Merry Christmas, 2021

Dear friends,

What year is it now? Oh, yeah, it’s sometime late in year two of covidtide. Sure, the sun comes up and the world still spins, but time is out of joint. But the whirling of the planets brings us ‘round to the longest nights, and, now again to Christmas. And so happy Christmas from northern Virginia where, because it’s not just time that is out of joint, it’ll be about 70 degrees on Christmas day.

Despite all the collective loss and grief of this strange season, we’ve found a good deal to celebrate in our small corner of the world. Even in dark days, we find sparks of joy that brighten the place where we are. For most of us, most of the time, that is the best we can do. So we offer our best, and share a few sparks of joy.

Hannah graduated from UVA back in May! Because the time is out of joint, I posted lots of pics from graduation hashtagged “Class of 2020.” D’oh. We’re proud of how Hannah made her way through the final 15 months of college in the midst of the pandemic, and our whole crew gathered in a big house at the edge of the Shenandoah National Forest to celebrate graduation weekend. After getting her piece of paper – “an unusually large diploma” she called it – Hannah moved with friends to Raleigh, where she’s been tutoring and working in a garden store. It took several months of job hunting before those two opportunities popped up. That turned out great, though, as it gave her the opportunity for one more brief stint on the staff at Camp Hanover. After several summers as high ropes coordinator (among other responsibilities) she got the chance to be counselor to a couple of groups of middle school kids for an exhausting, wonderful two weeks in August. As anyone who has ever been a camp counselor knows, a couple of weeks can be revelatory and transformative. Of course, revelation and transformation unfold over many seasons, so check back in with us same time next year to see what’s unfolding with the girl child.

This time last year, middle child was experiencing the unfortunate revelation that his case of covid was a long-haul one. Martin struggled mightily with the long-term effects of the disease through the first half of 2021. Even now, certain weather combined with too much exertion can be exhausting for him. (Consider this one more reminder that covid is all too real, and we should all get the damn shots.) In spite of the health struggles, Martin and Delanie had remarkable years. They continued to set up house with their collection of cats, books, music, and art in a cute elderly bungalow in Richmond. From there, they each launched new jobs. This fall, Martin became the teen librarian for the Central Rappahannock Regional Library in Fredericksburg. The job suits him well, and the institution seems well run with strong leadership. The commute is a bear, but worth it for at least the next while. Delanie, on the other hand, traded up in terms of commute (and many other aspects of work) by moving to the Maggie Walker Governor’s School in Richmond to continue her career as an art teacher. The work there is part time, which gives her more time to create and market her own art. You can follow her on Instagram, where you can also catch clips of Martin’s music and see pictures of the beautiful guitars he is building.

Delanie & Ollie and the mural she created for Baby Sister's room

While Monica and Mimi 
cook, Bud and Ollie ham
it up for the camera

Meanwhile, out in Reston, Bud’s part of the family is about to get a bit bigger. When the crew sat down together for our first dinner at last spring’s graduation celebration, Bud and Monica shared the news that Oliver is going to be a big brother come January. Baby Sister, as the new little one is currently known, should make her grand entrance on the stage of life sometime around King Day. Blissfully unaware of the life transformation just ahead of him, Oliver is a delightful toddler busily soaking up language and spreading smiles wherever he goes. Objectively speaking, as grandparents, we’re pretty sure he’s the most adorable kid ever. His dad and mom are pretty grand, too. One of the deepest joys of parenting, it turns out, is watching your own child become a parent and thrive in that role. Most of life for Bud and Monica centers, of course, on that role, but each of them has continued in other roles, as well. Bud’s software engineer work continues to grow with Viget, and it seems to be keeping him engaged. From the outside, at least, the company seems like an excellent tech firm that values its staff and treats them well. Monica continues her work as training coordinator and office manager for Heeling House, a nonprofit that works with special needs children through interactions with animals, mostly dogs. Given her great gifts with both kids and dogs, it’s been an excellent match for her. 

Everything has its seasons, and, as parents of adult kids now, we’re in the season that allows for the writing of a Christmas missive on Christmas morning. Coffee is on the counter. Cookies are in the cupboard. Lights shine from the tree and a living room lit with candles. Cheryl, of course, is bustling around. 

She keeps busy no matter what is going on in the wider world, and her work at “her little library” has barely skipped a beat

throughout the pandemic. While she has not set foot on Capitol Hill since March, 2020, her work has never slowed down. The only real difference is that now I get to sit in on a lot of staff meetings! She is a master of the webinar, these days, sharing the library’s massive online resources with teachers across the country, and encouraging and equipping them to use the collection in their classrooms. Although our lives have gotten quite compressed during covid, Cheryl continues to expand her horizons in the culinary arts, knitting (when a balking wrist allows), and joining me now and then for a bit of running.

I got back into a bit of distance running during the year, culminating in running the Richmond half marathon this fall. Alas, a herniated disc and resulting sciatic pain, have slowed me considerably since November. That’s been a literal pain in the butt, and also particularly irritating because I actually have more unscheduled time these days than I’ve had in many decades. My interim work out in Burke concluded at the end of September, and I’ve been funemployed ever since. I’ve heard colleagues rave about sabbaticals for years, and now I understand. I do wish, however, that mine was paid. Oh, well. As Cheryl continuously reminds me, the sweat equity that I’ve been putting into our Arlington house is the income for this season. I have thoroughly enjoyed the hours of creative and physical labor involved in constructing a new fence for the back yard and renovating the attic space.

The hiatus from church work is coming, if not to a close at least to a pause. I’m picking up a bit of work subbing for a colleague who will have surgery next month. After that, who knows?

Work for me may be centered in Richmond. Among the celebrations of 2021 for us has to be the completion of the interior renovation of our house in Richmond. Our family of choice will, in stages, begin living there next year. Cheryl’s new telework options seem likely to make it possible for her to be there at least half time. Clark and Mike are likely to make the move in late spring/early summer, and I’m completely up in the air.

Up in the air seems like a pretty decent description of the past 20 months. There is, of course, something in the air these days. The virus is awful, so stay safe and keep others safe to the best of your ability. But something else is up in the air, as well. Deep, profound, and lasting changes in social, political, and economic orders often come in the wake of major catastrophe. We are living through just such a catastrophic moment, and I see signs that such change is beginning to happen. History does not unfold in a straight line, and what comes next is not written in the stars. It is ours to join in the making. 

My faith tells me that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice. I believe that when we do the work of love the arc bends the whole world around. Wherever life and work takes us next, we’ll lean into that work trusting that, even now, a light shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it.

Friends, here’s to the light and living in it in the days to come.

Merry Christmas!

Another Trip Around the Sun

Eldest posted a picture in the family text chat thread today:

He added this pithy inquiry: “Happy birthday pater familias. Do you have any wisdom for us?”

It is, in fact, my birthday today, so, of course, I am pondering time. I have no claim to wisdom, but I have been around for a while. Long enough, in fact, to have forgotten much and to remember a few things.

Last night Louisville beat DePaul in a college hoops game, a result little noted outside of a small circle of friends and alumni. My doctorate comes from DePaul, so I reckon I am in that small circle even though I have never followed the fortunes of the school’s sportsing endeavors.

I only noticed this game in the scroll of scores because when I read it I remembered a time when that game would have been notable no matter the outcome. I thought, “wow, in the early 1980s that would have been a big game.” Then I thought, “wow, that was 40 years ago.”

Whenever my thoughts run along those lines I’ll think back to what was happening even 40 years earlier. That is to say, when I look back at what was current when I was a young adult – DePaul men’s hoops team being a top seed in March Madness three or four years in a row, for example – I regularly also wonder about what my young adult self thought about events 40 years earlier.

Oddly enough, in the case of DePaul’s men’s hoops team, 40 years earlier than 1983 they actually played in the championship game. Even more oddly, they were coached in ‘83 by the same man, Ray Meyer, who coached them to the championship game in 1943 (lost to Georgetown, in what would also have been a headline game in the early 80s). Oh, and hey, they didn't call it March Madness back then. And, by "back then," I mean 1983.

To be doing the same job in the same place for more than 40 years strikes me as the oddest fact in this collection of wonderings. I don’t really wonder what that would be like because I cannot imagine it. 

On the other hand, there is something comforting in recognizing that people were pursuing the same dreams 40 years ago that they pursued 40 years prior to that. 

We’re still pursuing them now.

Sure, the game has changed in ways that make it practically unrecognizable, but the dream remains the same: to be recognized for your excellence and crowned champion in your field.

There are countless human pursuits. Some of them are noble, others less so. Excellence remains a noble pursuit. Being recognized for it in your chosen field may be less so, but it's not ignoble.

The path that Ray Meyer’s teams followed probably didn’t change much in the essentials over his 42 years of coaching: pay attention to the little things and practice, practice, practice. That’s the only path to excellence in any field even though the game will change as time goes by. Your peers will recognize it even if no one else does.

Somebody probably told me that when I was young, but I didn’t understand it then. It took a while to grasp it, and it’s taken even longer to be grasped by it. 

Practice shapes us. We are what we practice. Practice art, and you’ll be an artist. Practice music, and you’ll be a musician. Practice running, and you’ll be a runner.

And, as Paul put it to the folks at Corinth back in the day, “strive for the excellent gifts … and I will show you a more excellent way.”

That’s his set up to the great chapter on love, where he basically says, “practice love.”

Love is what binds us together and holds us. Love means acknowledging and honoring our common humanity. 

In practice, it looks like kindness. With its shared root with kin and kindred, kindness is putting love – that which binds us together and holds us – into practice. Whether in families of birth or families of choice, kindness makes us kin.  

I’ve tried to practice kindness above all else over the years, and, after 62 trips around the sun, I intend to keep practicing. I commend it, even if I never quite achieve excellence in it, it’s a worthy pursuit. The people close to you will recognize it and honor it in gratitude.

Of maps and rocks and kisses and the mystery of time

I wrote this last month intending to post it ... and then I didn't ... until today. So, this unfolded a month or so ago. In other words, the time of a rock ... or a kiss ... or God knows what.

I drove down to Camp Hanover the other afternoon from Northern Virginia. I’ve made that trip hundreds of times so I know the way by heart, but I still turn on the Google Maps because: traffic. 

Maps are a good thing, a super useful tool. Think treasure maps – X marks the spot; or maps of great routes of ancient explorers; or trail maps for the AT; or just maps of camp. It is good to have maps even of familiar places.

Camp is a familiar place for some of us; for others it’s brand new. Everyone is welcome! Even though it’s a familiar place for many, there was a lot this summer that was not familiar because of Covid. For example, if you’ve been to camp in previous summers, you know that sessions usually begin with a campfire around the old senior fire circle. I missed that piece of the familiar, but creating a much more physically distanced option on an open field was a wise and joyous pivot. 

Still, during my two weeks at camp earlier this month I did wonder down the path to the old fire circle for a bit to visit. In the middle of the fire circle a huge mound of ashes from campfires from many other years. 

I was thinking about that ash pile as I was driving down I-95 listening to the radio. I was listening to an NPR show called the TED Radio Hour. 

They were talking with this journalist who travels the world finding really interesting people to talk with and shares their stories. He talked about this Peruvian hip-hop artist who raps in some indigenous language I’d never heard of – and it was amazing. And he talked about this artist from Kenya who started an arts movement she calls African Bubblegum Art – it’s art for art’s sake all about joy. It was fascinating. 

Then he talked about this paleontologist. He studies fossils and basically the history of the earth through fossil records – so, really, really, really old stuff – rocks and rock layers and fossils of things that lived millions of years ago. This particular scientist discovered the fossils of the largest dinosaur yet found – a creature that weighed something like 10 T-rexes.

He was talking about finding a place where he believes the key to understanding what happened that led to the extinction of dinosaurs – and here’s where it got me. Apparently, the key to understanding what happened to the dinosaurs lies in a huge pit, off a parking lot, behind a Lowes in New Jersey.

As soon as I heard that, I knew this was what I had to talk about at the opening campfire … if only because of the weird New Jersey connections on the staff of this Virginia summer camp. 

Anyway, what really caught my imagination was the way he talked about time and places. He said that his work has made him look at things – like a rock, for example, and think not just about a spot on a map where such a rock might be found, but also to think about things in terms of time – what happened in the place to make the thing what it is, and what happened in the place to transform things. He talked about the end of the age of dinosaurs as “an event.”

He talked about some really simple events – as simple as a kiss. 

We tend to think about something like a kiss as just a moment – a really brief gesture – a way of saying good-bye to loved ones, or good-night to children, or welcome in some cultures, and, of course, I love you. A brief, simple gesture with a beginning and an end pretty close in time.

But the paleontologist said, in terms of geologic time, a rock is just like a kiss – something simple with a beginning and an end that are – again, in geologic time, pretty close to each other.

That got me to thinking about the ashes from past campfires. Sometimes I’ll sit in the campfire circle and think back to friends I’ve met at camp going back decades, and those friendships seem wonderfully old, and those ashes feel like they’ve been around for a long, long time.

But in geologic time, well, they’re not even as old as a kiss – more like the blink of an eye.

Now you could think about that – about the relative shortness of our time in the vast scheme of things – and feel really insignificant, feel really small, feel like you don’t matter.

On the other hand, you can think about it a little bit differently. In all of the great vast history of time, the stardust that is you is unique. The stardust that is me is unique. There’s never been someone just like you or just like me.

As the psalmist prayed in scripture, “I praise you, God, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.”

Which is to say, "Wow! Thanks, God, for the gift that is this one life."

The theme at camp this summer was prayer – our various longings and how we express them to ourselves, to each other, and to God. To me the amazing thing about prayer is that I can open myself to the mystery of the God of all creation – of all time and space and matter, the God of the dinosaurs, of all those layers of earth, of that pit behind the Lowe’s in New Jersey, the God of the rocks and of the kisses, the God who bends low to us and says, “you are my beloved, you are enough, I made you and I love you.”

I try to let that be the answer to prayers whenever I am at camp – that we meet God in this place, and in each other. In that way – in the event of a meeting in a particular time and place – prayer is a map through time and space. 

Covid Boats

Since Covid hit a year ago lots of folks have observed that while we’re all in the same sea, we’re not in the same boat. The church I’m serving these days had a Zoom gathering over the weekend focused on the self care challenges presented by the pandemic.

It was fascinating to hear the vast array of responses to the basic “how are you doing” question. As one introverted person noted, “I’ve discovered that I could be quite happy as a hermit.” An extrovert, on the other hand, spoke of how deeply they missed random conversations with complete strangers at the grocery store.

Working families with school-age kids at home are experiencing these days completely differently than retirees or older workers whose children are grown. People in overall good health tend to feel less anxious than those whose health is compromised. Adults with aging parents have their own set of concerns.

Add on layers of economic concerns, job losses, career interruptions, graduating into a pandemic economy, and so on, and it is clear that our sea craft ranges from inner tubes to cruise ships. We see the overall picture of the pandemic from the point of view of the boat we’re getting by in.

Even though we only have the perspective shaped by our own experience, personality, and situation, we are still all seeing the water roll by. That amazes me. Other than the rise and setting of the sun and the moon, I’m hard pressed to think of any experience that is truly universal. 

It may be true that a billion people watched the Super Bowl over the weekend. It’s undoubtedly true that more than 6 billion people did not. 

But everybody everywhere around the world is experiencing Covid, even if it’s only the awareness that a few isolated locales or extraordinarily effectively organized have of how fortunate they are not to have major outbreaks of the disease. Whatever the current global population is, that’s the number of folks tuned in to Covid for at least some parts of the pandemic.

I don’t think any event in my lifetime comes close, but I wonder if that will remain true. Will future generations deal with such outbreaks from time to time and come to think about it like I think of major snowstorms. I’ve lived through a few. Will we all look back at Covid and say, “ah, yes, I remember my first pandemic” the way folks talk about “the great blizzard of ‘78”?

I’ve been part of lots of discussions about what we want to carry forward from this time. The great deficiency in all of those discussions rests on the great unknowns. We don’t know what the future will look like. What sea will we be sailing on? What boat will suffice? Are we riding out another pandemic or is it just a minor ice storm?

I’ve noticed that our church staff spends a lot more time checking in at the beginning of our daily Zoom meetings than we used to spend at the beginning of our weekly staff meetings. The fact that, almost a year in, we continue to check in daily speaks volumes about the need to connect, to try to bear one another’s burdens and bind one another up, to see each other if only on a computer screen and reassure each other that the waves are not as powerful as our compassion, nor as deep as our faith.

In truth, we don’t know what tomorrow will look like, or even this evening. Which is to acknowledge that not only are we all in different boats, but also we’re not necessarily in the same one we began in or, maybe, not even in the same one we went to bed in last night.

That is to say, our individual responses to the day-to-day realities of living through the pandemic vary wildly. It’s not only the case that my neighbor’s experience is hugely different from mine because he works in a grocery store and I serve a church, but my own experience in February is not what it was in September. In fact, my own experience yesterday is not the one I’m feeling today.

Some days the waves of grief or anxiety rise over the gunwales of our little boat, and it feels like I’m going to be swept away in a torrent I cannot hope to control. Other days, it’s calm and pleasant and cozy in this craft. 

The thing is, as privileged as my beloved and I are with good jobs that are almost entirely on line now, as safe as we may be in our snug small house, we’re still not in the same boat all the time. That potential hermit from the second paragraph above? She’s married to that extravert who misses trips to the grocery store. 

The only way we make it through this whole is to embody the wisdom in the old folk song, somos el barco, somos el mar – we are the boat, we are the sea. If we become the boat that carries us together, perhaps there will be something worth holding on to for the long term on the far side of this ocean.

 

Life During a Coup Attempt

Like most everyone across the country, I am saddened and deeply troubled by the events unfolding today across the river in DC. We live five miles, as the crow flies or the tear gas drifts, from the U.S. Capitol, and my beloved normally works on the Hill in an office that has been closed due to Covid since March. Several members of the congregation I serve work on the Hill, and at least one has spent the past few hours in lockdown in a basement of the Capitol complex. Clearly this strikes close to home for those of us who call metro DC home.

I don’t have any great wisdom to offer, and my immediate reactions reflect that. I long for accountability for those who fomented and participated in the violence.

But I also know that sometimes the most immediate thing most of us can do is take a deep breath and engage in some acts of hope and faith. Personally, we went for a walk and then went to church.

Both of these responses felt both wholly inadequate and entirely necessary.

The walk was a visceral reminder of how limited and feeble today’s hideous actions downtown really are. We’re obviously quite close, in global terms, to the events of the day. But here in south Arlington it’s just another winter day. It was quiet out, and we exchanged a few greetings with neighbors as we walked our dogs. It was good to move our bodies, and be reminded that we have grace sufficient to the day.

By that grace, I had already planned to join the Wild Goose worshipping community for their Zoom worship this evening. Wild Goose is a small gathering that meets, when meeting in-person is possible, in Indian Valley, Virginia, down toward the southwestern corner of the commonwealth. They center their common life on Appalachian traditions and their Celtic roots with a great emphasis on the music culture of the area. 

Their in-person worship always begins with a shared meal and ends with communion. Building relationships and community at the table is the heart of their understanding of church.

It’s probably safe to say, given the demographics and voting patterns of the area, that their community includes a fair number of folks who do not see American politics the same way that I do, so it was particularly good to share some time in worship, song, and prayer with them tonight.

The table – metaphorical as it may be in this days of pandemic distancing – is central to my understanding of the faith that I proclaim. Because Jesus welcomed everybody, so do we. 

But the events on Capitol Hill beg the question of limits, and that brings me, on this final day of Christmastide, on this day when we recall the journey of the magi and the gifts they brought, to a gift that we gave our daughter for Christmas this year.

It’s a t-shirt emblazoned with the words “abide no hatred.” It’s from the good folks at The Bitter Southerner. We can abide everyone who comes to table, but we cannot abide hatred. We must not abide hatred.

Hatred breaks community and destroys neighborliness. We can disagree. We can protest. We can engage in civil disobedience. But when we act with the kind of hatred on naked display at the Capitol today we break the commonweal. 

Everyone who abides in love abides in Christ. All are welcome to such abiding. No matter what you believe or profess, we can abide so long as we are rooted and grounded in love. No matter what you believe or profess we can break bread together if our gathering comes in response to an invitation to love. But we cannot long abide or endure in love’s absence, and hatred will break every relationship and will break the bonds that bind us as a nation. Abide no hatred.

Dear Jeff Bezos

I wrote this as a Facebook post a couple of days ago. In the writing of it, I remembered that writing more words than a typical Facebook post is something I used to do often. I used to post them here, and, a few times, try to get them published elsewhere with decidedly mixed results. But, hey, I have never written to get published. I've always written because it's the way I clarify my own thoughts. I am, of course, happy if anyone else reads the words, and all the more so if anyone else finds them clarifying. With those thoughts in mind, perhaps the New Year's Eve Facebook post will kickstart a more focused attempt to clarify thoughts more often. If I wind up doing that, I'll put them here mostly as a reminder to myself. But, hey, if you run across them here and find them clarifying, too, that's cool. Feel free to pass them along. Oh, and here's what I actually wrote on Facebook:

The Washington Post (owned by Jeff Bezos) ran an editorial this week opposed to the $2,000 Covid emergency relief payments. They argued that such payments are poor public policy, and, narrowly speaking they may well be correct. Still, the editorial did not sit well with me.

Here’s the thing that Bezos and his friends should know but cannot acknowledge. For more than 40 years they have systemically ripped off the commonwealth. Bezos also owns a little package delivery service you may have heard of called Amazon. They famously moved into our neighborhood recently, so you can consider this a friendly little neighbor-to-neighbor chat.

Bezos and his fellow American billionaires have seen their wealth grow by more than $1 trillion (that’s trillion, with a t) during the pandemic. Meanwhile, the nation’s GDP has declined by about eight percent or so since the beginning of the year, and fewer than half of the 22 million jobs lost in the first quarter of the pandemic have returned. Moody’s chief economist estimates that it will be 2024 before the job market recovers.

Since the late 1970s, the wealthiest Americans have simultaneously increased and consolidated wealth and power. They have used that power politically at every level to decrease their own tax burden, keep wages artificially low, and strip workers and their unions of bargaining power. That’s the tip of a huge iceberg of economic and political shifts that leave the U.S. economy profoundly less equal and more unjust than it was when I was a child.

It’s New Year’s Eve, and I’m not going to spend my time tracking down the data and footnoting it all, but I promise you, neighbor-to-neighbor, I’m not making up any of this. When I was growing up, it was possible for an average American family to get by and own a home on a single income. Lots of my friends’ families did so, and we were a decidedly middle class to working class crew of kids and neighborhoods. Most of us went to college, and few of us graduated in deep debt doing so.
Try doing that today. I dare you. Not you, Jeff. You probably own six homes and can just buy the university of your choice. But most of the rest of us? Not a chance. Even if you’re relatively well off – and we are doing fine – it’s pretty much inevitable that either you or your kids will wind up in substantial debt for their educations. Unless you have a spare quarter of a million, somebody is going to have to borrow some money if you want to put three kids through public universities on in-state tuition. I don’t need studies and footnotes on that one. We’ve got the tuition bills and bank records and credit card receipts.

So, while Jeff’s editors might be technically correct on the narrow policy question, in a broader sense they are missing the mark by as much as the Amazon delivery person who dropped one of our packages at the neighbor’s up the street. 

That was occasion for some lovely neighborly Christmas cheer, so, thanks Jeff. You really have moved into a nice neighborhood. We’re not the kind of folks to build guillotines or carry pitch forks. But there are other parts of the country that are doing far less well, and may reasonably be inclined to be less polite. Before you go dismissing the idea of sending the peons a couple grand you might want to consider that.