The Cost of Our Selfishness....

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often
bend the acts of government to their own selfish purposes.

- Andrew Jackson, 7th President of the United States

One of your presidential candidates wants to take us back to an unspecified time to reclaim the greatness of our country.  As this narrative has played out, we have been exposed to and have exposed ourselves as still very much subscribers to and sufferers of many -isms.  We have seen far more racism and bigotry than in a long while.  We have seen great sexism, horrifying misogyny and mystifyingly sexualized male privilege.  We have been 'treated' to horrific religiocentrism, xenophobia and much more.

What we now know is that these lesser angels were always with us, but just as video has transformed our appreciation for the frequency and too frequent lethality in the relations between People of Color and many supposed officers of the law, so, too, has the media coverage - or, in the consideration of many, the media circus - opened our eyes to our true selves.  And the results of this national 'mirror test' are not pretty.

There are a number of facets of our national character that have been exposed as wanting, but I'd like to focus primarily on one of them (though they're intertwined).  I'd like to focus on the clear and dismaying rise of a shared sense of selfishness and what this has done and is doing to our polity.

A few years ago, one of our political leaders (who has since risen to become Speaker of our House of Representatives) revealed his being impressed by and adherence to the 'philosophy' of Ayn Rand.  For those of you not well versed in Objectivism or its supporting body of thought, let's just say that it's, well, intriguing.  According to William Thomas, in a post entitled "What is Objectivism?" and published on the Atlas Society website, it's a "philosophy as radical individualism" grounded in the concept of the "ideal man, the producer who lives by his own effort and does not give or receive the undeserved, who honors achievement and rejects envy."  Hmmm.

In part, this worldview was expounded in both Ms. Rand's fiction and non-fiction books, one of the latter of which was entitled The Virtue of Selfishness, as well as in her proselytizing via various groups that aligned with and/or were founded to spread her unique take on life and human existence.  Whatever one thinks of her philosophy, the record of Ms. Rand's life is enough of a contrast to make one question its premise: while advocating for the view that "an individual's primary moral obligation is to achieve his own well-being," she used others - professionally and personally - to achieve her goals but most often in ways that were greatly injurious to them.  And in her last years she ended up living off of/being a recipient of the very governmental assistance that she had decried throughout her adult life.  Again, hmmm.

And why is Ayn Rand still relevant to us today?  Because her philosophy seems to undergird so much of the politics of one of our major parties and its nominee to be our leader.  And because, even beyond this, her worldview seems to be romantically fetishized by so many of our fellow citizens.  Simply put, we have enshrined selfishness and the concept of the interests of the individual as being above those of the collective in our culture ... and yet we seem surprised as to why we all can't get along.

Before I continue, let me disclaim my personal view on this, lest it be misconstrued:

I believe that individuals should pursue their self-interest in ways that are uniquely meaningful to them so long as this doesn't conflict with and constrain others from doing the same.  (Glad to discover that I've become a bit of a Libertarian at mid-life.)  This being said, however, it's clear to me that living synergistically is also and even more so in our interest: if we optimize our collective relations at the group level, there is a shared benefit that can be and typically is better than that which we can achieve on our own.  National and local defense, healthcare and public works (like parks, etc.) are just a few examples of such domains in which our coming together leaves us all better off.

And, economically speaking, I'm very much a capitalist at heart, but I've moved far beyond the laissez-faire variety that I was taught in college.  Now I'm more of a devotee of a 'Constrained Capitalism' in which a minimum level of life-sustaining support is provided to everyone - the socialist strain in my thinking, perhaps? - and a reasonable amount of regulation is enforced to insure that the interests of the many aren't infringed upon by the excessive profit motives of the few.  (One need only think back to the financial froth that led to the market collapse of 2008 and the resulting Great Recession to see how unrestrained capitalism can lead to enormous profits for a few with the costs of such recklessness shared by the many, though there are myriad other examples both historically and presently.)  In essence, ironically, my economic philosophy has evolved to be more MLK-like as I've aged, I suspect this being a reflection both of his wisdom, of my continued study of the man and his work and of my enlarged practical understanding of how the world works (versus the theories that I was taught so long ago).  This being said, my economic bent is not identical to Dr. King's, just far more similar to it than it was a few years ago.

So now let's return to Ms. Rand and the triumph of the selfishness that she championed:

If you listen closely to our political discourse now, there's a clear Us vs. Them trope playing out through multiple themes.  There are the 'Real Americans' who are (conservatively) patriotic and contributory to our society and the 'Takers' who want to redistribute our hard-earned freedom (read = money) to those less deserving.  And, of course, the derivation of these groups is a process of natural selection, so the resulting societal friction is therefore both authentic and rational, right?  Hmmm.

I'd like to focus on just three of the many manifestations of our selfishness before trying to draw some hypotheses (if not actual conclusions) about their (negative) impact.

The first manifestation of our selfishness is reflected in our tax policy in the past two generations.  In the 1970s, a second consecutive decade of major transition in our society, personal income tax rates ranged from 14% to 70% with a generous allowance for itemized deductions/approved exclusions so that effective tax rates were much lower (i.e., rarely exceeding 50% of AGI or Adjusted Gross Income).  Then along came the Reagan Revolution with its supply-side and trickle-down economic theories and our tax rates were lowered precipitously, especially for higher income earners.  From 1982 to 1985, the top tax rate was lowered to 50% and then in 1987 to 38.5% and then in 1988 to 28%.

So what's wrong with this, we might all ask?  What's wrong with not having the (federal) government take such a major share of our earnings?  In theory, nothing.  Except that we don't live in theory.

The reality of the 'Reagan 80s' is that the government didn't take in enough tax revenue - largely because it cut tax rates (too much) and increased spending (especially on the national defense) - so that the results were huge deficits that were funded by borrowing money in the capital markets for future generations to pay.  To put a finer point on it, to fund the last 30-year bond issued during this period, we taxpayers have been and still are paying investors a 9% interest rate until November, 2018.  (To put it in context, current long-term US Treasury security rates are approx. 2.6%.)  Think about this for a second, to fund the last Reagan-era deficit, money that we spent 28 years ago, we're still paying almost 3-1/2 times the current interest rate for another couple of years.  In other words, we haven't yet fully paid for the Reagan era deficits.  (That subsequent administrations have continued this historical practice since then - that, in fairness, President Reagan didn't start but amplified greatly - helps put this whole issue of deficits and federal finance in shocking perspective.)

So I'm sure that you appreciate the little foray into governmental finance, but, you, too, are probably asking why does this matter and how does it reflect increased and increasing selfishness in our society, right?  Here's why: because when we lower taxes on the few so much while increasing governmental spending, the resulting deficits not only imperil our national economic health but they limit our choices as a country ... for the many.  The few, with much more wealth, are largely insulated from the concerns and/or impacts that flow from inequitable tax (and spending) policy.

And if you're still not convinced, consider what happened twenty years later during the George W. Bush Administration: tax cuts for the wealthy and huge (war-driven) military spending resulted in huge federal budget deficits for which we'll be paying for another two decades.  Thankfully, under the Obama Administration, both the wars and the deficits have been scaled back significantly (but not entirely).  So, we - or, more correctly put, our children - will still be paying for Obama deficits, just not nearly as much as we've paid for the Reagan and Bush ones.  (And we'll just move on before exploring those Clinton-era surpluses won't we?)  So, under our tax policy in the past two generations, the rich have indeed gotten richer, but typically at the expense of the rest of us who have to pay for the deficits that their tax cuts generate.  That many in the working and middle classes voted aspirationally for these tax cuts that now hamstring their opportunities only makes the irony more cruel.

We could have made different choices, but we didn't ... and now we can't figure out why it's so hard for regular folk to enjoy the American Dream anymore.  Hmmm.

Let's turn next to the longstanding debate about government spending: you know, the old saw that our government is in the income redistribution business because it takes our hard-earned dollars in the form of taxes and then gives them foolishly to folks who are too lazy to work.  If this were true, certainly it would be a concern and possibly a reason to revolt.

The only problem is that it's not really true.  At most, the federal government spends 15% of its budget on "Safety Net" programs, according to the Center on Budget Policy and Priorities.  We certainly spend significantly more on national defense.  But even at 15%, the question remains whether we're being ripped off by so-called welfare queens and others who game the system, right?

Nope.  The apocryphal welfare queen conjured by President Reagan was actually a figment, but even searching for someone like her at the time turned up a skilled Chicago-area welfare abuser who just happened to be white.  Funny, but that 'urban' (read = African-American) association was just dog whistle politics at its most effective (and therefore shameful).  Do some folks on the so-called welfare rolls game the system?  Sure.  A significant percentage of them?  Not at all.

Who are the real beneficiaries of federal welfare programs?  Children.  Sadly, tragically (very) poor children.  In fact, some estimates put the percentage of American children receiving some sort of government assistance at almost 40%.  And lest you think that we're paying their baby-making mothers (or, supposedly, in rare instances, parents) to stay home and have more of them, be aware that the average food stamp (SNAP) monthly benefit is approx. $400 (or less than $100 per week, according to cheatsheet.com).  Can you feed your family on $400 per month?  Neither can most SNAP families.

And working class families: a recent University of California at Berkeley pointed out that "the majority of  households receiving government assistance are headed by a working adult."  In fact, "The study found that 56% of federal and state dollars spent between 2009 and 2011 on welfare programs ... flowed to working families and individuals with jobs," according to that lefty rag The Wall Street Journal.

So it turns out that most welfare recipients are just poor folks not earning enough at their menial jobs to support their families, not freeloaders sucking the rest of us dry.  But we don't here much of this from our elected 'leaders' on either side of the aisle.  (My own surmise is that the Democrats, as usual, are too scared to mention it and the Republicans are to craven to do so because they know that it contradicts the false narrative that they've been peddling for decades.  But I digress....)

And yet our politics is infected with a venal strain of needing always to cut our 'largesse' to the least of these because it's sapping their initiative (while, cynically and paradoxically, paired with a demand that we cut the tax burden of the rich for the same reason [i.e., because it's making it too hard for them to get that way or to stay that way or whatever the excuse is at the time...]).  Some of our political leaders seem to experience a good deal of glee in demonizing the poor among us, which, for a country that's supposedly heavily populated by Christians, seems antithetical to our Patron's example, at least to me.  (But, again, I digress....)

What any thoughtful assessment of our governmental spending reveals is that we are not going broke - at least in the short term - because we spend too much on the poor.  This may not always be the case, however, because since we choose not to invest in providing them decent incomes, educations, healthcare, etc., eventually their choices in life tend to cost us even more.  For example, as much as we don't want to 'give' the poor medical coverage because they haven't 'earned it,' it turns out that, before the Affordable Care Act, treating them as indigents in the emergency rooms of our hospitals was becoming unsustainably costly.   As an expert once noted, we're going to "pay either way," so it makes sense to pay in ways that are preventative rather than reactionary (not because we've all of a sudden decided to care for the poor just that being smart about doing so costs us less...).

Where's the selfishness in this, you might ask?  First, it's in the invariably negative judgment of the poor and the imputation of negative character and other traits to them because of their economic status.  In the "Land of the Free," anybody who's not a deadbeat or a reprobate can be rich, or, at least, middle class, right?  (If you honestly believe this, you are definitely part of the problem.)  And, second, it's in the willingness to be uninformed as long as you don't think that it's at your expense.  That Republican elites - or, if you prefer a less partisan but no less accurate descriptor, the rich - have gotten their poorer fellow citizens to vote for the policies that often disenfranchise them is one of the most brilliant political strategic victories in our history and thus one of the most truly deplorable realities in our society.  That the rich exploit the poor (in the latter's ignorance) for their own gain - and cry "class warfare!" when anyone dares to question the structures and/or policies that accomplish this - is both craven and selfish ... but also par for the course in modern America.

Lastly, let's consider our current political climate and the election season from hell that has to end in ten days (right?!?).  We hear a lot from the two major party candidates about economic and social policies designed to help the middle class (and, on one side of the aisle, doing so via that tried and true approach of advantaging the rich even more so that some of this trickles down to the middle class as well), but we hear virtually nothing about our poor and working class fellow citizens' plight and what we can and will do to address this.

Don't get me wrong, one candidate is very much stoking the alienation of a certain segment of the dispossessed to great political effect, but as far as I can tell, other than promises to bring jobs back to this country in (unexplained) contradiction to the now decades-long reality of globalization that has taken them away and will keep them so, I haven't heard any actual policy proposals to benefit the working class and poor.  Instead, these alienated masses - who have suffered greatly from the political choices made by folks that they've elected and re-elected continually that have disproportionately favored those who have capital over those who contribute labor - are being told to look at The Others among us - like Mexicans (who are criminals and rapists in large part and perhaps some are OK) and African-Americans (whose inner-city lives are hell) and Muslims (who should be banned), etc. - and to realize that they are the reason that you (white, working and middle class folk) are being held back because, you know, of their criminality and their disproportionate slopping at the public welfare trough and... (you get the picture).

And the other candidate is speaking almost exclusively of the middle class and pretty much avoiding a discussion of the working and non-working poor.  (In part, no doubt, because one of her husband's failures as president was to 'reform' the welfare system in ways that demonized the poor and made them worse off so that the socialized cost of their misery actually increased.  But, again, and with apologies, I digress....)  Yes, we could be stronger together, but neglecting the least of these among us because they don't vote and showing compassion for them is taken as a sign of political weakness in our toxic environment is an abdication of leadership, not proof of its shrewdness.

Ignorance is costly, especially when paired with selfishness.  (And when this concoction is mixed with many of the -isms that still very much plague our society - and, thanks to an candidate who seems to embody them all are now much more obvious - it's literally life-threatening.)

You don't have to have a PhD in economics to realize that globalization is real and here to stay, so "bringing back jobs" is a fantasy, since the loss of the jobs in the first place reflects the hard reality that labor in developed countries is far more/too much more costly and, by comparison, labor in the developing world is so incredibly/too cheap (even adjusted for productivity) for capitalists to pass up, so the owners of the companies whose bottom lines are fattened by cheaper foreign labor are going to keep exporting those jobs.

You don't have to be a rocket scientist to know that illegal immigrants aren't more but less crime-prone than the rest of us.  Or that no Democratic president has ever actually tried to take away people's guns en masse.  Or that ninth-month abortions aren't really a thing nor ever have been.  Even the dispossessed have access to Google and could look these things up.

But they don't, because being told that it's not your fault sounds an awful lot better than "Sorry you voted for a bunch of stuff that's killing you now, but maybe you should educate yourself and be smarter about your self-interest going forward," which is about all the Republicans can say.  And it's also sounds better than the Democrats' seeming silence, too.

And when you're willing to buy into the false notion that life and that uniquely nationally cherished variant of it, the American Dream, are zero-sum games, then you end up losing, especially when you elect representatives who vote for policies that benefit the few over the many (and, to remind the average American, you're in this latter group).  And you keep re-electing them.

The reasons for the alienation of a large segment of the American populace are largely real and true:  The game is rigged against them, not because they're largely white but because they're working and middle class folks who vote for policies that disenfranchise them time and again.  Every time a Republican president or Congress floats a new tax proposal, their tax rates are at best marginally lowered but their rich neighbors' burdens are massively lightened and the resulting deficits are paid for by them and their - the middle and working class folks' - children.

Every time we weaken the Department of Education - usually under the guise of holding teachers accountable or some other political ruse - we pay for this long-term.  Our taxes don't really go down - the cut education funding invariably ends up in another part of the federal budget - but we also don't invest in our children's education and thus our own future prosperity.  That our educational attainment continues to ebb internationally is a truly frightening reality because it suggests that our children and grandchildren will be less competitive economically and otherwise in the long term.

And yet we defend our own and our children's resulting ignorance and, in many cases, take pride in it.  As Isaac Asimov observed some years ago, there is a growing strain of anti-intellectualism in our society that is "based on the false notion that democracy means that my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."

But, of course, this isn't true, because our ignorance is tremendously costly.  Maybe former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's putative ban on sodas larger than 16 ounces was a bit of a reach, but the sanctimonious blowback was indicative of just how profound our (false) pride is: many New Yorkers and others across the country with profound reacted indignation to having their freedom (read = sugary drink options) limited.  Why, to them, it was a fundamental American right to consume mass quantities of drinks that contribute meaningfully to our national epidemic of obesity.  And who's supposed to pay the significantly larger healthcare costs for our obese fellow citizens?  The rest of us, of course.

And I'm OK without the soda ban, but I'm not OK with the lack of acknowledgement that dealing with individual choices that lead to obesity becomes a socialized cost that the rest of us end up paying, too.  One of the great things about the Affordable Care Act (ACA), otherwise known as Obamacare, is that it precludes an insurer from refusing care to someone with a pre-existing condition.  An unintended consequence of this is that many people's individual choices, which include various 'voluntary' conditions like obesity, will be paid for, in part, by others.  So, being able to obtain healthcare at what is in effect a subsidized rate encourages obesity in the short run (though we can hope that, longer term, access to care will encourage healthier behaviors as the insured are better educated about the true costs - individual and collective - of their choices).

The point is that the collective popular revolt against the soda ban reflects a selfishness that is, in many guises, undermining our polity.  So, too, does our anger and antipathy for other 'regular folks' like us who don't make the rules in our society but live by them like the rest of us do.  Immigrants aren't taking our jobs, they're either doing jobs that we won't do - is there a groundswell from 'regular Americans' to be agricultural workers who can't get jobs in the fields picking our fruit and vegetables? - or employers, seeking to pay less/the least for a service/labor so that their own profits are larger, are hiring them instead of fellow citizens.  Is the latter the immigrants' fault?  Of course not ... but it's a lot easier to demonize them than our bosses who're disintermediating us.

And do we not see the parallel between immigrant employment here and the exporting of jobs to other countries?  They are both driven by the same cause: the profit motive.  Immigrants can't hire themselves, they have to be hired ... so the people causing the 'problem' are the ones doing the hiring, not those being hired.  So, too, jobs don't export themselves, they have to be relocated overseas ... so the people causing the 'problem' are the ones doing the relocation, not those receiving the jobs in new locales.  In both cases, the motive is money and the desire for those in positions of (hiring) power to have more of it.  But in our politics, the theme is xenophobic (and thus selfish): it's those Others who're at fault, not the folks 'like us' who hire them.

(And, no, I'm not suggesting that employers shouldn't seek to hire the cheapest but sufficiently skilled labor possible to create their products and/or provide their services - though, in the long run, this may underdevelop the potential for their business - just that the reasons that they do are systemic and endemic to our chosen economic model.  As basic economic theory has told us for years, capital will always seek the cheapest labor possible because this leads to larger margins and profits in the short run, so for us to pretend otherwise is either patently absurd or willfully ignorant.)

This phenomenon of selfishness can be summed up by the theme of a popular meme on FaceBook.  In this apochryphal scenario, a banker, a worker and an immigrant are sitting at a table with 20 cookies.  The banker then takes 19 of the cookies and suggests to the worker that the immigrant is about to take his cookie.  The first part of the irony, of course, is such 'benevolence' obscures the real crime, the banker taking the vast majority of the bakery bounty; and the second and far sadder part is that it also obscures the scenario-based reality that the worker and immigrant are both stuck trying to get a minimal share of the otherwise appreciable opportunity.

So, too, with our society now: we're more focused on whether domestics or immigrants are getting that last cookie than asking ourselves why we'd structure society so that the banker can take the 19 in the first place.  And that the proverbial workers have voted for 'leaders' who've created this warped system that disenfranchises them makes it all the more tragic.  So, yes, I understand the cries of the disaffected, but I abhor their failure to acknowledge their own culpability for it and then their compound error in attacking others like them rather than the powerful who constrained their opportunities in the first place.

Only when we first realize that, as MLK noted, we are cloaked in a single garment of destiny, and, second, that we have the power to structure our society more equitably and inclusively but only if we overcome superficial divisions that have been used to keep the masses separated and down for centuries.  This will take us looking across the common table at others who are somewhat different than us - still human beings/Children of God, but with different histories/backgrounds, cultures and God-given/immutable superficial features - and seeing in them what we typically see in ourselves: people of positive intent.  Further, it will require us to seek access to opportunities in a way that allows for shared progress, not just the triumph of one group over another fighting for that last cookie when our shared focus should be the nineteen other ones.  And it will require, in this land still dominated my nominal Christians (but increasingly less so in the years to come), that we actually follow the Patron's "new commandment" to love our neighbors as ourselves.

When we actually realize that we're all better off when a rising tide raises all boats and act accordingly in our public life/society, then we'll overcome the selfishness that divides us.  If we fail to do this, however, God help us as the costs of our selfishness continue to rise and the gains therefrom continue to inure to a small set of fellow citizens who don't have to be and aren't concerned about the rest of us except every few years when they need our votes to keep them in power....

The world is so competitive, aggressive, consumive, selfish

and during the time we spend here we must be all but that.

- Jose Mourinho

The Fetishism of Our Flag and What It Tells Us About Ourselves....

I disapprove of what you say,

but I will defend to the death your right to say it.

- Evelyn Beatrice Hall (aka S.G. Tallentyre;

often attributed to Voltaire)

Symbol and substance: they are two different things.  What is ironic in this is that were we asked, virtually all of us would say that the substance of something is more important than its symbol.  And yet this is not the way we behave....

The recent contretemps emanating from the protest of Colin Kaepernick is a case in point:  So many have asserted an untempered reverence for the symbol of the United States and its flag, which they take to be an aggressive assertion of patriotism - that the quarterback protests by kneeling when the National Anthem is played before NFL games - and yet far fewer are or seem concerned about the issue(s) that motivated the protest in the first place: the reality that, in both historical and modern America, rights and opportunities are not respected and/or allocated equitably and that the country is far, far from living up to its professed ideals and creeds for many of its citizens.

But why are so many of our fellow citizens such zealots when it comes to honoring our country - i.e., so attached to the symbol of America and what it's supposed to represent - and yet seemingly indifferent to the reality of our country - i.e., that the experience of the vast majority of People of Color (PoC) and other minority groups is distinctly farther from the American Dream than that of their white counterparts?

While there are many reasons, I'd like to consider three:  First, many of our white fellow citizens have little to no inkling of the experience of their compatriots of diverse hues; second, especially amidst seismic societal changes when groups' standings are being redefined, there's a reflexive tendency to circle the wagons, making it distinctly less likely that empathy will be evidenced significantly; and, third, it's easier to cling to the symbol over the substance, to choose fantasy over reality.

With respect to the 'Experience Gap' between our majority and minority communities, numerous studies attest to its existence.  One recent study from the Public Religion Research Institute found that the average white person's circle of contacts was 91% white.  Of the remaining 9%, only 1% were African-American and another 1% were Latino.  Let that sink in for a moment: the average white person who knows 100 people will have among them 91 other whites and only 1 Black and 1 Latino in this circle of acquaintance.  With so little experience of each other, it's clear why it would be pretty hard to have empathy for groups whom you really don't know or with whom you don't interact much, if at all.

(By comparison, by the way, the average Black American has 83 Black friends, 2 Latino friends and 8 white friends.  One way to read this is that, on average, Blacks have far more experience with whites than the latter do with them, which is not all that surprising given that whites are, for the most part, still the dominant racial group in this country.)

So the first reason that we don't get along as well as we should is that we're still largely segregated from each other socially and thus don't tend to have enough of the necessary formal or informal channels of communication and collaboration built to encourage more harmonious relations.  In sum, we are still The Other to each other and though this is changing - the Millennial generation, for instance, seems to have a modestly more diverse experience than do its predecessors - it's not changing enough and fast enough to make group relations smoother at this point.

With respect to the changes in our society, studies indicate that many of our fellows feel that the world - and especially our country - is changing in ways that frighten them.  "Good jobs" are being lost to globalization and relocated overseas.  Even if they invest in themselves and go to college, they come out with staggering levels of debt.  There's an explosion of technology and connectivity from which many of them have been unplugged literally and thus enter this new hyper-connected digital age belatedly and at a decided disadvantage.  Muslims are everywhere now, as are Mexicans and a lot of other foreigners.  Men are marryin' men and women are marryin' women and we have to share bathrooms with men who used to be women and vice versa.  And the President's Black.

I could go on, but you get the picture.  And I must say that I don't disagree that many of these changes could be disturbing if not downright startling ... but only if you're mired in so many of the -isms that continue to plague our society as so many of our fellow citizens clearly are.

Why should it matter that the president is Black unless you subscribe to latent or active racism?  Why do you care what sex a person identifies with unless you subscribe to latent or active heterosexism?  Or that people of the same sex can now marry?  (Same cause.)  Why does it matter that your neighbors follow a different path to God unless you subscribe to latent or active (Christian) religiocentrism?  Why do you think that there are too many neighbors from different countries unless you subscribe to latent or active xenophobia and racism?  Etc.

And it's even worse than this, because many of our fellow citizens have gone beyond being upset at the changes to feeling victimized by them.  One such (delusional) example is evidenced in a recent study by the aforementioned Public Religion Research Institute and the Brookings Institution (and reported by theintellectualist.com) which found that approx. 75% of Trump supporters and 80% of Christian evangelicals believe that "discrimination against Christians is as big of a problem as discrimination against other groups, including blacks and (other) minorities."  ...  Let that sink in for a minute. ... Yep, a vast majority of Christians in this Christian-dominated country feel that they're victimized as much as African-Americans and other People of Color, the LGBTQ community, etc.  I can only shake my head and move on (which'll keep me from screaming "WTF are these people thinking?!?" and experiencing other decidedly unChristian thoughts about how to address this unfathomable situation).

I can only think that the propagation of an alternate narrative and reality by Fox News and others has led to a kind of creeping mass delusion.  Facts don't seem to matter as much - or, often, at all - any more.  Feelings, reinforced by comforting but unreality-based opinions (or, more accurately, pure conjecture and speculation), seem to hold sway far too often.  For example, it doesn't seem to matter that there's not a shred of evidence that (white) Christian evangelicals and/or Trump supporters are being discriminated against in any meaningful way; what matters is that huge numbers of people have chosen to feel this way.  Again, the reality that just because you believe it doesn't make it true - an anchoring tenet of being reality-based, admittedly - just doesn't seem to matter to tens of millions if not hundreds of millions of our fellows.  Let this sink in for a moment, too. ...  How does one dialogue and collaborate with folks who feel no need to be connected to a reasonably objective reality that you can share?

So so-called Christians in numerous states are actively trying to enshrine "religious freedom" laws that allow them to discriminate legally in the name of their religion.  Yep, that's another "let's stop and think about this moment": members of the religious majority are trying to make discrimination legal in the name of a Savior who was the paragon of inclusivity.  It would be farcical and funny were it not true....

This circling of the wagons will continue as long as so many feel threatened and the level of unreality in this bubble will continue to grow, meaning that the disconnection and divide between us will likely grow rather than ebb.  To the extent that many of our fellow citizens are coming into the digital world, they're constraining themselves to media and channels that reinforce rather than challenge their worldview, that promote subjectivity and denigrate objectivity and that spread the -isms rather than challenge, contain and eradicate them.

Why do our fellow citizens - knowingly - cling to their fantastic views and, often, clear fantasies?  This answer is unfortunately as simple as it is understandable: Because reality is hard and often scary and certainly harder and scarier than life in a self-soothing bubble.  Think about it: it's a lot easier to claim that you're being oppressed than it is to accept that some of your choices aren't working out as well as you expected.  Hence, the widespread perception of Christian persecution in this overly and overtly Christian-dominated country.  And the continuing belief that President Obama is a Muslim and not born in this country.  And ... oh, you get the picture....

So, what to do?

The solution, to the extent that there can be said to be one, is to educate and advocate ... and to listen patiently while suspending judgment.  Otherwise, we can't make it feel safe enough for our fellow citizens to share their views and then to pop these bubbles gently by exposing them to a more objective reality while offering support for them to integrate themselves into the larger and admittedly more complex and messier society in which the rest of us live.  But, despite the almost inhuman amount of teeth-gritting that this will require, listen and try to connect we must.  Otherwise we can kiss our "more perfect union" goodbye for some time to come (if not permanently).

(And it must also be said that those of us who feel that we're not living in a bubble need to check ourselves as well.  Moral superiority is quite often and easily misplaced.)

We, collectively, must seek to recapture the substance of our foundational notion of a democratic republic of the people for the people and by the people (which implies and is anchored in the concept of the commonweal or common good) ... or we need to acknowledge that the American Ideal must change.  If we're cool with allowing ourselves to be permanently divided, then let's acknowledge this and move on (into a new era of perennially putrid politics).  If not, then let's do the hard work of educating one another and moving together into a future that makes ever more of us better off.

America has experienced its greatest success when it pulls together, not apart.  If we truly do still believe in the American Dream, this is something that we must try and at which we must not fail ... regardless of who the president is or what she believes or what his sexual orientation is or which path to God she follows, etc. ... and whether or not a quarterback stands of kneels during the National Anthem....

United we stand, divided we fall.

Let us not split into factions

which must destroy that union

upon which our existence hangs.

- Patrick Henry

Watching a Train Wreck and Trying Not to Despair....

Men that have a strong opinion of their own wisdom

in matter of government are disposed to ambition.

Because without public employment in council or magistracy

the honor of wisdom is lost.

And therefore eloquent speakers are inclined to ambition,

for eloquence seemeth wisdom, both to themselves and others.

- Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan

OK, it's been almost three weeks since our national mistake and the initial sense of the costs of our collective failure are starting to become clear.  A boorish billionaire whose only qualifications to lead the free world are that he's white, inhumane and rich and who was elected supposedly to dismantle the very system that has enabled this natural tragedy in the unfolding.  In a word, we're f@#ked.

How did it come to this?  In part because of ignorance and in part because of arrogance ... on both sides of our very apparent national divide.  There are those who are triumphant, hoping against hope that our new 'leader' will take us back to a mythical time when all was well.  (For some that is, apparently.)  And there are those of us experiencing great despair and trepidation because our best case scenario involves years (if not decades) of concerted effort to overturn the regression sure to come in a single term of the President-elect (and our worst case scenarios being too hard - indeed, crushing - to contemplate).

The ignorance of the 'winners,' those able to overlook the fundamental inhumanity of our next elected leader, is palpable: even the concept that we could somehow stop time and revert back to a simpler, better one is farcical and thoroughly discredited by history, including our own.

Remember the Camelot of the Kennedy Administration?  It lasted just 2-1/2 years and, though we've wrapped it in gauzy, rose-colored ahistoricity, the reality of it was far less fantastic.  There were real problems then, and that administration handled a few excellently and many poorly - you know, as in beginning the military 'observation' that blossomed terribly into the Vietnam War a few years later - so our choice to remember the good and forget the bad is misguided at best and quite dangerous at worst.

And the behavior of so many who supported our President-elect was both deplorable and revealing: so many of the -isms still plaguing our society were bewilderingly evident in both the Deplorables themselves and their leader.  Having drunk the Fox News and Alt-Right (read = reactionary radical racist fringe) kool-aid for years, their espoused beliefs are a mystifying mix of unreality - that a capitalist who does his own manufacturing overseas would defy globalization to save their manufacturing jobs and even bring untold millions of "good" ones back, etc. - bordering on insanity.

Objectively so many of the issues that were supposed to be important or the challenges that were besting us were, in fact, untrue.  For example, America is experiencing greater economic prosperity than ever (and thus not in need of some supposed return to greatness) ... it's just that the equity in its allocation is becoming ever more skewed.  By shrewd political design and (largely immoral) social infusion, the trickle down theories of a generation ago have now shifted the balance of the respective returns between labor and capital decidedly in the favor of the latter.

It's greater now than ever before to be a capitalist - an actual 'haver' and thus investor of capital - and is beginning to suck ever more meaningfully for those who possess little more than their own labor.  That this system disproportionately benefits those at the top is no accident, and neither is the completely mystifying reality that so many of those in the middle and toward the bottom keep voting for it.  To sell masses on an economic policy that largely disenfranchises them, the ruling elites have commingled these self-defeating prescriptions with 'social' and 'wedge' issues - like abortion, so-called 'religious freedom' laws, etc. - and created an expedient reality that means that in order to support the latter, many have also condoned the former to their own and increasing detriment.  I don't care how much you hate abortion, having your and your children's life chances increasingly narrowed economically is way too high a price to pay for it (especially since the two are in no way inextricably linked in the real world).

The 'winners' also exhibited an arrogance that was hard to fathom as well.  Sure the plutocrats among them have reason to be proud of their insulation from the harsh realities of daily life, but the lesser of them displayed a perplexing sense of superiority.  For example, their support of violence to silence dissent seems an odd one: do they not realize that though they may not like the dissenters in their midst at the President-elect's rallies, those folks' First Amendment rights are no less immutable and thus shouldn't be subject to challenge?  Does it not occur to them that, following their own logic, they, too, may be subject to being silenced soon should they step outside of the groupthink orthodoxy?  Martin Niemoller's observation about for whom "they" come seems especially apropos here.

Further, their conflation of their candidate's standing and ultimate victory with God's will seems especially misguided: given their history of harsh judgment for anyone who didn't fit their supposedly conservative, evangelical Christian mold, how can one own and celebrate the elevation of a man who's a walking repudiation of all that they claim to hold dear?  You know, how do you reconcile that God has chosen to gift you - and, by extension, the rest of us - with a thrice-married, philandering, sexual assault-prone, xenophobic, racist, etc., feigned adherent to "Two Corinthians" as a leader?  I just can't wrap my head around how anyone claiming to be of the Christian Right can support such a person, let alone lift him up ... but perhaps that's because I don't have the temerity to claim to know God's will as much (or, truthfully, at all), as some clearly do....

Yet, deplorable as the are, the 'winners' were not the only ones guilty of arrogance.  To many of the losers, especially those of a more progressive stripe, simply assumed that the rubes' insouciance about their candidate's flaws, though unfortunate, could not be determinative.  Really now?  There was an assumption that their own candidate, because she was arguably the best-prepared in history and clearly more capable when the two squared off over the course of three debates, was the only real choice and thus, despite the narrowing polls before the election, destined to win.  Oops!?!  And soon to be "Ouch!!!" for us all.

And the arrogance of their dismissal of the admittedly craven and fake email (or, before it, Benghazi) scandal has been proven exceptionally misguided.  Simply put, the Left confused reality and what's right with politics, a realm that lately seems to have become devoid of both.

And then there's the Left's ignorance of the very real pain which too many of our fellow citizens feel.  Some of it is certainly economic: these are the blue collar Reagan Democrats who were unpersuaded by Mrs. Clinton's cerebral (and far more intellectually defensible) approach.  And some of it was certainly social: many of our neighbors feel like the world is changing in ways that are hurting them - whether or not these hurts are real or largely conceptual at this point - and that this pain was only seemingly deeply appreciated and reflected by one candidate.  To put a finer point on it, when the majority of women vote for the admitted sexual predator, you have to admit that the problem runs deeper than you thought/realized.  Perhaps this painful lesson will bring more of our progressive neighbors down out of their ivory towers in the future....

Sadly, on both sides, ignorance and arrogance have done us in and now we are about to suffer mightily.  The pain will be both multi-faceted and real, symbolic and literal.  And even more than this, the sense of common decency that allows us to collaborate across our differences will be under severe attack, making our recovery even more tenuous, costly and uncertain after the storm has passed.

I hate to sound like the funnily facetious comedian and social critic Lewis Black, but, truly, America, you've f@#ked yourself, at least for the next four years.  (And for those of you who think that the President-elect could be impeached sooner, remember that the transition to a new order thereafter will take some time, likely at least the same four years.)  Let's hope that we choose education and humility as a result, as the costs of our ignorance and arrogance become all to clear and painful in the days and years to come....

Arrogance, ignorance, and incompetence.

Not a pretty cocktail of personality traits in the best of situations.

No sirree.

Not a pretty cocktail in an office-mate

and not a pretty cocktail in a head of state.

In fact, in a leader it's a lethal cocktail.

- Graydon Carter

The Tyranny of Real Life....

I don't want to Adult today.

- Popular FaceBook meme/theme

Today I attended my third funeral in the past month.  Gone too soon were my 20-year old cousin, my 61-year old electrician and my 84-year old 'Other Mother' (of whose loving presence one can never have too much in life).  Adulthood is hard.  Adulthood is difficult.  Much harder and much more difficult than it appeared to be when I was a child hell-bent on getting to it as soon as possible.

As the FaceBook meme suggests, I can't adult today....

I would like to think that this is really a reflection of the much harder circumstances that I face relative to my parents ... but I know that this isn't true: I've enjoyed opportunities about which they could only dream, one of them having grown up in the de jure segregated South and the other having come of age in the de facto segregated North.  And, in terms of opportunity, with respect to my children - their grandchildren - this truth is even more so.

Part of the challenge for me is that both of my parents are gone now, so they're not here to coach me through the vagaries of fate at mid-life.  I can't help but think that were they here, I'd have made fewer mistakes and would've also leveraged opportunities better.  Or so I'd prefer to think (even though I've lived in a world virtually exclusively beyond their experience).  Whatever the case, I miss them and wish that they had lived to see their sacrifices come to fruition in the life that my family - their grandchildren and I and their daughter-in-law and step-grands - enjoys.

Yet I'm ever aware that, as I used to tell my cousin (who's like a brother to me) more than a decade ago, we are now the age at which we met (read = can remember) our parents in their prime ... and we've seen the rest of the movie of their lives, which turned out to be a short feature for some (like my parents) and a full-length drama for others.  In a word, this time in my life and my contemporary loved ones' lives counts.  A reality driven home all the more by this maddening and saddening rash of funerals....

A few years ago, my (cousin-)brother and I were having a conversation that has never left me: we were both remarking on the arc of our careers, which, it turns out, was not as grand as we had expected.  And the more we talked, the more we were drawn to the conclusion that our personal lives were more challenging than we expected, too.  Multiple kids in expensive private schools during stock market crashes and career transitions and minor mid-life medical challenges and ... had all added up to a far more challenging existence than we anticipated as we crossed the Rubicon of the Big 5-0.  Salad days were not our reality; we were rising before dawn to work harder and longer than ever for less money while coming home in the dark to crazy, loving households full of kids who were just a little more spoiled and less appreciative than we expected.  Life was supposed to have been easier now - given our sacrifices over the preceding two-plus decades - but our reality was something quite different.  Still blessed, but not nearly as easily so (as we expected, of course).

Hmmm.  There's that word again: expectation.  While we were cognizant and appreciative of our myriad blessings, we felt a real lack of comfort and ease, one of the expected payoffs that hasn't materialized in as great abundance as we'd anticipated.  Though we're still better off than 99% of the rest of God's Children on this planet, life for us hasn't nearly been no crystal stair as had been suggested to us in our youth, or so we believed....

I suspect that this aspect of our experience is three-fold:

First, we were naive when we were young and emboldened by our full access to the mainstream of America.  We were the first generation of young People of Color for whom the limits of our success corresponded to our abilities, or so we were told.  Second, I suspect that our role models had it a good bit harder than we realized when we were young and, like loving parents do, they shielded us from this bracing reality, which has turned out to be a double-edged gift.  Third, I do believe that, to a lesser extent than we might suspect, 21st century life is a bit more complicated and challenging than that our parents faced.

They were children of the Depression, our parents, so as long as things weren't horrible, to them, they were good.  We are the children of those Children of the Depression who strove so valiantly so that we wouldn't experience lack.  We may not have had it easy, but, thankfully, virtually everyone in my extended family had everything that they needed growing up and even a few of the things that they wanted.  I know that this was certainly the case for me.

In reality, in my family, we've all lived a good life, especially relative to so many others in our society and our world, and yet we're not fully satisfied (even though we are, I believe, virtually fully appreciative).  This dis-ease is only minorly material; it's far more about a perceived lack of comfort and ease - and a greater volatility that accompanies it now - than about the bigger houses and nicer cars to which our children have become accustomed.

So what is the nature of this middle-aged miasma?  What's missing?  Why aren't we as happy and satisfied as we expected to be?

Here, too, I think that the answer has three primary parts:

First, we were naive in our youth and it turns out that adulthood has always been harder than it appears ... so the answer to this part of the challenge is simply to acknowledge this reality, suck it up and move on, as hard as this may be for some to do.  As M. Scott Peck so memorably noted in that famous opening sentence to his classic The Road Less Traveled, "Life is difficult."  Get a grip, accept this and keep putting one foot in front of the other (in large part because we still can...).

Next, let's acknowledge that progress, too, comes at a cost.  The world is certainly more complex than the one in which we came of age, so we need to adjust to this.  Yes, we have the Internet and smartphones that bring the world into the palm of our hand, but we also have greater inequality and an Education Gap and a Digital Divide and a phalanx of other new phenomena with which to deal.

Third and most importantly, the reality is that adult life isn't linear as we thought that it would be, so we need to be far more resilient, sometimes in dramatic measure and for extended periods, than we expected to have to be.  Resilience, though potentially transformative, is also supremely enervating, especially when summoned on command but of necessity for a long period of time.  The challenge is that the cyclicality of life - that roller coaster phenomenon where it feels like every peak is followed inevitably by a dark valley and a frightening descent into it - is tiring and wears us down after a while.  In sum, we are not resilient enough to anticipate this troubling pattern and approach it dispassionately while working through it.  Damn us that we expected to become masters of our fate and to be able to handle life with aplomb by now....

In his new book, Thank You For Being Late, the ever perceptive Tom Friedman writes about how our world is changing so much and so fast that we're feeling disoriented and that the pace of the change is now greater than our ability to process it (though we're getting somewhat better at doing so).  For me, this is an update and extension to the myriad learnings that I had from studying the work of Darryl Conner, whose Managing at the Speed of Change transformed both my personal and professional lives two decades ago.  In it were so many astute distillations of concepts about the nature of change and how it affects us as well as tools to address them that I felt empowered to confront the impending new millennium.  Or so I thought....

By way of example, one concept that Conner brought to the fore indelibly involves the following:

Consider that you are sitting peacefully by the side of a pond that contains a single lily pad.  The next day you come back to your perch and find that the number of lily pads has doubled to two.  Ths doubling continues every day thereafter, you observe.  If it takes 30 days for the pond to become completely covered in lily pads, on what day would it be half full?  Naturally your mind cuts the 30 days in half and shouts "Day 15!" before you can think critically about this conundrum and come to realize that it's on Day 29 that the pond was half full and that as much change as had taken 29 days to foment was duplicated in a single day on Day 30 such that the pond became completely covered.  That's what it often feels like now: that we're living in Day 29 times where change is happening so fast that we can't keep up and seems at risk of doubling again before we've even mastered its latest iteration.

Friedman touches on this reality in several ways and almost as indelibly, including in his consideration of Moore's Law, that bold prediction a half-century ago by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore that the computational capacity of microchips (and thus computing power) would double every year for a decade (which he revised to every two years a decade later) but that has proven true ever since.  Think about it: a chip the size of your fingernail could have over a billion - that's right "one billion with a 'B'" - transistors on it.  And a computer that can perform 1.8 teraflops - 1.8 Trillion with a T calculations per second (and, no, you can't even mentally conceptualize such a number/speed!?!) - went from being the size of a tennis court, using as much electricity as 800 houses and costing more than $55 million in the mid-1990s to being available for retail purchase - because it's smaller than a DVR, runs off of a single electrical socket and costs only a couple of hundred dollars - a decade later (i.e., you know it as the PS3 Sony Playstation that you bought your kids in 2006).  Let those numbers - and the scale of change acceleration that they represent - sink in for a moment....

Now, is it any wonder that we're having trouble dealing with all of this change?!?

Of course not.  And therein lies the problem, because even though we know that we shouldn't be bothered too much by the feeling that we're always drinking from a fire hose and that life seems to keep aiming more of such hoses at us than we want, we're still troubled.  And we're troubled because this isn't what we expected.

The reality of the modern world is that even in the lives of supposedly comfortable middle class families, the alpha of change is higher, both objectively and than expected.  Connor's prescience is relevant here, too: it feels like the volume, magnitude and complexity of the change we're experiencing are increasing simultaneously ... because they are.

This is the New Reality: that change means that we're all at risk more than we used to be ... and thus we must raise our children and their children to accept this phenomenon dispassionately while we lead them to build their resilience continuously.  Here, too, Conner can be our guide, as we need to teach ourselves and our children to do two things: first, to increase our overall capacity to adapt to change over time; and, second, to have each experience of change cost us less emotionally, spiritually, physically, etc.

The Tyranny of Daily Life is quite simple: the world is gonna do what the world is gonna do, so the only question is what are we gonna do in response.  I/we don't like this new, change-dominated world as much, but that doesn't really matter, does it?  It's in our acceptance of this New Reality that we find our deliverance: cultivating resilience - or what Darwin would describe as adaptability - is both our charge and our salvation.  By choosing to become fluent in proactive evolution - which means, in essence, to learn continuously whatever it takes to stay current and make progress - we can adapt successfully to this new world in which we find ourselves.

Or we can delay the inevitable, as so many who've chosen to succumb to the siren song of leaders who promise to return them to some long ago but (necessarily) undefined better days seem to be doing.  This mass engagement in fantasy is both mystifying and dismaying given that no one can document an epoch when time/life/reality didn't march inexorably forward - admittedly at different speeds and with different scope in different eras - as we see it doing ever more profoundly at the present time.  The urge to want to stop this inexorable march is understandable; the belief that it can be done is not....

I, for one, am choosing to move forward, to embrace the reality that change is dominating my individual life and our collective lives ever more profoundly and, even at this 'advanced' life stage, to commit myself to learning new skills and increasing my resilience so that I can not only survive in this Age of Acceleration (as Friedman describes it) but thrive.  In part this will be accomplished not by lowering my expectations, but by reality-testing them.  It's OK to wish that things were easier and better.  I suspect that this is an innate psychic and intellectual pattern.  But it's not OK to project it out into the world, as many of us have been doing for some time now.

Life being easier and better because we want or expect it too isn't a thing.  But choosing to keep growing, stretching and striving continuously is, thankfully, and this is how I'm going to fight the Tyranny of Real Life going forward.  Will you join me?

It is not the strongest of the species that survives,

nor the most intelligent that survives.

It is the one that is most adaptable to change.

- (Attributed to) Charles Darwin

Now the Work of Christmas Begins....

When the song of the angels is stilled,

when the star in the sky is gone,

when the kings and princes are home,

when the shepherds are back with their flocks,

the work of Christmas begins:

to find the lost,

to heal the broken,

to feed the hungry,

to release the prisoner,

to rebuild the nations,

to bring peace among the people,

to make music in the heart.

- Howard Thurman

May the tidings of the season warm your hearts and fill you and yours with love for each other and for our world!

Ah, Christmas: that time of year - thankfully fully coordinated with Hanukkah this year! - when most of us celebrate the birth of our Savior in a stable in a manger by spending way more than is prudent to treat ourselves and others to gifts in His name.  Hmmm.  There has to be a better way....

I really do enjoy the holidays and especially Christmas, but I also really do think that our celebration of Christmas must change.  If there's a war on Christmas - there's not, but a few traditionalists want to think that it's so and involve the rest of us in their dissatisfaction - it's because we've taken the spirit of the day and transformed it into something unrecognizable in a Frankenstein's monster sort of way.  This is what has to change.

Let's face it, in its modern American incarnation, Christmas has three parts: first, ostensibly it's the celebration of the birth of Jesus, the Redeemer of the Christian faith/faithful; second, it's a time to gather with loved ones and be renewed by the love (and occasional rancor) that comes with them, too; and, third, in this era, it's a time of commercial excess that is, frankly, sickening.  So much so that we've figured out how to ruin our Thanksgiving holiday so that we can shop/stock up for Christmas.  It's this last part that has to change the most, followed by the first.

I'm all for celebrating the birth of Jesus, though I do think that we go a bit to far when we literalize and mix it as we do.  Though many Christians don't realize it, the only thing that we can say for sure about this sacred day is that it didn't happen as we celebrate it now: there was likely no stable and manger scene with wise men, etc.  How do we know this?  Because the Bible, and specifically two of the Gospels, tells us so:

Luke's story of the birth of Jesus is most familiar: the trip to Bethlehem to be recorded in a census and the unexpected birth of the Christ in the most humble of circumstances.  While this last part is likely correct figuratively - Jesus' earthly family was at best working class and thus his circumstances humble from beginning to end - the former, generative part is likely not: there is no census of record during this time - and the Romans did many things well, including keeping great records to which we have access even today -  meaning that this part of the story is, well, a bit of literary license.

Further, where are the wise men and the star in Luke's story?  Have you read this Gospel lately?  They're not there because in Luke's story, it's about the shepherds and an angel.  You're thinking of Matthew's Gospel, which begins with a genealogy of Jesus linking him to David and then mentions the visit of the wise men (but, contrary to popular belief, no camels on which they were supposed to have ridden).

Finally, the two Gospels disagree about what happened soon after Jesus was born: Luke has the newly expanded family return to Nazareth (where Jesus grows up and is then presented at the Temple) and Matthew has the family flee to Egypt temporarily to escape King Herod's jealously murderous wrath.

The point is that this story shouldn't be literalized and mixed as it is in modern America, because it didn't happen as we celebrate it and fetishize it to our detriment.  What do I mean that we 'fetishize' Christmas?  Just that: we create a comfortable (and historically fictional) story and then insist that everyone agree to and abide by it.  Nonesense!

In my humble opinion, it really doesn't matter what the circumstances of Jesus' birth were because they are dwarfed by the true significance of His life and message.  So, I'm all for celebrating Jesus' birthday, but let's do it in a way that honors who He was and still is for/to so many of us.

We should celebrate that someone so consumed by Love walked among us and that His impact and influence were such that now delineate time based on His birth.  (Though, technically, it appears that we do so incorrectly, as Jesus would have had to have been born between 4BCE and 10BCE - i.e., 4BC and 10BC - for the details in the Gospels to bear any resemblance to the recorded history of the time.)  We should celebrate His Love and Example ... by being loving and emulating his example, which brings me to the part of Christmas that needs to be changed the most....

Do we ever pause to reflect on the irony that we celebrate the birth of a man who was poor and anti-material his entire life by engaging in conspicuous consumption and physical gift-giving?  Do we ever register that Jesus gave of Himself and His heart, lovingly, and eschewed the material (and required His followers to do so)?

I submit that we should celebrate Christmas by being like Christ: loving and proactively so.  Instead of buying ourselves the latest, largest big screen TV and our spouse, kids and loved ones gifts that we likely can't afford and that they likely won't use for very long, perhaps we should get out in our communities and minister to the less fortunate as He did.  Perhaps Christmas should be about our being as Christ-like as possible and about giving from the heart.  Perhaps we should stretch our budgets at Christmas to give to those for whom our funds are beyond their current conception and recent experience.

It seems to me that if we really want to honor Christ on His birthday, then we should give of ourselves freely, totally and "wastefully" as Bishop John Spong describes it.

Think about it: would your life really be meaningfully less blessed if you didn't get a bunch of stuff today?  And what would the impact be on the receivers if we took all the money that we spend on ourselves and instead share it with fellow Children of God who are less fortunate?

I offer this suggestion: that we follow the guidance of the late great Howard Thurman - shared at the beginning of this piece - in his litany "The Work of Christmas Begins," that we invest ourselves today (and every day, really) in honoring Jesus' legacy by continuing it in doing His work - finding the lost, healing the broken, feeding the hungry, etc.

In this way, we'll actually be living as He commanded us, which is both the best way that we can honor Him as well as to give to and live with each other:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you should also love one another.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples,

if you have love for one another.

- The Gospel of John, 13:34-35

In this spirit, I wish you a Merry Christmas and hope that His spirit will illumine and guide your life and all of ours toward living the Love that is His legacy.  Amen.

Saying goodbye to my Other Mother....

Let parents bequeath to their children not riches,

but the spirit of reverence.

- Plato

When I was growing up, I had the great fortune to have two loving parents.  They are both gone now and I miss them.  I really wish that they would have lived long enough to see their sacrifices to fruition: to celebrate and participate in the life that I now live thanks to them.

And yet, another aspect of the truth of my journey is that my parents both fought their demons throughout my young life and I was often the collateral damage.  Into those breaches of safety and security would often step another adult who would care for me and offer me succor and sanctuary, my mother's lifelong best friend, Vera Champion Woodruff.  Mrs. W, as I have always called her, was a haven in a storm, someone who could make a bad situation feel much better as well as make a good situation feel great.

And now she's gone: she passed away quietly a few days ago, just before Thanksgiving.  So, in the spirit of thanksgiving, I offer this tribute.

Mrs. W and my mother met in high school when my mother moved with her family to Columbia, South Carolina.  In my mother's retelling many years ago, they became fast and lifelong friends.  They graduated high school together and went to Bennett College together, transferring after a year to Fisk University from which they graduated.  One notable difference between the two is that, one year, Mrs. W, then known as Vera Champion, was the Sweetheart for the Omega Psi Phi fraternity, of which my (future) father was a member at the time.

They then went off to graduate school to get their Masters degrees in Library Science - my mother at the University of Michigan and Mrs. W at Case Western Reserve - and thereafter settled in Detroit, where I grew up.  They both became distinguished educators and married - in my mother's case, to her college sweetheart from Fisk, in Mrs. W's case to a dashing young up-and-coming businessman and executive named James Woodruff - and had a single child.

Mrs. W's daughter, now Maria Woodruff Wright, and I were only children of best friends, so we've been the only siblings that each other have known, in addition to my cousin Paul "Bobby" Thompson, III, who was also an only child of close cousins and rounds out our triumvirate.  In fact, so close were Maria, Bobby and I that it wasn't until we were about 25 years old that Bobby finally figured out that, technically speaking, he and I weren't related to Maria by birth but by love.  That's how close we've always been and, hopefully, will forever be.

So close that for many holiday celebrations, the entire Shivers clan - my mother's family, most of whom had also settled in Detroit - would gather at Mrs. W's home on Santa Rosa.  In fact, it turns out, Mrs. W was related by love to my entire family on my mother's side, such was her impact on and influence in our lives.  I would estimate that about a quarter of our family celebrations were held in her home, a rotation that most often included my home, my cousins the Thompsons' home and one of our aunt's homes (i.e., Bertha's in my youth and Doris Ann's in my adolescence).  The echoes of the love in these gatherings ring in my heart even now.

To this day, it's not really Christmas to me unless I listen to Handel's Messiah, to which I was introduced during one of those long-ago Christmas dinners at Mrs. W's.  I remember being about 14 or 15 at the time and being struck by the beauty, power and majesty of this work, so much so that I stopped, sat down in a chair in the living room and listened rapturously to the entire thing.  It remains one of my most cherished holiday memories four decades hence.

(And as I listen to it now while composing this tribute, I must type through the tears, smiling for having been touched by her life but also aching from being touched by her death and facing the first Christmas season I've ever experienced without her....)

"Hello, Walter!" would be how she always greeted me in adult life, with that sweet, twangy and a bit snappy lilt.  I suspect the sound reflected a native southern accent that was mostly gone by her mid- and later adult life.  It was an endearing and ironic notation of our relative transition: me into an adult who no longer wanted to be called by my childhood nickname and her into a loving elder who did her best to respect my choice.  When she slipped occasionally and called me "Wally," we would both laugh because, in truth, I would always be Wally to her, no matter how seriously I tried to be an adult and thereby use my given name, and that was just fine by me.

And I could never bring myself to call her by hers.  In part, this was due to my very proper southern mother's influence, but as an adult it was a reflection of deference and respect: I couldn't address someone whom I loved and esteemed so greatly as if she were a peer.  She was and forever will be above my level in life, which means that I am and have been blessed to have known her.  So forever she has been and will be Mrs. W to me.

I will never forget her smile, which could light up a room.  I will never forget her home, which could light up the lives of all who entered.  And I will never forget her spirit, which inspired us all, and all of which, along with her quiet determination, was required as she battled cancer successfully for years, usually without her losing that endearing and reassuring smile.

She played cards with friends, sang in the choir at church, traveled throughout the world and was a blessing to all who knew her.

But to me, she was the great lady who never forgot my birthday though I, too often, was late in memorializing hers.  After my mother died more than 20 years ago, Mrs. W's card was the one that I could count on receiving before my special day, and some years it was the only card that I would receive (our world having lost to an appreciable extent the habit and courtesy of written birthday greetings).

When I saw her last, at Maria's wedding earlier this year, I was honored to have been given the privilege of driving her to and from the reception.  We chatted freely as in the olden days, as if mid-life weren't kickin' my butt and late life challenging her mightily as well.  And in those golden moments, I could appreciate all that she'd meant to me over the years, a person who was unfailingly in my corner and always had a good word to share with and for me (even as she upbraided me occasionally as Other Mothers are wont and called to do).

As I watched her head to the elevator in her building, as life had taught me over the years, I realized that this might be the last time I would have the privilege of seeing her (though, of course, we always hope otherwise).  And so it was.  This being said, however, I will forever remember that proud lady, who despite the challenges of age and disease, refused to allow me to accompany her all the way to her apartment: she had the grit and determination to meet the challenges of life on her own feisty terms, an aspect of her character that I've always appreciated and admired.

Vera Champion Woodruff wasn't a saint, but she sure felt like one to me on many an occasion and was also proof of God's beneficence to me, to Maria, to her grandchildren Jay and Kristen and to all who had the privilege of knowing her.  Truth be told, the only differences now are that she's no longer in pain and we have been gifted with moments of love and guidance that will last us a lifetime.  And so she lives on in our hearts and spirits, forever joyful, loving and inviting, an eternal spiritual presence to be felt longer than her earthly life.

And though I won't be getting a birthday card this year, I appreciate my Other Mother all the more: she was a gift in my life that I hope to pay forward.  As with my mother, she has taught me that love can last longer than an earthly lifetime and that some of the greatest gifts are the smallest ones, the courtesies and kindnesses usually unexpected but always appreciated.

And now I must end this tribute: as I read it, I see myriad mistakes and realize that it's just too hard to continue, her loss just a little too fresh to enable me to move beyond it.  Disappointing though this may be to me, I can imagine her pardoning me and, instead, thanking me for the effort.  What I know now is that the privilege has always and ever been mine....

Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,

while loving someone deeply gives you courage.

- Lau Tzu

One of my favorite Bible verses is from St. John’s Gospel, the 34^th verse in its 13^th chapter, in which Jesus says:

I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.

Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.

Vera Champion Woodruff was the very embodiment of this gospel for those of us who will honor her today in Detroit and the many whose lives she touched over the years have been immeasurably blessed by this singular life.  So as we thank God for the blessing of Vera Champion Woodruff, let us promise to love as we were commanded and as she loved us for so many joyful, grace-filled and graceful years….