Christmas 2016

Friends,

Christmas letters typically look back over the year with a nostalgic sepia-toned mix of sweetness and light, but 2016 was not typical. Many of us simply want to put it behind us and hope for something better next year.

The deeply troubled state of the world challenges the Christmas proclamation that a light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it.

I reckon that even a dumpster fire provides a light that overcomes darkness, and, even in a year that challenged the most starry-eyed optimist to find it there were some rays of light.

Actually, 2016 began full of simple joys in our little corner of it. We made it to one coast or the other five times in the first half of the year, and walking along the edge of the ocean always brings a sense of awe and wonder at the grandeur of creation.

We could all use a bit more of that, for standing in awe of something inexpressibly larger than ourselves provides perspective too often lacking in our overly wired lives. One might think that the wired nature of life these days makes it easier to share light, but that’s not the way it feels most of the time.

It’s not just me and it’s not just you. Something different is going on these days. According to a study published in the journal CyberPsychology you can discern something different in the values that predominate in television shows that kids watch these days compared to shows over the preceding half century. The researchers found that “Fame, an individualistic value, was judged the top value in the shows of 2007, up from number fifteen (out of sixteen) in most of the prior decades. In contrast, community feeling was eleventh in 2007, down from first or second place in all prior decades.”

Though the surveys on which the researchers drew hasn’t been completed for the current decade, I’m

willing to bet that the situation has only gotten worse. Perhaps that’s why most folks started their complaints about the dumpster-fire nature of 2016 as celebrity deaths started piling up, and some folks date the beginning of the end for 2016 back in April when Prince died.

The problem with celebrity culture, as noted in other research, comes when our focus on the lives of celebrities diverts our attention from life in community. People who follow celebrity culture most attentively are also the least likely to engage in community organizations and to volunteer. Virtual life replaces real life, and we wind up with a reality TV star stepping in to the most powerful office in the world.

Real life, of course, can be hard. As the wisdom of the Princess Bride reminds, “life is pain, princess; anybody who tells you otherwise is selling something.” Real life brought more than our share of pain and grief in 2016, with the unexpected death of Cheryl’s brother Dave in August, and the equally unexpected death of my sister’s husband, Terry, the Monday after Thanksgiving. Any year that includes the deaths of two brothers-in-law, each only a few years older than we are, is a dumpster-fire of a year.

Nonetheless, by the light of even a dumpster fire, we beat back the darkness and experienced more than our share of deep joy.

Hannah began her senior year of high school this fall. As one of her friends notes, not inaccurately, she’s “a freakin’ genius.” I don’t know about that, technically speaking, but she is an exceptionally bright, thoughtful young woman driven to succeed academically. She’s busy with college applications over the holiday (although, at the moment, she’s reading a book about “ferocious human beings” that seems decidedly non-academic). She keeps herself moving – literally – by running cross-country, swimming, and running track. She even consented to running a 5-mile Turkey Trot with her old man on Thanksgiving, and has signed up to join me on a 4-miler on New Year’s Eve. She was heavily motivated by the swag.

Neither of her brothers would consider such opportunities no matter what the gear giveaway included, but they will hit the disc golf links with me whenever we’re together.

That doesn’t happen as often as we’d like, of course, but we did get out to Santa Cruz to visit Bud last spring and he was in Arlington for about six weeks at the end of summer. Many discs were thrown. Bud is heading into the homestretch – that is to say, the dissertation phase – of his doctoral work. More significantly, he’s engaged! He will marry his long-time girlfriend, Monica, next fall at a Virginia winery. We are thrilled to welcome Monica (and her two adorable little dogs) to the family officially. (Unofficially, she’s been one of the crew since soon after she and Bud met at Mary Washington when they were freshmen.) 

If you’re paying attention so far you’ve noted that we’ll have a high-school graduation and a wedding in 2017. But wait! There’s more!

Martin will graduate from Virginia Commonwealth University in the spring with a BA in history. He’s pretty much loving life in Richmond, and he has also brought Delanie, another delightful member of the crew, into our lives over recent years. Martin is spending his Christmas break doing an internship in the maps division of the Library of Congress. (It pays to have a well-connected mom!) He has come home each day bubbling over about the maps he gets to study. He’s writing descriptions for items that are being digitized, and he’s spent several days this week studying Nazi-era maps of the Atlantic coast used by German U-boats. He says that it’s more than a bit unnerving to handle real documents stamped with swastikas.

Personally, I can’t think of a more important, though sadly undervalued, academic major these days than history. As Charles Taylor wrote recently in the Boston Globe we have created a “culture that equates knowledge and expertise with elitism, a culture ignorant of the history of the country it professes to love and contemptuous of the content of its founding documents.” Our collective ignorance of our own history certainly feels particularly threatening just now, and so many of our institutions designed to create and sustain an educated citizenry are debased.

Fortunately, Cheryl remains happily employed by one of the truly great American institutions. Her work at the Library of Congress continues to engage, challenge, and reward her. She works with a team of smart, thoughtful, and caring colleagues, and they do remarkable work helping educators access and use the library’s incredibly immense digital collections in classrooms across the country. She also continues to fill our home (and, often, our church) with delicious food, and keeps family (and special friends) warm and cozy with beautiful knitted socks and hats and scarves.

I receive more than my fair share of those, and I am perfectly happy with that situation. I am also quite content well into my 14^th year as pastor of the wee kirk. The work is good, and the people are better. Beyond work, I spent a lot of time in 2016 writing songs and playing them on the front porch. One of these days Martin and I will commit a bunch of them to digits and share them beyond the confines of the porch. You can find a few things we’ve put up on Soundcloud.com under my name. We’ll continue our creative collaboration in 2017 as we begin the research phase of a second film project. This one is being funded by a generous grant from the Louisville Institute. Consider that a really lame teaser, and tune in to Facebook for further developments.

In an early conversation with one of the folks who will undoubtedly be featured in the project I jokingly said, “we’re going to make you famous.” I do not, actually, aspire to that at all. Fame and celebrity bring little of value to the world. I hope, instead, to share a little light, because I continue to trust that even a little light will overcome the darkness. Here’s hoping that the light that shines brightly in 2017 comes from something far more beautiful and hope-filled than a dumpster fire.

Peace,

PS: have I mentioned Cheryl’s big brown eyes recently? They are the most beautiful in the world, and they usually get what they want. That is why we have a new addition for Christmas. Meet Mr. Bounce – 10 whole pounds of fluffy sweetness who, in the 24 hours he’s been with us, is living up to his name.

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Tears and Fabric

Of the MLK quotes that have found their way into my writing over the years, these lines, from the Letter from the Birmingham City Jail, have resonated most often with my own thinking:

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly. 

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about two parts of that connection and the weaving. When we were in Atlanta for my brother-in-law’s memorial we stayed with a friend on her family’s farm out near Stone Mountain. The story of the remnant 60-some acres of what was once a 600-acre farm that has been in a family since the 1940s is one of being woven together. The story of Stone Mountain itself, with its tortuous history of KKK gatherings and its weird relief of Confederate heroes, has its own inescapable network of connections.

These days the farm where we stayed boards horses, and out in the middle of one pasture stands a seismic station. It can detect an earthquake happening on the other side of the world. The stable earth we stood on in Atlanta is the same rumbling earth shaking beneath the feet of others standing half a world away.

Our friend told us about finding some unexploded ordnance from the Civil War on the farm a few years back. She had professionals come out to take care of it which they did by blowing it up. I remember watching the video on Facebook. It was impressively loud. Yet it didn’t register on the seismic monitor. The explosion scratched the surface of the earth but it didn’t cut deep enough to register at the level where we are all connected.

The war that left behind the unexploded bomb and the carvings on the nearby mountain, on the other hand, touched far deeper places.

On a community and family level, the death that had brought us to Atlanta also left a deep wound that tears at many hearts. No seismic monitor can measure the depth and breadth of this shaking (although the site meter on the blog does show that more people read the eulogy to Terry than any other single post in the more than 10 years I’ve put scribblings here.)

More than that, thought, the overwhelming response of several communities – art, music, faith, work, and family circles – takes measure of something beyond our finest instruments. We are bound together in a single garment, and whatever affects one directly affects the rest of us as the fabric of our lives is rent.

The personal is political, and these connections carry profound implications in all kinds of ways. From the straightforward reminder to hang up and drive, to take driving as the deadly serious responsibility that it is, to the reminder that a single death in Atlanta – or in Aleppo – shifts the ground beneath all our feet.

Remembering Terry

When Beth asked me to say a few words this morning, I rested in the silence for a while remembering. When I went to jot some notes I headed the document “Remembering Terry.” But that seems to me to miss the mark. To remember is to put back together. It’s just wrong to think that I am remembering Terry. He was among the most put together human beings I’ve ever known. He does not need me to re-member him.

Instead, I only wish I could recall him – that is to say, just call him back. Just once more, say, “hey, Terry, did you bring your saw with you? Let’s play some,” or, “hey, Terry, you feel like putting together a grits soufflé, maybe?” or, maybe just, “hey, Terry, how about a Tom & Jerry?”

Reading the posts so many of you shared on Facebook following his death this week I was struck over and over again by a common thread: Terry could find something extraordinary in the most ordinary. He could create quirky, lovely party favors out of objects found buried beneath the house. He could make stunning photographs out of bacon grease. He could make a style all his own out of someone else’s castoffs. That he could make haunting music out of a homely hand tool should come as no surprise.

More than that, though, he could find beautiful chords in the cacophony of community life. When the vendors at the farmers market, the boss from a job you held 30 years ago, the crazy artists, the neighbor down the street, the parents of your young adult child’s friends, and those friends all write touching notes of appreciation about you, you know you’ve lived life well.

Someone wrote on Facebook this week that Terry lived a Christ-like life. I really wish I could see the look on his face in response to that. I’m sure he would have a wry smile and arched brow beneath an angled hat as he pondered the suggestion, and shrugged it off.

Terry was a gentle agnostic when it came to doctrinal questions of religion, but he got exactly right the most important parts of what I think of as faithful living. He knew how to do what he could with what he had right where he was to make others’ lives better. And he knew how to do it with love. Whatever space he occupied, he did so with warmth and generosity, and with a natural hospitality. He was at home almost anywhere he found himself, and he made others at home there, too.

I love that he and Beth lived, both in Athens and here in Atlanta, close to train lines. Terry had friends from both sides – all sides – of the tracks. He was never afraid to be himself, and when you live like that – unafraid – you are not afraid to make friends, connections, community everywhere you go.

I never saw him walk on water, but if being kind, warm, generous, and loving as you bring out the best in everyone around you is Christ-like, well … I don’t know about that. I do know that the religious language of salvation is way over-used, but at its root it simply means wholeness, well-being, and right-relationship. Terry lived that fully. My own faith tells me that the restless Spirit at the heart of creation is loving and eternal – good all the time and in the time beyond our experience and understanding of time. I trust that Terry rests in that gentle and everlasting love.

I do know a few things with utter certainty: I know that Terry loved my sister well, and could almost always make her laugh even if the laughter included an eye-roll at whatever crazy thing he was thinking up to do with whatever crazy thing he had dragged home. I know he loved Willamae beyond words, from her first sentence – “wanna beer” – to the last time you spoke there was deep love behind every syllable. And I know he made our family’s life richer, fuller, and brighter.

For more than 30 years, the Ensign clan has been so happy that Beth brought Terry into our circle. His kindness, generosity, creative spark, and great good humor have helped us hold together well through all of the kinds of ordinary joys and sorrows that families share: the births of a next generation and the deaths of an older one, the birthdays, marriages, and anniversaries, the Christmases and Fourths of Julys. All of the ordinary days that Terry could so often make extraordinary.

We will never stop recalling you, Terry, your laughter will echo in our memories the rest of our days and our broken hearts will hold you in love. The gospel of John begins with the beautiful poetic insistence that a “light shines in the darkness, and the darkness shall not overcome it.” We hold you in that light, today. Rest in the light, dear brother.

Prayers and Lamentations

It's morning in America. Literally. Not in any rosy metaphorical way, but just in the "lord, I hate mornings and there's just not enough coffee for this" kind of way. It’s raining where I am, and the dull grey seems appropriate to this morning after.

Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States of America.

Sometimes I have to write things down and read them before I believe them. This is one of those times. Even reading it doesn’t much help. Perhaps it’s the sleep deprivation from staying up past midnight as returns came in and hopes dwindled.

I much prefer losing sleep for baseball games. This, alas, is not a game and I fear the many people dear to me will suffer greatly under this man. As friends lose health insurance, lose marriage rights, lose reproductive freedoms, religious freedoms, are reminded that their lives don’t, in fact, matter to the majority of Americans and their bodies are not safe, I will lament.

I will recommit to the work of justice, but on this drizzly morning it feels too soon to make even that small statement. The work goes on, but this election has made it so much more difficult.

There is a time for every purpose under heaven, and this feels like a time to rest in lament. That is not the same as wallowing in despair, but, rather, a holy moment stepping outside of the rush of history to give voice to the tears that well up in prayers for the nation. In my lamentation, I pray.

I pray today that my daughter, who this morning said, “I’m glad I decided not to apply to Virginia Tech because I don’t think I would feel safe in that area,” some day lives in a country where feeling safe is not a privilege reserved for men.

I pray today that a friend, who this morning posted, “well, I guess now I won’t have health care insurance,” some day lives in a country where health care is a right and not a privilege reserved for the affluent.

I pray today that an African-American friend, who last night wondered, “will I be safe,” some day lives in a country where black lives matter as much as white ones.

I pray today that gay friends, who are wondering if their marriages will survive a new Supreme Court, some day live in a country that believes that love is love is love is love is love.

I pray today that friends who are federal employees (not to mention my wife who is one), and who today are fearful not only about their economic futures but also about their personal safety following a campaign in which they were casually vilified, some day live in a country that authentically values public service.

I pray for the planet whose climate we have so deeply damaged, for the lands far distant where war wages and peace, today, seems even further out of reach, and for refugees who, today, know that they are not welcome in the country from whose shore shines a lamp that once proclaimed, “give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Finally, I pray today that our long experiment in self-government does not come apart at the seams, even though the fabric of the nation is fraying in frightening ways.

In time, I trust, we will find hope for our hearts, strength for our hands, and ways to give feet to our prayers, but today it feels appropriate to sit in lamentation. Weep, beloved nation, and trust that though tears will linger for a while, there will again be a time of joy, of dancing, of building up, of love, and of peace.