Set Free

My Little Brother's Birthday Party

My little brother is 45 today. Let's not talk about how old that makes a bird feel.

What's on my mind is another of his birthdays, the one in 1968. Our dad was in the U.S. Senate, and we lived in a suburban neighborhood in Alexandria, Virginia, and a few days before my little brother's birthday party my parents decided it might be wiser to have it in the backyard than in a public park, as planned.

I was nearly 7, and I could tell something was wrong, that we were not simply changing our minds about the best venue for a party to suit five-year-old boys. I'm sure I asked my mother, more than once, why the plans had changed. I was a big girl, a first-grader, wise to the ways of the world, or so I thought, imagining myself as more of a colleague to my mother than her child.

Persistence paid off, and my mother, worn down, told me that she was afraid to go to the park. People are angry she said, because a man has been killed, a man people cared about, and there are riots going on, and people are setting buildings on fire. It's better for us to stay at home, she said.

What strikes me most about this memory is that there was no judgment against those who might be rioting, and no indication that race had anything to do with the troubles.

I lived in an idealized world.

 My little brother's birthday party took place in our fenced backyard on Belle Haven Road. It would be hard to imagine a more safe-feeling place outside a gated community. I went back to the neighborhood with Pure Luck several years ago, to show him where I had once lived. We stopped across the street from 2209, a house I dreamed about as recently as last week, and before we had been there two minutes, someone stopped to ask if we were lost? I guess we looked like we didn't belong there.

I never knew I lived in a place where some people didn't belong, and that is perhaps nearly as bad as believing people don't belong in the first place.

Ruby, my childhood friend, had some similar experiences. In our nearly apartheid-like hometown, Jane Austen's Village, we grew up in homes where we did not internalize the prejudice many of our peers did, but that did not prepare us for the real world.

I'm not sure how long it took for me to realize that Dr. King had been killed because he was a person of color.

I can't even remember hearing my parents say "Negro," but wasn't that the word then? I remember being 8 or so and hearing "Afro-American" for the first time and wondering why these words even mattered?

I fear there is such a thing as being too sheltered.

I understand now why my mother felt frightened. My father had received his own death threats for his political positions, and there were more to come. The world felt too big and too uncertain to her. I'm not sure what she thought of Dr. King then; she didn't say.  She was busy overseeing the play of little white boys who came to a birthday party in plaid jackets and bow ties.

But I have a vivid memory of sitting with her in the Bubble Room at the Children's Museum in Jane Austen's Village, many years later, watching #1 Son interact with the other children, the first place in my hometown where I ever white and African-American children playing together, the first place in my hometown I saw a hint of Dr. King's dream.

iWorld Continued...

I'm not sure how much power I have in the face of something so cute.

I swear, I did not go looking for it. I was leafing through a magazine, and it appeared out of nowhere.

But how much more than a phone is the expense of having these things month to month? Naturally the Sprint website does not want to make it clear to me.

Help me resist.

Help me resist.

(No, really.)

Help me.

Help.

iWorld

The TV ad voiceover man posits, "What's so great about having the Internet in your pocket?"

And I respond, "Nothing. It's bad enough having it in my lap."

Continuing to resist iPhones, Crackberry, etc.,

Songbird

The Morning News

Sometimes we go to bed thinking one thing, and wake up to discover the world is a slightly different place than we understood, and that we need to reconsider.

Yesterday at the Whole Paycheck, I bought some beef, just a little, already prepared. After an afternoon of what I would call small eating failures, I realized that I had been in need of protein, and when The Princess and I went out to get sushi for supper, I picked up a small amount of teriyaki beef to have today.

If you've watched the news this morning, you know where I'm headed. Holy God, how can people treat animals that way? To think that animals are being killed for our food with no regard for their health or their pain is wrong in every kind of way. I'm just saying something obvious, and not saying it particularly well, because I'm shocked.

And then I'm disappointed in being so deliberately in denial that I could be shocked.

Now, I know the lovely pieces of beef teriyaki from the fancypants grocery store probably came from a different source. It's the school lunch program and fast food restaurants that get their meat from the slaughterhouse in question. But seriously. Seriously.

For many years, I did not eat four-legged animals, mostly because The Father of My Children didn't. We continued to eat a moderate amount of poultry and fish. But when we split, I went back to eating meat, in part because I needed to assert my authority over myself, to be sure any choices I made were mine, not his. In the past year or so, The Princess has taken up his way of eating, of her own volition.

I'm not sure what I will do about this. I'm already limiting what I eat in pretty significant ways, and setting another limit would require an even more focused commitment. I just know I'm disgusted this morning, and not just disgusted, but horrified.

Still in Recovery

You would think, wouldn't you, that after two years and four months things on the Gulf Coast would be back to normal, but they are not.

I spent a good bit of today in the car with St. Casserole, touring many of the places I saw two years ago and last year, and while there is a good bit of progress, there are many places where it's hard to believe so much time has gone by with so little change. Sometimes those contrasts exist right next to each other: the huge new casino hotel next door to the cleared lots that used to hold houses, the devastated town of Pass Christian as the gateway to the new Bay St. Louis Bridge, the shiny car dealership on one side of the I-1o and the still-empty ruined apartment complex just on the other side.

We've talked a lot today about why it works out so differently for some people than others. Some people are better-resourced or more skillful at working the system. Some people are just plain lucky. They got their insurance money, or didn't need to wait for it. Others, meanwhile, fill out one more form for the SBA and wonder if there will ever be an end to the post-Katrina waiting.

This kind of recovery ought not have to be for a lifetime.

The friend we had lunch with yesterday seemed to feel people were healing now, finally. She reported a post-Katrina baby boom, the kind of thing usually seen nine months after a tropical storm with its attendant power outages. This time it did not come, she told us, until people got out of their FEMA trailers and back into their homes.

But of course there are still a minority living in the trailers. And again they are the least-resourced people, and I can only imagine how hopeless it feels to be living in one of the FEMA trailer parks, a good arm-stretch from the neighbors.

At a party tonight, I met local folk, volunteers and a woman who relocated here to work for the Red Cross. That woman expressed concern that by March the money will run out for some agencies, and those agencies will close. She told us that she feels she has done little, and that the need is still so great. But I said to her, "In the grand scheme of things, it may feel that way. But I doubt the individuals you have helped would say that."

It's nearly 2008. I want to live in a better world, in a place where the money we give goes to the places we mean for it to be sent, in a place where people can hold a thought for others and continue to pray, give and volunteer. The waves that washed through these towns contained countless drops of water. No one drop could have done all this damage, and no one act will make things right. Like the Red Cross worker, I feel my contributions are small, but I know that it is through the combined efforts of many, many people that the recovery will end some day.

Have you been to the Gulf Coast since the hurricane? Have you found a way to give in support of those who are still in recovery? I hope you will. I hope you will.

Some Things Do Change

It was 1983, a beautiful early summer evening, and I was walking around Manhattan with the future Father of My Children and his roommate. One of them told a joke, and we all laughed. I wish I could say I laughed uncomfortably, but I'm afraid I thought it was funny at the time, or at the very least didn't think twice about laughing along.

It was a joke I won't repeat, about people with AIDS. I was 22, and AIDS was new, not just to me, but to pretty much everyone. I was ignorant and prejudiced and embarrassed by and fearful of things and people about which I did not know much. My gay friends in college were closeted or very careful, and my gay co-workers at Scribner's were so much the opposite that I was having trouble figuring out how I felt about homosexuality, particularly at a time when we knew so little about how the disease was transmitted and that it was going to affect all sorts of people. I caught up quickly, or at least I remember that I did, but none of that makes me feel any better about how limited my thinking was at the time.

Flash forward. It's 2007. I ask The Princess what she would like for Christmas, and she says, "An iPod shuffle." I investigate further and decide it's not an unreasonable possibility. I show her a website with the different colors.

After a few minutes, she turns to me and says, "I would like to have one of the red ones, since part of the money goes to help people with AIDS."

She is 12, and she is matter-of-factly accepting and compassionate. At school she has learned how to take care of herself, and she has also learned not to adopt a superior attitude towards those who for whatever reason have not been able to do so. I think her brothers are the same way. They're giving me a shred of hope for the future of the world. It's a small thing, the red iPod shuffle, a First World response to a global problem, but in her choosing she shows she cares. And maybe someday she'll be in a position to act on that caring, without having to learn the basics from a place of ignorance and prejudice, the way her mother did.

'Tis the Season

Baby, it's cold outside.

And the heating oil is expensive.

And people who through poor planning or life crisis or just plain bad luck don't have enough money for an oil delivery are calling churches.

When I was a single mother of three, going to seminary, and spending my first winter in this house, heating oil cost 89 cents a gallon. If I could come up with $90, I could get 100 gallons delivered.

When I called the oil company last Friday, our discounted price was $2.95 per gallon. So to get 100 gallons is almost $300.

I don't know what kind of emergency or discretionary funds your church has available, but giving away the funds for 100 gallons of oil is just not going to be within our powers at Main Street Church this winter. We've been talking about how to handle requests, knowing that the need will be great. Just putting gas in the car is a burden for working poor families, and for many of us in the middle, too!

Last week I got a sad phone call from a woman who told me a terrible story. She said she moved here 8 months ago with her husband and five small children. Then four months ago he walked out. They had an empty oil tank and no money. Could we help?

She lives in one of the little towns surrounding Old Mill Town, and I asked if she had talked to any of the churches closer to home. She told me they attended the Congregational Church in one of those towns, but the church could not help them because all available assistance had been given to a grandmother taking care of her grandchildren. I told her we could not swing 100 gallons, but if she could find an oil company that would deliver 50, we could help her.

A second call came from a man describing himself as her friend, telling me she had left town to take a sick child to her mother's house, but he was still trying to find an oil company delivering in her area that might do 50 gallons.

While I was at a clergy retreat yesterday, bemoaning the price of oil and the 100 gallon minimum, the man was calling and leaving me messages, and when I returned to the office this morning, there was another call from the woman. She gave me the name of what I assumed was a local oil company, and I arranged for a check that she could pick up tomorrow morning.

Then tonight the man called me again, upset that he had heard nothing. I assured him that I had spoken to his friend and made arrangements for a check. He thanked me and said goodbye, but within minutes he called again, and then I heard a completely different story.

The children are his, he said. The woman is a fly-by-night girlfriend who walked out two days ago. The grandmother the church is helping? His mother, who has been caring for his children.

I guess he thought a church would be more sympathetic to a woman.

I'm not sure he isn't right.

Come to find out the name his "girlfriend" gave me for the check was not an oil company but a feed store. I suspect she knows someone there who would have cashed a check.

Tonight I called the pastor of the small country church, and he confirmed that they have been generous in helping the grandmother care for the children, and that he has visited the father in jail. Country Pastor said the church is still helping the family, something the man had hedged on with me, but I guess I don't blame him completely. He's trying to get all the help he can.

I guess I'm glad we have a locked door to the church office building, one that no one can enter without being buzzed in. I sent an email to my admin and will call her first thing to be sure she does not give the check to the woman who will come looking for it in the morning.

I hate the thought of explaining this to the good-hearted Deacon who raced over to get it to us before we left today.

Tis the Season, right? When visions of dollar signs dance in our heads? How will we make it all happen for those we love? Or who can we get to do it for us? There is an air of desperation abroad that worries me. How can we go on this way, with gasoline and heating oil at such ridiculous prices? Will our churches need to become shelters for our own members, when they cannot afford to get another 100 gallons?

On the 4th

Some sort of weather threatens and the branches of maple and butternut and pine tremble with anticipation. But this morning, the air and sun exquisite, we took a ride to Old Mill Town for the annual 4th of July parade. Sometimes I forget, as I hunker down in the office at Main Street Church, how close the length of Main Street is to farms and lakes. The people gather eager to walk or drive the several miles of parade route: the high school band, the Shriners in their little cars, the gymnasts who tumble along the painted line without falling, the firefighters in trucks of all ages and styles, the Brownies on a float and the Red Hat ladies, too.

A group of older white men walk together behind a banner, and we see them from the lawn in front of the church. We gathered early, and Molly rests on the grass beneath someone's graciously loaned canopy while cheerful church members provide refreshments to parade-goers, donations accepted.

The words on the banner come clear: "Coast-to-Lakes County Pastors Prayer Group."

"Is that your group?" asks Mr. Life Trustee.

"No," I answer, shaking my head. "They are from denominations that would have a problem with me."
Mr. LT nods knowingly, but disappointedly.

In the parade, all the political candidates for local office, and representatives of the parties, march one after the other. On red, white and blue signs their names appear, almost none listing a party. A truck goes by with signs for many of the Democrats in the Presidential race -- Edwards, Clinton, Obama -- one big happy family?

A lone woman in a convention straw hat ends the Presidential party, carrying a hand-lettered sign bearing one word only: Kucinich.

I watch the older people seated in front of the church's wrought-iron fence rise from their lawn chairs each time the flag goes by carried by a veteran or a reservist or a guardsman. A float carries members of the Old Mill Town Vacationlanders, a baseball team in the NECBL.  Young, handsome, smiling--how can they be safe in Old Mill Town, playing ball for the summer, riding in a parade behind their Moose mascot while their peers die in the desert so far away?

My boy, the same age, my young man, sleeps safely in a summer sublet and rehearses to play the chronicler of another war. I wouldn't want it to be different for him, but how dare we be so safe and smug? How dare we?

And yet there are those more smug, who do not care about favoritism, who do not regard the lives of any of these young people to be particularly valuable. They are the ones who make choices that change lives, that lead to death, that caused me to wake up on this Independence Day faced with a choice. Can I celebrate the ideals on which our founders based this experiment in democracy despite the way our leaders ignore them willfully today?

I celebrated this morning, snapping a flag bandanna around Molly's neck. I celebrated at the parade, holding a flag and waving at the parade. I celebrated driving home and stopping to buy local strawberries, those harbingers in this part of the world for the celebration of nation and of too brief summer, as sweet and as poignant as the berries I will slice and layer in a bowl this afternoon.

Human Faces

The Sophomore Class of Hippy Dippy High School finished its Humanities expedition, "The Human Face of Human Rights," with an exhibition at a local gallery devoted to documentary film-making and photography. Snowman and his group interviewed Gordana, a young woman from Bosnia who now lives here in City By the Sea, learning about her life as a little girl during the war, the way she and her brother managed not only to survive but to play and find the fun that children must have, despite worrying about their father in jail and the scarce rations the family had to eat.

The Princess and I were late to the event due to a conflicting piano lesson, and we missed the speeches and a choral reading from the oral histories taken by the students.

When I arrived, a teacher I have known for some years, glowing with the excitement of the evening, said, "Snowman was WONDERFUL! He could have held back, but he didn't, and his reading was WONDERFUL!!!"

We wandered around the gallery, perusing the other student displays, and then had a chance to read Snowman's complete oral history (each student in the group wrote a paper about the interview subject).

As we walked back to the car, I asked him about the choral reading.

"What was it exactly? Mrs. TeacherLady was quite excited about your participation."

"She was?"

"Yes, I'm sorry I missed it."

"It was nothing."

Snowman tends to be quite nonchalant about his own achievements, so I pressed him.

"Tell me more about it."

"It was nothing, really. We each read a sentence from our oral history, just standing in different places in the gallery. Lots of people didn't even do it."

"But yours must have been a really wonderful sentence, if Mrs. TL was so pleased with you. What was it?"

He pulled a folded piece of scrap paper from his pocket and read:

"She reasoned that she could still take many guns apart from memory."

Although we laughed on our charming street in the Old Port as we reached the car, wondering why that sentence seemed so wonderful to the teacher, upon reflection I think I understand. Our little city has become home to many, many people with stories like Gordana's. They know what the world is really like, a place where the deaths of 33 people in one day cannot shock the way it does here on our protected brick sidewalks and cobblestone ways that pass chic local shops and the ubiquitous Starbucks.

Sometimes I wonder if I am living in Disney World.

What Got to Me

When the anchor on CNN told this story about the emergency workers: as they carried the bodies out of Norris Hall, the cellphones of the dead students were ringing as their parents, no doubt, tried to reach them and be sure they were okay.
My boy called for assistance filling out his 1040EZ today, and I was glad to help him.

Mental Illness?

A blogger friend alludes to yesterday's incident at Virginia Tech and suggests the cause was mental illness. Having heard very little about the shooter except descriptions of his actions, I haven't heard a case being made that he was mentally ill. I'm hearing he was thorough and ruthless, brutal and prepared. One report says he obliterated the serial numbers on the weapons, which suggests preparation. He chained the doors of the classroom building closed, also suggesting preparation.

Do we call it mental illness anytime we don't like what other people do, when we find an act offensive or inexplicable?

If so, that's the only explanation for our President's remarks yesterday, leaping immediately from sympathy for the victims and their families to support of the right to bear arms.*

We live in a militarized culture, in a country where leaders think nothing of sending people away to kill and to die, to maim and be maimed, even when the battle being fought is offensive and inexplicable to so many. Our culture is ill, spiritually and mentally, when we sit back and say there is nothing we can do.

This morning I watched an interview with a young man who helped bar the door against the shooter. When asked how it felt to be called a hero, he could no longer speak, but stood blinking back tears.

This enemy was not a foreign terrorist, according to the Washington Post. He was a boy from Northern Virginia. There will be more to his story, of course. Perhaps we will learn of mental illness. Perhaps we will learn of personal difficulties. But if it weren't so easy to get those guns, we wouldn't be talking about it at all.

*Edited to add: I understand that the President made no public remarks about the 2nd Amendment, and I apologize for my error. The statement came from his spokeswoman, Dana Perino, earlier in the day.
I stand by my feelings regarding the availability of guns.
And, I hope obviously, this was written prior to the firm identification of the young man who committed the crimes.

Uprooted

When we speak of being "uprooted," we usually mean something more like transplanted. I, for instance, am a transplanted Southerner who found a new home in New England. Uprooting connotes a violence, a suddenness, a shock to the system so great that death is nearly inevitable.

At one end of our street there is a high chain link fence. I'm not sure who put it there or when. Our little enclave consists of four short streets running from a major artery through City By the Sea to a stopping point above a well-traveled vein, a street of smaller houses, not so old or so well-preserved. The dead ends and the fence divide us from the dwellers down below.

The dead end receives many visits from the city snow plow, which smashes a block's worth of snow against the fence. I first noticed what looked like a huge pile of dirt mounded up against the fence, a curious sight. We took the dogs down the street, and I realized the fence had risen up out of the ground.

"Is there a tree at the end of the block?"

The Princess nodded, "Yes, on the other side of the fence."

The storm pulled down branches and wires and flooded cars and washed away homes and tore off a roof here and there, it also uprooted a tree. The "pile of dirt" was the base of the tree, upended, exposed. The tree filled the yard of the house down below. Beneath it a drain in a curb covered for many months by snow received the run off of rain and last melting, a plash of weeping.

Uprooted, the tree will have to be removed, like the bodies of the men and women killed far away this morning, ended by an unnatural form of violence. We cannot control a storm. We cannot control each other, or will not. We cannot control ourselves.

(Edited to add: I hope you'll go see what Sherry has to say about uprooting.)

On the Other Hand

Let's be thankful for the Caller ID that is part of our TimeWarner package. When the guy called back again at 9:30, we were watching TV. He repeated the same line he used earlier, but this time I said, "I have Caller ID. If you call again, I'm calling the police." I got the name and phone number, and thanks to reverse number look-up, I have an address, too.

What would make people think any kind of prank phone calls could be successfully hidden nowadays?

On Language

I rose earlier than usual this morning to attend a breakfast meeting in Old Mill Town, and to prepare for the drive, I stopped at the Dunkin' Donuts for a serious cup of coffee.

While there I "enjoyed" listening to the casual profanity of the employees, who seemed happy to use F-&-$-%-I-N'  wherever "very" would do.

It's not that I never use a bad word, but I seem to be noticing that the sort of language reserved for times of bone-breaks, battlefields, life-threatening shocks and childbirth is now used commonly to refer to such inconveniences as the incorrect folding of boxes intended to hold Munchkins.

The nice young man waiting on me was also the store manager. I told him in the nicest possible way that while I understood we live in a society of diminished civility, the language I overheard did not make me eager to return.

I may change my mind when I need another serious cup of coffee.

Popular Topics

Some months ago, I blogged about a person in the news. I am not going to name her here or tell you what she did, but I will say that in the weeks that followed, while she was a hot topic, my traffic count went from about 150 readers a day to 683 (give or take).

Over the past 8 months I have built up to an average of a little over 200. When I see a spike, I know this person is back in the news again.

Today's e-mail and comments brought some really angry people to my usually friendly blog and to my Inbox, too.

I've considered deleting the post, but instead decided to close the comments (and delete one of them) and post a warning. You see, I'm not interested in reading abusive diatribes. And if you think I need to "get a life" rather than reflecting on what's happening in the world, you may consider that you have the same need yourself. And if you can't see that I was essentially sympathetic to the person in question, you need to read the piece again.

It's too bad, because along the way I heard from people whose stories connected to hers, and my heart goes out to each of them.

I may write again about living in the general category of family in which she lived. But I won't type her name again. I'll just pray for her instead. And I'll think twice before blogging again about a popular topic.

a thumpin'

It was a folksy way of telling the truth, for once.

What do we want for our future, friends? What do we hope for this country to be? We have an opening (or ope-nin', as the case may be), and we have no excuse for sitting around moping.

How many times do we say we wish our lives were different, wish we weren't so helpess to change, contemplate giving something up or taking something on but end up back on the couch or at the desk or on the job simply doing our daily lives?

Things are different, and they can be even more different. I take courage from the results, but I know that the hard work, as our President likes to put it, is only beginning. We don't get to flee the other party; we have to co-operate with them. We don't get to send them on a boat to Corta Rico or get on a bus to Canada ourselves; we have to live with them.

In families, in churches, in civic groups, there are so often two ways of thinking about what is the best course to follow, the best program to undertake, the best way to simply be. One group or one person will out-wait another, hoping for the opportunity to change things completely.

It doesn't happen that way, friends, not most of the time. If we swing too far one way, the other side is waiting for the pendulum to swing back and hit us in that part we may wish were less of a target.

Whether it's Democrats and Republicans, or developers and preservationists, or Young Turks and Olde Guarde, or husbands and wives, or parents and children, we don't make real change until we actually face each other and talk about our differences, hear each other's words, really hear them, even when the other's way of thinking makes our ears bleed and our brains hurt.

It's hard work. It's harder than business. It's harder than politics. It's harder than war. But it holds the possibility of transformation.

Voting

I love to vote on Election Day. My daddy was in politics and going to the polls with him was always exciting! I really look forward to voting each year, and I poo-poo those who suggest I vote early. Voting early is for college students home on Fall Break; voting absentee is for the homebound and those working out of state. Voting early at City Hall when you don't have to is for, I don't know, hermits, and those who just don't appreciate being part of a community event!!! (I love to vote on Election Day.)

Here in City By the Sea, where I have lived for 19 years at five different addresses, I have visited many polling places:

• a 1960's era elementary school
• a plain vanilla room at the University of Southern Vacationland, later turned into a gym
• the fellowship hall at Large Church
• the fellowship hall at St. Famous Irish Saint's Catholic Church (where two precincts came together to create a major traffic jam)
• back to the fellowship hall at Large Church

3 of those 5 addresses have been in the same precinct. I'm used to voting at Large Church. It has a great parking lot. Plus, I went there to church for a long time, so it's one of my Don't Have to Think About Where I'm Going Destinations.

This morning as I drove Snowman to school we passed Temple Conservative Congregation, and I noticed an unusually large number of cars parked alongside its triangle of land. I had to brake suddenly when a car pulled away from the curb in a somewhat dangerous fashion and exclaimed, "What do you suppose is going on here this morning?" It was 7:38 a.m., a little early for a funeral.

Snowman said, "Oh, yeah. One of those robo-calls we got last night told you to vote here."

I heaved a sigh, because I know how bad the parking is in that little area. I decided to do my utmost to get back there before the after work rush. We like to vote in City By the Sea, and in Vacationland, too, and I stood in line at St. F-I-S's for 90 minutes once in an OFF YEAR election. Sure enough, when I returned to Temple C C at 4 p.m., there was no place to park on the side street or in the small parking lot. We went around the triangle, discovering the available parking was on the wrong side of the street for our direction.

I got a little cranky, but this may have been due to a building headache.

Finally I managed to park on the narrow side street with parking on both sides, imagining how much fun people coming an hour later in the dark would be having. At the entrance, a volunteer greeted me.

"How are you?"

"A little irritated about the parking," I answered. "I can't think it's going to get any better after dark."

He patiently explained that Large Church is undergoing renovations. (First I've heard about it.) He allowed as how they hoped this was a one shot polling place.

Inside volunteers I know personally greeted me, and I tried to be a little more cheerful. I noted that Pure Luck's name had been marked as voting Absentee. Knowing his ballot had been received improved my attitude. And after all, there was no line to speak of, despite the enormous number of cars outside. I took my ballots (PAPER! BALLOTS!) into a teeny little curtained "booth." In the teeny little booth next door, my neighbor was having the ballot explained, loudly. I had to put my fingers in my ears while reading a constitutional question on the statewide ballot. I wondered who was really voting next door. I thought about calling a volunteer. I plugged my ears harder and decided to vote "yes," but now I wish I hadn't. How many amendments does a state constitution need?

I waited in line to feed my ballots to a machine. We have the paper ballots on which you fill in a circle. It cheered me to know that my ballot could be re-counted by hand if necessary. I wished The Princess had been with me, but she was at dance class. She might have liked to get one of those "I Voted Today" stickers. (I'm wearing mine.)

When I got outside, there were very few cars parked on the side street. But my head still hurt.

Where is it you go to vote early?

Slow Food

Snowman's school follows each of the first two trimesters with a week of Intensives, classes that are designed to spark the kinds of interests not necessarily met in the regular school program. This fall one of those subjects will be Slow Food. I'm helping arrange for the students to prepare a meal at the soup kitchen downtown. But just talking about Slow Food is affecting our lives at home, too. The past two evenings, Snowman and I have cooked dinner with as little packaged material involved as possible.

Now, the dirty truth is that I am not an enthusiastic cook. If I have a grand expanse of time, I can do pretty well, but on the average busy day, I would just as soon get something out of the freezer or -- gasp! -- might even suggest Evil Fast Food. But my children are becoming fond of real food, cooked at home, and they nudge me in that direction.

Part of the Slow Food idea is that you should know what is in your food and where it was prepared, or at least that is what Snowman tells me. Last night we made home fries and cheesey scrambled eggs, and tonight it was tuna casserole. We did not resort to Campbell's Cream of Mushroom soup as an aid, nor did we give up entirely when we burned the roux the first time around. (Yes, I know some cooking words.)

These meals took a long, long time to prepare, for one reason or another.  They were not thrown together. We really enjoyed eating them. They were simple but delicious. It felt good to eat them. They were authentic.

And all this authenticity got me thinking about something that may seem unrelated: the page scandal in Washington and the notion that it is possible to "take the responsibility" for something without actually taking any blame or making any kind of recompense, without being changed in any way. You see, I could say, "I'm cooking a real meal for my family tonight," yet get out a box of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese with the powdered orange stuff that doesn't seem like cheese at all. Or I can melt a little butter and stir in some flour, add warm milk and whisk it while it thickens, then stir in grated cheddar and pour it over multigrain pasta and tuna. Both of these things are fixing dinner, but only one is a real meal in which all the components are readily identifiable, and in only one of these cases am I making any kind of effort. And the effort is changing my attitude about what I will cook tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

When Dennis Hastert says he is taking responsibility, it is the Kraft version. He does not intend to sacrifice anything to show that he cares or to actually suffer any loss of time or prestige or power due to his participation in covering up the actions of Mark Foley.

I don't think he understands that Fast Food apologies are about as good for us as a Big Mac. They get a response from the public taste buds, but all they do in the end is clog the public arteries.

I Don't Like Mondays

Here's the Mixed Messages Score Card for my Monday:

Husband--far away, sweet to talk to on phone
Son 1--far away, too busy to talk on phone
Son 2--near at hand, helpful, funny
Daughter--not shot by gunman during school day

Because really, how can I think of anything else? I can take on the tasks of the day, and I did. I began the day with laundry, packed children off to school, strategized with the Domestic Goddess, chatted with the Dog Walker, met with my student, made sure the chair of our Church Fair had 40 pieces of letterhead, e-mailed the church newsletter, called RevFun to make plans for filling in for him this coming Sunday, helped the Clerk prepare a letter of transfer, discussed a difficult situation with our nursery school teachers, went to the Dentist to have my teeth cleaned, came home, petted the dogs, ate lunch--

but while I was eating lunch, I turned on CNN.

And there were the aerial shots of a group of people in Amish country, accompanied by the sound of talking heads trying to explain what is entirely inexplicable and unacceptable.

The front door opened and I jumped in my seat, jangled until I heard the familiar voice of RevFun, arriving for our meeting. Sam was shocked by the door noise and the voice that felt strange to him, and he ran to the door barking fiercely.

Life insisted on my attention. I settled Sam by calling the dogs to the kitchen for a cookie. They sat, and they went into a nice down, but as he slid his legs forward, Sam gave one more "OAF!!"

We cry out against the destruction in the world, but we are distracted by the needs around us or by our own desire to be comforted.

We met and planned, I took a call from my City Council rep, I met my student to take him on his first nursing home call, I came home to take The Princess to piano, I met with a Boy Scout planning an Eagle Scout project at the church, I walked the dogs with Snowman, I gave the dogs their dinner.

The news had returned to its earlier topic of fascination, the bad actions of a congressman and the potential impact on the fall elections.

I don't like Mondays.

Current Events

From Sixth Grade Guest Blogger, The Princess, writing about President Bush's visit to the UN last week, as reported in Scholastic News.

What is this article about? Give a brief summary. Include information about when and where the events occurred.

President Bush went to the United Nations and made a speech on September 19. In his speech, he spoke to the people of Iran, saying that he didn't want them to have nuclear weapons. Bush met with French President Jacques Chirac to discuss how to get Iran to stop its nuclear program. Bush said that Iran should agree to stop before the UN could talk to them. Chirac disagreed.

Why is it important? (Why is this important to my class, my state, my country, the world, or me?)

Peace is important because, where wars are going on, there are more innocent people being killed.

What questions do you have after reading the article? What do you want to know more about?

I don't understand why Bush was talking so much about peace at the UN after going into another country and starting a war.

The New Yorker

I wanted to be a New Yorker long before I knew what that really meant. My daddy subscribed to the magazine, and I read it for the cartoons first, and later the movie reviews, and finally everything between the covers.

My first trip there was for an afternoon, in on the subway, up to the streets, and there is a vague memory of terror at the first looming tall building I saw. I don't remember anything else from that day except the excessive whiteness of my blond, blue-eyed little brother, dressed in a little white suit, as we rode on the subway.

When my father took me to New York City overnight for the first time, we stayed at the Plaza, saw two plays and a movie, ate breakfast at Rumpelmayer's and went to the top of the Empire State Building. I was eleven, and I was in heaven.

I went with him again at 15 and 21, the latter trip a college graduation gift. I was there for a job interview, and soon I was living in the city of my dreams.

I met a boy, because although I was 21 and he was 25, I still thought that way. When I told my mother she wrote a letter saying, "There is nothing like being in love in New York City." And although she had spent one night of her honeymoon there, I don't think she was talking about my father!

I worked in the Scribner Bookstore at 597 Fifth Avenue. It's a perfume shop now, but the building is a landmark, so the beautiful exterior and the spiral staircases and railings remain. I used to dream of getting married there, walking down the stairs into the center of the store as if the island with the cash registers were an altar.

My time in New York was brief. I married the boy I met in the bookstore, and he went to law school. I continued to read The New Yorker. My father gave it to me for Christmas every year. I once framed a cover for my Richmond Hill, Queens-born in-laws, when a special anniversary fell on a Monday.

Very tall buildings have never felt safe to me. I went to the plaza at the World Trade Center once, with the boy I would marry. It was a Sunday and eerily quiet, except for the wind. I looked up and thought I saw the buildings sway. We didn't stay long.

Five years ago, the first person I thought of calling was that boy, now grey, no longer my husband. It had just happened, the swaying buildings of long ago were still standing, though burning. He didn't want to talk about it. I waivered at the doorway to my sunroom, wanting to know what was happening, but not able to settle and watch. I did not want to see them come down.

Of course, seeing it was unavoidable, even for those of us who did not watch it live, did not watch them die in real time.

When my father died, I inherited the end of his subscription to The New Yorker, added on to the gift he had already given. I kept it up for years, but earlier this year I did not renew. How they had piled up! I was back to reading just the cartoons, regarding them with a 9-year-old's eye.

This was an anniversary that fell on a Monday, and yesterday at a bookstore, The New Yorker caught my eye. A man on a white background, holding a thin pole, appears to be walking an invisible tightrope. Inside the cover is the rest of the picture: the city, with the footprints of two missing buildings, the man high above it all in mid-air.

A day so dreadful calls us to be more sensitive, more appreciative, more connected, more faithful to whatever grounds and inspires us. It seemed we would be that way at first, the country and the world. Many people made changes in their lives. I loved a man, and in the days following, we made the first in a series of decisions that led to our marriage, to his folding into my family, an ingredient making us something very different.

We have grown and deepened as a result of that terrible day. But our country's leaders manipulated the unity born of grief and terror, and as Americans we have lost what might have been good as surely as I let lapse my subscription to The New Yorker. And some things are not so easy to renew.

I Wish I Knew

St. Casserole asked in the comments on a previous post when Pure Luck is going to get his own blog? He feels no one would want to read about the things that are most on his mind: the war, politics, peak oil, global warming. He tells me, "Your readers have children, and they want to have hope." He feels his world view is so gloomy that we would find his thoughts depressing.

I wish I knew how to solve the troubles in the world.

Some of the things that need to happen seem so straightforward to this mother. We all need to play by the rules, whatever they might be, and the punishment for disobeying them should be swift and predictable but not destructive. Boundaries must be clear and respected by all. Not all resources will appear to be distributed fairly, but everyone needs enough to get by and the opportunity to strive for what he or she wants and the assurance that it won't necessarily come to them.

There are days I crave a micro-managing God. She would not put up with the injury people inflict on other people just because they have the means to do it. She would not allow it to continue. She would put the leaders in a room to talk and say, "Don't come out until you've figured out a way to live together." And when this one said, "I'm willing, it's his fault!" and the other said, "She's lying!! I've been playing fair all along!!!" She would smile knowingly and shut the door and be willing to wait as long as need be.

I wish I knew. One thing I do know is that hope is not hope when it is rooted in ignorance. Avoiding the reality is not a way to remain hopeful; it is the employment of denial. And although playing computer solitaire instead of watching the news may be a more passive form of denial than denying the humanity of civilians living on the other side of a human-made border, it is still denial.

Snowman (aka #2 Son) plays the clarinet, and he wants to make music his life and his livelihood. He is about to enter 10th grade, and college is becoming a small part of the conversation about his future. Yesterday we watched a video about New England Conservatory, and I thought back to the time I was his age and told my father I wanted to go to Westminster Choir College. Daddy objected strenuously to the idea of anything other than a liberal arts education. He worried that I would never get a job.

My first job after college was bookstore clerk making minimum wage, and I never got much further (library paraprofessional being the high point) until I went to seminary. It is true that the English and History double major of the dim past worked well for me there. But I often look back and wonder whether I wouldn't have been prepared for a job in a church music and found my way to seminary by that route. It couldn't have taken me any longer than it did his way.

We don't know how things will turn out. We can make some predictions based on our knowledge and our intuition, but we cannot know. Will Snowman become a professional clarinetist? Will he and #1 Son live in the attic forever in between musical gigs and acting jobs? Will there be any money left in the grandparental college fund to send The Princess off to do whatever appeals to her--to date these possibilities include psychology, ministry and, of course, music--in another seven years? Or will she need to walk to the local university because we don't have any more gasoline and the world will have been radically changed?

I wish I knew.

But I look at them, and even in the face of diminishing resources, even in the deep sadness I feel about all the bad things people are doing to one another, even in the wide anger I struggle to manage about the needlessness of their hatred and fear, and even in the full knowledge that God will leave it to us to work things out whether we figure out how or not, I have hope. They are drawn to beauty, and I know God is working in their out-drawing and their in-breathing, and that around the world there are other young people just like them, and yet not like them, dreaming their own beautiful dreams.

Who will win? The haters and the fearers? Or the dreamers and the beauty-makers?

I wish I knew.

My American Dream

Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Government of the people, by the people, for the people. All men, all persons, are created equal. And the inalienable rights to which we are entitled are given to us by the Creator. These are four of the concepts that are intrinsic to our historical view of being American. It is the very nature of our existence to be free and forward-moving, to be seekers, and to include everyone in that freedom. We value life, according to the declaration, and liberty—or freedom—and the pursuit of happiness, which I have always taken to mean the pursuit of what fulfills each individual.

I’ve grown up in a time where the American Dream has come to refer to material gain. The pursuit of happiness has come to mean expanding one’s net worth in order to afford McMansions, SUVs, vacation homes and expensive wardrobes and furnishings. Too many people measure the dream that is America by the acquisition of wealth. And, honestly, even those of us who don’t have to admit that the rest of the world sees our country’s concept of freedom as meaning primarily freedom to take whatever we want, like spoiled children who have never been disciplined.

But my American dream still has those founding values at its core. And although I don’t always like the course my country may be taking as a whole, I do believe there is hope. Lots of people came to this country believing they could live a utopian dream. As Garrison Keillor said on A Prairie Home Companion the other night, we know we have a good thing, because people won't stop trying to get in here!

Main Entry: uto•pia
Pronunciation: yu-'tO-pE-&
Function: noun
Etymology: Utopia, imaginary and ideal country in Utopia (1516) by Sir Thomas More, from Greek ou not, no + topos place
1 : an imaginary and indefinitely remote place
2 often capitalized : a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions
3 : an impractical scheme for social improvement

I believe in that “often capitalized” definition of Utopia: a place of ideal perfection especially in laws, government, and social conditions. But I don’t believe that Utopia is going to come up and knock us on the head!! With all this freedom comes the responsibility to bring about the same freedom for others.

Now here’s a problem for Christians. There’s a historical attitude for some of us that this life is meant to be hard, but that’s okay because we’re going to be free in heaven someday. And while I am a believer in some kind of heaven, there is a trap in focusing so strongly on that view of our lives. It gives us an excuse to give up on the world and wait patiently to be invited into the New Jerusalem someday. Because surely the New Jerusalem is heaven, right?

Well, I don’t think that’s all there is to it. I think Jesus calls upon us to bring it about here and now. He didn’t tell the disciples to sit around praying and waiting for the end of the world. He sent them out to share the good news that God’s reign is near at hand. He told them to travel light; he told them not to worry about it when their message fell on deaf ears. Just keep moving and sharing the good news, he said. Some people are called to that still. But most of us are called to be in one place, and one of the most powerful ways we have to share the good news is to live out God’s commonwealth of love right here and now. We do it by caring for the hungry, the homeless, the lonely and the friendless. We do it by loving each other. We do it by speaking up in the face of injustice, as Jesus did. We do it by being first and foremost people of our faith, a living and active faith.

It’s not easy. It’s quite difficult, in fact. For in this country of political and religious freedom, we may find ourselves in disagreement with those closest to us. It wasn’t just true during the Civil War. The lines drawn between the red states and the blue states on the political map can be drawn between neighbors, friends and even members of our families. In my family, we were Baptist Republicans on mom’s side and Methodist Democrats on dad’s side. One grandmother gave her money to Pat Robertson’s 700 Club, and the other grandmother was on the first board of Planned Parenthood in our community. They grew up in the same neighborhood, went to the same schools, knew the same people and even saw their children get married, but they had the freedom to be different and to interpret God’s calling in their lives very differently.

That’s where freedom gets hard. Your pursuit of happiness and mine may take very different roads. As a person of faith, I believe our pursuit of happiness is found in seeking after God’s will for our lives, knowing full well we are free to seek it or not. We’re each born with some quality to develop that will show us our destiny, some seed in our soul which is looking for the right circumstances to root and then to break through and blossom. God, who set Creation in motion, is waiting to see if we will seek Him. God, who made the sun and rain that nourish growing things, is waiting to see if we will turn our faces toward Her. The real utopia is not getting to a place of peace when we die, but making God’s peace manifest while we live, a peace that includes enough to eat, a safe place to sleep, a warm coat to wear, a good school and a steady job. In America, we have all the resources anyone could dream of for making it happen. What will we choose to do?

Pure Luck Would Like to Know

This afternoon I heard my dear husband on the phone to the office of one of our Senators. He wanted to know how this Senator felt about the debate going on in the Senate this afternoon. The topic? A flag burning amendment to the Constitution.

Yes, there are few things more important in the world today than amending the Constitution to make flag burning. According to CNN:

A constitutional ban on flag burning is seen as being more widely popular than the proposed amendment to ban same-sex marriages. A gay-marriage ban was defeated earlier this month and was seen as another attempt by the GOP to mobilize its conservative base before November.

::sighs::

Yes, because it's all about winning. We need to get on top of those flag-burners and those people who want to make a commitment to one another and get the rights attendant on that commitment that other people can have and then toss away whenever they please. Winning is everything.

Pure Luck understands this on some level, as he has devoted himself to beating the computer at Scrabble, a victory that does not threaten his personal relationships. But it also has no impact on the world around him. It is a benign victory.

This afternoon, driving back from a faraway small town funeral, I listened to John Edwards' speech given at the National Press Club last Thursday. He spoke about the need to lead by speaking up for what is right, not what is popular. He outlined a program for fighting poverty by creating jobs and second chances for education. I found myself saying "Amen!"

But that man is not President or even Vice-President or even a Senator anymore. They are very busy in the Senate discussing flag burning and have no time for poverty.

Edwards shared his dream of what this country might be like in 20 years. What is your dream for that future? Would you tell me in the comments? I have enough nightmares. I want to hear more dreams.

Just Heartsick

Tom Fox

His life and death raise questions about politics, faith, personal responsibility and the future of the world for our children. But for now, a prayer.

God, forgive us. We are all involved, whether through misguided enthusiasm or apathetic sideline-sitting or helpless hand-wringing or racial hatred. Forgive us, God, but provoke us, too, to think more deeply, to listen more eagerly, to act more confidently and to change the world for the better. We are weak, of heart and mind and body, but in you we may be strong. Guide us to use that strength to make this world your world, truly, a world in which all your creatures are valued equally, a world in which feeding the hungry means more than mergers and acquisitions, more than conquest and subjugation, a world in which care for others becomes the new victory. Amen.

Tom Fox

Hope on a Grey Day

It's a gloomy morning in City By the Sea. Pure Luck says his body clock is resetting for spring. We've had temperatures in the 40's and 50's, the snow is melting, and this morning it is raining and gloomy. I suppose this is part of the Global Warming some people believe is not occuring (just like the evolutionary science that is a fairy tale and the moon landing that was a hoax in some people's minds).

It can be hard to face reality.

We don't like to look at hard things. Maybe we're afraid of what changes in the world will mean for us. Maybe we're afraid that what someone else has said about us has a grain of truth. Maybe we're afraid we've been wrong all along.

Phantom Scribbler wrote beautifully yesterday about discussing Martin Luther King, Jr., with her 4-year-old son. I grew up in a geographical area that was pretty evenly mixed among white and African-American people, although you wouldn't have known it by selectively visiting schools, churches and grocery stores. The people of color in my life worked in what I now know were menial jobs, and I did not know very many. I did not know, at age 4, any children of color.

I live now in a predominantly white city, but it has been leavened in the past fifteen years by an influx of immigrants from around the world. For #1 Son, most of the immigrant kids did not become classmates in his world of Honors and AP courses. At City By the Sea High School, the two cafeterias were not marked "white" and "other," but in most cases the students divided themselves.

But for my younger children, it has become common to have several and even many classmates a year who were born in other countries. They take for granted that people are from everywhere, that "different" is just a way of being and not something to be feared, that we don't all practice the same religion and that skin color is not remotely a factor in how we interact with people. Our schools have done an excellent job of moving students for whom English is not a first language into the mainstream. The Princess has friends from literally all over the world. They are a mixture of good and mediocre students, and that is what will likely divide them socially when they reach high school, as they are funneled into classes based on academic drive and ability. Dr. King's dream of children playing together has already been realized at our neighborhood elementary school. My hope is that these young people will be sitting together at lunch five years from now at City By the Sea High School.

That would be good news, but is it enough to ward off Global Warming? Will it inoculate us against the disease of disinformation and give us the strength to resist being told that "hard work" by "heckuva" people is all we need to get by? I want a world for these young people that will allow them to bloom and flourish in community with one another. I want a world for these young people.

It ought not be 49 degrees and raining on a January morning in the Northeast. The reality is a messed-up world, a world that reacts to our human input and insult by heating up and melting down. It's hard, as I mentioned earlier, to face reality.

As a person of faith, I hold onto hope, even on this grey day. I hold onto hope that it will not be too late to remedy the mess in which we find ourselves. I hold onto hope that among the children my generation has produced will be leaders who will bring about the needed changes, people who have grown up in a world changing for the better at the same time some of its citizens have been clinging to the old ways. They are growing up knowing that iit makes no sense to hate people because they look different. They are growing up knowing that gay is something some people are and not making such a big deal out of it. They are growing up knowing that even for those of us who believe there is one God, there is not one right way of being religious over all others. Because of these things, I hold onto hope.

My eschatological understanding is that we will reach a point of being able to see things as they really are: the fragility of human life and of nature; the need to care for one another and the earth; the futility of holding onto material things for their own sake; the rightness of celebrating our human existence by doing justice and loving kindness, as the prophet Micah put it, and walking humbly with our God. Even for those who do not name God in the same way I do, this last is important, and I mean that this way--I don't believe that the capacity to do these things, to be kind and unselfish, runs deep in us. I believe we are wired to protect ourselves, wired to survive. The unselfish and the sacrificial come from outside us; they are transcendent, born of our sense of being connected to something larger than our own immediate needs. That source of supernatural goodness, for me, is God. And that source is where I locate my hope. I don't believe it's running dry. I don't believe we're approaching Peak God. But it may take reaching Peak Oil, it may take crises of enormous proportions, for humankind to recognize that our futures are interdependent.

In that crisis, we will need more than ever the source that enables us to care for one another instead of elbowing each other out of the way to survive. The fate of the world is in the hands of Sons 1 and 2, The Princess, LG and Baby Blue, and all the children we share with each other in our blogs. Having heard their stories, I have a hope.

Grieving

Singing Owl left a comment below and I wanted to link to her post-Katrina entries of late September and early October. I've been in Harrison County all week, but Mr. Casserole took me to Hancock County yesterday, a long and sad ride down to Waveland/Bay St. Louis, and then over to Pearlington and into Louisiana.

Oh, Waveland. Along the main road through town, there is hardly a business open. There was so much water! We visited with the pastor of the Shoreline Park Baptist Church, which is really not all that close to the water.

The water just came up out of the Mississippi Sound, out of St. Louis Bay, filling up the Bayous and creeks. It swept through, not just for blocks but for miles. Pastor Ed Murphy told me that the water went up to the ceiling of the sanctuary, which is on the second floor.
Now stop and digest that. The ceiling of the second floor.
His church folk are meeting in a tent. They've built bunkhouses to house work crews. They are building storage pods that folks can use next to their very small FEMA trailers.

Friends, this is just not over, not even close to over.

At one point we took pictures of a house missing its first floor on South Beach Boulevard, and today I found it on Singing Owl's blog, too. Of course a lot has been cleaned up since September here, but still much has not.

From Waveland, we went into Bay St. Louis along the beach route. When you get close to the railroad bridge, the one you've all seen on TV, the road just ends. It's just gone. The stores on the beach side, just gone. It looks like bombs were dropped on the shore. It looks like war.

It seems selfish to want to cry. These are not my places and not my people. I never drank coffee in that shop. My friend didn't have his offices on the now-missing floor of that building. I never worshipped in that church with the steeple in the yard. I don't know the people whose lilies are coming up around a slab with no house on it. I didn't buy my books in the store that is only a sign on a tree now.

But I am grieving for and with the people who did. I can't believe it's time to go home. I can't wait to come back.

We Interrupt These Christmas Posts...

for a few Monday night questions and observations:

~I don't much like Condoleeza Rice, nor am I a major fan of Andrea Mitchell's, but there is something heartening about watching an interview of the Secretary of State by a major network journalist and seeing they are both women. At least the clock hasn't been turned back completely.

~If the President is making public statements about something the day after a major speech, the speech was not successful.

~The people who watch Lou Dobbs on CNN are obsessed with immigration. 53% of those responding to his poll tonight think "Broken Borders" are the most important issue for Congress and the President to address. Who are these people? The Economy was 2nd, at 29%; Iraq 3rd with 15%; Terrorism a distant 4th with 3% as of last count. I know he's the old Moneyline guy, so I get the economy piece, but I guess I don't get the whole illegal immigration thing. (I mean, I know what it is, but why is it the top issue to these people? Because I'm thinking domestic spying is pretty important myself.)

~Why am I watching Lou Dobbs?

~There has been major turnover in the professional staff at our veterinarian's office. I am missing the doctors who have cared for Molly since she was a pup with major orthopedic issues. Is it worth driving farther to the new practice of the three women vets who left? Or should I get to know the new women vets hired by the old fart vet who owns the practice? It's not the same thing as getting used to a new dental hygienist when your dentist remains the same. It's more like having your pediatrician suddenly and without warning leave to go to start an office two towns away. Complicating all this, #2 Son is employed there as kennel help, and we get a discount on veterinary care and medications. I was worried that he would be unhappy about the sudden changes, but he came home tonight and said, "Mom, it's going to be the same." "But #2 Son, these new doctors don't know you! They don't know you might want to be a vet someday! They won't know to give you extra things to do." "Mom, they're so new, I'm going to be telling them where things are and what to do."
Guess I'll take a wait-and-see approach.

~That bag of Barilla tortellini that claims to make 4-5 servings? Barely feeds Pure Luck and The Princess. I am now eating Pop Tarts for dinner.

~Okay, this last one is about Christmas, after all. If you want to get your Christmas cards in the mail on the busiest day of the postal year, it's a good idea not to bring the envelopes home and leave the cards at the office.

~And finally, if you want to see the Christmas card picture and haven't already noticed it in the Flickr badge, here it is. (Click it for a larger view.) You already know more about us than anyone getting our Christmas letter ever will!

It Starts

The holiday madness has started. On the way home from our knitters’ group at church last night, I saw Christmas lights on houses.

It’s really, really dark here. You can see the appeal of extra electric lights. I even enjoy listening to secular Christmas music, if it’s any good at all. But what do they really have to do with Christmas?

On the web, I read about Jerry Falwell’s attempts to convince us that Christmas is under attack. Good grief. And then I saw something about “The Committee to Save Merry Christmas,” a group organizing boycotts of stores that don’t hang signs saying “Merry Christmas.”

For goodness sake, haven’t these people ever read The Grinch?

“Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “doesn’t come from a store. Maybe Christmas,” he thought, “means a little bit more.”

Apparently it doesn’t mean more than that to some people who profess to be Christian. They will only be happy if they see multi-colored, lighting-up signs containing the word “Christ” displayed all over the mall. Because that will really get the message of the Incarnation across, won’t it?

It’s my plan to boycott stores that give in to them

Loving Dangerously

We were down at the dog park the other day, and Molly, as is her habit, made the rounds of all the people there. She gets attention by throwing her head back and calling out an insistent “Woo-Woo!” People turn toward her and want to pet the pretty, fluffy dog. You can tell when she smells treats on a new person, because she immediately goes into a very proper “Sit” and looks them intently in the eye. Other people get the walk-through treatment: she tries to walk between their legs, hoping to get her back scratched. There are some people Molly finds especially likeable. Those people get “The Paws of Love,” as Molly sits back on her haunches and puts both front paws up in her version of an embrace.

The water has been turned off for the winter at the Valley Street Dog Park, and dog owners are bringing water down in gallon jugs to share. As Molly and Sam were getting a drink from the common bowls, a couple of banged-up old pots, I began thinking about the Canine Flu. Dog owners are already arguing about the best response to this flu that has already been found in large kennels and at racetracks. Should dog shows be avoided? And what about dog parks?

Suppose Molly had to spend the winter at home, with no new people to meet and greet, only the family to embrace with “The Paws of Love?” The beauty of those paws is how indiscriminately they are offered: to old friends and perfect strangers, to men or to women, without regard to age, race or fashion sense. It’s sad to think of Molly tucked away safely, because going down to the dog park would mean loving dangerously.

You can hardly turn on the television or pick up the newspaper without hearing about the possibility of an avian flu pandemic. A swan in Eastern Europe, a parrot in Great Britain, children in southeast Asia—each day there are new stories about the potential for spreading this potentially deadly flu around the world. What would we do if faced with a flu pandemic? Perhaps we would be placed under quarantine. Sales of surgical masks and rubber gloves would soar.

Dr. Grattan Woodson, author of a booklet called Preparing for the Coming Influenza Pandemic, tells us to expect not to be able to go to the store or to work, to visualize hospitals so full of patients and short of staff that you wouldn’t want to be in one anyway. He makes a list of the things any family would need to cope with serious illness when professional medical care isn’t readily accessible and gives instructions about keeping the ill person hydrated, the most important thing of all for a flu patient. Most importantly, he tells the caregiver, “Caring for severely ill flu patients is something that everyone is capable of doing. You can do this. No medical skill is required. . .they need to be comforted and told that they are going to be OK and reassured that you will be there for them.”

The most important thing we could give is care. Our most important act would be to love.

All the great religions put an emphasis on care for those who need it most. Devotion to God and care for others form the foundation for a life of faith. They provide a rule for living, and living them provides ongoing revelation. We learn more about how to love God and love one another simply by doing those very things.

In an epidemic, basic care for the sick is an urgent need. Do we feel that urgency when it comes to loving our neighbors on the average day?

Molly does! I often wonder what made her that way. She is naturally winsome and charming and affectionate, so in part it’s her nature. As a puppy, she came to live with me, and I like to go places and always stop to speak to people; her environment reinforced her natural tendencies. Most of all, greeting people with love and enthusiasm is her rule for life; it is her practice. It is both who she is and what she does.

Can we be like that? It means throwing caution and prejudice to the winds. It means living and loving dangerously, knowing that we may not be loved in return by other people. To do it, we need to peel off the gloves and throw away the masks that keep us “safe” and separate from other people. We need to admit to being God’s people when we aren’t tucked safely away with people who would say the same. We need to be ready to infect and be infected in a pandemic of love. Such an epidemic would change the world.

“The Paws of Love” would be universal, and our healing would be assured.

Updated to add: This is a selection from this morning's sermon and also a draft of my next reflection column for the local paper. Feedback appreciated.

Um...ick.

Friends, if you have a subscription to my old URL via bloglines, you're going to get a...well, surprise is one way of putting it, today. You may want to unsubscribe. I did.
(PPB, at least it took them longer to find me than to find you.)

Creepy Call-ies

It's a little early for Halloween, but I am creeped out tonight.

Let me begin by saying I am not a person who enjoys scary stuff. I don't like scary movies or scary books or scary things. My children have never dressed up as anything particularly spooky for Halloween, and no fake blood has been employed except when #2 Son went as a murdered mime a couple of years ago.

Tonight the phone started ringing about 9:50 and for the next 15 minutes it rang every few minutes for a total of about 8 times. And every time there was silence at the other end, or breathing. Once someone mumbled "Hello." I got #2 Son to answer in his deepest voice. (He admitted he was no Pure Luck when it comes to the deep voice, but he gave it a manly effort.) Even after that, the phone rang again.

#2 Son wondered if we should try *67? I said, "Don't you mean *69? I'm not sure we have it on Time Warner digital phone." We also didn't have phone service most of Saturday afternoon, when all the Time Warner services in our area went down during the rainstorm. We did a Web Search to try and find out, and he wondered what would happen if we dialed "0." I honestly don't know.

Tomorrow I'm going out to get a phone with Caller ID. (Also a new toaster, but that's another story. Okay, the story is I threw my malfunctioning toaster away, because I knew Pure Luck had one in the garage. Except that it's in Connecticut with him. So my action may have been a bit premature.)

I don't like living in a world where my 9th grader says, "I don't think I have a stalker. Do you have a stalker?"

And then I don't like thinking, "Hmm. Could I have a stalker? My name is on those newspaper columns. It's on a sign in front of the church."

And then I don't like hearing #2 Son say, "I wish I had a shotgun." He's kidding, but he's not, because this was creepy!!

I realize that I'm of a mind to be terrorized because every time I turn on the television, the stakes are being raised by the scary news of the world. I hope this was just an obnoxious idiot, and that is the likely explanation.

Anyway, our doors are locked, and the car is locked, and I'm hoping to go to bed and rest, but probably with a phone close at hand.

I did solve the mystery of *67. It's Caller ID block, that thing you use when you're pranking someone, so they won't know who's calling. Should I be surprised that a 9th grader has heard of it?

Animals in the Flood

The flood continued for forty days on the earth; and the waters increased, and bore up the ark, and it rose high above the earth. The waters swelled and increased greatly on the earth; and the ark floated on the face of the waters. The waters swelled so mightily on the earth that all the high mountains under the whole heaven were covered; the waters swelled above the mountains, covering them fifteen cubits deep. And all flesh died that moved on the earth, birds, domestic animals, wild animals, all swarming creatures that swarm on the earth, and all human beings;everything on dry land in whose nostrils was the breath of life died. (Genesis 7:17-22, NRSV)

When #1 Son was a little boy, we sat down on the couch one day to read Peter Spier's Noah's Ark, a picture book. I remember his response to the image of the animals left behind as the waters closed over their heads; to say our hearts were wrenched is not putting it too strongly.

I read a story last night (International Herald Tribune, I think) that described a little boy having his dog torn away from him as he boarded the bus to Houston. I saw a piece on MSNBC about a handyman who swam through the flood waters for 8 hours with his dogs; no one wanted to pick them up. He is blaming himself for not fleeing with them when he might have--but where would they have gone?

We also have two big dogs, 90 and 120 pounds, and three cats, and how could we think of leaving any of them if we had to evacuate for some reason? I would no more leave a child behind. But if we had to get away, we would have a credit card to take, with a honking big credit limit, because I have a husband who won't leave a balance on a credit card for five minutes at a time.

I'm privileged. And very lucky. There is someone to take care of me. There is a station wagon in the driveway, bought with money my parents left me, that would fit us all if need be.

My biggest problem today is wondering whether I'll need to fill up on the way back from taking #1 Son to college tomorrow. If we don't drive too many places today, we should be able to get to Connecticut and back without needing more gasoline.

But most people in the face of flood and fury are more like those animals in the Noah story. Remember that Noah only took two of each kind. So many more wondered why they were leaving at all. Picture those left behind in New Orleans, mostly fine after the hurricane, puzzled and confused and horrified as the waters rose and rose and rose.

Going to the Vigil

Pure Luck and I went down to Back Cove for the Candlelight Vigil tonight in support of Cindy Sheehan. We went out the door with a couple of candles and a teeny little lighter, aware of the breeze and not sure how to protect the lights we carried. As I was standing in front of the house waiting for him, a couple from down the street walked by with their dog; she saw my candles and asked, "Are we going to the same place?" I can't tell you how good it felt to say yes.

Because I grew up in a political family, any actions of mine had the potential to reflect on my father, and so I learned to be very quiet, very discreet, almost politically invisible. I didn't put bumper stickers on my car, or work on campaigns, or any of the simple things I always wanted to do. And as a pastor I find myself in a similar situation; I don't want my political acts to reflect badly on God. So I hold back. But I'm coming to a point in my life where I can't anymore. The earthly father I tended to conflate with God might not have liked it, but I believe God wants something different from me.

It started last fall, when I put a couple of bumper stickers on my car. One promotes the UCC's God is Still Speaking campaign. The other was designed by Pure Luck's former wife. In white letters on a green background, it says "Peace on Earth: It's Not Just for Christmas Anymore." I bought four dozen and gave them away to people at church and to friends and to colleagues, to #1 Son's friends who have cars. The leftovers will be at our Mission Table at the Church Fair this fall.

I think that bumper sticker struck me in much the same way Cindy Sheehan's actions have. It was just so *true.* How could I not share it? It says peace is more than a Christmas card slogan. Cindy reminds us that every death--and I mean every death, American or Iraqi or Italian or British or any other--in this conflict is a bereavement. I think this is important to remember, because as soon as we forget it we lose both our humanity and our Divinity. I believe this