure.  Who wants to face into such goodbyes, such endings?  Not me! And yet....

We need the fall. We need to leave sometimes. We need leaving in this life. 

For the new cannot arrive until the old has made way for it.  A new relationship cannot bloom forth unless we have made peace somehow with the old relationship, the one who is no longer with us. For children to grow up and into the world they will inherit, we adults must know when to hand over such responsibility, say to them, "It is yours' now. Take good care of it."  For the sweet promises of next spring and summer to come true we have to first welcome the fall, and finally close the door on last spring and summer. Pack those seasons up and put them away in the attic so that when all is ready, they can come back out and play next year.

Yes, there is a wisdom to autumn and to leaving. 

So as we move into shorter days and chillier temperatures, as the animals rush to collect forage for the winter, as the geese fly overhead and head south in a cacophony of honks, my prayer is that we can all lean into our natural and personal leave takings with grace and with care. That we can be grateful in the midst of leaving, for the times that are going away and the times that are coming, just up ahead.  In our leaving may we be thankful to our God for the people who come into our lives and bless us, but then have to depart. 

So welcome autumn. It's time to leave.

     

   

To Be Right We Must First Admit When We Are Wrong

"It does take great maturity to understand that the opinion we are arguing for is merely the hypothesis we favor, necessarily imperfect, probably transitory, which only very limited minds can declare to be a certainty or a truth."             
--Milan Kundera, author

I know this much is true. I get it wrong in this life. A lot. I have opinions that need to change. Biases that need to be challenged.  Self-righteous convictions that need to be overturned.  I'm actually wrong several times a day.

So this past Saturday evening, on the last night of summer, under clear skies and crisp temperatures, I was at Gillette Stadium in Foxboro, watching the New England Revolution professional soccer team play the Chicago Fire. For years I gave a friend of mine a really hard time about his diehard status as a "football" fan.  I argued that soccer was in fact boring--just a bunch of folks running up and down, up and down the field, this repetitive display of play rarely punctuated by the actual scoring of a goal. I was half serious and half silly. I loved ribbing him but was also very set in my ways. 

But then I finally decided to go to a game with him, to give it a chance, spend a few hours under the lights with 20,000 or so other fans and....WOW! It was a great match. Really exciting. The players were amazing, so athletic, kicking and heading the ball in ways unfathomable. The match was tight and hard fought and came down to the final minutes. When our home team scored in the waning moments of the match I leapt to my feet and roared with joy.

And so I was wrong. And so I am wrong too.

Not just about soccer but also about other ideas and issues and beliefs too.  It used to be hard for me to confess when I was mistaken, or made an incorrect assumption, or held some belief I thought sacred and inviolable but that was in fact incorrect.  If challenged I'd dig in my heels, argue even harder, double down on my self-righteousness and never, ever, ever, ever back off.

But then I grew up. Came to see that to be a fully formed and mature human being, to get along with folks I share this life with, I need to be open to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world. I have to actually listen to an opponent with respect and care.  I have to dig deeper, do research and look at both sides with thoughtfulness.  I have to have the courage to try new things I can so easily dismiss as "not for this guy!" I have to be willing to change my mind.

About things like a soccer match. Or a political belief. Or a moral stance. Or a religious ideal. Or a partisan conviction.

That soccer epiphany reminded me of a larger reality about right and wrong and right now. We are in a civic crisis in the United States: more divided, more angry, and more convicted by our unwavering convictions than ever before, at least in my lifetime.  Democrats and Republicans move in lock step as partisan foot soldiers, more loyal to their own kind and their own way of thinking than to country.  We are "led" by firebrand politicians who rarely, if ever, admit when they are wrong. We are awash in media and social media that is ever hungry and hungrier for a cruel tweet, a nasty insult, or a sweeping opinion that condemns a whole group of humans as "less than" or "the enemy". 

As the poet William Butler Yeats wrote in "The Second Coming", "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed...The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity."  I don't think this judgment is overly dramatic. For the worst among us these days are so full of passionate intensity, are so sure of their own beliefs that they would even take down the community as a whole, even the nation as a whole and why?

To be "right".

I'm almost always idealistic about the future of our land and world, the days ahead, and our ability as a species to overcome whatever crises we face.  I want to believe, I need to believe that at some point those who lead us will let go of ego, self interest and blind conviction to actually do the work of our democracy.  But if this is to happen, all of us as citizens must leave the safety of our righteousness and have the courage to imagine that we may be wrong.  That we may need for our minds and hearts to change.  That the common good will happen when folks meet somewhere beyond mere passionate intensity.

I'm wrong today.  My opponent too.  That's the place to start.

       

100 Years Ago: The Pandemic That Started in Massachusetts

“The living owe it to those who no longer can speak, to tell their story for them.”

--Czesław Miłosz, Polish poet and writer

It's a largely forgotten story now, lost to history, vaguely remembered by some Americans but almost never recalled for the huge public crisis that it was. How many lives it took; how it disrupted all forms of public life; how it stole away husbands and wives, young children and young adults, folks who were supposed to live long and loving lives, but who instead died in the grip of a mysterious plague.   

And it all happened exactly 100 years ago in the fall of 1918.

The previous spring, reports had come from Spain about a deadly form of influenza, the flu, sweeping through groups of soldiers, killing scores of previously robust and healthy young men. It was World War I, "the war to end all wars" and Americans were being sent to Europe by the hundreds of thousands and, of course, then coming back home. The Spanish flu, as it came to be called, was first detected at an Army base in Kansas, but then the outbreak dramatically escalated, and right here in Massachusetts. It appeared at Camp Devens, a military base 45 miles northwest of Boston, and at naval shipyards in the city's downtown.

Victims of the outbreak would first suffer from normal flu symptoms: fever, nausea, aches and diarrhea.  But for many, especially the young, folks considered in the prime of their lives, the sickness would turn fatal. Severe pneumonia would develop. Patients would turn blue from a lack of oxygen, and eventually die, as their lungs filled up with fluid, victims drowning in their own bodies. 

In the Boston area by mid September, hundreds of cases were reported in the city and its suburbs. In response public schools were closed at the end of September and almost all public gatherings--military parades, sporting events, concerts, movies, clubs, etc.--were temporarily banned. Churches were given the option to stay open but most closed out of great caution. Still the pandemic grew. By October there were thousands of cases of influenza around the region and dozens of people were dying each day. Coffins were in short supply.  Understaffed hospitals could not keep up.  As one nurse of that time said, "It seemed as if all the city was dying, in the homes serious illness, on the streets funeral processions.” 

By early December, Boston had lost 4,794 people to the flu, with many more added to that number after a brief flare up the following winter.  Boston's influenza death rate was 710 per 100,000 residents, making it the third hardest hit city in the country.  Imagine 5,000 Bostonians dying in a matter of months from the flu in 2018 and you can begin to comprehend the depth of the crisis.

Scientists and historians estimate that worldwide, 20 to 50 million people died from the Spanish flu; that number includes 675,000 Americans, 140,000 of whom were soldiers. Some reports estimate that upwards of 5 percent of the global population died in this outbreak.  More folks died from the flu than all the military deaths from World I and World War II combined. 

But then in 1919, as quickly as the Spanish flu flared up, the flu died out, leaving families, communities, cities and nations ravaged, a whole generation lost to a disease that we still do not fully understand. How did it develop?  Where exactly was the first case reported? Why did it go away?  Could it happen again?  Such important questions.   

Yet why then do most of us suffer from historic amnesia when it comes to this, the worst worldwide pandemic since the bubonic plague, or Black Death, of the mid fourteenth century? Part of it may have to do with a lack of storytellers: folks who survived 1918-19. For the most part they are long gone from this life.  Maybe we neglect to remember because death was so random and chaotic--no logic to it. So hard to understand or comprehend.  Perhaps the story is untold because unlike casualties of war, which are often framed in dramatic, patriotic terms, folks who died from the flu went quietly, anonymously, and privately. 

But remember we must. To affirm this part of history as a part of our human story and our American story. To name the lost, these children of God: to recall them in memory, in honor, and in prayer. A few years ago, while on a bike ride, I discovered a lone gravestone at a local state hospital, now long ago closed. The marker stands at the entrance to a field of unmarked graves, anonymous souls who passed on. Affixed to that stone is a brass plaque, that simply declares: “Remember us: for we too have lived, loved and laughed.”

One hundred years ago.

                            

        

  

In Praise of Tears and the Relief These Bring: Pass the Tissues

"It opens the lungs, washes the countenance, exercises the eyes, and softens down the temper; so cry away."                     --Charles Dickens

A confession.  I'm a crier.  A sniffling sap.  A big softie. 

Yes. Even at 57 years old, I tear up, well up, weep, if something or someone touches my heart; makes me realize how great it is to be alive; inspires me to remember what a gift from God each day is; what a miracle it is that love happens in this often broken and ugly world.  I weep at a corny TV commercials, grateful that the insurance agent arrives to save the day! I weep every single Christmas watching the last scene from the film "It's a Wonderful Life" even though having seen that flick 143 times, I already know that George will be rescued from suicidal despair by his friends and that an angel named Clarence will get his wings.   

Sniff, sniff.

I weep when I stand with parents at the front of the church and take a little baby from them and hold that fragile and delicate soul in my arms and then drip holy water over that child's tiny forehead, with sacred and ancient blessings. I weep when I sing a soaring majestic hymn, as the organ notes waft above me. And yes I wept when the Red Sox finally won it all in 2004!  I definitely wept when I saw my Godson get his diploma last May and flashed back to a day long ago when he had to hold my hand to cross the street. 

When's the last time you had a good cry? 

Mine was last Saturday night when I really, really overflowed with the water works at a family party celebrating the 25th wedding anniversary of my cousin Darrell and his wife Deb. She had no idea what was coming and so as 100 or so of us huddled quietly in a banquet room, Deb walked through the doors and then saw her life love holding a dozen red roses and then he took her into his arms and then their song played and then they danced slowly in a tight embrace and she wept and heck, we all were blubbering. 

Pass the tissues please.

There is something powerful, therapeutic, spiritual, and beautiful about being so moved by an event or a person or an act of love in this life, that we just have to cry.  The tears can signify so many things.  That we've finally let go of some thought or notion or grief we've hung on to and we can lean into it, let it come.  When I finally wept at my Grandfather's funeral, it meant I knew he was really gone and with God, but it also meant I did really, really so, so love him.

Tears remind us what is most important to us in this life.  We cry at a wedding because in this hour of joy, we re-learn that love really is the most powerful force in this world, that love is really all we need. Tears signal that we are going into a soul space, deep within, into a mystical realm.  We cry in a house of worship because the music or a sermon or a soft spoken prayer gets us closer to God and to our real feelings, nothing held back and so we weep. Art moves us to tears because the best song or symphony or story or painting reveals human truth in a way the everyday just cannot.

I know folks for whom it is still hard to cry.  They fear that once the tears start they won't be able to stop. Or men, who still think it is somehow less than masculine to cry; echoes of "Boys don't cry!" holding them back from shedding tears of sadness or joy. Or we can hang on to an outer shell of cynicism or snarky irony to protect us from our tears, to push away deep emotions.

The truth is that crying actually takes courage.  Crying cracks us open, reveals our hearts and takes us to the most authentic place of all: being fully human. Remember that the next time you start to tear up and your first instinct is to tamp it down, push it back. Here's a gentle suggestion. Let those tears come. Let them flow. It will do you good. Nothing like a good cry.

So if you find yourself sitting next to me at a wedding, please have a hanky ready.  I'm definitely going to need it.

 

Summer Memories: The Gift That Keeps On Giving

“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.” 
--Lucy Maud Montgomery, "The Story Girl"

Unload the luggage from the car and clean out all the detritus of my road trip: eight  coffee cups, four pretzel cheddar combos bags, etc. Check. Sort accumulated mail: 80 percent in the recycle bin, 10 percent to the bill pile, 10 percent for actual reading. Check. Listen to landline voicemails: two sales calls, one hang up, one offer for a free cruise. Erase. Check. Read work email. Well, maybe not just yet, at least not until later,  post summer, post vacation.  

But most important? Remember the memories. Remember. Check. Check!

Here's a suggestion for a September spiritual pick me up before we move so quickly out of summer and into fall, before we rush back to school and off to college and ramping up at work and shorter days and leaves turning and yet another year rolling on by. Sit down this day and write down all your favorite memories from our quickly departing summer of 2018. Go through your phone and your camera and download all the photos too. 

The image of your toes squishing into the sand, or of you squinting into the camera because it was so sunny that day. The bright technicolor fireworks from the fourth: remember all the "ooohs!" and the "aaaahs!" and how hot it was that night. Take a moment to look at the pictures from an exciting soccer match at Gillette Stadium with your mates, or a night at Fenway as the Sox rolled over their opponent in this baseball season when the hometown team is red, red, hot. Look again at the portrait of your freshman son or daughter, so happy and nervous in their new college dorm room.    

And then remember.  Just remember. 

The stars in the sky on a muggy August evening. The peepers lulling you to sleep. The sweat on your brow or trickling down your back when you mowed the lawn or took a long bike ride or ran a few miles or tended the garden or just sat and read. The barbeque at the family reunion, dropping kids off at camp, hosting grandkids for a week or two, that funky outdoor concert where you actually got up and danced. 

Remember it all.

Then give thanks. Practice gratitude. Say "Thank you!" to God or to the Universe or to whatever mysterious power greater than ourselves gives us the grace of enjoying this life twice. First there is the profundity of living right now, and then also, remembering "then", recalling precious moments, the days, nights, and hours that you just do not want to forget. For that was a time that will never, ever be again. 

What memories stay? What event so thrilled your heart or caught your breath or made you cry or made you laugh, that you just do not want it to fade away? What summer memory do you want to hang on to and then remember on a chilly day next February, when you need some warm reassurance in the middle of snowy winter? That's the power of memory and memories. They gift us in their creation and they gift us in their re-creation too.

In so many ways memories and the act of remembering make us into the people that we are at this very moment. Especially as we get older, we judge the present by comparing it to what happened to us in the past, by our remembrance. Yesterday shapes today. That experience can be evoked by something as simple as a smell (think frying bacon or the like), a sound (remember the bells of the ice cream truck?), or a touch (clutching a toddler's hands and recalling your own parents' safe grip). 

Memory is miraculous and memory is powerful and memory is a blessing. As J.M. Barrie, the author of "Peter Pan", wrote, "God gave us memory so that we might have roses in December." So just this day, may we all make memories and then collect memories and then keep our precious memories too. You see, we won't pass this way again, and so let us all....

Remember.

 

         

     

 

 

     

      

Godspeed John McCain. The Real Deal. A Patriot.

“If it is not right do not do it; if it is not true do not say it.”  
--Marcus Aurelius, Philosopher and Roman Emperor

Where have you gone John McCain? Our nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

A story: near the close of the 2008 campaign for the Presidency of the United States, Republican nominee Senator John McCain faced a moment of truth and courage, one I'll never, ever forget witnessing. It all unfolded a decade ago on the stage of a rally in Minnesota. With a little more than a month to go before election day, McCain was behind in the polls and struggling to make up lost ground.     

Context: ten years ago the fact that an African-American, for the very first time ever, had a very good chance of winning the highest office in the land: this heartened many but also threatened and scared many voters too.  Folks who looked with suspicion upon that candidate's exotic sounding name--"Barack Hussein Obama"!?  Others, including a publicity seeking businessman and developer from New York City, who insisted Obama might be foreign born, maybe even a Muslim.

In that historic campaign McCain could have easily jumped on the fear mongering train. Stoked the ugly whisper campaign against Obama.  Presidential politics are often marked by such Machiavellian tactics. To win at all costs, right? But that was not candidate McCain. A decorated Vietnam War veteran and a prisoner of war for six years in a North Vietnamese cell: he endured torture and starvation. McCain was a person of honor, integrity and above all, courage. 

Not a saint.  He could be tough and blunt. He made frequent mistakes but usually took immediate responsibility for his sins.  His conservative politics were certainly not my cup of tea, but always I was so impressed by the political courage he showed in his life as a public servant for so many years. When McCain was confronted with political hypocrisy or deception, with political buffoonery or grandstanding, he named it for what it was.  He did not suffer fools lightly. He was a maverick until the day he died.

And so at that town meeting style campaign event on October 11th, 2008, McCain could have gone low.  Played dirty.  Used fear to garner votes. Smeared Obama. Been a bully or a braggart. A voter stood up and said to McCain: "Frankly we're scared of an Obama Presidency. (Applause). McCain responded: "First of all I want to be president of the United States and obviously I do not want Senator Obama to be. But I have to tell you, he is a decent person and a person that you do not have to be scared (of) as...President." (Boos and hisses). A second voter pushed back: "I can't trust Obama...I have read about him. He's an Arab."  McCain quickly took back the microphone and said: "No. No Ma'am. He's a decent family man and citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that's what this campaign is all about." 

McCain's honorable defense of Obama did not win him many fans among the party faithful. In doing the decent thing McCain that day no doubt angered conspiracy minded "birthers" who still insisted that Obama was born on foreign shores, was maybe even an "Arab".  But McCain, in that one shining moment, showed courage, as a man not willing to give up his personal integrity for the sake of winning an election. Such courage was the hallmark of his career. He actually worked across the aisle with Democrats like that liberal lion Ted Kennedy to pass legislation. He put country before party, the common good before a narrow partisan good. He was a patriot in the deepest sense, beyond the pseudo patriotism of flag lapel pins and public posturing.

McCain was the real deal. And yes, as a country, we will surely miss him.

As he wrote in "Character Is Destiny", a book he co-authored with Mark Salter in 2005: “So live your life that the fear of death can never enter your heart. Trouble no one about their religion; respect others in their view, and demand that they respect yours. Love your life, perfect your life, beautify all things in your life. Seek to make your life long and its purpose in the service of your people....Always give a word or a sign of salute when meeting or passing a friend, even a stranger, when in a lonely place. Show respect to all people and grovel to none. When you arise in the morning give thanks for the food and the joy of living....Abuse no one and no thing, for abuse turns the wise ones to fools and robs the spirit of vision. When it comes your time to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with the fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song and die like a hero going home.”

Godspeed John McCain. Thank you for your service.

          

Take the Road Less Traveled: It Will Make All the Difference

"Exploration is in our nature. We began as wanderers, and we are wanderers still." 
 --Carl Sagan

  

"So where are you going on vacation this summer?" a well meaning friend asked me not long ago.  "Columbus, Ohio!" I replied with enthusiasm. "It's my yearly summer road trip. This August it's 765 miles from here to there. I can't wait to go and just explore."

"But...Columbus, Ohio?! Why?" she persisted.

"Because I've never been there." I replied.

That's really the only reason I need to travel: because I've yet to visit some part of God's Creation.  Explore it. Learn more about its history. Discover what makes a place like Columbus a very special place, one of kind, home to so many.

So some of my destinations on this trip have included, yes, Columbus: capitol of Ohio, home to minor league baseball and the Clippers, who play in a gorgeous downtown stadium. Cheap tickets, tasty hot dogs and "Play ball!". And Akron, Ohio, where Alcoholics Anonymous was born in a quaint guest house on the grounds of a local tire magnate's estate. Two struggling drunks shared a cup of coffee there in 1935 and together they discovered the miracle of recovery for millions of people. And Seneca Falls, New York, where in 1848 the first Women's Rights Convention was held. Participants, including Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Fredrick Douglass, demanded that America live up to the ideal that all people are created equal, that the vote must be given to women. And the Detroit-Shoreway neighborhood of Cleveland, where a good friend of mine opens up the church he serves for community basketball, as a beacon of hospitality and non-violence in a hardscrabble urban landscape.

If I hadn't detoured off the main roads, explored these off the beaten path places, away from typical tourist haunts, I'd never have discovered their unique stories. Their quirks and oddities. Their place as just one part of this amazing country and world. I wonder why more of us as tourists and vacationers, travelers and wanderers, don't go out of our ways to explore such destinations.

Sure, we all want to go to the places that the millions also explore: Times Square in the Big Apple, Boston's Faneuil Hall, the strip in Las Vegas, Mount Rushmore. I've visited those places, but will I return? Not likely. One and done. Such marquee landmarks are often too crowded, too familiar, too easy to experience. Don't get me wrong. I loved Wall Drug in South Dakota and the Empire State Building and Disney World too. 

But when I travel I also ask the human spirit of wandering to bring me to a hole in the wall diner in Lime Springs, Iowa. Or on a long bike ride along the Lake Woebegone path in northern Minnesota. Or to the architect Frank Lloyd Wright's studio in the leafy Chicago suburb of Oak Park. And, of course, to a baseball game, anytime, anywhere! All in a quest to explore and be an explorer in life, of life. Throw out the map and toss the GPS and go off road.

For when we choose to go beyond our well worn boundaries and outside of our travel comfort zones, the world changes and we change for the better too. We live in a time when too many of us spend too much energy exploring the world, virtually, all through our screens. Yet there is no substitute for face to face exploration. You have to actually be there to "be there". We also live in a time when our nation is infected with an angry spirit, fueled in part by geographic and political ignorance. Thus so called "deplorables" despise so called "over educated coastal elites" and visa versa.

Imagine what might happen if we as Americans chose to explore parts of the United States that we've never seen, that we far too easily stereotype. I know this sometimes snobby northeastener has had my mind and heart opened up by leaving the familiar and getting to know folks in far away places.

All you need for such adventures is a full tank of gas, a spirit of exploration and the courage to take a road less traveled.  Be an explorer. I dare you!  Go! Even all the way to Columbus, Ohio.