In 2022: To Do the Right Thing? A Child Shall Lead Them.

“Do the right thing, and then do the next right thing, and that will lead you to the next right thing after that.” --Michael J. Fox                                                               

When I grow up I want to be like 11 year old Davyon Johnson, a typical 6th grader from Muskogee, Oklahoma. According to a recent New York Times article he likes wrestling, basketball, remote controlled cars and Fortnite. But Johnson is anything but typical because on December 6th of last year, he saved the lives of two people. That’s right, two souls saved and within mere hours of one another!
 
First, he saved the life of a classmate when he came upon him in the school hallway and noticed his friend was choking.  Davyon went into action, using the heimlich maneuver he’d learned on YouTube. After one, two, then three squeezes, a bottle cap flew out of the boy's mouth. That object had become lodged in his throat when he drank from a water bottle. But Johnson was just getting warmed up.

Davyon’s Mom picked him up after school and they both went home to relax for a bit and the two then left for evening church services. On the way to church, Davyon spied smoke coming out of the back of a home and insisted his Mom pull the car over. While she called 911, Davyon knocked on the front door to alert the homeowners and five folks fled for safety. But one older woman was using a walker and struggling, so Davyon helped her get out safely, away from the burning home.
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Yup. All in a day’s work! At least for Davyon.

His community, of course, was amazed by his selfless and caring acts and so they feted him. As reported in the Times, “The Muskogee Police Department and Muskogee County Sheriff’s Office presented Davyon with a certificate on Dec. 15, naming him an honorary member of their forces.” There was also a pizza party and his photo appeared in the newspaper and a story ran on the local TV station.  Funny thing is Davyon thought it was all a bit overblown, the accolades and the “attaboys” that came at him from every side.

As he told his Mom, “I don’t want everyone to pay attention to me. I kind of did what I was supposed to do.’” Yes you did Davyon. You did the right thing and not once but twice and both times saving the life of a neighbor, in one case a person that you’d never met. And this all happened in a year when Davyon also lost his beloved 52 year old Dad to COVID.  His father, Willie James Logan, had also once saved someone from a burning building.      

I’m not sure what impresses me more: Davyon’s heroism or his humility.

So, here’s a spiritual piece of advice to all of us, as we begin a new year, that if the past year or so is anything like a guide, might just be filled with even more strange and challenging times. Like COVID, like toxic politics, like wondering where we might find glimpses of human sanity and yes, human goodness in this strange world. 

After all, it was just a year ago that a violent mob stormed the Capitol and tried to overturn a legitimate election for the only time in our history. Sheesh. Violent crime is up in many places and everything costs more and just when we think we might be able to jump off this crazy train, something else happens. Right now it is all too easy to grow weary or worse, cynical, about the state of our world and the human condition.

But then you hear about someone like Davyon, a child (!) who just does the right thing, who steps up with courage and service to help others and reminds us that most folks in his world are, in fact, good. Good of soul and good of character. That most people want the best for their loved ones and neighbors and strangers too. That most of us, when challenged with the specter of someone in need or hurting or in need of a little kindness: we will do the right thing.

You might read those sentiments and dismiss them as clueless idealism. Maybe you want to stubbornly hang on to a dim view of humanity, see all the bad in our world right. I guess you could be forgiven for such an attitude. We are all spiritually weary right now, battered by too many months of bad news.

And yet, given the choice? I will continue to seek the good and to see the good. To celebrate the best of human behavior and look for the saints like Davyon, everyday people doing extraordinary things, doing the right thing, and all to make this world a better place. My God and my beliefs tell me it is always better to light one candle rather than curse the darkness. There is still so much good to do and good to find in others if only we look with hearts of faith.

Give us your best, 2022. With folks like Davyon to lead the way, it just might be a very, very good year, to do the right thing.

Cleaning Out the Junk Drawer Called 2021

“Oh! Old rubbish! Old letters, old clothes, old objects that one does not want to throw away. How well nature has understood that, every year, she must change her leaves, her flowers, her fruit and her vegetables, and make manure out of the mementos of her year!”   --Jules Renard, French author

What to save? What to toss? What to hang on to? What to let go of?

This year I got into a strangely satisfying habit, a way to pass the time and organize my house, as I spent too many solitary hours amid COVID's lockdown, surges, and disruptions.

I sorted through my stuff. I sifted through my things. I separated the valuable from the disposable. First, I started small, taking on my kitchen drawers, especially the junk drawer that everyone has, the one that overflows with batteries and extension cords and nails and a radio that doesn’t work anymore, oh and orange twine. Why do I need orange twine?

Then I began to sort through the 1,000 plus books I’ve accumulated in the fourteen years since I moved into my current home. (And no, I am not a literary hoarder and yes, I find it awfully hard to let go of books.) Next, I tackled the garage with all its clutter. A dead snow blower. A tangled string of long burnt-out Christmas lights. A wall sized map of the United States I received as a gift. I was sure I’d love it but still it sits in a forlorn corner, going nowhere. I tried to tackle the scrum of the attic too, with so many old clothes to go through (how many bike shirts do I really need?!) and the steamer trunk filled with a pile of sweaters I no longer wear.

There is something so liberating about letting go of things that we no longer have need of. There is a joy to decluttering, simplifying, getting back to the basics, knowing what matters and is precious and knowing what is excess baggage and just needs to be trashed, donated, or passed on to someone else, so they can deal with it.

At years’ end I also try to do the same thing with all the events and happenings and changes I’ve gone through in the past twelve months. Sort through regrets, sift through mistakes, tease out the sadness and joy, the moments this year when I was so happy to just be alive and the times this year when life just kicked my butt and left me bleeding on the field.  To rummage through my memory of 365 days and then to choose intentionally: what do I want to carry forward into 2022 and what do I want to discard, throw away? Jettison, like so much excess emotional baggage?

You might call it cleaning out the closet called 2021.

To let go of? Well, I’d love to finally say goodbye to COVID and all the ways it’s made life so complicated, anxious, and unpredictable. Omicron is now putting any hope for that on hold so even though the coronavirus won’t soon leave, like a stubborn guest holed up in your spare bedroom, what I need to hold on to for 2022 in the fight against it is this: resilience. We all need to continue to hang on to this most valuable of human virtues.

Resilience somehow always bounces back, no matter what the set back. It tries and tries and tries again.  It picks itself off the ground, dusts itself off and then carries on. Resilience is at the heart of my faith, as I look to my higher power each day to show me the way forward. I get that we are all sick and tired of COVID, but also believe with a passion that we cannot flag nor fail in our struggles against it. May you, may all of us just keep on keeping on.

To hold on to? The sense of how precious and beautiful this life finally is, yes, even with all its challenges and bumps along the way. Perhaps I’m feeling like this because at 61, I’ve got more days behind me than in front of me.  The pandemic and all the ways it still threatens us has certainly reawakened me to the amazing gift of getting up in the morning and just being alive, putting my feet on the ground, and taking on the day.

That’s a good start. Let go of fear and hang on to courage. Let go of weariness and hang on to tenacity. Let go of wasting time and hang on to using whatever time I have left on this earth, wisely and well. And you? What will you let go of before December 31^st and what will you bring forward in the year that awaits us?

Thank you, God, for 2021. I tried my best to use it all up and not waste one second. Thank you, God, for 2022.  I’m definitely ready for it to get here. And to you dear reader: I pray that you are ready too. To let go. To hang on.

See you in the new year.

Being Grateful for the Gift of December Darkness

“Holy darkness, blessed night, heaven's answer hidden from our sight. As we await you, O God of silence, we embrace your holy night.” –Dan Schutte, “Holy Darkness”

Last December I fell in love with walking in the dark in my suburban neighborhood.

I was six months out from a hip replacement, not quite fully healed, feeling stuck in my recovery and so I decided to take a daily walk at day’s end. My hope was that by getting up from the couch and getting outdoors and using my brand-new hip, the lingering pain and stiffness might finally be gone. And I did get better, step by step.

But the real revelation of those journeys after sundown, and all the endless circles I walked in my cul-de-sac laden neighborhood, was my discovery of just how beautiful the dark finally is, especially December dark. Like the dark that contains the glow of moonlight on a full moon night. The dark that surrounds all the colorful holiday lights on house after house after house, blinking and bursting forth in mellow whites and colorful reds and greens and blues and yellows. How sublime is the darkness I see in an ink black night sky that takes my breath away, so many stars spilled across the sky like a bucket of milk, like a milky way.  I love the dark that embraces the one light in my living room, a quiet light that shines down into the street and reminds me that I am almost home again.

If you are into the dark, this is your time of year.

Just this week, on the 21^st day, was winter solstice, at 10:59 am Eastern Standard Time. At that exact moment, the sun was at its farthest southerly point in its angle towards the earth, hence the shortness of the day: sunrise at 7:10 am, sunset at 4:15 pm. Just nine hours, four minutes, and thirty-five seconds of light. The next day we gained two seconds and began our long journey back into the light, which will peak on summer solstice, next June 21^st when we will bask in more than 15 hours of the light.

This is where I’m supposed to kvetch about the dark and the cold of December. It’s almost a cliché in these parts of the world to complain about the winter and the dark and the snow and to pine for summer and the light, and the sun. I might have done so in years’ past but this December? I say bring on the dark. I say celebrate the dark. I say love the dark. 

The dark gets a bad and undeserved rap in our culture and language. The bad guy always wears a dark hat, and the dark is where nefarious folks hang out to do their dark deeds. The dark is about shadows, places we can’t see and therefore are supposed to be afraid of. Bruce Springsteen laments about “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and Batman is so threatening as the Dark Knight and…well you get the picture.  The dark always seems to be seen as malevolent. Bad. Look up the word “dark” in a dictionary and almost all the synonyms for it are downright, well, dark: dingy, gloomy, dire, and dreadful, to name but a few. 

But the dark…it is where we spend the first nine months of our lives, in the darkness of our mother’s womb. It’s in the dark where God shapes us, where we come to be as human beings. Before the world was, it was first full of darkness and without form, as the Bible notes. No dark. No creation. No life. The dark is where we will spend half of our lives, in the night, in the twilight. Nature needs the dark: more than 60 percent of invertebrate and 30 percent of vertebrate creatures are nocturnal, and hunt, forage and live in the dark. And in my faith tradition, three wise men from the east needed a dark night sky with one blazing star up above, to find a little baby who would grow up to change the world forever.  

December dark.

Maybe instead of seeing this time of year as a burden or something to be put up with on the way to “blessed” spring and summer, perhaps we might reconsider. See the darkness as our friend. Explore the darkness and discover what we might not have paid attention to before.  So, this month, I say, thank you December, for the dark.  Thank you for inviting us in. The light will return soon enough, but for now?

Who wants to take a walk?

 

 

 

 

Another Variant, Another FREAKOUT!!!! Or Maybe Not.

"Don’t Panic.” –“Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy”, Douglas Adams

You’re allowed one freak out, just one. Get it out of your system. Do what you must.

Yes, in response to the latest COVID variant to visit our already angst and fear filled world, go ahead. Yell and scream. Jump up and down. Ball your fists tight and scrunch up your face in a scowl and snort with anger and frustration.  Throw something—but please be careful! I don’t know—hit a pillow?! Let out an exasperated dramatic sigh. Swear with your best obscenities, the ones you reserve for special occasions but please make there are no young’uns within listening distance. 

There. Feel better?

I hope so because at this point in our twenty-two plus month COVID journey, we can’t afford to spend too much time kvetching, complaining, moaning, whining, or freaking out about variant number 354 to come down the path.  Okay, I pulled that number out of thin air, but it certainly feels like that is how many times we’ve had to zig, zag, adapt, shift, and change our behavior in response to a new variant, a surge in cases or overcrowded hospitals, since this whole nightmare began in March of 2020.

According to the World Health Organization (WHO), there are, in fact, five variants we’ve had to keep a close eye on, all named after Greek numbers: alpha, beta, gamma, delta and the latest, omicron. As I write this essay, scientists are scrambling to figure out just how virulent this latest version of COVID is, how the present vaccines will work against it, and what that will mean for all of us. It’s like déjà vu all over again.

To be honest, I am tempted to panic, to be swept up in the now familiar media frenzy at this latest COVID threat. Maybe I should go out and buy more toilet paper or more home test kits or maybe I should cancel my trip to Florida later this month. Maybe I should lockdown my life again, close the doors, park the car in the driveway, and wait it out until this current threat runs its course.

Or maybe not.

Because then I remember (and recommend we all do as well): we’ve done this before and we did pretty well, and we can, and we will do it again. We know how to distance and how to mask, how important it is to be vaccinated, and now to also get a booster. We know how to work from home and our kids know the drill at school. Most of us have worked out in our minds the level of risk we are willing to take as we seek to live as “normally” as possible. 

We can do it! Absolutely.

One of the lessons my faith has taught me is that of being resilient, enduring the toughest of times and not being overcome by whatever life throws my way. Resilience teaches us to be calm, to put our heads down and to move ahead. And so, I pray and hope for the wisdom to lean into the toughest of situations, depend upon others for help and then turn to a power greater than myself to put life into perspective. I think of the generations that came before and faced and overcame what threatened them in their times, in their history. War. Depression. Polio. Social upheaval. They somehow found the strength to keep calm and to carry on.  They kept on keeping on. They kept the faith. They did what they had to do.  And they got through.

So can we. So will we! Just remember one strategy, one defiant act of resilience, to stay the course, and to live life well and live it fully, despite COVID.

Don’t panic.

   

All Is Calm. All Is Bright. This Can Be Your Holiday. REALLY!

"In our rushing, bulls in china shops, we break our own lives.” 

 --Ann Voskamp

And….it’s begun.

The rush. The dash, The sprint. The marathon. You know, the race so many of us as Americans undertake each year, from the day before Thanksgiving to the day after New Year’s.  For a time that barely adds up to 11 percent of a given year, just forty days, we certainly try and cram as much as we can in between these two holidays, this extended season of the holy and the holly.

What might we call this shared frenzy so many of us undertake come late November? This orgy of shopping and baking, travelling, buying, wrapping, decorating, eating, drinking, and partying? How about the Turkey trot? The holiday hullabaloo? The December derby or perhaps…Santa’s sleigh ride from “h-e double toothpicks.” (Look it up.)  

I know I sound overly dramatic, but if you drive anywhere these December days and run into bumper-to-bumper traffic or if you visit a packed mall or if you try and finish all your end of year stuff at work or when you struggle to plan for visits with family and friends…well. It is as if overnight, the culture goes from fifty-five miles an hour on pre-Turkey day to ninety miles an hour and then it does not slow down until the new year finally arrives. 

This is not just experienced by folks like me, who “do” the holidays for a living: clergy, people in retail, restaurant employees, package delivery drivers, postal service employees, and transportation workers. So many of us are forced to climb all board the speeding holiday train and then not be able to get off it, until early next month.

There’s lots of reasons for this.

Businesses, especially after COVID: these depend on you and me opening our wallets and spending big bucks. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans spent $650 on average for holiday gifts in 2020. That doesn’t include travel or eating out or decorations. That’s a lot of money, especially if you are on a fixed income, at the lower end of the pay scale or are out of work.  For those of less means, it must be hard to see all those sparkly and joyful advertisements for consumption that promise happiness, but if only we spend. And even if we do have the means to shop ‘til we drop, there’s always the risk of having a wicked debt hangover post-holiday. 

I’m no Scrooge. I am not anti-holiday cheer. I love silver bells! I love singing “The Twelve Days of Christmas” at the top of my lungs. FIVE GOLDEN RINGS!! Love time off to be with folks I love. Cherish holiday carols, hymns, and rituals. But at this point in my life, what I most desire can’t be found in a Macy’s box or at the bottom of a glass of eggnog or on a calendar packed to the hilt with so many things to do.  December busyness, for me, does not equal meaning, and not just now, but all year long. Buying does not bring me happiness. Overwork no longer feels like a badge of honor.

Instead, this is what I want for the holidays.

I’d like it if the world actually worked towards what is central to the message and story of my faith tradition: peace on earth and goodwill towards all people. That’d be a great gift. I’d like to slow down this month, pull within spiritually, pray more, listen more for the quiet of December. Days grow darker and the nights stretch out longer and the air chills and the snow falls upon a silent night. That would be nice. What I really hope for is that after two years of being away from my circle of love at Christmas, that this year we will be able to gather.  To eat around a cozy table and to tell the same old corny jokes and revisit trustworthy traditions and remember just how much we need one another.  

I’d be thrilled if more folks could appreciate and enjoy the religious traditions celebrated right now: ancient tales of wisdom and sacred music that makes the spirit soar. Whether or not you have a faith to claim, I hope we can all find some deeper meaning in the holidays. Some spirit of hope that lasts throughout the year. A remembrance that giving is so much more important than getting.

Okay. I got it out of my system. My holiday lament. My yuletide kvetch.

Now I will try my best to relax and really enjoy the sweet and beautiful days ahead, and to do so at a sane and sober pace. And I pray and hope that you too will find your sacred and cherished place in the world, at this holy time of year.

     

 

The Myth of a Perfect Thanksgiving. The Joy of Giving Thanks.

"It takes a great deal of courage to see the world in all its tainted glory, and still to love it."

--Oscar Wilde

In my dining room hangs a print of what may be the most iconic depiction of an American Thanksgiving ever created, Norman Rockwell’s illustration “Freedom from Want.” It first appeared on the cover of the Saturday Evening Post magazine in March of 1943. It was inspired by a 1941 speech by President Franklin Roosevelt, in which he envisioned four freedoms the world needed fight for, in that time of war. Freedom of speech, freedom of worship, freedom from fear and freedom from want.

The painting is almost too familiar. It embodies all the cliches and all the tropes and yes even, all the hopes, we Americans often invest in the third Thursday of November and the feast thereof, which this year falls on the 25th. The United States government used the painting to sell war bonds and so the image was reproduced some 2.5 million times, hence its almost unconscious presence in our personal and collective memories.  

It portrays an impossibly happy and perfect holiday.

Eleven folks gather around a “just so” dining room table, all of them smiling in anticipation of the perfectly cooked turkey, straight out of the oven, balanced on a tray in the arms of a white-haired New England Yankee grandmother. Behind her is the sturdy husband all prepped and ready to carve the bird. All the water glasses are filled perfectly and the jellied cranberry sauce glistens in perfection on the table right next to the most delectable stalks of celery I think I’ve ever seen.

It’s a mythical take on Thanksgiving, too perfect in its portrayal of human life.  Everyone is home and around the table, no one left out or left behind or missing. Plenty of food, enough for everyone and then some. And all those folks getting along, just so happy to be with one another. What is there not be grateful for that day? So much to thank God for!

This is the myth of Thanksgiving. It’s supposed to be a perfect day, right? But then there is the reality of thanksgiving beyond a one-dimensional image frozen in time.

Sometimes, it is comical, the ways that Turkey Day can go south and so fast. Like the year my sister dropped a bowl of hot mashed potatoes on the floor and covered herself and the kitchen in gobs of the white stuff. The many years I’ve wrestled my best friend Barb in the kitchen for turkey control, me opening the oven every three minutes to see the bird, she shooing me away so that the fowl might actually be able to roast. Burnt rolls. Spilt eggnog. Political debates amongst ideologically opposed family members.

Sometimes Thanksgiving is tender, melancholy, a mix of the profound and our human longing for community. Like the years I’ve looked around the table and realized not just who was there with us but also who was not there. The loved ones we’d lost since last Thanksgiving. My Dad, my Uncle Franny, my grandfather, my close friend Manley, they who died and were and still are so missed. The year a friend of a friend joined us for dinner in the midst of battling stage four breast cancer. The time a beloved cousin was absent because she was in a rehab center far away from home, for her addictions. 

The interesting thing is that those years of Thanksgiving, the challenging ones, were no less celebratory for me than the Thanksgiving years when almost everything seemed to go right.  There’s a lesson there for all of us about gratitude, heartfelt gratitude, giving thanks, and not just on the days when the sun is out, and the sky is blue, and the gravy has nary a lump. No.

Can we also give thanks on the days when the rain comes in sheets and a loved one just got a scary health diagnosis and the finances are tight and oh my goodness, I can’t imagine Thanksgiving without the one I so loved. And yes, the gravy is all lumpy too.

One of the wisest of folks in my faith, Saint Paul, wrote that it is our call to, “Give thanks in all circumstances.”  He doesn’t say give thanks for all circumstances. Who among us would thank God for a world war or folks who struggle to feed their families or cancer or family discord? Those things do not happen because God cruelly plays cosmic dice or as a test or to teach us something, as if the Creator of the universe would intentionally hurt us. That’s not the power greater than myself that I know.

Sometimes things are hard and sad, and good people go through tough times, and Thanksgivings are not always the cheeriest of days because this is the nature of life. Life is a package deal, all wrapped together, and we cannot tease out the parts that break our hearts or scare us just as we would not want to only experience the parts of life that are so amazing, miraculous, and beautiful. It’s all of one thing.

True gratitude, heartfelt gratitude, courageous gratitude sees some good, some redemption, some gift in all things.  Gratitude is able to weep but also to laugh and is always ready to say “Thank you…” no matter what the circumstances. Gratitude is found everywhere, if only we have the wisdom and the humility to look for it.  

I still love my Rockwell print. But now I never mistake it for the beautiful and broken and very human day we’ll all celebrate this week, thanksgiving. It is our day to give thanks, no matter what. Thank you, God.

May we all enjoy the most grateful of Thanksgivings.   

 

   

What Are You Doing This One Amazing Day? Living or Dying?

“Life is neither a glorious highlight reel nor a monstrous tragedy. Every day is a good day to live and a good day to die.”       --Kilroy J. Oldster

By the time this piece goes public I’ll have celebrated another birthday, not quite as big a one as last year (six whole decades!) but still a demarcation line in time that gives me pause. I’ll be 61 years old. No turning back. No way to reverse my course to my fifties or better yet, my twenties, though I did do a lot of bonehead things during that decade. But that’s another essay.

Sixty-one.  

If I live to at least the average life expectancy of an American male, 77.8 years, that means I have about 17 years left, and worse, because of COVID, I lost a year in 2020, because the pandemic pushed that number downward, in its biggest drop since World War II. That’s sobering. If I was playing golf, you might say I was on the back nine, hole number 15 or so. Gulp. In baseball I’d be standing up at the park to sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the seventh inning. Yikes. My heart has already beat some 2,135,000,000 times so I’ve theoretically only got 493,500,000 to go.

Be still my heart. Wait, NO!!

I don’t mean to sound fatalistic, but birth and death are the great equalizers in God’s Creation.  We all come into this world squirming and squawking and taking that first breath and we’ll all one day leave this world with one final sigh.  Thus, it’s the in between times we should be most concerned about, not the beginning and not the end either. Our exit is already planned and so the real challenge is in what we choose to do with the days that we do have left.

As an adolescent I might have imagined that life goes on forever, but now? Life is urgent in a way. Life is that much more precious by its finitude. It makes me think I need to heed the life philosophy offered by a character in Stephen King’s novel about prison life, “The Shawshank Redemption”. Facing into the daily challenges of incarceration, Andy Dufresne knows the only thing he has control over in his locked down environment is how he chooses to live each day. To use well, or not so well, the 24 hours he is given daily.  And so, he names the choice all humans face, as the days and the months and the years roll on buy.

“Get busy living or get busy dying.”

It's not just our biological age that brings us to this inflection point. I know that the past twenty months of these COVID times has taught me to wake up somehow from the slumber of merely sleepwalking through life or just going through the motions, or worse, imagining that some magic day called “tomorrow” will be the place where finally, we will be happy or content. As in, “When I retire” then life will be good or “when I fall in love” then life will come through or “when I have a child” then I’ll feel fulfilled. But the truth is all we have is today. There is no day but today, to quote a favorite song.

So, yes, we all are, getting busy living or getting busy dying. God help me to choose life!

Living, as in forgiving quickly and not holding a grudge or nursing a resentment. Living, as in spending as much time as possible with the people whom I love and who love me back. Living, as in pursuing the passions that bring me the most joy in this life and not spending so much time on empty pursuits like staring at my phone zombie-like, tapping and swiping, as if there is life to be found in a machine. Living, as in getting outside every single day and appreciating how beautiful Creation is, with its golden sunrises and multi-colored leaves falling to the earth and a sky so blue it takes my breath away. Living, as in remembering I am just one soul in this interconnected world, and so I must be care-filled in how I live and take full responsibility for how my how behavior effects other souls for the good or for the bad. Living, as in believing that a power so much greater than myself put the whole of existence together and that’s a miracle.

Maybe 61 is a good age after all. Makes me want to not waste a second, not even one. Busy living. Busy dying.

What will it be?