Requiem for a Friend: A Meditation on the Life of a Maniac....

"Ever has it been that love knows not its own depth

until the hour of separation."

- Khalil Gibran

 

I heard yesterday, when a dear friend and high school Brother-From-Another-Mother FaceBooked me with the news.  And then another of my set called to confirm what I had hoped against hope wasn't true: the first of us had passed on....

 

Carlyle Vincent Smith has shuffled off this mortal coil, to borrow the phrase from the Bard ... and those of us who loved him are lost in grief, struggling to wrap our heads around the extinguishment of a bright but lately distant light in our lives....

 

I've known Carlyle since I was eleven, when he and I were part of what turned out to be a very successful experiment indeed.  The University of Detroit High School - now know as U of D Jesuit High School - had invited sixty boys to become members of the its first Jesuit Academy class.  In part to part to provide spiritual, moral and academic guidance to eager and ambitious young men and in part to stave off its declining enrollment as the realities of post-riot Detroit in the mid-1970s hit it hard, very hard, ninety-eight years into its existence, U of D founded what was in effect a junior high school.  And Carlyle - or C-Lyle, as he was known to us and everybody - was in its inaugural class of seventh graders.  We would graduate from U of D together six years later at the dawn of a new decade and in the process grow from boys to young men and from friends to brothers for life.

 

In fact, Carlyle and I were not only members of U of D's class of 1980, but, together, we were one-quarter of an octet that named itself the Maniacs, an appropriately juvenile sobriquet that these many years later is actually oddly inappropriate for eight inner-city Detroit kids who all graduated from college and have a half-dozen graduate degrees and various other illustrious achievements among them.  Back in the day, we liked to suggest that we were crazy and perhaps a tad dangerous, reflecting as it did at the time the need to posture protectively during that teenage crucible period in our lives, but, actually, we were a pretty straightforward, clean-cut bunch: one of our number was our class valedictorian, another won our school's Leadership Award and half of us captained one or more of U of D's athletic teams (while three of us finished second, third and fourth for the school's scholar-athlete award because, in effect, we split our classmates' votes), etc.  In sum, in six critical, wonderful years together, we grew from boys to young men in whom our parents (and friends) took great pride and from hangin' buddies into life-long friends and brothers....

 

But I saw Carlyle only occasionally in my adult life: the vagaries of fate being what they are, we stayed in touch but only got together a handful of times independent of our sojourn back to U of D every five years for class reunions.  In a phase, we were cool but not close ... and yet when we got together - as happens with all great friends of longstanding - it was as if time had not passed a moment.  Whether it was just a few of us or all of us, when we were in each other's company again we were home, transported back in time to the innocence of our youth when the possibilities of the world shone brightly and lay just ahead of us for the taking.

 

And despite our success, we each struggled.  A few years ago, at one of the lowest points in my life (working and wobbling my way through a protracted and enervating divorce, a simultaneous career transition, etc.), Carlyle came to New York City to celebrate his birthday and I agreed to meet him for a drink.  Though I was really rather depressed and reclusive at the time, I couldn't pass up an opportunity to be in my dear friend's company again, a rare and treasured prospect.  So I drove into the City through rush-hour traffic to experience the type of homecoming that nourishes the soul, sharing three glorious hours with my dear friend as we commiserated about the vagaries of life and celebrated our appreciable but seemingly ephemeral triumphs.  And then he left to hook up with a lady friend for the evening ... and I never saw him again....

 

It was another glorious moment among the string of such restorative and elevating reunions over the years.  In fact, just a year or two before, we had celebrated our 30th high school reunion and managed to get seven of the eight of us back together, having only managed to get all eight of us together on three occasions during those intervening three decades.  (I'll own the fact that I was usually the one missing on the half-dozen or so occasions when we only managed to get seven Maniacs in a room during this time.)  We were - and are - still like brothers, though life has taken us down separate and quite distinct paths.

 

Which is what made my quite reasonable and calm reaction to the news of Carlyle's passing a real puzzle to me yesterday.  Sadly, he was the twelfth friend of mine to die this year - a mystifying, unwelcome and unprecedented experience in my life, to be sure - but, logically, one could posit that I'd developed a sort of unconscious self-protective fortitude based on my recent experience. Yet I was troubled that I wasn't more upset: yes, I was sad, but not as sad as I thought that I should be when a lifelong friend passes on....

 

And then it hit me: awakened involuntarily in the middle of the night - a night, ironically, before a family road trip that necessitates sufficient rest - I realize that I'm mourning my friend deeply and that the delayed reaction was just my body and mind collaborating to protect my soul.  But now that it's loosed, the wound is gaping indeed.  I miss my friend terribly.  I regret that I was not closer to him during what I suspect neither of us realized were his last months and days.  I ache for his family, as now his parents must bury their eldest child.  And I grieve for what will never again be: no more Maniac reunions (like the anticipated one for our upcoming U of D reunion next year), no more deep but just a touch distant conversations with my friend who always seemed to be close but not quite fully accessible in the last decade of his life.  (To put a finer point on it, in recent years, I always felt like there was more to the story that C-Lyle wasn't sharing about his life and his circumstances, a veil that no amount of loving attempts at comfort and support could pierce, which is an experience that other friends have noted as well.)

 

Whatever happened to my friend, I want him to know that I love him still and that his spirit will always live on through me.  I will always try to be just a little bit cooler than I naturally am because of his example, a preternatural sense of self-assurance and nonchalance that made him magnetic to friends and acquaintances alike.  I will always think of that laugh and of that inevitable response of "Walt, maannn, you just don't understand..." when he was trying to set me straight about something or other.  And I will always wonder if there was anything else that I could have done to make his earthly life happier, as the reserve and distance in our relationship in recent years intuitively suggests to me an opportunity lost.

 

May God bless and keep you, C-Lyle, as you're returned to Him from whom you came.  I will treasure the more than four decades of friendship and the myriad hilarious and happy memories with which you gifted me (and everyone who was privileged to know you) in your earthly life and try not to ponder what could have been.  You were always the coolest ... and now the world seems just a little more stark and cold without you.  So the work begins, of keeping your memory alive and aflame in our hearts to steel us for the journey ahead and help us be just that much cooler, like you, as we travel our path....

 

"You can love someone so much.  But you can never love people as much as you can miss them."

- John Green





There's Only We: Keepin' It Real and Clear in Challenging Times....

"We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality,
tied in a single garment of destiny.
Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly."
 

- The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. 

 

Today, Officer Rafael Ramos is being eulogized and laid to rest.  It's a sad day for us all, but especially for his family and those who were privileged to know him during his earthly life.  And it will be so, too, when we honor the life of Officer Wenjian Liu, his partner.  There are no words that can capture the tragedy of the precipitating event fully, though senseless and inhumane begin to point the way.  The officers' execution a week ago is an horrific reminder of just how inhumane we humans can be sometimes....

 

And yet Ismaayil Brinsley, their killer, is both an afterthought and a symbol.  He's an afterthought because his own self-inflicted death accomplished nothing and perhaps actually made this situation worse, as we will never have the opportunity to try to understand why, specifically, this tragedy occurred.  To be clear, I don't think that we would've gotten a cogent answer from someone who was clearly deranged, but I do think that we may have had an opportunity to understand better both the causes and manifestations of Mr. Brinsley's mental illness so that we can endeavor to prevent them from metastasizing again such a lethal way.

 

Which is why I believe that Mr. Brinsley is also a symbol, in this latest case of our failure as a society to address mental illness effectively and thereby subjecting ourselves to the too often deadly consequences of this choice.  Simply put, better mental healthcare may not have prevented this particular tragedy, but it would be hard to argue that a better system thereof wouldn't reduce the number of such tragedies (and possibly their severity) in a meaningful way.  After Columbine ... Virginia Tech ... Sandy Hook ... the DC Navy Yard ... and now this, can we at least agree that we need to address mental illness in a far more consequential way than we have thus far?

 

(Notice that I used ellipses to allude to the dozens of shooting incidents between the listed tragedies and also that I've left unaddressed the twin issue of gun control as, sadly, I've almost come to accept that we'll never come to any reasonable and meaningful progress on this issue.)

 

Why did all of this happen in the first place?  Proximately, one could posit that a deranged man decided to assassinate two NYPD officers in retribution for Michael Brown in Ferguson and Eric Garner in Staten Island, as the killer is reputed to have claimed before his heinous act.  And yet the reality is that it's happened in the context of a massive, legitimate protest movement in response to these unfortunate - and unpunished - police-involved deaths.  But this has been lost amidst the media's virtually exclusive focus on the NYPD tragedy in the past week.

 

And that's the point: it's hard to believe that it's a coincidence that the focus on addressing police brutality in its most lethal form has been virtually totally lost in favor of the legitimately heart-rending family tragedies of Officers Ramos and Liu.  Again, to be clear, I'm not suggesting that we shouldn't be present for the slain officers' families and NYPD colleagues, we most certainly should be ... and especially so after the glare of the cameras goes away soon after the funerals.  What I am saying is that we owe it to ourselves - and to the slain officers' families - to multitask, which in this case means staying focused on the police lethality issue as well.

 

Sadly, though, this situation has been hijacked because its politicization is virtually complete: I'm still trying to figure out who's more reprehensible, former NYC Mayor Giuliani for trying to blame President Obama for this tragedy - apparently some of us were wrong that there had to be something for which the president couldn't be blamed - or NYC Patrolmen's Benevolent Association President Patrick Lynch's blaming it on current NYC Mayor DiBlasio.  When on earth has any modern-era elected official seen it as a personal, positional and/or societal benefit to encourage and/or endorse the slaughter of innocents?  Only the most craven among us would try to make this an Us vs. Them situation, which, at least for now, is what it seems to have become.

 

But why?  As far as I can tell, don't we all benefit from more effective policing, which, among other things, means less lethal policing (especially in Communities of Color)?  Isn't it better for us all if the police are rightly seen as our supporters, protectors and advocates in the achievement of public safety rather than an occupying force prone to prey on the least of us, especially Black and Brown males?  I couldn't agree more with Jon Stewart of The Daily Show who has presciently suggested (yet again),

 

"You can truly grieve for every officer who's been lost in the line of duty in this country, and still be troubled by cases of police overreach.  The two ideas are not mutually exclusive.  You can have great regard for law enforcement and still want them held to a high standard."

 

This is not an Us vs. Them issue as if those of us in the community are separate and apart from those who are sworn to serve and protect us.  This is an Us issue, period.  Whatever decreases safety in our communities imperils police officers, too, and whatever improves it benefits both citizen and cops.  We truly are in this all together....

 

And yet we're not:  In many communities, where police have acted more like an occupying force, citizens are legitimately wary of them, often beyond the point of suspicion to active distrust.  So, too, within many police forces, the combination of (mostly) living outside of the community being policed and having to deal disproportionately with the dregs of our society leads to a detachment from those ostensibly being served and protected.  These are both underlying causes that deserve more address.

 

In fact, I can't recall the last time that I heard a police official acknowledge a mistake publicly, although, logically, with hundreds of thousands of officers and hundreds (if not thousands) of unfortunate police-community/suspect interactions each year, statistically speaking, some of them have to be mistakes.  With respect to New York City, the names Diallo, Bell and many, many others come to mind.  Are our police leaders beyond accountability (and, even worse, devoid of humanity)?

 

Yet, we have to acknowledge three realities about how we typically interact with the police, especially in communities where the estrangement is greatest:

 

First, we tend to lump them all together rather than treat them as individuals, which, it turns out, is exactly what we ask them to do with respect to us (i.e., "Don't treat me poorly - by profiling me, stopping and frisking me, etc. - because I'm a young Black male; get to know me as an individual," etc.).  We tend to speak of "the police" universally as if each of them is equally responsible for the actions of a (very) few offenders among them (much like we as members of certain groups don't want to be associated with the transgressions of a few members whom we typically don't know or whose behaviors we, too, detest).  Until we're willing to acknowledge them as a collective of individuals, we lump them to our mutual detriment.

 

Second, we (most/too) often choose not to trust the police, more out of allegiance to a misguided communal ethic than because of direct experiences with certain unprofessional (and, possibly, inhumane) members thereof.  Before I keep going, let me acknowledge that in certain (typically urban, poor and violence-infested) neighborhoods, this distrust is earned by the harassment to which many - especially young Black men - are indiscriminately subjected by members of law enforcement.  Driving While Black (DWB) and its unfortunately myriad variations are real and the actual, lived experience of too many (including me, a suburban, upper middle class Black man).  In these situations, I understand the inclination toward mistrust ... but the reality is that most of us - even those of us of Color - don't have this direct negative experience with the police, so we need to change our approach.  We can't have it both ways: we can't choose not to cooperate with the police and then blame them for the level of crime by which we're being victimized and that they, in turn, are receiving little if any help to address.  In fact, the accountability imperative increases in direct proportion to our level of cooperation and collaboration.  If we really want to experience the benefits of public safety, we have to partner meaningfully and constructively with them.  Only in this situation, in which we've provided them the greatest possible cooperation, can we hold them fully accountable for the outcomes that we seek.

 

Third, we must acknowledge the reality of the nature of policing by reflecting deeply on the answer to this question:  When do we call the police?  The answer is, in virtually every situation, when things have gotten out of control and we can't handle it anymore.  Into this morass, we invite the police to dive in and in so doing to resolve it both for our benefit and to our satisfaction.  In short, to be in law enforcement is to be the option of last resort.  Think about this carefully for a moment.  How hard must it be to be involved in situations that are disproportionately out of control and at a minimum confused/confusing and, too often, dangerous (if not potentially lethal)?  Let's face it, very few jobs are as difficult as being a policeman or policewoman.  Which doesn't mean that we condone their misbehavior, just that we must understand the conditions that can give rise to it amongst the less skilled or principled members of law enforcement.  Yes, police officers should know what they're getting into when they sign up for the job, but, so, too, we should acknowledge how difficult the job is that we're asking them to do.

 

If, all day every day, almost exclusively, you were asked to address nothing but problems - some of which could be quite dangerous for you personally - how do you think that you'd do?  Do you think that you might eventually begin to build up a psychic armor to protect yourself from this virtually constant negativity?  Do you think that you might tend to be more suspicious than the average person?  Which, again, isn't to say that we should allow police malfeasance, just that we need to appreciate the circumstances that can and too often do give rise to it.  We need to be compassionate enough to understand why the police often don't trust us while we also hold them accountable to acting conscientiously and professionally.

 

Which is what this is really about: we need to continue to honor those who serve and protect us - especially in life but also in death - while we continue to expect and hold them accountable to being compassionate, constructive and equitable in their service and protection.  We want the police to be protected, too, as we are, but this doesn't mean that they're allowed to violate our rights in doing so.  The Golden Rule applies still: the police don't want to be targeted so they should respect that we don't want to be, either.  And when outcomes are disproportionate, they must own and address them in collaboration with us, especially deftly and humanely in the segments of the community that are most and most often disadvantaged by their actions.  After all, we are all safest when the police are our partners, when we're safe and they're safe, when we are we and they are, too....

 

So, please consider this: isn't the best way to honor the lives of Officers Ramos and Liu (and all of those who've made the ultimate sacrifice in our service) to strive to have their legacy be that more of their fellow are like them?  They're being lauded as exemplary officers and people, so why not work together to insure that we can say this about everyone who has the opportunity to protect and serve?  And should a few members of law enforcement misbehave, let's commit to treating these unfortunate situations for what the are: aberrations by individuals that shouldn't be excused but understood and improved upon by the collective (which is admittedly supremely hard to do in the worst/most lethal of these instances).

 

In the end, there's no winning a war against the police or gain in conceiving of and acting as if this is an Us vs. Them situation.  The only victory is in seeing this as a We situation and working together accordingly.  Just like there are a few aberrant members in every family, in our communal family there are misbehavers who're civilians and those who're cops.  We all lose if we demonize either or both groups.  Our only solution is to extend the compassion and understanding that we'd want in situations involving a close relative to our more distant fellows, be they citizens or constables.  Our only solution is We, even - or perhaps especially - in situations when we may be deeply hurt by our fellows and our anger is authentic/right but not effective if expressed inappropriately.

 

Young Mr. Brinsley was angry (in addition to being deluded), but this didn't justify his heinous actions.  So, too, with the pack of officers - one of whom clearly applied a prohibited choke hold  - who wrestled Eric Garner to ground and, sadly, to his death (despite his protestations that he couldn't breathe).  None of us can breathe when we lose our humanity completely ... and, increasingly, our nerves frayed by too many tragic occurrences, it's hard for us to do so when we lose it even a little.

If we expect our police brothers and sisters to behave more responsibly and humanely in their service, especially with members of our communal family who may not look like them and live differently than they do, then we have to help them do so.  When we choose not to trust, then we can't demand trust in return.  Only by acknowledging our interrelation, however costly, can we live in harmony and peace.  Only if we truly live in alignment with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's memorable words quoted above can we all be protected and served.  Only if there's We will there be life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for all in our land....
 

Merry Christmas, Jimmy: Reflections on and Prayers for the Season....

And the king will answer them,

‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these

who are members of my family,

you did it to me.’

- Matthew 25:40 (NRSV)

Supposedly at the holiday season, we take time to reflect on and appreciate our blessings.  One way that we express this is to share gifts with those we like and love.  In fact, one of the laments of our age is that this gift-giving - reminiscent, for Christians, of the Ultimate Gift, God's sharing of His only begotten Son, born this day - is that it's been transformed into a time of rampant consumption and materialism virtually (if not totally) devoid of its seminal purpose.  And yet, at any time and moment, we can change, we can choose to return to the purpose of this Christmas celebration: honoring the birth of Hope in human form.

 

Even those who are not believers or Christians can identify with this purpose: grateful reflection on the past accompanied by hopeful anticipation of the future.  And it's in this universal spirit that I write today, to reflect on the meaning of this season, in this case through the lens of my relationship with a man named Jimmy.

 

Actually, I'm not 100% sure that his name really is Jimmy, but I've overheard others calling him that, so I've done so, too, and he's never corrected me (whether out of politeness or some other motivation).  What I do know is that Jimmy is homeless and that I often see him on 34th Street on my way to and from Penn Station.

 

Of course, on any given day, one will encounter any number of homeless people on the streets of New York City, many of whom are begging for anything that passersby would care to share.  In my recent experience, this seems to average about one such person per block.  What makes Jimmy just like his peers is that he sits inconspicuously in front of a shuttered storefront with a small sign requesting donations.  But what makes him stand out is that he has a companion, a small, tattered black, white and grey dog whose name I don't know (or, at least, remember).  I've often asked myself what it means about me (and my character) that the primary reason that I noticed him was because of the dog.  When I am totally honest with myself, much to my dismay, I suspect that this is so and it pains me.  Most of his peers I don't recognize, but Jimmy I do, virtually exclusively because of his companion.

 

At least that was the case until one interaction about a month ago that literally rocked my world:  I've made it a habit to donate a dollar to Jimmy each time I pass him and, most importantly while doing so, to acknowledge him/his humanity.  (Certainly being homeless is a stressful life, but often even more painful is the reality that to so/too many of their fellow humans, these least among us are often effectively invisible or, if noticed at all, treated inhumanely/as 'less than.')  One morning just before Thanksgiving, I decided to increase my gift in the spirit of the season and slipped him a five-dollar bill.  He didn't seem to acknowledge the significantly increased donation, responding graciously and appreciatively as usual, but what he said almost stopped me in my tracks.  When I wished him a Happy Thanksgiving and implored "God bless you, brother," he answered confidently and louder than usual that...

 

"He does, every day, and I appreciate it!"

 

I smiled, said "That's great!" and kept walking ... for a few steps at least until it hit me: What?!?  Did a homeless guy just say to me that he feels blessed by God every day?!?  Did I hear that right, that a guy who has nothing and is living on the cold, hard streets of New York City and depends on the kindness of strangers to live feels blessed by God ... and, even more, every day?!?  At this point, I think that I actually stopped walking, as I remember being jostled by several fellow pedestrians, which I assume was as a result of my being lost in befuddlement....

 

I realize now that I was dealing with a thunderbolt to my worldview: as is so often the case in my experience, we meet God in the most unexpected of places ... and for me, on that day, it was in the person of Jimmy.

 

As I regained my equilibrium and began again to my destination, I couldn't stop thinking about what I'd just heard and witnessed (in the truest sense of this word).  And, soon, it - the lesson - came to me:  If Jimmy can feel blessed by God every day, what on earth do I have to complain about/how can I not feel even more blessed and grateful every moment of every day?!?

 

The next time I saw Jimmy, I thanked him for sharing something of great importance with me and, graciously as he accepted that day's donation, he looked up quizzically and said cheerfully, "You're welcome!"  I was just about to explain when I decided on what I thought might be a better course, to wish God's blessings on him again, which then elicited the same response as before.  "Thanks for that lesson, Jimmy!" I said as I walked on feeling renewed and supremely grateful.  "You're welcome!" he again intoned cheerfully as I left and he welcomed his next benefactor.

 

As the Christmas holiday approached, I promised myself that I would stop and talk at greater length with Jimmy when I saw him to learn more about this kind soul whose honest, happy sharing had helped me gain a much better perspective on the vagaries and blessings of my life.  Alas, the several days that I passed his usual spot, he and his companion weren't there.  My heart sank a little bit each time.  I had hoped that in exchange for a little insight into his worldview, I might be able to share a greater kindness, perhaps a larger donation or even the offer of a hot meal in a warm place.  But this was not to be....

 

I come into Christmas this year greatly benefited by my association with Jimmy but as yet unable to share my gratitude with/express my gratitude to him.  So I share it in this blog and hope that somehow, wherever he is on this thankfully more temperate Christmas Day, he'll know that someone is wishing him well and appreciative of him.  And when I see him, of course, I intend to express this fully.

 

Until then, I share with you what Jimmy taught and returned to me: that happiness and fulfillment are a function of one's perspective and, especially, of one's gratitude; that God's abundance is ever present if we choose to be aware of and appreciate it; and that the real giver in our relationship was not me....

 

As I shared with my spiritual brothers at the Men's Breakfast at my church later that week, Jimmy gifted me with one of those life-altering moments of clarity that haunt, illumine and elevate.  If he can feel so blessed, then surely I should (and, by extension, my troubles should be a distant, secondary consideration).

 

And, for the most part, I have been more aware of and appreciative for my blessings and less concerned by my inevitable and ceaseless challenges.  To put a finer point on it, like Jay Z, I got 99 problems - as do we all - but I'm more focused on the reality of my too-innumerable-to-count blessings.  And since Jimmy's gift of perspective, my challenges haven't lessened in number or magnitude, but my appreciation for the context in which I live - and especially the far more voluminous and meaningful extent of my God-given blessings - has certainly grown greatly.

 

Like so many, I was caught in the daily grind and more attuned to the challenges than the gifts.  But now I'm giddily humbled by the abundance in my life and appropriately but not overly concerned with my burdens, which is as it should be.  In sum, this Christmas, I'm truly in the Spirit of the Season, largely thanks to Jimmy.

 

So, Jimmy, my Brother, wherever you are tonight, I hope that you're feeling blessed and know that I realize just how blessed I am, especially by the gift of you in my life.  And I'm most appreciative for your kindness not to point out that, distracted and misperceiving as I was, I was the one who, though I thought I was sharing God with you, was actually meeting Him/Her/It in you.  Thank you for this gift of life, Jimmy. I hope to share something of such profound meaning with you someday.  Until then, I'll keep appreciating my myriad blessings and keep paying them forward in your honor at Christmas and every day.

 

What if God was one of us, indeed.  Just a stranger on a bus, as Joan Osborne sang a few years ago.  Or, in my case, a homeless but generous soul named Jimmy....

 

 

 

 

Blessings and Love: A Reflection On Angels Among Us....

 And thus we rust Life's iron chain

Degraded and alone:

And some men curse, and some men weep,

And some men make no moan:

But God's eternal Laws are kind

And break the heart of stone.

...

How else but through a broken heart

May Lord Christ enter in?

- Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol

 

 

Recently, my dear friend Joanie Collyer passed away after a courageous battle with cancer.  And with her went a little piece of my heart, for, to me, in the five years that I knew her she was tangible proof of God's Grace, a true Angel Among Us.  It wasn't just that Joanie was kind and thoughtful with a wry sense of humor and a heart "as big as the sea" (to quote a song of this Advent season), but also that she was so influential in her completely understated way.  In sum, Joanie taught me that the quietest person in the room can often be the most influential and that one can lead from the background in a very powerful way.

 

And power isn't a concept that one would normally associate with a diminutive 'little old lady' who stood just over five feet.  No, her physical presence was anything but powerful, initially and overtly at least.  But if you ever got to know Joanie, you'd realize just how powerful a person she truly was ... and is.

 

First and foremost, Joanie was a person of great faith.  Both in her professional life - a large portion of which was dedicated to creating opportunities for others to explore and expand their faith - and in her personal one, she was devout.  And yet she was also open: whatever she may have believed herself - and now, upon reflection, I struggle to summarize just what this may have been - it was clear that she was completely dedicated, in her inimitable, understated way, to helping others come to know the Divine in ways that are meaningful to them.

 

Perhaps what captures this best is that Joanie started a revolution.  A small one, perhaps, but a revolution all the same, one that has resulted in the spiritual enrichment of hundreds of people in the past five years.

 

For three decades or so, Joanie worked on the staff at Marble Collegiate Church, a deservedly revered and venerated institution in New York City.  During this time, she excelled at responding to the needs of that congregation by playing a vital role in developing opportunities for that church's parishioners to explore their faith.  And then she came to our church, St. Luke's Episcopal in Montclair, New Jersey, and this is where, quietly as ever, she started the revolution.

 

It all began innocently enough with her planting a seed in our esteemed Rector's fertile mind about the kind of spiritual exploration and enhancement opportunities that Marble was providing to its members.  As St. Luke's has grown under Rev. John Mennell's leadership, so, too, has the interest in and need for more opportunities for the members of our parish and the broader community to cultivate their sense of the Transcendent in their daily, earthly lives.  Joanie suggested that he have members of St. Luke's check out what Marble was doing as they began to address our church's own needs in an expanded and enhanced way.  And that's how our now thriving Spiritual Enrichment effort was born....

 

Little did I know that November day so many years ago that I would be starting a new and deeply meaningful chapter in my life.  I just thought that I'd be checking out an interesting program at Marble and then contributing to the dialogue about what we could do in a similar vein at our church.  It turned out that this was the beginning of a powerful experience of spiritual renewal and expansion for me personally and of a similar revolution at St. Luke's.

 

Joining me at this gathering were two fellow parishioners and church Vestry members, one whom I'd known for years but not that well and another who had joined relatively recently.  Although we didn't realize it at the time, we were, along with our beloved Joanie, the founding members of our church's Spiritual Enrichment Team, most often known by its acronym, SET.

 

What transpired at Marble that evening was truly uplifting and inspiring, as, among other opportunities, we were exposed to and engaged by the work of Rev. Ron Farr and participated in various spiritual exploration exercises in which we were encouraged to get to know other participants, most of whom were members but a meaningful number of whom were visitors like us.  In sum, what my fellow Vestry members and I realized that night was how a thoughtfully constructed and well-executed slate of spiritually-infused programming - in effect, a spiritual 'adult education' effort - could create a powerfully energizing and enriching sense of community among its participants, including both fellow parishioners and members of the broader community.  (In fact, one of my greatest surprises and delights about the experience that night was how welcomed we were made to feel and how the leaders of the various exercises encouraged us to participate just as meaningfully as their fellow Marble members.  In that sacred place and space, there was no "Other," only friends and friends we've just met.)

 

I left Marble that night not only nourished in a way that I'd never previously experienced but also completely committed to helping create a similar effort and opportunity at St. Luke's.  Simply put, though I didn't yet comprehend it fully, in a matter of hours I had become a motivated member of the revolution that Joanie Collyer had started....

 

When we first met, the inaugural members of SET were the three Vestry members who had attended the program at Marble and the diminutive Anglican lady who'd initiated it all.  Truth be told, I had an idea who Joanie was, but it wasn't until that first organizing meeting that I came to know her in any meaningful way.

 

And in the series of a half-dozen meetings or so that resulted in the creation and debut of our initial Spiritual Enrichment effort at St. Luke's, Joanie was a contributor but a seemingly quiet and almost reticent one.  (What I didn't realize at the time was the mark of a true leader: she was just staying in the background until needed, and, over the next few years, would step forward to take a more overt and active leadership role whenever the situation required it.)  What was clear from the very beginning of our efforts was her fierce belief in the power of what we were doing, creating opportunities for others to cultivate their sense of God and His/Her/Its Grace in our daily lives.

 

And that's also something that I came to appreciate about Joanie as I got to know her better: though she was petite and quiet, she was indeed fierce.

 

And kind:

 

As SET was developing its inaugural slate of programming and envisioning how to bring a greater experience of heaven on earth to our church and our community, personally, I was going through hell as I was in the midst of a bitter and protracted divorce and an accompanying (and enervating) slump professionally.  In truth, it was the lowest and most challenging point of my adult life.  Yet, thankfully, as the members of SET worked more closely together and became true friends, we also supported each other as well.  While I was dealing with my exhaustive and exhausting travails, another member was supporting her husband of five decades who was experiencing some major health challenges and a third was just beginning to get a sense of what turned out to be her own life-endangering health challenges to come.  In sum, we were all wounded spiritual seekers and 'warriors,' intent on creating something beautiful and meaningful for our church and the broader community despite the hardships that affected us.  And quietly and constantly, Joanie was our rock....

 

Proactively so, it turns out:  At one particularly challenging point - during Hurricane Sandy when the power and heat in my home were knocked out for two weeks during the beginning of winter - Joanie took me aside and asked me how I was holding up.  Reflexively, I told her that I was fine, but she pressed on in her quiet but firm way.  No, really, she insisted, how was I doing?  The truth was not well at all: although I was putting on a brave face for my children, family members and friends, the reality was that I was besieged and near the end of my tether emotionally, physically and financially.  And Joanie was there, listening compassionately and patiently as my woes gushed out of me involuntarily yet cathartically.  When I was done I was exhausted and thanked her for being so patient and supportive and then apologized for saddling her with my burdens.  She dismissed this kindly and took hold of my hand, prayed with and for me and then put something in it: a small wad of bills amounting to a couple hundred dollars.  Overcome by her kindness but proud to a fault, when I objected, she shushed me and insisted that I accept her gift, so I did....

 

Yes, it felt good to release my burdens, but, truth be told, it felt even better to know that, by her proactively caring presence, it was clear that Joanie was a source of compassion and strength upon which I could draw during that very dark time.  And so I did: every few weeks she would check in with me and inquire as to how I was really doing ... and every few weeks I would let down my guard and share this with her.  Things eventually improved for me to the point where I could repay her monetary kindness, but, politely yet firmly, she refused.  What I realized then and appreciate now was that my experience with Joanie was a true expression of who she was and is: an Angel Among Us, tangible proof of God's Grace in our daily life.

 

And while our Spiritual Enrichment effort debuted to rave reviews and then was renewed and expanded in subsequent years, Joanie was the quiet yet consistently energizing presence at its core.  And when members of SET had to change or scale back their involvement for periods of time, Joanie invariably stepped up and in and became the coordinator and logistical leader of our efforts.

 

And then her own health challenges began.  Truth be told, Joanie was proud, too: she didn't disclose her true situation to us for some time.  Yes, her work with SET energized her in ways that helped her deal with the physical and emotional demands of chemotherapy, but she really didn't tell us the full extent of her challenges because she didn't want us to worry.  Each of her fellow SET members was either still contending with his or her own challenges or trying to start a new, more positive chapter in life, so Joanie insisted that we focus on this and not her.  I realize now that I should have been more like her and insisted that she allow me/us to support her as proactively and meaningfully as she had done for me/us over the years.

 

She did let us in a bit, but mostly she soldiered on valiantly while thanking us for our concern but insisting that we go on about our lives: about as much as she would let me do was to pray for her on a regular basis.  In fact, while she was in the midst of excruciating rounds of chemotherapy, she was equally fierce in performing her SET duties.  And over time as it became clear that her personal battle would be a losing one, she was nonetheless conscientious and committed.

 

But the toll that it was taking was evident, both in her physical appearance and in her emotional aura.  In good health, Joanie, in her invariably understated way, would radiate a joy and good humor that was infectious and uplifting for all in her presence.  As she battled her cancer, that glow dimmed noticeably, which I took to be an indication of the true magnitude of her challenges.  While she continued to eschew my attempts to support her as meaningfully as she had me, I decided to send her a note expressing my continuing commitment to and appreciation for her.  In part, it read:

 

But it's more than this, it's your warm, loving, caring presence, too.  Whenever you are in a room, the others who are so fortunate know that their well-being is being tended ever so quietly and reverently.  We know that you have our best interests at heart and are actively seeking to be loving in that most truly Christian way: you are so generous with your healing and uplifting spirit and yet you do so in such a self-effacing and almost retiring way that sometimes your touch is only appreciated upon reflection.  It's this soft but loving gift of spirit about which I marvel and for which I am so thankful.

I've never believed in angels, Joanie.  They're one of those mythological aspects of ancient Christianity that actually has tended to repel me rather than inspire me over the years.  Until now, that is.  Because now, in you, I see an angel in the flesh and know that God is (always) quietly present and loving and supportive because you are.  My faith has been so deepened by your example and I have been so inspired by you that I have come to know Christ more meaningfully through you and thereby been indescribably more blessed (in the midst of what, ostensibly, is one of the darkest times of my life).  I pray that you realize how much of a gift you truly are....

And she fought valiantly on, doing amazing work with and on behalf of her SET colleagues, even as it became increasingly challenging physically and emotionally.  In truth, I regret that I didn't insist on doing more with and for her during what turned out to be her last few months, but I allowed her to define the proximity of our relationship.  Even though I saw her deterioration with my own eyes, I couldn't quite accept this reality fully, in part because I'd come to assume that her quietly indomitable will would somehow create a last-minute miracle reprieve if not cure.

 

But she left us nonetheless, physically at least.  She will always be a part of us in spirit and in this way will live on through the lives she touched in her earthly life, expanded exponentially by the lives that these lives will touch in turn.  Even now, there are hundreds of people who either didn't know Joanie or barely knew her who owe her a debt of gratitude for the opportunities that she helped to create and from which they've benefited greatly.

And even more than this, she will live on in my life and spirit because she was truly an Angel Among Us.  I will always know and feel the presence of the Divine more intimately and more powerfully because of His/Her/Its manifestation in my life in the form of Joanie Collyer....

When she signed off an email, Joanie would close with "Blessings and Love," which, it turns out, is a fitting epitaph for her.  In her earthly life, Joanie Collyer was for those privileged to know her a true blessing and manifestation of God's Love.  So, to you, Joanie, I offer my own blessings and love as your journey continues in spiritual form and hope that you know just how much you have meant and will continue to mean to those of us enriched by the abundance of your spirit.  Thank you, too, for reminding us that there are indeed Angels Among Us, quiet but powerful (and fierce) leaders in our midst who encourage us to live more fully, love more boldly and broadly and be more of what the Good Lord created us to be.

And this, as far as I can tell, is the very embodiment (and legacy) of life well-lived, a life like that of the indomitably sweet and spiritual Anglican woman named Joanie Collyer....
 

Set Adrift on Memory Bliss....

"Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it."

- L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

Ah, the holidays, they are upon us....

 

And, so, too, are the quickened pace of gift-getting and meal-planning and vacation-planning and ... so on.  And, yet, what are the holidays really all about?  Most of us would probably say that they're about family, which is supposed to mean spending quality time with our loved ones.  What it can also mean is preparing for the inevitable friction that can result whenever people who know each other well get together for an extended visit.

 

Or it could mean rising above this, focusing on the big picture and staying above it all in a detached, Zen-like way....  (Yeah, right!?!)

 

Some might say that the holidays are a time of faith and of observing the sacred moments associated with this time of year.  Also, in a more secular sense, they can be about renewal and the opportunity to change with the calendar.

 

For me, all of these are true: the holidays are about reveling in quality time with one's family and loved ones, of celebrating the promise of new life based in faith and of choosing to change in order to enhance one's experience in the near term. 

 

And yet they're also about something else for me now: the holidays are a time to express gratitude by consciously making memories.  Amidst the hubbub of the season, I've decided to try to create special moments for those I love, however modest these may be, in an offering of what matters most and is eternal: the love that we share with and extend to each other.

 

So far this Thanksgiving, among other things, this has taken the form of sharing great news with my gathered family (and having it shared on my behalf with another branch thereof gathered elsewhere) and of a brief but memorable journey to one of my sacred places, the wonder of which is now a shared experience among us all.  Next up is a fun getaway weekend with my Beloved and a Christmas with modest but meaningful gifts and a different type of gathering by which to enhance the celebration.

 

The genesis of the idea is simple: this year, as in years past, as I drove with my family to our annual Thanksgiving gathering with (almost all of) the Bookers, I couldn't help but think of my own many happy memories of family gatherings on this sacred but technically secular holiday ... and I regaled them with stories of crazy uncles I had to watch out for, aunts with mustaches that tickled when you kissed them on the cheek, a grandmother with so many grandkids that while I always felt special to her I also felt less unique and crazy and slightly sadistic older cousins possessed of a warped sense of responsibility to help me "be(come) a man" by hazing in me in ways that would now be considered illegal.  In other words, you know, great times!

 

And I encouraged the kids to see the upcoming Thanksgiving gathering as just that: an opportunity to create memories to be savored for a lifetime (in a much safer way than during my own youth, of course).

 

And it happened:  I'm pretty sure that we'll all remember when two of the three of them actually tried chitlins, joining generations of African-Americans who've savored this delicacy and its rich cultural heritage and legacy.  (Actually, I suspect that what we really learned is that the tradition of chitlins is virtually guaranteed to stop with their generation, at least on my limb of the family tree....)   And I know that I'll long remember that journey into North Newark to visit the site of a legendary local Italian bakery to purloin two of the desserts that were so ravenously consumed that their time out of the box in which they were presented could be measured in mere seconds.  And who can forget the experience of everyone jamming into the kitchen to listen to recordings of family gatherings from more than a half-century before?  (Yep, that's right: my dear late uncle Robbie, God bless him, had the foresight to record those Thanksgiving events on an ancient tape recorder so that more than fifty-five years later we can hear now 60+-year old relatives as they sounded when they were little kids, learning to perform "Jesus Loves Me This I Know" in front of the friendliest audience ever, and the voices of those who've gone on to a better place but whose presence lingers and loves those of us who were fortunate to know them in their time on earth.)  And then there was the next day's trip to Newport....

 

And therein lies the lesson that I've learned about the holidays: to savor the experience and thereby to create memories that encourage us to keep savoring and living and loving.

 

And was there a little drama to go along with the festivities?  Not really.  It's one of the things that I appreciate most about the Bookers, my father's side of the family: they really do love each other and enjoy each others' company and other than minor squabbling over the proper sequencing of foodstuffs in the buffet line or who's responsible for the black eyed peas being a half-hour late in preparation, there really wasn't much drama to record, as there typically isn't.  (I also appreciate that this may be a unique experience from others' perspectives, but I hope that whatever drama you did experience was outweighed by the joy and hilarity of your family gathering ... or, if it wasn't, you're more than welcome to join us next year!)

 

So, memory collecting season is now in full swing.  I hope that you, too, are gifted with - and gift yourself with - moments to be savored for a lifetime, and, in so doing, experience the eternal in the here and now.  Wherever your journey leads, may you recognize and appreciate the blessings of this life in the moment and for all time ... and avoid that crazy uncle and learn to kiss that scratchy-faced aunt mid-cheek....

 

My most sincere wishes for a safe, happy, restorative, enriching and ever-memorable holiday experience to you all!

 

Celebrating The Sacred....

"The sacred, I shall say, is that which acts as your partner

in the search for the highest and deepest things:

the real, the true, the good, and the beautiful."

- Brendan Myers

It took me over four months to compose my last blog post, which was quite a disappointing, frustrating and new experience for me: I've rarely had writer's block.  And so many reflection-worthy developments occurred during that time: it was hard to be unable to capture my perspective on them.  And yet it's taken me just a day to produce this piece because upon reflection, the re-reading of that blog post, conscious appreciation of the numerous kind comments about it on FaceBook and a perusing of several of my friends' FB posts, it hit me: I was disheartened and disoriented by my perception of the loss of the sacred.  More simply put, what has kept me from writing is that I'm wounded spiritually and psychically by the turbulent and tragic world in which we live and the dismayingly deteriorating American society of which I am/we are a part.

It can be summed up simply in a question:

 

What's become of us?

 

As I asked myself this question for real, not rhetorically, for the umpteenth time, from that quiet space and place in my soul where God abides, the answer emerged softly yet powerfully: I ache because I believe that we've lost the sense of the healing, steeling sacred in our lives, that appreciation for the mysterious gift of life that make us humane and loving toward ourselves and our fellows.  Whether it's the atrocities abroad or the injustices at home, each of these disturbing and immobilizing developments chips away at that part of us - or at least of me - that risks to live ever more fully, abundantly and lovingly.

 

This being said, I accept that my calling and God-given command are to be a gift to this world (and, in effect, a re-gift from the Lord to those He/She/It privileges me to touch in and with my life).  And yet so often my gift, imperfectly given as always, seems too small to matter in the great sea of our miasma and mayhem.

 

One way that I could react is to give up and in to the pervading negativity and, ultimately, nihilism ... but I know deep in my soul that this isn't the way.  Certainly it would be a less painful choice in the short-run, but ultimately it would lead to disaster: if we have nothing to live for we can easily loose our self-selected constraints and compulsions to humanity.  If everything's awful anyway, what does it matter that I don't make an effort, try my best, care?  If the world's going to hell in a handbasket anyway, shouldn't I/we just have fun before the arrival?

 

And even though I know that a negative answer to this negative proposition will be costly (and supremely so at times), I feel compelled - and called by the God who created me and us all - to make the more difficult choice: to resist the powers of evil and negativity and fight mightily to share and spread light and love.

 

So how does one do this in such a too-often dark world, spread light and love?

 

One answer that I've discovered comes from a spiritual mentor and fellow Christian 'heretic' whom I'm proud to know, Bishop John Shelby Spong.  As I noted in a previous installment of this blog in a reflection on the lives of some friends who've left me/us too soon this year:

(I)n reality, if death has any lesson to teach us in life, it's that we must live life to the fullest now.  In the words of the incomparable Bishop John Shelby Spong, we must "live fully, love wastefully and be all that (we) can be."

What the Bishop's wisdom and perspicacity have helped me to understand is that we honor God and the gift of life by living fully, fearlessly and lovingly in the present moment (which does not mean to live only for the present moment, but in it).  Tomorrow is not promised, so I/we should both enjoy, live fully and love wastefully today and in a way that we can do so even more meaningfully and impactfully tomorrow (if we receive the blessed gift of that day).

 

So, how do I/we do this?

 

As I've pondered the answer to this seemingly simple (but profound) question, I've come up with a few answers, one of which I'd like to share now:  In order to live fully, love wastefully and be all that we can be, we are called to know The Sacred in ourselves and others and to honor this as much and well as we can.  If I love myself, (one of things that) I'll know (is) what's sacred to me ... and nourish and celebrate this.  And if I love others, I'll get to know what's sacred to them and support and join them in nourishing and celebrating it (provided, of course, that it affirms and enhances life).

 

What's sacred to me?

 

Sharing via this blog has certainly become so this year.  (Of course, the kind comments that friends and family members have shared in return have heightened my appreciation for this experience even more.)  And quiet moments reading have always nourished my soul, especially challenging inquiries into theology or sociology or biography or, once a decade, historical fiction.  So, too, the austere, contemplative grandeur of an early morning spoken word church service, which moves me almost every time and leads me to contemplate the Great Mystery of Life always.

Sacred, too, are crazy-busy weekends with the kids, who've taken to our blended/Brady Bunch family like ducks to water.  And family movie nights together on the couch invariably stir the soul as they delight the heart.  This new phase of my life as a parent, when my children are teenagers who are largely self-directed and thus pursuing new adventures in addition to still valuing family time, is also a blessing: I've been able to parent appreciably while also reclaiming a bit of my personal life and time (while they're off exploring the world).  It's nice to be able to focus on oneself a bit while caring for the young adults who are no longer your babies physically but will always be so emotionally.  And yet I savor the memories of them from back in the day even as I know that the next time there will be babes is when those children are their own....

And deliciously, delightfully and unexpectedly sacred is the love that I've found in mid-life (after having been a party to two failed marriages).  Not that I didn't believe in love - I have always been and hopefully always will be a hopeful romantic - but I didn't expect to find it again in such a different and better form.

When I was young, my values were different and so, too, were my choices, including those of mates.  As I've aged - and, likely, matured - I've come to appreciate what I consider a more realistic and workable model for relationships, especially committed ones.  Simply put, when I was young, I underrated the value of niceness and overvalued external considerations.

Now, I realize that the essence of any strong, positive, lasting relationship is true friendship and companionship.  Now, I realize that money can be earned and lost and earned again, but, in itself, it offers little beyond the temporal.  Now, I realize that where you go and what you do is always secondary (and often ancillary) to with whom you journey.  Ah, how costly those middle age 'Duh!'s can be....

Now, I appreciate fully that love and proactive kindness can heal, ennoble and embolden the soul beyond measure.  And nothing is ever more sacred than the opportunity to give love in ways that are meaningful, both to those whom you love and to those whom you may not and who cannot ever repay you.  Yes, it's a good thing to be loving to those we love and who love us in return.  And yet, it's a different and wonderful thing to be loving with those whom we may not know, especially those who can never repay us, because such love is truly altruistic (if it's motivated solely by the desire to pay one's myriad blessings forward).

So, in an effort to experience the sacred every day, I try to be loving - proactively so - with my loved ones and even with those whom I don't know.  I realize that my salvation has come from reveling in, celebrating and acting on the opportunity to express my gratitude by giving.  Yes, the world is troubling and too often ugly ... but within this, there are always opportunities to create and experience beauty.  By refocusing myself on expressing gratitude for my still myriad and ever abundant blessings, I have regained possession of my soul and found my voice again.

It turns out that what had me out of rhythm was that I'd forgotten that one can and should always start small and work from inside out.  I forgot that re-claiming The Sacred is really about sharing it, even - or perhaps especially - in those times when I feel less able to do so.  It turns out that The Sacred is always one loving kindness away ... and the awareness of this is in itself an experience thereof.

So, I share a lesson that I've had to learn again and have learned again: to reclaim The Sacred, give of yourself lovingly and thereby make your experience of the world real, true, good and beautiful.  The Sacred is never "out there" waiting to come in; it's "in there" waiting to get out ... so let it out.  No, the world won't change overnight, but your/our experience of it will.  And therein lies The Sacred, to experience the real, the true, the good and the beautiful in every moment, even amidst the chaos....

In Living Color....

"We must accept finite disappointment, but never lose infinite hope."



-Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

 

 

The world we live in is a troubling place indeed.  Syria.  Iraq.  The Ukraine.  New York.  Ferguson.  South LA.  The first three of these are international geopolitical hotspots, the latter three are domestic ones (where, sadly, unarmed Black men have died at the hands of local police in just the past few months).  While I am troubled by the seemingly endless string of international challenges, truth be told, the domestic ones are consuming ever more of my focus (and disaffection) of late.  There will always be challenges among nation-states as they attempt to follow their respective manifest destinies in a culturally diverse world ... and apparently the same is true with the citizens of our republic.  In a society in which we've seemingly enshrined selfishness and fear of The Other as cardinal values over the years, we are now reaping the bitter fruits of these efforts: our communal relations are fraying, especially across color and socio-economic lines.

Yet I cannot help but wonder what Rev. King would make of this world and of our society, both of which seem to be moving away from the Beloved Community that he envisioned and in pursuit of which he died.  We seem to be increasingly dismayed by our polarizing and polarized community relations and yet unable to acknowledge that we are the cause of (the majority of) the problem.  Why are we (so) surprised?

For example, generally speaking, we have a fundamental problem with being able to acknowledge the (continuing) challenges of race and (enduring, ever-present, especially institutional) racism in our country.  So many want us to be "post-racial" ... which, in reality, for (many/most) Blacks means that we're tired of being on the proverbial short end of the stick and wish our society would become more fair, equitable, inclusive and authentic (as in living up to its supposed creeds) and for (many/most) whites means that they're tired of hearing about it and want us to pretend that we're living in a color-blind society so that they don't have to address the legacy of the problem (that, in fairness, most of them didn't create but inherited along with the privileges that accrue thereto...).

To put a finer point on it, it's stunning that in the second decade of the 21st century, there would be both a need for and such a vehement reaction to Nicholas Kristof's recent and excellent 3-part "When Whites Just Don't Get It" New York Times editorial series.  In essence, what Kristof does so brilliantly is to acknowledge the realities of present and continuing racism (of both the institutional and individual varieties) and the Black disenfranchisement and resulting anger and white privilege and resulting insouciance that pervade - and in many cases preclude - our ability to have a collectively beneficial dialogue about this or to develop a shared commitment to solution-seeking to address it.

[As I so often do now at mid-life, I find myself shaking my head and wondering how we can begin to address our problems if we can't even acknowledge the reality of them.  For example, (most/many) Blacks' and (many/most) whites' divergent reactions to President Obama are instructive here: most Blacks are disappointed with him, too, but acknowledge the unprecedented obstruction that he's faced from a literally do-nothing Congress (and the thinly-veiled racism that seems to undergird and sustain it), but whites blame him for virtually everything to the point of parody.  Now ebola is his fault.  Before this it was ... (fill in your own blanks here).  Yet few voices have credited him with the clear successes during his administration including the economic recovery (which, given that it has disproportionately benefited the wealthiest among us would seem to elicit at least some acknowledgment and appreciation from them if not fervent praise), the recent dramatic reduction in oil/gasoline prices (though the President was widely blamed for their record increase a few years ago), Obamacare (because, despite the asinine and insane demonizing of a program to provide basic healthcare to millions of our least advantaged fellow citizens, the predicted apocalypse has not come and, even better, more of us have lived [not] to see this), etc.  I mean, can anyone really imagine a white President who had the nation's most prominent enemy eliminated - in our case this being Osama bin Laden a few years ago - not being lauded profusely and in an extended way as a hero/savior?  Funny, but I don't remember much fawning from the right (and typically more national security-obsessed) side of our political spectrum or its 'news' and policy organs and I've come to expect the tepid and temporary responses of the cowed and cowardly center-left and their media outlets and pundits.  The point is that to a far greater degree than ever before, this President is blamed and not credited ... and yet so/too many of us refuse to acknowledge that race has played some (if not a determining) role in this.  Obviously we won't be able to solve a problem that too many of us either pretend doesn't exist and/or don't want to do the collective work to address....]

Or, what is to be made of the heightened role of religion in our society currently?  Certainly this country is dominated by Christians - its most populous religious group - and also disproportionately influenced by the sub-segment of conservative/fundamentalist adherents thereof.  And yet in our society the most prevalent strain of this belief system supposedly derived from an illiterate, itinerant Jewish sage and faith healer two millennia ago most often contrasts with its patron's behavioral and spiritual example.

Was not Jesus, in effect, what we've come to describe as a socialist?  Did He not advocate a fairer distribution of the resources of the unjust society of His day?  Did He not advocate on behalf of the poor and disenfranchised to be treated more compassionately - indeed, humanely - and included more meaningfully in the society of His day?

Does not the modern Christian Right seem to stand in direct opposition - and, in reality, contradiction - to this example today?  Is it not in fact aligned with the rich and powerful such that it joins in and extends the exclusion and oppression of those whom Jesus served and elevated in His earthly time?  Could the modern-day Christian Right be any more unChristian (to borrow a term from Dave Kinnaman, one of its own contemporary chroniclers)?

And our politics reflect this dissolution and disaffecton:  To consider just one example, in this election year, what is to be made of the on-going campaign to restrict access to the most fundamental of American and democratic rights, that to vote?  For a variety of reasons - and most often under the guise of an attempt to address the effectively non-existent problem of voter fraud by instituting onerous voter ID requirements - there has been a consistent effort to disenfranchise ever more of our fellow citizens in the past half-dozen years.  And it's not partisan but an acknowledgment of objective fact to note that the vast majority of this effort has been led by and for the benefit of the Republican Party.  Further and sadly not shockingly, those most affected and likely disenfranchised by these successful efforts are those who are less likely to vote Republican (like People of Color, the poor and the working class, the elderly, etc.).  When added to the craven gerrymandering that has occurred in the last decade under a mostly Republican-controlled House of Representatives - to the extent that some have estimated that Democrats will have to earn in excess of five million votes more than their Republican counterparts just to be as successful/prevail as often in congressional races - the pattern is clear: rather than compete for votes honestly and ethically, Republicans have chosen to win the old-fashioned way, by suppressing their opponents as much as possible.

And yet this suppression oppresses us all: as political analysts have noted for years (if not centuries), an overtly favored and inherently incumbent party that's not worried about losing elections begins to diverge in its leadership from the interests of the electorate.  Which is a really nice way of saying that a party that has the game rigged in its favor and that isn't particularly beholden to or concerned about the interests of its ostensible constituents will begin to govern in ways that reflect this.  Or, to put it even more bluntly, the result of disenfranchising literally hundreds of thousands - if not millions - of voters is the modern Republican Party: morally bankrupt, overtly classist and slavishly attentive to the interests of the few at the expense of the many.

[And don't even let me get started on the myriad negative impacts of our allowing our political system to become awash with special-interest money.  Let's just consider the following briefly to illustrate the point and then move on: what would Washington be like if K Street (i.e., the lobbying industry) were eliminated?  Perhaps not nirvana, but certainly more responsive to us regular citizens to a far greater degree than it is today....]

So, returning to Dr. King and his vision of the Beloved Community: we are almost compelled to ask if this is a dream that we can or do share today.  Do we really want a society in which the diverse interests of its diverse citizens are considered and reflected in the delineation of the boundaries within which we live and the values by which we live?  If so, what are willing to do - which really means what sacrifices are we willing to make - to achieve this?

Or, following the oft-brilliant and trenchant satirist Stephen Colbert, should we just acknowledge that this is (too) hard and we just don't want to do it?

At a minimum, what is imperative is that we realize that this is indeed a choice.  Too often we shrug our collective shoulders and absolve ourselves of responsibility by asking rhetorically, "What can you do?  That's just the way it is...."

And yet this isn't true, and that's the point: we have made this mess - or, in most individual cases, allowed it to happen on our watch - and thus we can unmake or refashion it into something preferable.  We can educate ourselves.  We can engage in constructive dialogue.  We can empathize and behave compassionately and inclusively.  We can disagree agreeably and focus on developing ever more common ground.  We can engage more fully in our local and national societal/governmental life and processes.  We can vote.

Or, to follow the ever-prescient Dr. King, we can accept finite disappointment but never lose infinite hope, especially by acting in ever more humane, constructive and inclusive ways....

 

 

From the Mouths of Babes....

"If your dreams don't scare you, they're not big enough."

-Miguel Diaz, SEO Scholars Program Class of 2014,

Franklin & Marshall College Class of 2018

Ah, these kids today!  What do they know?!?  Yep, as a father of three teenagers and a mentor to hundreds of young summer interns (and to thousands of them over the years), I've said this many times.  In fact, I say it often still.  And, much as I prefer not to acknowledge it most of the time, I know the answer: a lot.  Maybe not about the stuff that we adults think they should know - or, at least, based on their behavior at times, not in the way that we think they should know it - but the reality is that our children and young people do know a lot ... and likely a lot more than we did at their age.

Take, for instance, young Mr. Diaz, whom I quoted above: what does he know?  Well, as I listened to him share this and other nuggets of wisdom with his fellow graduates of the Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (high school) Scholars Program Class of 2014, I thought to myself, "Apparently, a lot!"  And yet I wondered if he really knew/fully appreciated what he had just shared.  Does he understand how profound a suggestion his is?, I wondered to myself.

I was tempted in my adult all-knowingness to assume that he didn't.  Immediately, I was filled with thoughts like, "Why, if this kid really understood what he was saying, he'd know that life's not necessarily about dreams but about playing the hand that it deals you in the best way that you can at the time and over time."  Or "Sure, at your age, you can say that because you don't know how truly scary life can be."  Etc.

And after a few of these self-reassuring and -satisfied justifications, a new reality dawned on me:  As the British used to say in my youth, "By jove, I think he's got it!"  In fact, this 18-year old has clarity on something many - and probably far too many - of us 'adults' have forgotten or unlearned long ago: life is indeed about dreams, about pursuing them passionately and especially about pursuing them courageously.

How many of us who've been around for a while get up every day truly trying to live our dreams?  How many of us gave up on our dreams long ago and settled for something meaningful enough but not quite enough to ignite our passions fully?  How many of us don't think that dreams are appropriate any more for adults who have commitments like marriages, families, mortgages, kids' tuitions, elders for whom to care, etc.?

How many of us even know what our dreams are (anymore)?

For too many of us, life has taught us that dreams are nice but (too) costly.  We appreciate the blessings that we have (more or less), but we don't fight passionately to create fully the vision that we have (or once had) and thereby to create the world anew as we believe that it should be.  We bemoan our fate globally and socially - we remind ourselves that the world is so screwed up and in some ways getting worse on our watch - and confine our focus to the daily life of the loving commitments that we've already made - both personal/familial and professional/communal - at, what it turns out, is the cost of our dreams.  We've been taught by life in its inevitable travails and occasional triumphs to focus on the possible, not on making the impossible happen/making infinite possibilities real.  And therein lies our mistake, a mistake that young Mr. Diaz and his fellow SEO grads have yet to make ... and, we pray, that they never will....

Dr. M. Scott Peck, author of the classic book The Road Less Traveled, defines courage thusly:

Courage is not the absence of fear; it is the making of action in spite of fear,

the moving out against the resistance engendered by fear into the unknown and into the future.

What life has taught most of us adults is that the pursuit of dreams can be and usually is supremely costly.  Consequently, we are more constrained by fear than our children are.  They don't know better yet - in large part because we've endeavored successfully to shield them from many (if not most) of life's harsher realities - and thus they have the privilege of dreaming ... while we have the responsibility of living, especially of living up to our commitments.  Or so we tell ourselves....

In fairness, Mr. Diaz's youthful ambition is not yet fully tempered by the world, but let's hope that it never is, because therein lies a lesson for those of us who are a few (or even many) years further down life's road:  Why can't we dream?  Why don't we dream (anymore)?  There are indeed a million (good) reasons why we can't just drop everything and do what we dreamed long ago or even what we secretly dream of today.  Yet there are a million and one reasons why we should, especially that, as far as we know, we only get this one trip through life.  Simply put, if we don't live our dreams now/in this life, when will we?

This is the lesson that Mr. Diaz taught me (and, presumably, many of the other adults in the admiring audience) earlier this week: whatever your age, whatever your circumstances, dream big and pursue them courageously.  After all, for those of us much older than Mr. Diaz, presumably, we have less time to do so, so our pursuit should be the most passionate and courageous of all....

Courage is a funny thing: most of us believe ourselves to have it, and yet, if we examine our lives more closely, we'll find that our definition of courage and Dr. Peck's diverge greatly and to our detriment.  It is indeed courageous to take on all of the commitments that we do over the course of a lifetime; yet it is the opposite of courageousness to allow these commitments to distract us from the simultaneous pursuit of our dreams or, even worse, to extinguish those dreams altogether.

If I've learned anything from mentoring young people in the past 30 years, it is exactly this: that from the mouths of babes, from the minds and hearts of those we would presume to lead and instruct, often comes wisdom that we ourselves need to regain or, in some cases, to learn for the first time.  Simply put, as much as I've supposedly been teaching, I've learned even more....

I was raised by my family - and especially by my mother - and by the Jesuits at U of D High School to be a "Man for Others."  In my young adult life, I was fortunate to come to know, to be developed by and to be presented the opportunity to contribute meaningfully to SEO (Sponsors for Educational Opportunity).  SEO gave me the first break in my adult professional life, an internship on Wall Street, and I found a career.  SEO also gave me the first break in my adult personal life, an opportunity to serve, and I found a calling....

As much as Mr. Diaz's challenge was aimed at his 18-year old peers, it actually was an even bigger one to those whose lifespans can be measured in multiples of his.  I pay tribute to him today in this meditation because, once again, he has proven one of life's greatest lessons: that the teacher often learns much (if not more) from the student.

And what a meaningful lesson his is: to live fully, to be scared by what we dream and yet (to have the courage) to pursue it passionately in spite of this fear, as if the cost of this pursuit will not matter nearly as much as the rewards of doing so.  Because, as so many of us have forgotten in our 'maturity,' it won't: the real living is in the journey, not in the reaching of the goal.  Indeed, the point of living is to make the unreal real, to create the world anew in our own unique ways, to strive and in this striving to grow, to contribute and in this contribution to forge a legacy, to achieve and to fail and in this achievement and failure to live fully into whomever our Maker has created us to be....

Every day going forward I will remind myself to be scared for the right reason - not because I'm worried about failing but because I'm awed by the profundity of the possibilities that await and tempt me - and I will have one of my students, young Mr. Diaz, to thank.

What are your dreams?  Are they big enough?  Do they scare you?  And what young person in your life will remind and inspire you to live them fully today and every day?

Walking the Christian Talk....

One of the scribes came near and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, he asked him, “Which commandment is the first of all?”   Jesus answered, “The first is, ‘Hear, O Israel: the Lord our God, the Lord is one;  you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’   The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.  (Mark 12:28-31)

For Christians, according to our Patron, the second greatest Commandment is to "love your neighbor as yourself."  Suffice it to say that, upon observing the behavior of the vast, diverse group who self-identify as Christians, this seemingly simple directive appears to be a daunting challenge indeed.  Further, it would seem that those who profess to follow Jesus Christ should try to emulate His example.  Here, too, this ostensibly simple calling proves far more challenging in practice.  As Gandhi noted, “I like your Christ; I do not like your Christians.  Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”


Why are we Christians so unlike our Christ?


Well, the first reason is an obvious one, that we are not, as we were taught to believe, fully divine or the Son of God as he was, so we aren't capable of emulating him fully.  Perhaps.  As Episcopal Bishop John Shelby Spong has noted, what made Christ so transcendent was his full humanity, that he gave himself away at every turn, seizing every opportunity to be loving and life-enhancing.  And as second century Bishop of Lyons St. Iraneus observed, the glory of God is man (i.e., human beings) fully alive.  Jesus was certainly fully alive and a vessel for the Holy Spirit to be made manifest in our world during his earthly life.  Accordingly, His example is an eternal one, both in the sense that it endures throughout the ages and in the sense that it serves for all time as a cardinal example of a life well-lived.


Yet, again following Bishop Spong, can't we (more consistently) choose to live fully, love wastefully (as in giving ourselves away lovingly and unconditionally as Jesus did) and be all that we can be?  I believe so ... which is why so much of so-called Christian behavior troubles me, both historically speaking and contemporarily.


The historical examples are legion, so at the risk of giving them short shrift, I will cite a single illustrative example and move on.  The Inquisition of the Middle Ages now appears to us to have been an extended and immoral example of religiocentrism.  Some Christians in positions of power took it upon themselves to determine what were the acceptable practices of the faith and then enforced these views repressively and inhumanely for hundreds of years.  Their sense of religious exceptionalism even led them to consider themselves the sole arbiters of the path to God, which led them to persecute not only those Christians whom they considered to be heretical but practitioners of other "false" faiths as well.  Countless lives were sacrificed by the self-selected Elect in the name of (the Christian) God.


(In its modern incarnation, such inhumanity in the name of God is the cause of extremism and terrorism of all types, from "Christian" paramilitary groups and abortion clinic bombers to Islamist jihadists, etc.)


Today, especially in the United States, we find ourselves with a widening gap of opinion (or, if you will, fraying consensus) with respect to the practice of our faith.  On the one side are the Christian fundamentalists and literalists who insist on the inerrancy of Scripture, profess to espouse "conservative" or "family values" and claim any number of religiocentric views on behalf of their perception of the Christian God.


On the other hand are the Christian liberals and progressives who are only now beginning to respond vigorously to the re-definition of American Christianity successfully pursued by the Religious Right in the past half-century.  This group is more inclusive and accepting by nature, so its views are more varied as is its approach both to its faith and to the dialogue within and outside of the Christian community.  This diffusion has not served it well historically as the designation of "Christian" is most likely to be associated with fundamentalism and not liberalism today.  As one friend put it a few years ago, based on the behavior of some of the more proactive fundamentalists of today, she doesn't like to identify herself as a Christian because it's not typically considered to be a positive reference in the collective consciousness.


Why would anyone be embarrassed to be a Christian today?


Well, because of the frequent and visible behavior patterns of many other self-identified (and mostly self-described conservative) Christians, which, to many, appear to be the very antithesis of the Patron's example.  One viewing of the documentary Jesus Camp will acquaint the reader with a vivid example thereof.  And it's hard to know where to start when considering the twisted mixing of pseudo-Christian moralism and our modern political process.  That we even have a concept that has enjoyed great notoriety in recent years called the War on Women, led ostensibly by self-described conservative (Republican) Christians (who are also apparently all male), is another such example.  That they would presume to legislate the behavior of their sisters in Christ without the latter's engagement is another frightening example of how twisted the use of our faith has become.


Yet, the example on which I would like to focus most is that of our treatment of the poor, the less fortunate, the other, the different among us.  Suffice it to say that one of our major political parties has made great hay by vilifying these groups, inciting a distrust cloaked in pseudo-Christian hypocrisy that is almost hard to describe in its depth and breadth.  How anyone could see cutting social welfare benefits for the least fortunate or giving tax breaks to the billionaire owners of corporations whose employees are paid so little that they rely on those very same benefits as being reflective of - much less being motivated by - Christian faith is beyond my and many others' comprehension.  The poor are seemingly demonized at every turn now, yet weren't they Jesus' special focus during his lifetime?


Many of us understand our Christian calling as to be joyfully charitable - meaning inclusive, loving and giving - to those who are less fortunate and/or somehow different or (incorrectly/inhumanely but invariably considered) 'lesser'.  As Jesus was recorded as saying in the Gospel of Matthew:


"Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me."  (25:40)


Based on this and numerous other similar statements attributed to Him, it would appear that Jesus expected something much different from us than we now often see.


And when this calling is interpreted in our political realm, it seems to become all but perverted completely.  In fact, many of the policies advocated by so-called religious or social conservative leaders and politicians seem to be the very antithesis of the Patron's charge to us.  That the Christian faith is associated with the support of the status quo and protecting the privileges of the few (i.e., the wealthy and powerful who control and benefit disproportionately from it) is only recently being contested vigorously in our societal dialogue, as abhorrent and antithetical as it may be to some.  Wasn't Jesus executed precisely because He contested the corrupt and oppressive established order of his day?  What would He do in today's world?  Somehow I can't see Him hangin' with the Plutocrats....


So how do we become better Christians?


The answer may lie in not becoming better Christians, actually, but by striving to be what Rev. Dr. Obery Hendricks calls "Followers of Jesus," people of faith who are committed to emulating Jesus' example in the profession and practice of their faith.  Followers of Jesus (or, as they were known in the first century, Followers of The Way) are loving, inclusive and community-focused as was their patron.  They are not concerned with creating a (rule- and dogma-defined) religion or an (institutional) church or with accumulating wealth and power in this earthly life as much as they were concerned with the communal welfare of all and with sharing with each other in uplifting and mutually beneficial ways.  (Yes, they would indeed be labeled "socialists" in today's enflamed and exaggerated political climate.)


Another way is to engage more proactively in (non-judgmental) service.  Jesus's entire public ministry was about service.  He literally gave himself away by being loving to all, including/especially the dispossessed of his time.  In fact, it was his anti-establishment approach that led to his death by crucifixion when he had become too big a thorn in the side of the Jewish ruling class (and their Roman patrons).  Perhaps not to the point of sacrificing ourselves - a worthy goal, to be sure, but not one that the majority will consider seriously nor to which it will commit - but certainly giving of ourselves individually and collectively more than we do should be our goal


A third and final way that I'll suggest is to practice inclusion proactively.  Certainly Jesus did this during His lifetime.  He associated, broke bread with and healed Jews and others, especially those on the lower rungs of the oppressive social order of His day.  What would happen if, rather than recoiling from those we don't know or whose culture or faith we don't understand, our first inclination were to engage in dialogue rather than judgment?  Would we all get together and sing Kumbaya as the world's problem's floated away?  Probably not.  But would there likely be a much greater understanding between and among the world's peoples and thus a stronger basis for relating and collaborating in mutually beneficial (and peaceful) ways?  Absolutely.


And that's the point: if we overcome our human nature to exclude, recoil from and judge negatively "the Other" and practice Jesus' example of loving inclusion and community instead, the world will indeed be a better place ... and we will be far better Christians....