The Most Important Issue Missing in the Race for President Is....

"We must stretch for our better angels instead of falling toward our lowest instincts." 

--former California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger

What would you ask the Presidential candidates, if given the chance?

Let’s say you got the opportunity to sit before this posse, this herd, this scrum of 23 candidates now running for the highest office in the land, and that your exchange with these men and women would also be filmed for posterity. Since this is a pipe dream, let’s also assume, unlike much of the time in debates and public exchanges, when candidates dodge a question or give a non-answer or are evasive or vague or just downright ignore a query, this time…they actually have to tell the truth. The absolute truth. No stonewalling. No equivocation.

It’s my fantasy, so I get to set the ground rules.

So, what to ask? What’s most important to you as an American voter in 2020? What national problem perhaps keeps you up at night? What worries you when you think about the nation and the world your children will soon inherit? What do you want your candidate to actually do on day one, January 20^th, 2021, when, at approximately noon, the 46^th President of the United States will take the oath?   

If the polls are correct, Americans are as split on the issues that need to be addressed as they are about everything else. According to one national survey from the end of this summer (Rasmussen.com), that polled 1,000 likely American voters, the top three issues for Democrats are health care, gun laws and the economy; for Republicans, national security, the economy and immigration; and for independent voters, the economy, health care and national security.

Is one of these topics what you’d demand honesty about, from your candidates and future president?  Is it “the economy, stupid”, as one candidate’s advisors once infamously declared; what is in, or not in, your wallet and 401k and savings account? Or is health care and our country’s chronic inability to provide affordable, accessible medical care for all? Or maybe the question of immigration? That’s certainly been at the fore of our national dialogue ever since the current commander in chief took office. Keep ‘em all out! Let ‘em all in!          

Now, if I got to be the one to ask a question, I’d take a different tack, one less about specifics, and more about the tone and the tenor and the essence of the one who governs. As a person of faith, I’m certainly very concerned about how well our nation cares for its people, especially those on the edge the poor, the uninsured, the sick and infirmed, the stranger and the prisoner. That’s on my heart. But there’s one civic challenge I see as trumping any policy question, any economic indicators, any law and order stance.

In 2020, I’m most anxious about character. The character of the person who will lead us.  The character of the woman or man who has the courage and the chutzpah to actually want to govern this wonderful and challenged, this soaring and stumbling republic of some 330 million souls.  The character and essential human decency of the one who leads us and for better and for worse, somehow embodies who we are collectively as a people.

So, here’s my question or questions, actually.

What will you do to bring out the best in us, as Americans?  How will you work to appeal to the better angels of our nature, as citizens and neighbors, as fellow human beings who all call the same place home, these United States of America? How will you make each us want to do better by one another and be better in how we live with each other?  How will you lift us all up and not just tear us apart, for a vote, for an office, for an ego, for a hollow victory?

These are the questions not being asked by the media, by the folks in the press who seem much better at treating the election more like a horse race and less like an actual struggle for the soul of America, for how we see ourselves morally, ethically, civically.

I want a President who inspires me, who makes me want to serve others and not just myself. I want a President who appeals to the angel within me and not the devil, who leads not with a clenched fist of conflict but with an open hand of community. I want a President who calls all of us to put aside narrow interest for the national interest, to love country before party, a President who reminds us that the national motto is not “every man for himself!” but instead “E pluribus unum”, from many one.

Will you bring out the best in us? Please. PLEASE! 

I can dream, can’t I?

    

 

 

One More Birthday, One More Year, No Looking Back

“The longer I live, the more beautiful life becomes.”     --Frank Lloyd Wright

Forever 21.

That’s the name of a clothing store I walked by at the local mall last week. Forever 21. Really? Funny: I could not find a store named Forever 13 or Forever 40 or Forever 58 or Forever 77. Which makes me wonder if the owners of that retail outlet actually believe that, if you are going to be one age forever, as in all eternity, it might as well be 21. Right?

But then I thought back to my twenty-first year, my twenty first birthday as well, thirty-eight Novembers ago this month. Who was I at 21?

I was a young man who’d yet to figure just what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, as I plowed through my classes at UMass. Politics? Writing? Ministry? I was scared at the prospect of an unknown future and so excited too, at the life that lay before me. At 21, I loved the posse of folks I ran with, such good friends who loved me too. We had so much fun. Good friends, who like me, often partied way too hard, which sometimes led to mindless impulsivity which sometimes led to very risky behavior. On the night before my 21^st birthday back in 1981, I sat in the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey to watch a sold out Rolling Stones and Tina Turner concert. Loved the music: AMAZING! Hated the fact that the completely drunk guy behind me threw up all over my back, just two songs into the evening. YUCK!

Forever 21? I don’t think so. 

You see, I was exactly who I was supposed to be when I was 21. Anxious and cocky.  Growing up and struggling to take responsibility for my one life. That’s what it meant to be so young. That’s what it meant for me to be there and to be then.

And then I wasn’t 21 anymore. I was 22, and so on and so on and so on and so on. I’m discovering that one of the gifts of aging is that we all get to go through a phase in life and enjoy it fully, and embrace it fully, and wrestle with it when it is so hard and celebrate it when it is such a miracle, such a gift from God. The wild and beautiful truth is, that subject to time as mortals, we are always moving forward, moving into whatever the next life chapter is to be. Childhood. Adolescence. Young adulthood. Middle age. Retirement. Final years.

That inexorable passage of time is non-negotiable. We cannot be Forever 21 or Forever any age. Yes, sometimes I am so tempted to romanticize a past part of my life and wish I could be there again, wish I could go back. Get a do over. I think we all do. That’s very human. Go back to 30, when I could work sixty hours a week and not feel it so much in my bones and my spirit. To 40, when I fell in love so hard and so beautifully and so tragically and so wonderfully. To 50, when I hit my stride professionally and remember thinking, “I’m pretty good at doing this and I like it.” And now almost to 60 when I will…well, I’m not really sure.

That’s the adventure of time, my time, our time, the limited time we are given on this earth by our generous Creator. I’ve absolutely no idea what the next decade will bring. God only knows. And I don’t want to know either. If we got to know just how our personal stories will end up, or how the story of this world will unfold, or the story of our loved ones and what is in store for them: now how much fun would that be? 

Probably about as much fun as being forever 21.

So, as I stare down another birthday, as I imagine how hard it will be to blow out the forest fire of 59 candles, as I get all those best wishes and prayers from the folks I love and some corny cards and maybe even a cake, here’s my birthday hope. That I will try my best to thank God that I am 59 and that I got to live another year in this beautiful and broken and amazing thing called human life.  I will pray for the wisdom to accept that I am exactly as old as I am supposed to, and maybe even as young too sometimes, when I live with the right attitude.

Most fervently, I will pray that God will give me gratitude, deep gratitude, for the 21,541 days I’ve been blessed to be given and for the days that lay ahead too.

Forever 21? Not this year. Not ever. Just let me be who I am. Fifty nine. Just let us experience, with grace and thanksgiving, all the days of our lives as we live them, as they arrive, as they depart, as they become a memory. 

Then, maybe every day will be like our birthday. Pass the cake, please!

 

            

  

In the Waiting Room of Life, We All Need a Little Kindness

“We think too much and feel too little. More than machinery, we need humanity. More than cleverness, we need kindness and gentleness.”          --Charlie Chaplin

Last week I found myself sitting in the waiting room at a local hospital, getting ready to undergo a minor medical procedure. The waiting room. At one time or another we all arrive there, either for ourselves or in support of a loved one or friend. Waiting rooms are microcosms of the human condition, especially humans in need. Humans in fear or anxiety. Humans who need the body healed, no doubt, but the soul cared for too, with a little gentleness and a little kindness.

I saw those qualities on display that day, in the hour I sat waiting to be ushered in for my test. Like two old friends who spoke animatedly, intimately, as they sat knee to knee to knee, holding each other’s hand, passing the time before a scan was to take place. An adult son sat next to his elderly father, as his Dad did the crossword to pass the time. No words spoken: just quiet presence. Two patient and kind receptionists dealt with the ocean of humanity that came through the hospital’s revolving front door. No matter the question or complaint or concern, all I saw from them was smiles as they interacted with all those folks. And then there were the nurses, who would walk into the room, call out a name, and when a person stood, that caregiver greeted them, placed a hand on the small of the patient’s back, simple touch to calm the spirit.

I’m not quite sure why I was so taken with the love and respect I saw that long afternoon, experienced myself as well. Maybe it’s because in our fast paced and often sharp elbowed world, to witness such face to face care was a reminder how all of us need a little TLC, especially when facing the unknown. Perhaps it’s because absent from that room, thank God, was the blare and buzz of an oversized TV hanging from the wall, tuned into a news station, anchors breathlessly telling us what we were supposed to fear or be vexed about that day. What public space has not been invaded by this incessant buzz of the media?

But I think what most impressed me about such simple human decency, was it belied the story we’re telling ourselves in 2019: that Americans have just forgotten how to talk to each other, be with each other, care for each other, watch out for each other, serve each other, just be civil.  It’s easy to believe this trope about widespread incivility.

All you have to do is listen to the coarse and crude and mean-spirited language that passes for discourse among our civic leaders. When the commander in chief labels members of his own political party “human scum”, or the press the “enemy of the people”, or an American city “a disgusted, rat and rodent infested mess”, it’s tempting to imagine that he’s pulled down the rest of the country to his level of cruelty and malice.

But down here, at the local level, in the myriad of places normal human beings find themselves day to day, like in a waiting room or a waiting line or at high school football game or just standing in the front yard talking to a neighbor? Here, I believe, most of us want to be kind, want to be gentle, want to be wanted in the sometimes messy scrum called human life. We want to hold the door for a stranger. We need the chance to allow that merging car to squeeze into traffic and then get a little wave of thanks.  We all desire just a little human connection, even if it is only a “How ya doin’?” offered to the hardworking clerk who every morning delivers hot and fresh coffee to us as we go through the drive-thru.

Because then we remember we’re all in the waiting room, in a way. Waiting, hoping for a time when kindness will be the rule and not the exception in life. Waiting, praying for the day when governments and citizens will go out of their ways to be gentle, compassionate, and merciful, in how they treat fellow children of God, especially “the least of these”, fellow members of the human family. Like refugees fleeing violence or the poor in our cities, or folks who lack health insurance, or veterans needing a grateful welcome home or just a stranger on our border seeking a cold cup of water.

The best traditions of faith and spirituality always teach us that how we treat and speak about these our neighbors: that is the mark of a great person and a great nation. Not big bucks. Not flexed military might. Not terrible Twitter tantrums. All the best life asks for is this: for us collectively and individually to show just a little kindness and a little gentleness.    

Because eventually? All of us end up in the waiting room. So, let’s be kind. Let’s be gentle.