My Family, Music, and Christmas, 2025

 

Christmas is not Christmas without its music. The community choral group in which my wife and I sing presented its annual Christmas/holiday concert a couple of weeks ago. And we both sing in our church’s choir, which draws extra duty every Advent and Christmas season.

But as Advent wound its way toward Christmas, 2025, I had the unique opportunity to witness two family members of different generations express Christmas through music.

We heard daughter Rebecca as one of three soprano soloists in multiple performances of choral music by German composer Michael Praetorius (1571-1621), and entitled “Praetorius Christmas Vespers.” Jeannette Sorrell, the artistic director of Apollo’s Fire, Cleveland’s Baroque Orchestra, had created the Vespers from a number of Praetorius’s works for the season. Rebecca is a professional singer, and she performed beautifully, as did the entire ensemble. The performance was in Cleveland’s magnificent Trinity Cathedral. As we walked back out into the world that night, I felt I had just heard all of the Advent and Christmas music I needed for this year; that anything more would be superfluous.

And we watched granddaughter Keira dance the challenging “Dance of the Reed Flutes” in the annual Nutcracker performance by the Fokine Ballet Company of Oneonta, New York. Under the direction of Donna Decker, this company of children and youth students (supplemented by professionals from the Dance Theater of Harlem in key roles) presents a complex performance with remarkable skill. Ninth-grader Keira tackled her 2 1/2 minutes alone on the big stage with a focused commitment, and danced beautifully.

It was deeply gratifying to witness these two engaging with music. Rebecca has been at it for years, building upon singing before she could speak words. She has accomplished far more than her mother and I ever dared dream. Keira is still near the beginning of what could be a career in ballet, but at this point there is no predicting where she will find purpose in her life. One thing for sure: she will never forget all it takes to make a dance come to life.

As a father and grandfather, I have had a good seat from which to watch Rebecca and Keira nurse and nurture their artistic gifts into artistic accomplishment. I have not witnessed the hours of study and lessons and practicing that their achievements have required, but I have heard the trials and triumphs of learning an art, and seen exceptional results. Inborn talent is one thing; developing that talent into artistic success requires just plain hard work.

Given their parents’ and grandparents’ interests, it is not surprising that Rebecca and Keira have chosen to pursue arts that are outside the popular mainstream. Michael Praetorius and The Nutcracker belong in the realm of classical music, hardly known to most Americans, if known at all. But that is where we are.

Now, allow me an abrupt detour to the gospel of Luke, the first couple of chapters of which are better known. I do not know how the writer of Luke felt about “the arts,” but they certainly seem to have known the value of song, poetry, and drama when they fashioned their book’s birth narratives. Luke’s telling of the birth of Jesus exists in that place in art where things become true whether or not they happened just that way. They are true because of what is universal in them—their joys and their fears, their hopes and their tears. Luke’s telling of Jesus’s birth touches the heart as Christmas Vespers and The Nutcracker do, whether that heart is fully formed or still in training.

To witness our daughter and granddaughter working so hard and accomplishing so much in pursuit of their arts’ truth have made my heart sing this December. They and their colleagues have elevated my celebration of Christmas—both religious and secular—in ways I do not fully understand, but which are true. I am overwhelmed with humble, grateful awe.

Healing Web

364 days after our first appointment, my dermatology specialist pronounced me clear of psoriasis symptoms. I could finally end my twice-weekly phototherapy sessions.

I had first met with her a couple of months after my regular dermatologist had started treating me for the bright red scaly spots that were taking over large areas of my skin.

I am grateful to them both—to the first for referring me to the specialist, and to the specialist for what finally worked. This essay is about gratitude.

But first: “healing” is probably too strong a word for where I am right now in relation to psoriasis. Psoriasis is an auto-immune disease in which the body’s immune system, thinking there’s a threat to the skin, attacks the skin. The triggers for auto-immune diseases, as I understand them, can lurk in our bodies long after discernible symptoms disappear, waiting for the next opportunity to assert themselves.

Plus, although I am done with phototherapy for now, I am still injecting my thigh with a biologic medication every twelve weeks. It got at or near the source of the psoriasis, and the creams and ointments and phototherapy treated the symptoms, visible and itchy on my legs, torso, and arms. The injections, the substances that I (and my wife) applied to my skin, and the light box I am where I am today.

Fortunately, the rash never erupted on my face or hands, so most people did not know about my psoriasis unless I told them. That made for a slight credibility problem when I had to schedule appointments around the frequent phototherapy sessions. I did not wear shorts while we were on a Caribbean cruise last February for fear I’d be regarded as one who had broken out of a leper colony. Fortunately by summer’s hottest days, the spots were faint enough that I no longer had that worry.

The prompt for this piece springs from my ruminating on the question, Insofar as I have been healed of psoriasis, to whom or what do I owe thanks?

As a Christian believer, I reflexively begin with thanks to God. But even as I write those words, I want readers to know that I write them with a palpable sense of mystery, and no sense of personal pride or superiority. I thank God for my good outcome because I believe that, despite the theological tension between the notion of a good supreme being and the reality of evil in the world, God is ultimately the source of healing. That’s a statement of faith. I can do little more than just put it out there. And I trust I would say it even if my psoriasis not gone away.

So having thanked God, I must say more. I have experienced freedom from this ailment because I am inextricably part of a web of life that sometimes brings me good and other times brings me ill, over which I have little control and to which I can only give witness.

I am grateful to two fine, caring, persistent, and completely professional doctors, who did did not come out of nowhere. They are products of fine educations that drew upon generations of attempts to heal psoriasis as well as upon the latest medical discoveries and technologies.

One of those two partners with another dermatologist in a small, independent practice; the other works in the immense Cleveland Clinic complex. Both are backed up by and tied into offices and labs far beyond the tiny exam rooms in which I saw them. Both had access to treatments that are the result of years of research in governmental and private institutions and clinics, research conducted by people who would not give up on any even slightly-promising avenue of study until they had wholly exhausted its possibilities.

Push it even further back: what natural substances went into the products that were finally developed so they could help me? Who found them and recognized some medical or other possibility within them through basic research justified only be, “because it’s there”? Who knew what might come to be out of someone’s mere curiosity?

I am grateful that my phototherapy treatments were available a ten-minute drive from home, and that I did not have to schedule them around work. Shockingly, the phototherapy appointments have to be scheduled during daytime, Monday through Friday. What does the average working person with psoriasis do?

One more thing for which I give thanks: I could afford the therapies I was offered. Not that I could pay for them all myself—hardly! This was a costly bout with illness. Some of the medicines I’ve used are by far the most expensive that have ever entered my body. (One costly lotion was actually made in India.)

Crucially, I have good health insurance because generations of Presbyterians have, through our Board of Pensions, made affordable, comprehensive insurance available to me, as part of a generous pension plan. And honesty compels me to write that family inheritances helped make it easier to pay what I had to pay.

I could go on, but I think my point is clear: I did not get through psoriasis on my own power. The thanks that I offer to God does not blind me to the reality of the web of nature and humanity that made restored health possible. I have been able to welcome my reprieve from psoriasis because I am part of a universal network that I did not create nor can fully understand. I certainly cannot claim any such healing as “my right,” as if other human beings do not have exactly the same right, as if I somehow earned it, or as if I am owed it.

The fantasy of being self-made—or even of being dependent upon few beyond immediate family and friends—is a fantasy because in this world no one, no nation, no culture can go it alone and survive in other than the most basic of ways.

Bound together as we are on a web we share with untold numbers of other animate beings, everything we say and do benefits or harms the web and those on it with us. So long as we live, we cannot escape where we are. Never knowing this web’s outer limits, we must make the moves we make on it with caution and all the wisdom nature and nature’s God give to us. And never forget to be thankful.

Cruel, Uncalled-for, and Un-Christian

 

This headline is so creepy that it makes my skin crawl. Our president and his administration not only deny food to the hungry but also take aim at states that try to respond to their needs. This is one more cruel, uncalled-for, and (for those who claim Trump is some kind of a latter-day Jesus) un-Christian action on the part of the Trump administration.

Meantime, the same administration is looking for every way it can to enable wealthy individuals and corporations get even richer. (Which Jesus do they cite for that?) And the President is busy managing the White House ballroom’s construction and welcoming rich syncopates to a tawdry Halloween party at Mar-a-Largo. Gives new meaning to “fiddling while Rome burns.”

If President Trump is going to deny supporting anyone financially during this shut-down, it ought to stop paying congress. On top of that, it should fine the House Republicans for failing to show up at work for weeks, with a double fine imposed upon Mike Johnson. It would be a sweet violence, rightly-earned.

The violence that’s been visited upon immigrant-appearing populations is now being visited upon the most vulnerable Americans. If we think that’s as far as the violence against our own people will go, we are fooling only ourselves. Next thing we know, it will be our turn, if we dare share a contrary opinion at all.

It is—every bit of it—cruel, uncalled-for, and un-Christian.

Halloween Hope

All Saints’ Eve (“Halloween”),

when we try to scare ourselves

(and others)

with fantasy and fake blood,

is followed by All Saints Day

when faith dares to hope,

even in the face of

our world’s blood and gore.

Why do we immerse ourselves

in imagined fright

while side-glancing (at best)

all too-real frights:

war, devastation, injustice;

hatred, indifference, racism;

poverty, sickness, homelessness;

despair, suicide, death…

…all that blood shed?

Come All Saints’ Day,

those who, going before us,

held on to hope

will rise in glory;

while we who still walk this earth

can yet rise to the occasion of our times,

and dare to speak words and do deeds

inspired by crazy, reckless hope…

…and perhaps stop the bleeding.

Our Last Rose of Summer

'Tis the last rose of Summer, 

  Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
   Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
   No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
   Or give sigh for sigh!

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one,
   To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
   Go sleep thou with them.
Thus kindly I scatter
   Thy leaves o’er the bed
Where thy mates of the garden
   Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow,
   When friendships decay,
And from Love’s shining circle
   The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie withered,
   And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
   This bleak world alone?

Poem by Thomas Moore (1779-1852); check out John McDermott's recording on YouTube.

Bootlace Business

My pair of new Herman Survivors bootlaces was delivered to our doorstep last Saturday mid-afternoon, several hours before the 10:00 p.m. cut-off time that Walmart had promised. I was relieved.

What did it take to find 54-inch laces for the brown Merrell hikers that I purchased several years ago at R.E.I.? Not a lot, but more than it should have.

I began shopping at Famous Footwear across Euclid Avenue from our neighborhood. Their sparkly, shiny laces in the length I needed offended my sense of style. The Merrells expressed offense as well.

I then made my way down I-271 to the R.E.I. where I’d bought the boots. I would cut to the chase and get the job done efficiently.

Alas, R.E.I did not have a single pair of 54-inch laces in stock. But the helpful clerk suggested their Portland (Oregon?!) store might have them, which isn’t helpful when you live in northeast Ohio. (I know that they meant that I could probably find them online at the Oregon store, but it still struck me as an odd suggestion.)

You sold me the dang shoes, didn’t you? Can’t you carry their laces?

Back at my Mac, I refused to search for them online from any R.E.I. anywhere. Surely I could find and pick up a pair at Dick’s Sporting Goods. But again alas, such was not to be.

So I ended up at one of the last two places I often end up looking for items: Walmart. (The other last choice is Amazon, but given the choice, I tend to choose Walmart. It just seems so real and so local, compared to the amorphous super-duper mega Bezos enterprise.)

Visiting the Walmart website at 9:30 on a Friday evening isn’t exactly the best way to start the weekend. But it was worth it, or seemed to be, because…

…Yes! Walmart had the laces I needed, for $2.50, pick-up-able at 7:00 a.m. Saturday morning at their store a couple of miles from home. I’d save Walmart the cost of shipping by getting them myself the next day…though somewhat later than 7:00 a.m.

But with the morning came disappointment. My laces were not available at that store, or anywhere else in the Walmart universe. Downcast, I returned to the Walmart website after breakfast, and found a $3.00 pair that I could pick up that day—Saturday—after noon. The additional $.50 was no problem. I wonder what they will cost with whatever tariffs Mr. Trump eventually decides to place on imports from China, because that’s where they were made, probably for a couple of yen.

Then, a few minutes later arrived the inevitable dreaded email: No, my Walmart doesn’t have them after all. BUT, meta Walmart can deliver them to me before 10:00 p.m. this very evening! How could I say no?

Thus, and with relief, it came to pass that—

My new pair of Herman Survivors bootlaces was delivered to our doorstep last Saturday mid-afternoon, several hours before the 10:00 p.m. cut-off time that Walmart had promised.

What did I learn from all of this?

1. Never assume that you can get laces for your shoes from the place where you bought them. Imagine: R.E.I. Merrells showing Walmart laces in public! Un-cool, but also unavoidable.
2. Never think that you can easily get the laces you want anywhere.
3. Everything comes from China, at least for the time being.
4. Walmart is not quite sure of its inventory.
5. “Herman Survivors” was once a pretty good brand of boots whose name Walmart bought and now uses to market what reviewers say are at best serviceable boots—not great, but okay for the price. ’Tis the way of current American commerce.

Finally—and I am embarrassed to admit this—my Merrells don’t really need 54-inch laces. I had carefully measured the old ones, but didn’t account for the fact they are stretchy, which all clothing is these days. The new laces are about 6 inches longer than I need when stretched to their limit. Maybe the 48-inch laces R.E.I. did have would have been okay. I will never know.

Because, you see, the laces I finally found work, which is good enough for me, American consumer that I am, beaten down a little bit more that weekend by the way that America does business today.

Another sad day for our republic

 

Wrecking the White House's east wing to build the Trump ballroom seems to me to be the perfect symbol for what he and his party are trying to do to our nation.