Mondays with ... Orville and Wilbur?

The Wright Memorial on the OBX

On the way home from the Outer Banks yesterday we stopped for gas in Ashland, Va. I wound up standing in line to use the restroom. The station had two facilities, each of them a “one-holer” of identical design, furnishing, and, most importantly, function. Each door had a standard-issue restroom placard, one of which read “Men,” and the other “Women.” The women’s placard included a strip of masking tape on which was written in blue marker “only.”

All weekend in North Carolina I had gone out of my way to speak with the manager of each business we went into. While others in our crew shopped or settled tabs, I’d go speak with the manager and leave a copy of a letter explaining why, following the passage of HB2, not all of us feel safe or welcome in North Carolina.

After a weekend on “team advocacy” of our vacation crew, I was simply too tired to inquire at the gas station in Virginia concerning what prompted the signage. After all, the restrooms were already private and each was, by architecture, exclusive to the individual using it.

I’m writing this blog post in a coffee shop in Arlington. The shop has three one-person restrooms. Over the years I have drunk gallons of coffee here, and I have used each of these restrooms. I’m certain that each has been used by countless men, and women, and, also, by countless transgender persons, and gender queer persons as well.

I’m pretty sure nobody cares.

What I do care about, though, is justice. That’s why, wherever we went in North Carolina, we left behind a copy of the following letter, printed on church letterhead: 

Dear North Carolina friend,
 For the past five years a small group of us from Northern Virginia have enjoyed a lovely weekend together on the Outer Banks. We have strolled your beautiful beaches, enjoyed many wonderful meals at your restaurants, rented condos, participated in OBX running events, visited your parks, and shopped in your stores. We love the Outer Banks.
 Thus it is with real sadness that we must let you know that we will not be back in the years to come due to the recent passage of HB2.
 We are members of the Clarendon Presbyterian Church community, and the deepest values of our common faith rest on the conviction that all of us are created equally in the image of a loving God. HB2 violates that image in some of our sisters and brothers. More than that, it threatens the safety of our transgender sisters and brothers, and, particularly, of trans kids.
 We know that many North Carolinians oppose the law, and that many North Carolina businesses are working to create safe spaces for all people. We applaud that effort, but we will not continue to contribute our dollars to the economy of a state that does not welcome all of us.
 We encourage you to become active in your own state’s political processes, and send to your legislature leaders who truly want everyone to feel welcome, valued, and safe in North Carolina. In the meanwhile, we encourage you to contact your current lawmakers and your governor and tell them to rescind HB2.
 We promise that when you do, we will come back and visit again.
 Grace and peace,
 David Ensign
Pastor

We left about a dozen such letters, and in almost every conversation, the business manager was incredibly gracious, receptive to the conversation, and deeply sympathetic. About half of them apologized for the law.

To those apologies I responded, “you don’t need to apologize; it clearly was not your idea. But we do encourage your activism. Contact your governor and your legislators, and let them know how you feel, and feel free to share our letter with anyone who might be interested.”

The conversations were universally pleasant, and several of them were deeply moving. A clerk in an ABC store actually had tears in his eyes thanking us for what we were doing. The only person who was merely cordial was the clerk in a state park, and I suspect that, whatever her personal convictions, she’s probably bound by her employment to avoid engaging controversial topics.

Even though the conversations were powerful to participate in, by the time “team advocacy” reached Ashland, really all I wanted to do was pee in peace. Come to think of it, that’s all anyone opposed to HB2 and similar proposals wants.

Oh, there was a line to the restroom marked “men.” The one labeled “women – only” was empty. I’m through Ashland from time to time. If I need gas, I’ll stop there again and ask, “why?”

Mondays With Martin: Lines and Justice

When our youngest was a little girl she was a master at “the Charlie Brown walk.” When she got her feelings hurt – which happens frequently when you’re the youngest child – she would pout off to her bedroom doing the walk. When she felt that something was unfair, she’d do the walk. Sometimes for reasons undetectable to anyone else, she’d do it.

Her childhood gave me a great appreciation and a keen awareness of the Charlie Brown walk. I witnessed another master this morning.

A little boy who wanted to have his picture taken in front of the relief of Dr. King was told by his parents that he would have to wait while others took their pictures. He found the idea of waiting deeply unfair. He Charlie Browned it all the way across the plaza and found a place along the low wall where he could slouch in deep pout. It was hilarious to watch, though I felt a sympathetic twinge for the parents of a kid on the verge of a meltdown.

“It’s not fair,” he said.

I thought immediately of the times our kids used to employ that phrase. They learned quite early on to come up with something else because my response was always the same. “Taking turns is not a justice issue,” or “cleaning your room is not a justice issue,” or “eating your vegetables is not a justice issue.” Followed immediately by, “you want to know what a justice issue is? Kids who don’t have enough vegetables to eat – that’s a justice issue; kids who don’t have a home with a bathroom to clean – that’s a justice issue; kids who never get a turn at all – that’s a justice issue.”

Yeah, life was tough for kids in our house!

On the other hand, the idea of waiting and the challenges waiting presents do resonate at a memorial to a man who wrote Why We Can’t Wait.

In that book, which recounts the Birmingham campaign of 1963, King wrote:

“Time itself is neutral; it can be used either destructively or constructively. More and more I feel that the people of ill will have used time much more effectively than have the people of good will. We will have to repent in this generation not merely for the hateful words and actions of the bad people but for the appalling silence of the good people. Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men willing to work to be co-workers with God, and without this hard work, time itself becomes an ally of the forces of social stagnation. We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right.” 

On my way into town this morning I was listening to the Diane Rehme Show, and they were talking about the so-called religious freedom laws that have recently passed in North Carolina and Mississippi. In the introduction, the host said of these laws that they have been “promoted by faith-based organizations.”

I took a couple of minutes, sitting in my car parked along West Basin Drive, to fire off a quick note to the show saying simply, “as a board member of People of Faith for Equality in Virginia, and as pastor of Clarendon Presbyterian Church, I know that there are countless people, motivated by the deepest values of their faiths, who work tirelessly for equality and justice for LGBTQ people. I’m parked next to the memorial dedicated to a man who, had he lived after Stonewall, would have counted himself among those countless ones.”

King knew that time doesn’t care. It is, instead, up to us to care, and to care deeply about those things that truly are matters of justice. So we keep on walking with heads held high. No Charlie Brown walking toward freedom.

Mondays with Martin: Existential VIP

The National Park Service treats its volunteers well, right down to the title they've designed to make volunteers feel special: Volunteers in the Parks, or VIP. When the ranger who coordinates volunteers sends out a mass e-mail communication, it is always addressed to VIPs, and, speaking only for myself, we do feel like very important people.
I was reminded of that during my four hours at MLK today when I directed at least a dozen people to the nearest bus stop or restroom. Hey, what's more important than finding a bathroom when you need it? The little things in life make up most of life, after all, and, though they feel like an ever-flowing stream, as it were, the whole of it doesn't last very long.
When I get to talking with visitors I always ask where they are from. Today one woman answered my question with, "oh, from here, temporarily."
I couldn't resist replying, "well, that's true no matter where you're from." Free directions to attractions around the Tidal Basin, and a pint of philosophy thrown in for no extra charge. You're welcome!
A family from Atlanta stopped for a lengthy chat, and asked all kinds of interesting questions, including "what is my favorite quotation on the wall of the memorial."
I answered, "the one I probably quote most often is 'the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.'"
The mom asked why I believe that, and, having already established some Presbyterian common ground, I said, "because we're an Easter people, I believe that resurrection is woven into the fabric of the universe. In the end, it will be all right. If all is not right, it's not the end. When we do the work of love, we bend the arc toward justice, and toward that day when all will be well for all of God's children."
At the memorial I often invite kids to look at the figure of Dr. King carved in granite, and see what's missing. Eventually most of them will notice that the sculpture, which is, technically, a relief, has no feet. When I ask why they think that is, responses range from, "I don't know," to "feet are hard to carve," to deeper reflections, such as, "his life wasn't finished," and "his work wasn't finished."
The figure invites us to consider the long walk to freedom, and who is going to keep on walking now, in this moment when it is not all right, yet. Who is going to use this temporary time, this brief sojourn we have, to bend the arc a bit further?
There are all kinds of ways to do that work, and at a moment when some folks seem particularly concerned about bathrooms, telling people where they can go -- and working to make sure that all people can go to the bathroom where they feel comfortable and safe -- is very important work, indeed.

Mondays With Martin: Heroes and Fame

I met a hero at the memorial today, and I was reminded a bit about the costs of fame. Actually, this is two stories about separate encounters, but they both have something to do with legacies and the weight of histories.

First I met a family of four -- parents and two young-adult children -- having a spring-in-DC vacation. When I welcomed them the mom told me that she had gone to school with Dr. King's kids in Atlanta in the mid-60s at Spring Street Elementary School. The family I met at the memorial is white, and I was surprised to hear that the mom had gone to school with King's children. But Spring Street was the first public school in Atlanta to be desegregated, and King's kids, along with those of King's close friend and colleague in the Movement, Ralph David Abernathy, attended.

The mom told me that her classes had assigned seats by alphabetical order, so she wound up sitting next to Dexter and Bernice. I asked her what her name was, and she said, "my maiden name is King, and my first name is Carol, so I sat between them often."

She told me about what she called a precursor to "bring-your-dad-to-school day," when Dr. King came to school. "The other dads said a few words in their children's classroom, and we all wondered why Dexter and Bernice's dad got to speak to the entire school in the auditorium."

We chuckled at that memory, and speculated about what it would be like to have been a typical dad with a typical job and get to try to follow Dr. King, or what it would be like to introduce your dad after your classmate has stood up and said, "this is my dad; he is the youngest person ever to be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, he was Time Magazine's Man of the Year in 1963, he has received at least 50 honorary degrees from colleges and universities around the world ... here's my dad."

On the other hand, she noted, "we were just kids; we didn't know anything about who he was beyond being our friends' father." That changed when their friends' father was assassinated, school was closed, and the city of Atlanta shut down.

As she and her family left the memorial to her elementary classmates' dad, I was left pondering the steep price fame often exacts from the children of the famous. Dr. King's children have struggled with that burden for years as they've come to different positions about protecting his legacy and the family's rights to it. These days, more than a little white girl sits between Dexter and Bernice (and their older brother, Martin) as they feud in court over the rights to Dr. King's Nobel Prize, his Bible, and other pieces of property, and over broader rights to control his legacy.

Fame, for the King children, seems a sad inheritance and one they have carried with, often less than heroic aspect.

Which makes a heroic life stand out all the more in contrast.

We had a hero visit the memorial this morning, though there was no fanfare nor announcement when an elderly African-American gentleman led a group of about 15 black teenagers onto the plaza. He gathered them in a loose circle off to one side of the monumental relief of Dr. King, and asked, "how many of you have ever heard of Claudette Colvin?"

My ears perked up immediately because I knew that Colvin was arrested in Montgomery, Alabama, for refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger in March, 1955. Nine months later a woman named Rosa Parks was arrested for the same "crime."

Colvin, the gentleman explained, didn't quite fit the image that black leaders in Montgomery had in mind as they considered fighting the city over discrimination in bus service. She was only 15, she had very dark skin and nappy hair, and she was not afraid to speak out.

He was clearly trying to get these contemporary teenagers to see themselves in the 15-year-old Colvin. Perhaps they did. It was hard to tell just how engaged they were with her story.

But then he told them his own story.

When he was 15 years old he lived in Lynchburg, Va. It was 1962. Barely 24 months since the height of Massive Resistance, the response of Virginia's white establishment to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education Supreme Court decision that struck down separate but equal public schools. Virginia shuttered schools in many districts rather than comply with Brown, and by the early 60s only a few districts were slowly desegregating.

"Slowly" was the point. Lynchburg's school board had just proposed a plan that would integrate one class at a time over the course of 12 more years before the entire system would be desegregated a full 20 years after Brown. But by 1961, a few dozen teenagers in Lynchburg had applied to transfer from all black schools to previously all white schools.

By the time the system acquiesced, it was January, 1962, and only two students were still willing (and had their parents' backing) to make the move.

Thus Owen Cardwell, Jr., became one of two students to desegregate Lynchburg's high schools.
Today he works with kids who were about the same age he was then, encouraging them to stand up for what is right, to speak out against what is wrong, and to understand that, even though they are young, they have the power to change the world and the responsibility, as well.

I don't imagine many people know of him. Judging from my own web searches this afternoon, more folks know about Claudette Colvin, and that's likely a pretty small circle. There's little by way of fame attached to his name, but a great deal by way of heroism.

(When he had finished speaking with the kids and invited them to walk around looking at other aspects of the memorial, I went over and thanked him for his work and witness. I asked his name, but I am the world's worst at remembering names, so I'm relying on the accuracy of the article linked above and a couple of others I found today to have correctly identified him.) 

Mondays With Martin: Runners are Clueless

I am a runner. My brothers are runners. My daughter is a runner. Many of my closest friends are runners. Runners are clueless.
This is not a particularly insightful observation, nor a recent one, but it was driven home to me this morning as I exercised a small part of my responsibilities at the MLK Memorial in asking several runners to "please walk through the Memorial."
I'll confess to having ignored this responsibility for months because I pretty much knew what was confirmed for me again today: runners are clueless.
Part of volunteering involves what I think of as "hall monitor" duty. I ask kids not to walk along the tops of the low walls surrounding the space. "Young man (or lady), please don't walk on the top of the wall: the granite is slippery and it's really hard. If your head hits it, there's going to be a lot of paperwork involved." That line almost always draws a smile and a "sorry" from either the kid or a nearby adult. Similarly, the "please walk your bike through the Memorial" gets a "I'm sorry" and a dismount -- even when the request is delivered in sign language to tourists who don't speak English. Even the unwelcome, "I'm sorry but you can't eat in the Memorial; there are benches along the Tidal Basin, please take the food there," almost always gets an apologetic compliant response.
But ask a runner to walk through the Memorial and you get a dirty look, an annoyed, "where does it end?" or a blank stare as the runner continues straight on. Knowing this to be true, mostly I just ignore runners because stopping them is not worth the effort.
So why did I ask today? Probably because it was particularly quiet for a while, and when there are only a few visitors the space seems to compel even more reverence than it typically does. At such moments, a passing runner seems as incongruous there as someone running laps around the chancel of the National Cathedral.
As a runner, I can understand cluelessness. All runners know the experience of getting lost in the moment, or, perhaps more accurately, getting lost to the moment. We get lost to the moment because the moment is hard. Running is work, and sometimes it hurts. Running comes with an amount of suffering that is as sure and certain as the multi-hued shoes we wear these days. Some of us plug in to music to get lost to the moment. Others work out problems as they run. Only a few of us actually think about the moment we are in as we run. Thus, most of us are utterly clueless to the rest of the world while we run through it.
That's not terribly surprising, nor is it unusual. While runners' cluelessness is its own particular form of cluelessness, runners are simply being human in finding ways to avoid thinking about suffering.
King, on the other hand, thought a great deal about human suffering. He wrote or spoke regularly about suffering. That none of those quotes made the wall at the Memorial should come as no great surprise. After all, we don't like suffering.
Nevertheless, King understood an inherent power in suffering. In a speech in 1961, he spelled out his understanding:

... both violence and nonviolence agree that suffering can be a very powerful social force. But there is this difference: violence says that suffering can be a powerful social force by inflicting the suffering on somebody else: so this is what we do in war, this is what we do in the whole violent thrust of the violent movement. It believes that you achieve some end by inflicting suffering on another. The nonviolent say that suffering becomes a powerful social force when you willingly accept that violence on yourself, that that self-suffering stands at the center of the nonviolent movement and the individuals involved are able to suffer in a creative manner, feeling that unearned suffering is redemptive, and that suffering may serve to transform the social situation.

Left unspoken, because there was no need to point it out: King's followers did not create the suffering they willingly endured. The social situation of Jim Crow segregation, economic inequality, and institutional violence created suffering.
Those working to challenge the triple evils of racism, poverty, and militarism were willing to stand in solidarity and compassion with those suffering the direct effects of institutional violence. They believed being present to pain and to suffering was transformational.
Being present is the essential piece.
You can run along the Tidal Basin all you like. It is beautiful, after all, and running is certainly healthy. But if you want to transform more than your own body, slow down and take note of all around us that stands in desperate need of a deeper transformation.

Mondays With Martin: It's Cold Out There

I was struck again, this morning, by the same block of text that grabbed me last month: "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy."
It was breezy and about 30 degrees out this morning. Not bitter cold, by any stretch, but, as the blooming forsythia mutely testify, a darn sight colder than it's been all of what has passed for winter in these parts. I was pretty chilly, and appreciated the ranger who thanked me for volunteering on a cold Monday morning in January. It was not comfortable out there, but it is no great measure of one's fortitude -- much less any more ultimate measure -- to stand outside on a cold but sunny day and welcome people to a beautiful memorial.
So it wasn't the cold breeze that lifted these words above the others. Rather, it was a letter to the editor of the Post over the weekend that got me to thinking about how we measure things. The letter, from a member of National Capital Presbytery's committee on church property, was ostensibly in response to a Post story about the journey of Arlington Presbyterian Church that has led the congregation (and the presbytery) to the decision to sell that church property to the Arlington Partnership for Affordable Housing. APAH will build a mixed-used high rise on the property that will include 173 affordable apartments. It is a bold, visionary, and gospel-based mission for the property and for the congregation, but the letter writer saw fit, instead, to decry the decline of church membership and lay the blame for that decline on "the recent dramatic leftward lurch of our clergy and the ordination of gays as ministers and elders."
I don't often read letters to the editor. They fall under my mantra, "don't read the comments." But this one was brought to my attention by members of the congregation I serve who were angered by it. As I read the letter I shared the anger.

I also felt an unhealthy dose of resignation at a perspective that seems to value the comfort and convenience of an unjust status quo over the challenges of controversy and change.

Dr. King addressed the same dynamic in his famous Letter From a Birmingham Jail in 1963. He wrote that letter to moderate white church leaders, including leaders of Mainline Protestant congregations at the peak of their membership, and he warned them that "the contemporary church is often a weak, ineffectual voice with an uncertain sound. It is so often the arch supporter of the status quo. Far from being disturbed by the presence of the church, the power structure of the average community is consoled by the church's silent and often vocal sanction of things as they are. But the judgement of God is upon the church as never before. If the church of today does not recapture the sacrificial spirit of the early church, it will lose its authentic ring, forfeit the loyalty of millions, and be dismissed as an irrelevant social club with no meaning for the twentieth century."
The church hasn't lost its way when it welcomes the outcast to the table, when it listens to voices long silenced, when it finds creative ways to build shelter for the homeless. When we do justice, love kindness, and walk humbly with God we're following Jesus and standing where our true measure will be revealed. Such a stand is neither convenient nor comfortable, but it is where we are called to be.

Christmas 2015

Dear friends,

It’s about 70 degrees and raining out this morning, but the lights on the Christmas tree and the presents around its base insist that it is late December, so “merry Christmas!”

We still live in metro DC, but it feels more the way I imagine Miami does just now, so perhaps we’ll go in search of some Caribbean Christmas music, and let In the Bleak Midwinter rest for another season.

It does seem just now that the climate has changed more in the past year than we have. Life continues to be rich with the ordinary and filled with the day-to-day of school, work, and all of the little things that make up our time circling the sun.

The kids are all third-years in their respective academic endeavors: Hannah in high school, Martin as an undergrad at VCU, Bud doing doctoral work at UC Santa Cruz. It’s crazy to consider that in less than two years we will truly be empty-nesters, but, as the song says, “time like an ever-rolling stream soon bears us all away.”

Too morbid for Christmas? I hope not, because the old hymn does not fill me with any dread, but, instead, reminds me that we are all given this time and while time may well roll on forever, we will not. So, the question for us always is, what will you do with the time you’ve been given?

Here’s a bit of what we did with the gift of the last year.

Hannah grabbed hold of high school and embraced the challenge of three sports and more AP classes than I, not being an AP math student, can count. She continues to excel academically and compete on the track, in the pool, and on the cross-country course with some interesting mix of stoicism and laughter. She enjoys the exercise almost as much as she enjoys complaining about it, but she rarely misses a practice and gets positively jumpy when she hits the down time of late spring. The new year will bring a new urgency to her college considerations. She’s visited UVA and VCU, and we’ll add Stanford to the list when we go out to visit her big brother in the spring. There will be others, too, I’m sure. When not in school, you could usually find the girl curled up with a book, watching the Nationals disappoint us local baseball fans, or working at Camp Hanover.

Modern chess.

Delanie, Martin, Bud,
Hannah, and cousin Willamae
playing games at Thanksgiving 

Martin, meanwhile, spent most of 2015 in and around Richmond. He was only home for short spells, and is loving most aspects of life in RVA. School is, well, school, and it is, as it always has been for Martin, a necessary task but not necessarily a source of deep joy. He is studying social work, and has tremendous gifts for the compassionate work that lies ahead. Meanwhile, Martin’s deep joys come from his friendship circle, including his long-time girlfriend, Delanie, his housemate, Ford, his roommate from Mary Wash, Thomas, and a list of folks from camp and school, as well. We’re happy to know most of these young adults, and find our own deep joy in the kinds of people drawn into relationships with our kids. If you’re in Richmond, chances are you can find Martin either hanging out with friends, banjo in hand, or out on one of the local disc golf courses hating the game he loves to play.

Martin launching a disc
off the top of the world.

Bud, meanwhile, is getting into the Christmas spirit by teaching his sister binary arithmetic – for fun. That kind of sums them both up – she’s a math geek, and he’s a born teacher. He’s also a remarkably smart young man who finds his own deep joy in the complex intellectual challenges that he confronts in his computer science studies of games and playable media. He’s in his third year of life in California, and still mostly loving it. The one major drawback, of course, is distance from those he loves, including Monica, his girlfriend of almost six years. He has done a fair amount of writing, some publishing, and several academic conference paper presentations in the past year. If you Google him (well, first, that would be weird…) you’ll probably find some of his platform studies work, and chances are you won’t understand it any better than you would my dissertation in post modern philosophy. Nuts … trees, you know. 

Golfer. Disc. Basket.
Bud shooting from a
difficult lie.

When he’s not nose to the digital grindstone, you can probably find Bud on a disc golf course or out coaching the Slugs ultimate Frisbee team. His ultimate passion did cost him a fairly serious knee injury last year, and that has kept him confined to the sidelines since last spring.

selfie with guitar

The boys have infected their father with their love of discs, and, as a result, if you’re looking for David some place other than church, there’s a good chance you’ll find him on a disc golf course, as well. Throwing plastic had to replace running as the exercise of choice when foot and leg injuries curtailed running in mid-summer. I hope to be back at running early in 2016, but middle age brings challenges that they don’t tell you about when you’re 20! It also brings perspective, and with that a keen appreciation for the gift of good work. The year in the life of the wee kirk saw major change as we renovated a 75-year-old worship space to create a space more amendable to creative liturgy and broader community use. If you’re looking for an intimate space to make music, hit us up.

A 2015 highlight: showing
Crooked at the Floyd
Country Store in January.

Cheryl’s work at the big library on the hill continues to feed her, and, thanks to the powers that be, it feeds the rest of us, as well. She still loves going to work, enjoys her colleagues (most days), and finds challenge and fulfillment in working with educators who use the library’s incredible on-line resources. If you’ve never visited the www.loc.gov website, you should take a minute and treat yourself. If you’ve never visited the library in person, you should take a day or two and treat yourself. Cheryl gives a great tour, and is always happy to welcome visitors to what we both think of as the most beautiful public space in DC. When not at the library, Cheryl can be found knitting, baking, reading, or enjoying the regular stream of folks who find their way to our little house in S. Arlington.

We got away from home a few times during the year, heading out the Santa Cruz to visit Bud and the beach last spring, and making short trips to visit the grandmas in Chattanooga and NE Ohio at various times over the summer. But for the most part we were happy to stay home and welcome others.

Some years ago, on one of our beach vacations, the kids noticed that so many of the beach houses have ridiculous and pretentious names. They decided our humble abode needed one, too, so we christened it The Randolph. Our motto: Welcome to The Randolph – enjoy fine dining in an atmosphere of casual chaos! Come and see!

Hospitality is the heart of faithful living. When we welcome strangers to the table we take our leave as sojourners on the way. When we sit down together at table to break bread we build, repair, and sustain the relationships that make life worth living. In a world that dwells these days in so much darkness, when we create welcoming tables we light a candle whose flickering flame may seem small and insignificant. But, as my friend David LaMotte suggested in a song, the light of just one candle defeats all the darkness in the world.

Holding you all in the light through these holy days.

peace,

the Lederle-Ensign household