The Shepherd, by Frederick Buechner

 The Shepherd

from A Christmas Triptych, by Frederick Buechner

“Night was coming on, and it was cold,” the shepherd said, “and I was terribly hungry. I had finished all the bread I had in my sack, and my gut still ached for more. Then I noticed my friend, a shepherd like me, about to throw away a crust he didn’t want. So I said, ‘Throw the crust to me, friend!’ and he did throw it to me, but it landed between us in the mud where the sheep had mucked it up. But I grabbed it anyway and stuffed it, mud and all, into my mouth. And as I was eating it, I suddenly saw – myself. It was as if I was not only a man eating bread but a man watching a man eating bread. And I thought, ‘This is who I am.  I am a man who eats muddy bread.’ And I thought, “The bread is very good.’ And I thought, ‘Ah, and the mud is very good, too.’ So I opened my muddy man’s mouth full of bread and I yelled to my friends, ‘By God, it’s good, brothers!’ And they thought I was a terrible fool, but they saw what I meant. We saw everything that night. Everything. Everything!

“Can I make you understand, I wonder? Have you ever had this happen to you? You have been working hard all day. You’re dog-tired, bone-tired. So you call it quits for a while. You slump down under a tree or against a rock or something and just sit there in a daze for half an hour or a million years, I don’t know, and all this time your eyes are wide open looking straight ahead someplace but they’re so tired and glassy they don’t see a thing. Nothing. You could be dead for all you notice. Then, little by little, you begin to come to, then your eyes begin to come to, and all of a sudden you find out you’ve been looking at something the whole time except it’s only now you really see it – one of the ewe lambs maybe, with its foot caught under a rock, or the moon scorching a hole through the clouds. It was there all the time, and you were looking at it all the time, but you didn’t see it till just now.

"That’s how it was this night, anyway. Like finally coming to – not things coming out of nowhere that had never been there before, but things just coming into focus that have been there always. And such things! The air wasn’t just emptiness anymore. It was alive. Brightness everywhere, dipping and wheeling like a flock of birds. And what you always thought was silence stopped being silent and turned into the beating of wings, thousands and thousands of them. Only not just wings, as you came to more, but voices –high, wild, like trumpets. The words I could never remember later, but something like what I’d yelled with my month full of bread. ‘By God, it’s good, brothers! The crust. The mud. Everything. Everything!’

“Oh well. If you think we were out of our minds, you are right, of course. And do you know, it was just like being out of jail. I can see us still. The squint-eyed one who always complained of sore feet. The little sawed-off one who could outswear a Roman. The young one who blushed like a girl. We all tore off across that muddy field like drunks at a fair, and drunk we were, crazy drunk splashing through a sea of wings and moonlight and the silvery wool of the sheep. Was it night? Was it day! Did our feet touch the ground?

“‘Shh, shh, you’ll wake up my guests,’ said the Innkeeper we met coming in the other direction, with his arms full of wood. And when we got to the shed out back, one of the foreigners who were there held a finger to his lips.

“At the eye of the storm, you know, there’s no wind – nothing moves – nothing breathes – even silence keeps silent. So hush now. There he is. You see him? You see him?

“By Almighty God, brothers. Open your eyes. Listen.”

A cookie for one

“Making a single-serving chocolate chip cookie is the perfect outlet for a stress-filled day.” So read the caption under a picture of a pair of hands mixing cookie dough in a hand-sized bowl.

As the holiday season—propelled in part by sweets—rushes in upon us I cannot imagine a sillier, lonelier enterprise than baking one cookie at a time. At the same time, doing just that may represent the sorry excesses of our American individualism and divisions.

I started baking chocolate chip cookies several years ago in a quest for the secret to my mother’s recipe for them. Her chocolate chips were like no others. She baked an untold number of them for decades prior to her death at nearly 96 in 2015.

Mom could have never imagined baking to satisfy her appetite alone. She baked for family and friends. Her cookie jar was never empty, and was usually filled with chocolate chips. In her later years—much of her family scattered—she drove around our community on Saturday afternoons to give away cookies, breads, and rolls that had been isolated raw ingredients earlier that day.

I believe my cookies come pretty close to tasting like hers, though I am not sure exactly why. It’s taken some experimentation, and therefore some investment of time to approximate her secret. My experience has convinced me that making a single-serving chocolate chip cookie is an extravagant enterprise destined to lead to lonely consumption.

The article with that picture reported that it takes half-an-hour to bake one cookie. In around three hours I can mix, shape, bake, stow and clean up after the creation of 48 chocolate chip cookies. Do the math: my way is eight times more efficient than the one-at-a-time way. My mother, who no doubt made her cookies much faster than I can, would not have survived had she been so inefficient.

Advocates of small-batch baking (as they call it) may argue that not everyone can carve out a three-hour block of time to bake. I counter with, you make time to do what you want, don’t you? If you baked four dozen cookies in a single evening and preserved them (freezing works), you could eat one a day for a month and half without investing another minute or making another mess.

But of course, you’d have to eat each cookie all by yourself. You would not dare invite a neighbor in to watch you eat your cookie, would you?

This, then, is my real concern: loneliness; isolation; individualism. As in, I’ll do it myself for myself. Other people just get out of my way and my life.

That sounds extreme. But it is exactly the opposite of how my mother lived her life. Though she could be an independent sort, her overriding concern was always the comfort and good of others, particularly of her family.

Being so focused on yourself that you bake a cookie that simple good manners dictate you must eat by yourself sounds like much of what endangers our nation and world today.

In 2020, the BBC conducted what it called “The Loneliness Experiment.” It surveyed over 46,000 people of all ages living in 237 countries regarding their experiences of loneliness. Among its findings was this: “people in individualistic (vs. collectivist) countries reported more loneliness.”

In the name of individual and private freedom, many of us resist masking requests and vaccination requirements, laws that extend liberty to people not like us, to using public policy to share some wealth with poor Americans, and more. We think we can take care of ourselves without caring about people we do not happen to know. As long as I am okay—but even if I am not—I will not do what anyone else tells me to do, even to preserve the common good or to protect my neighbor. Because I am my own person, responsible only for my own self.

“America First”—when it means “America only” or “America in isolation”—is the macro-political equivalent of baking one cookie at a time and eating it alone. It seems so right…until we can’t get our hands on the things we need to bake just one last cookie because someone else controls our access to them.

How to overcome loneliness in our uber-individualistic and isolationist land? Here’s a start: bake a real batch of chocolate chip cookies…2, 4, 6 dozen. Then, share them. Give them away, or enjoy them and a cup of tea or glass of milk with someone else. The baking and the sharing will both do wonders for you. They will do wonders for others as well, and could be your greatest contribution to the flourishing of us all.

 

My red shoes

 

Dorothy had her ruby slippers. Finally, I have my red shoes, and I am many decades older than she was.

Buying shoes has always been a challenge for me. Like the rest of my body, my feet are long and narrow, requiring 12A shoes since I was a teen-ager. Many say that the unusual thing, given my height, is that I don’t need size 15 or more. Count me lucky.

Finding the narrow width was always the problem. Stores overflow with men’s shoes marked wide and extra wide. Sure, you can buy men’s A-width shoes if you are willing and able search hard for them, not be fussy about style, and pay a premium price. Sometimes I did pay that price.

But many times, especially for athletic shoes, I made do with shoes too wide for my feet. Tying them tight created folds of leather or fabric just in front of the laces. They rarely felt really comfortable no matter how hard I tried to pretend at first that they’ll be okay, thank you.

About 20 years ago I discovered that New Balance offered narrow shoes, and I paid the price for them. As with many things, it was worth it. There’s little that’s harder on one’s state of mind than an ill-fitting pair of shoes. Hurting feet can raise hell with the head.

Shoes suitable for riding a bike became an interest of mine when I bought my Specialized Cross Trail in 2015. I pretended I was young and agile enough to buy clip on pedals and shoes. In this arrangement, the shoes firmly attach to the pedals. Your shoes cannot slip off the pedals, nor can you lift them from the pedals. The advantage is that you can benefit from lift on the way back up, pulling the pedals up with a force somewhat less than the force you get from pushing them down, but nevertheless significant.

You get out of clip-on pedals by sharply kicking your heel outward away from your bike. This releases the shoe from the pedal so you can put your feet on the ground and keep yourself upright when you stop. It’s a tricky maneuver that takes some practice. It also requires an extra second or two before you do stop.

The shoes I bought for this two-wheeled, self-powered, integrated man/machine were black with red accents.

There are many stories of cyclists meeting the pavement because they had not freed at least one foot fast enough. Fortunately, that never happened to me. I am an extremely cautious rider. I anticipate problems like most people anticipate food.

But as the pain in my arthritic knees got worse, I lost confidence that I could kick my shoes free from the pedals in an emergency. So, a couple of years ago I got plain old flat pedals and returned to riding with athletic shoes. It was kind of come-down, but I was less likely to fall down.

When I bought a new Jamis step-through bike early this summer (another concession to age’s advance), I decided I’d buy some shoes primarily for riding. Don’t ask me why. It seemed appropriate. But I did not want to spend too much on them, so Maxine and I went to a shoe warehouse sort of place rather than to a New Balance store to see what I could find.

I found all-red, almost ruby-red, Pumas. Their black laces nearly wrap around the entire upper part of the shoe. Very cool.

They weren’t the first shoes I’d found that day that might have worked for me, and their fit is not perfect. But they were relatively inexpensive, and felt good on my feet. Perfect for cycling, I told myself and Maxine.

But did I dare? Red shoes on feet the age of mine? I liked the thought of it. Just a little bit daring, outside my retirement community’s norm of clunky white walking shoes. Maxine assured me they were great. I snapped a picture, and texted it to my daughters, and they said go for it. So, with the unneeded but appreciated assurances of those who could afford to be honest with me, I bought them.

Since getting my red shoes, I’ve noticed red on the feet of other men, all of whom are decades younger than I. Wearing red Pumas fools no one about my years, except maybe myself. I imagine they make my aching knees feel a little stronger. Plus, they work well on my bike, as I’d hoped. And they are almost as much fun as that bike  whether riding it or walking the pathways of our peaceful neighborhood.

On the existence of high winds

From time to time when I’ve driven the great stretches of lonely highway in America’s Southwest, I have been confronted by an official road sign advising me that, “High Winds May Exist.”

I am sure the sign is intended to warn me that, without warning, a gust of wind might blow my car where I do not want it to go, or even overturn it altogether. Semis and recreational vehicles are particularly vulnerable to such winds, but regular automobiles are, too, if the wind is really high.

I am never sure what I am supposed to do with the sign’s statement while managing my car at a 75 m.p.h. clip. Instead of making me more alert to what’s going on around me, the notice that “High Winds May Exist” sends me into a philosophical rabbit warren.

For one thing, high winds do exist. Yes, the philosopher will demand definitions of “high” and “wind” and “exist” in order to fully trust the truth claim of the assertion. But common language usage leaves no doubt that high winds certainly do exist. Just ask anyone who’s been through a hurricane.

But the statement painted in plain letters on that isolated sign tends to sow a tiny seed of doubt: if high winds may exist, one must consider the possibility that they may not exist. Despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, and using the right tricks of the philosopher’s trade, it is possible to argue that high winds do not exit.

After all, who has ever seen the wind, any wind, low or high? You can see evidence of what seems to be a high wind’s existence, but that doesn’t prove that high winds exist, however you define existence. You might conclude there’s no such thing as a high wind at all.

Of course, my existential concern when I see that sign is supposed to be whether a high wind exists or is about to exist right where my car is. It’s not the theoretical existence of high winds that should concern me, but the actual presence of high winds on this road at this moment. I am, I believe, being advised to be very alert. But it’s hard to think about the here and now when my mind is adrift in a metaphysical whirlwind.

Thus, something we all agree to be true is challenged by a carefully contrived statement that sows doubt without directly confronting the agreed-upon truth. It’s easy to distract people from the realities around or near them just by asking a question or suggesting an alternative to something they, for good reason, take for granted. Politicians do it all the time, and the nation slides into a metaphysical warren from which there is no escape for anyone but a rabbit.

My witness in this election

I do not expect that my views on the upcoming election will sway any voters one way or the other, but I still feel called to witness to what I know:

I know that Joe Biden is our legitimately-elected president. I know that the evidence is all on my side in this regard, and that Mr. Trump’s party’s embrace of his “Big Lie” is a direct threat to our democracy. I know those who control today’s Republican Party would lead us to one-party, authoritarian rule, buttressed by an extremely distorted version of Christianity. 

I know that talk of “Civil War” comes from people who fear they cannot get what they want through the legitimate processes of our democracy because what they want is not the will of the majority of our people.

I know that white supremacists should have no seats in our halls of government 

I know that the pursuit of truth about such matters as race, history, sexuality, and science, must not be constrained by politics and political power.

I know that fear—of others or of one another—in no way to make a nation “great."

I know that Liz Cheney is right when she says, “If you care about democracy and you care about the survival of our republic, then you need to understand—we all have to understand—that we cannot give people power who have told us that they will not honor elections

The light must not go out

One must say Yes to life and embrace it whenever it is found - and it is found in terrible places; nevertheless, there it is. For nothing is fixed, forever and forever and forever, it is not fixed; the earth is always shifting, the light is always changing, the sea does not cease to grind down rock. Generations do not cease to be born, and we are responsible to them because we are the only witnesses they have.

The sea rises, the light fails, lovers cling to each other, and children cling to us. The moment we cease to hold each other, the moment we break faith with one another, the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.

~James Baldwin: The Price of the Ticket

Summer's end--the shadows lengthen

 Late this afternoon along the Ohio and Erie Canal Towpath in Cuyahoga Valley National Park.

My first bike ride there in over a year, and it was a beauty!

The queen is dead. What next?

Yesterday we buried Queen Elizabeth II, Sovereign of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Head of the British Commonwealth of Nations, Defender of the Faith, etc., etc., etc…

I say we buried Elizabeth II because she represents the end of our era, of the era of those of us who born just before and during World War II.

What a grand era it has been for us! It began with our side vanquishing the Nazi threat to humanity, and the beginning of a time of great prosperity for millions around the globe. Our side of the world—the western side—created the United Nations largely in our image. We forced the Soviet Union into bankruptcy and dismantling itself, making it clear to all the democracy/free enterprise was the best and most humane of all governments. Increasing awareness of other peoples and other cultures enriched our lives, and we even came to new understandings of pains and the aspirations of the varieties of people within our own borders. Some of us even offered apologies for the abuses those before us and we ourselves visited upon others.

And the Queen smiled over it all, her benign countenance blessing all. Even her beloved England, now picking up whatever pieces of its remaining empire that it might yet hang on to, put on a display of power and pride for her funeral as only the Brits can. For a few hours you’d have thought Britain still ruled the waves and the world.

But of course, things have changed. They have been changing for decades. The first hints came in the 1960s. In that decade distrust of institutions seemed overwhelming, but time proved those years to be only mildly unsettling compared to what was to come. While Elizabeth II smiled, the world order created by the west fragmented, Vladimir Putin became the 21st century’s Joseph Stalin, China grew into the new Communist threat, American democracy was assaulted by our own citizens, and the distance between wealth and poverty increased everywhere. Dictators were encouraged; democracy was dismantled; free enterprise was costly for everyone except the wealthiest. People stared into screens from the security of their own homes, and civic involvement has all but disappeared. Pop culture celebrated the crude, celebrities with no discernible talent got rich as “inflencers,” and everything became subservient to the whims and wiles of the individual.

Not to mention that the natural world, having had enough our abuse, struck back at us with increasing ferocity.

But the Queen smiles on us no more, except in pictures. Her “rule”—backed up by no real political power—her rule will fade as we pick at and fight among ourselves for our last fragments of a world forever lost.

The Queen is dead. What sort of humanity will we become now that she is gone?

A line is not a border is not a line…

A long-ago memory: I said something to my dad about crossing the “border” between Iowa and a neighboring state (probably either Illinois or Minnesota), and he corrected me. “It’s a state line, not a border,” he said.

I am not sure what I thought that meant when he said it some 70 years ago. But I have often thought of it recently with all the talk of the rights and powers of the several states vs. the rights and power of our federal government.

A lot of that talk goes back to the 19th century, when our nation’s divisions over slavery led southern states to emphasize the “sovereignty” of each state over what it considered its own internal business. That talk culminated in the Civil War. It never went away, and enjoyed a powerful revival in the mid-twentieth century in the desegregation struggles.

Is the “United States” in fact fifty sovereign states separated by borders that need defending in order to protect each state’s own values and interests?

The issue is complex, and I am no expert. “Line” is probably not strong enough to describe how the states relate to one another within our union. Certainly not “line in the sand,” subject to being moved or obliterated in the breeze. Isolated states merely in the guise of being “United States” were not key to winning two world wars, which may have influenced my father’s thinking when he said that to me.

And “states’ rights?” How do “states’ rights” and individual rights as American citizens interface? If a state’s rights can take away or deny an individual’s rights, then what sense does it make to speak of being citizens of “United States?”

I don’t buy all the revived talk of the unassailable nature of “states’ rights.” I know there’s constitutional basis for some such talk, but most of what I am hearing sounds like a cover-up for denying human rights, as it always has been. 

And those principles are....?

Hardly a day passes without someone saying something so strangely incomprehensible that I can think of no sensible way to respond to it. ("The election was stolen," comes to mind.)

This morning's strangely incomprehensible statement comes from Taylor Budowich, who is, according to the New York Times," a spokesman and adviser to (Donald) Trump."

Explaining Liz Cheney's defeat, Mr. Budowich is reported to have said, "She may have been fighting for principles, but they are not the principles of the Republican Party."

Okay. But, in August of 2022, those principles are...?

With regard to Liz Cheney, of all people, I really need help with that one.

How to interpret the Constitution

 

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

I can imagine our Republic’s founders being quite pleased when they completed and agreed upon the Preamble to our Constitution.

Its aspirational words envisioned not only a renewed nation, but a new kind of nation. This was to be a nation centered upon its people, and focused on that which benefited and served those people as a single nation.

We the people, the document begins. These words, and the words that follow this opening statement, are the peoples’ words. They are words through which the people ordain and establish a Constitution to guide their lives together.

I trust the drafters of the Constitution trembled at what they were claiming for themselves—that the words they were approving represented the people’s will, and not just their own. If they felt no fear at that moment, they should have.

And what were to be the fundamental norms and qualities of this nation’s life for these people, for this people? Here are their six descriptors of them:

1) First, this nation was beginning an ongoing, never-ending, journey toward forming an ever more perfect Union. The opening words did not claim that they in themselves, either at their moment of conception or throughout whatever life they would have validity, would create a perfect Union, because, the founders surely knew, human perfection is always beyond human reach. More perfect is a moving target; you have to get ahead of it to meet it. This was to be a nation always focused on the future and its possibilities

And it is always to be a Union…a one, a singular…made out of many. A thing by itself—consisting only of its own kind or substance—is not a union, because it doesn’t have to be. Union requires the combining of different kinds or substances, in this case, I suppose primarily, the States of the Union, but also the varieties of peoples and ethnicities and heritages that called those States their homes. The Preamble obviously envisions a union, not a disunion; a union always moving toward perfection—never there but nevertheless, always a union.

I suspect the founders would be dismayed by the politics of disunion for the sake of politics that prevails in our Republic two and half centuries later.

There’s a dark underbelly, of course, to their talk of Union: the Union envisioned at that moment excluded a lot of people who lived here, particularly the half of the population that was female, and the large percentage of the population that was not white. At best, women were second-class citizens; at worst Blacks and Native Americans were not citizens at all. Only with great struggle and sacrifice have they walked out of that dark into the light of full citizenship, each step forming a more perfect Union than the one just before it.

The Union would become more perfect as five more goals that follow this first one were embodied in the life of the nation.

2) Justice would be established not only in court rooms, but in the daily communal life of the people. The establishment of justice requires the careful balancing of the wants and needs of some and the wants and needs of others. When any individual or group of individuals achieves and maintains social, economic, or political power that controls the lives of others, there is injustice, and the people of this Union want that injustice righted and justice between peoples established. 

3) Domestic tranquility would be assured, not by the power kings and dictators assume for themselves, but by the respect of the people for one another and for the system of government and laws this Constitution ordains and establishes. Individuals and groups of individuals who threaten or destroy domestic tranquility threaten to destroy the Constitution itself.

A tension necessarily arises here: what if someone or some group seeking justice for themself threatens, or shatters, domestic tranquility? Too simply put: the nation takes a step back and explores what needs to be done to resolve the issue in a way that will create a more more perfect Union, a union without the fracture of that particular injustice.

4) The common defense would be provided for to assure our security from hostile invaders, foreign and domestic. To defend not just our land and our people. but the very ongoing ideals of our life together as envisioned in this preamble. The common defense defends us all together, not some part of us against some other part of us.

5) The general welfare would be promoted—the goal that there is a level of good that is good for every person in an increasingly perfect Union of all the parts of the nation. This Constitution is not to be understood and applied in ways that increase the welfare/wellbeing of some at the expense of others. The general welfare, like the general store, offers to meet every basic need, and a few extras as well.

6) And finally, the Blessings of Liberty would be secured not only for us but also for our Posterity, for those who come after us, after we the people. The six characteristics of the new nation that began by looking ahead to a more perfect Union conclude by looking ahead at Liberty for generations to come.

The articles and amendments that follow the aspirational words of the Preamble are, or intend to be, practical and down-to-earth guideposts toward turning the aspirations of the people into practical, livable reality. They are, in fact, implementing directions, answerable to the Preamble and its vision. However and whenever they are implemented, called upon, invoked, or interpreted, they are subject to the kind of nation the Preamble envisions.

To pull any one or collection of articles and amendments away from the preamble—as is done by many with the Second amendment—and understand it as if it is only about itself and its concerns is to cut it off from its air supply and threaten the living organism the Constitution’s drafters intended to establish.

Today’s striking down of Roe v. Wade advances none of the preamble’s envisioned characteristics of this nation. It is a giant step backwards. It threatens the full “blessings of liberty” for my young granddaughters. God forbid they ever become pregnant against their will.

In the name of “the unborn,” it threatens the respect for the Constitution itself that is necessary if it is to continue to guide our life together. I doubt the creators of the Constitution had any notion that one day, the “yet to be born” would exercise absolute power over the lives and fortunes of those who are here already.

Biking my age

What’s a guy your age doing buying a bike like that?

No, I haven’t lost my mind. But it is strange for a man pressing 80 to buy a bicycle. I don’t owe you an explanation, but I will give you one anyway.

Bicycling is one of my favorite outdoor activities. I used to enjoy walking, too. But “balance issues” began to affect my walking a several years ago, and now I need a cane or trekking pole to walk safely—especially in open spaces like the outdoors.

But put me on a bike, and it’s as if nothing’s wrong. My bicycle balance seems to be what it always has been, and I ride with hardly a thought about falling.

But another issue increasingly complicated my relationship with my beloved Specialized Crosstrail, size XXL. A year ago I began to have difficultly swinging my leg over the seat the get on and off the bike. And when I pushed it out of the garage this past March, I could not make that move at all. I felt too unsteady, and feared falling to the pavement with the bike on top of me. Was it because of the new left knee I got just about a year ago? Or was it…age?

I knew I could ride my bike, if I could get on it. Would I have to give up forever the freedom and joy of riding, a favorite activity that connected me, almost magically, to my youth? I began to search for alternatives, and that’s when I discovered step-through bikes.

Well, not really, There’s always been step-through bikes, and I’d always known about them, but they were called girls’ bikes. In another sign of society’s changing gender nomenclature, what had been binary (boys’ bikes vs. girls’ bikes) was now something in between, both and neither, something new that had actually been around all the time but we just didn’t know it. Who said a small difference in bicycle anatomy had to single a simple either/or, one-or-the-other bicycle gender?

I began to look for XXL-sized step-though bikes, and although they are out there somewhere (I think), I wanted to stay in a reasonable price range. So, the friendly staff at Joy Machines Bike Shop on Cleveland’s near west side helped me find the Jamis Citizen 2 pictured above, and modify it to make it work for me: longer saddle post (to which I attached what is definitely not a “comfort” seat), and a rack on the back where I carry a folding trekking pole in case I get stranded and have to walk a distance.

When I first got my Specialized bike, I put toe-clip pedals on it. A few years later I replaced them with regular pedals, fearful I could no longer easily make the quick motion needed to get out of them in an emergency. I didn’t like the change, but I knew I had to get used to it, and I have.

Now I’ve made another change. It’s what we do as we age if we want to keep living the best lives we can live. We must learn to adapt to the changes forced upon us by the years if we want to continue to live fully in the present.

My new bike is a metaphor for much of what is happening in my life these days. And it’s also a heck of a lot of fun.

Surrounded by family?

It’s become the norm for obituaries to report that their subject died (passed, went to Jesus, left this life, etc.) “surrounded by family.” I do not believe we’ve been offered this detail in obituaries until recently, and now it’s everywhere, apparently expected. Who could want otherwise?

“Surrounded by family” creates the image of a crowd of loving people gathered around the bedside of the dying person just at the moment of death.

I frankly doubt that this actually happens as often as it is reported. Maybe it’s a way of saying the person died “surrounded by the love and care and prayers of family,” which could well happen often. But literally…all or most family members crowded around a hospital bed in a tiny room, or gathered in a home all together at just the right moment when death finally comes? How often does that really happen?

Most deaths, even those that are expected, are unpredictable. Based on my experience as a pastor, I would say that much as families may think they should keep watch until an expected death finally occurs, few members of any family have the time or the freedom to wait around day after day, expecting it to happen soon. People have jobs, they have children and families to attend to, they are scattered far and wide geographically, and most of all, they just get exhausted and need to get away to get some sleep. Kind nurses often suggest family members care for themselves by going home and resting. Sadly, that’s sometimes when death happens.

Which can lead to guilt: I was there for days. Why didn’t I stay just a little longer? I feel so guilty about leaving them to die alone. No one needs that.

I wonder, too, if there are not many situations in which the dying person would rather some family members had stayed away. Feigned affection at the end of life is no substitute for the real thing during it. Maybe a sibling who has been hurtful for a lifetime is determined to be there at death, and adds to the hurt. Maybe the dying would just like to rest in peace before they die, not surrounded by a crowd of people who’ve long run out of things to say to one another, much less to the one whose death they are awaiting.

I am not against wanting to be with a loved one at death, and trying to gather family as it approaches. But reality often makes that impossible and perhaps even not desirable. Maybe there are times when just one or two beloved persons, representing all the caring family and friends who made life worth living for the dying one, is all that is needed. “Surrounding the dying” may not be the best thing for everyone in every situation, comforting as it sounds. Why make it seem as if it is?

Our Brutalist Birdbath

Introductions

Our Brutalist birdbath’s dull gray poured concrete displays only the vaguest of decorative touches. It it is so heavy that it nearly roots itself into the earth. Birds fly to it on its terms.

We bought it at Heckinger’s Hardware when we lived in southern Maryland, just south of the District of Columbia. We hauled it home, and lugged it to the tree-shrouded back yard of our modest church-owned manse. What a joy it would be to attract birds into our view!

I cannot remember how successful the bath was its first few years. Our daughters were born during that time, and I was serving my first solo church, and there were many distractions. It was spring-time for our family. I suspect I kept the bath filled with water during the hot and steamy summers, because I do things like that. More squirrels than birds may have enjoyed it.

In 1982 we moved our millstone-like birdbath to Illinois, and then, in 1989, to Ohio. That summer, as we settled into the suburban Cleveland home we were to call ours for three decades, I set it up in our back yard and filled it. 

Spring

Every spring for nearly fifty years, I have planted my feet firmly on the ground, and heave-hoed our birdbath’s shallow basin up on its pedestal.

Every spring I’ve worked diligently to set it just right. Water in that basin, like oil sealed in a carpenter’s level, tells me if it is only slightly out of kilter. After several tries, I either get it just right or give up. Most often it spends the summer pretty close to being level…not that the birds care.

And every spring it weighs just a little more than it weighed the year before.

Summer

We moved our birdbath with us to our retirement home in February, 2020, where it is most popular with the birds in late spring and early summer. The grassy rise outside our east windows is dotted with bird-filled trees. Robins, sparrows, flickers, finches, cardinals, crows, and more all fly to and from it during nesting season, taking a break from their parental responsibilities. One day we watched a hawk splash around in it. The other morning a pair of crows—side-by-side—was taking turns drinking from it.

I keep it filled with fresh water, occasionally scrubbing it clean with a wire brush to remove the greenish-black scum that grows on the bottom during summer’s long sun-filled days and moonlit nights. Once I ignored my housekeeping responsibilities toward our birdbath so long that mosquito larvae came to life in its dirty water.

As lazy summer drifts by, our birdbath’s visitors are reduced to thirsty squirrels. It needs filling less and less often, and I tend to forget it’s there, and its joys.

Autumn

Then, one day, it’s fall. Just like that. Fall’s rich odors are in the air, winter’s coming chill is in the wind.

Leaves and other debris float down into its dry basin. Once in a while, walking by, I brush them out of it onto the ground, and tell myself that’s it’s almost time to put it away for the winter. A thin sheet of ice floating on top of water left by rain the day before finally forces my hand. I don’t want to let water freeze hard and deep into it and risk cracking it, even though I am almost certain that would never happen.

Winter

One cool day I again plant my feet firmly in the ground and lift our birdbath’s basin off its pedestal. I used to carry both pieces of it off to shelter under a nearby tree for the winter, but now I just lean the basin against the pedestal right where it’s at.

Temperatures fall, rain is replaced by snow, and my disassembled birdbath withstands it all with nary a whimper. Concrete was made for such unfeeling. I can calculate how deep snow is by how far it reaches up the pedestal. It joins the barren trees and shrubs rooted in the grounds around it in promising the restart of life in a few months. Our birdbath may be inanimate but, strangely, even with its age spots, it is not dead.

I hope that before long I will again heave-ho our birdbath’s basin back up onto its pedestal. I trust the promise of life renewed, including mine.

Happy birthday, and how free will she be?

I’m thinking about our granddaughter’s birthday today, and wondering how free she will be to make decisions about her one precious life and body in the decade between now and her 21st birthday.

I fear her freedom will be sharply limited by the Republican party in cahoots with a theologically compromised evangelical Christianity and a politically compromised judicial system.

Under no circumstances would she have the choice of a medically safe abortion. She would not be free to enjoy a legally-protected loving relationship with another woman. She would not be free to change her gender if she realizes she is not the gender she was assigned at her birth.

People eager to limit other’s rights should focus on one person they truly love and ask what if? about their futures and freedom. How doing that would change the discussion!

Now to the politics of it…

The New York Times published an article this morning about Doug Mastriano, who is running for the Republican party’s nomination for governor of Pennsylvania. He’s very conservative, so much so that the Republican establishment in the Keystone State is said to be worried that he might get the nomination.

The article was accompanied by a picture of Mastriano wearing a t-shirt on which is printed, “Walk as free people,” and under it in small print, “John 8:36,” or so I think it says. That citation is a bit fuzzy, and that’s not how John 8:36 reads. In any case, what purports to be a Christian scriptural citation is spread across the chest of a man running for governor of a very diverse state.

It tells all you need to know about whose votes are important to him.

In trying to find exactly where Mastriano got his “walk as free people” slogan, I came across a June, 2021, article about a rally held to protest pandemic restrictions in Pennsylvania…masks, closings, distancing, vaccinations, the whole bit. In remarks to attendees that day, Mastriano is quoted as having said, “We need to walk as free people. You’re sovereign over your own body.”

Judging from his stance on abortion, honestly should have compelled him to add, “except when you are pregnant.”

Beware of politicians wearing their religion on their chests.

"The Americanization of the foreigner"

Herbert Quick’s 1922 novel, Vandemark’s Folly, is the first-person story of very young Jacob Vandemark’s trek from New York State to Iowa in the 1850s. Jake is an American by birth, born of Dutch parents in New York. One of the central crises occurs when he finally comes to the forty-acre plot that is to be his, only to discover that it is considered the poorest piece of potential farm land in that part of Iowa. “Hell’s Slew,” the locals call it. Soon it will be known as “Vandemark’s Folly.”

At the end of his long and arduous journey, Jake is overwhelmed by the shock of his profound disappointment at where it has brought him, and he “crie(s) like a baby.” He feels a large hand on his head, looks up, and sees the man who will be farming the land next to his. Immigrant Magnus Thorkelson comforts him with, “Forty acres bane pretty big farm in Norvay. My fadder on twenty acres, raise ten shildren. Not so gude land like dis.” Magnus offers to live and work with Jake, and he accepts the offer.

Here is how Jake concludes this chapter of his story:

A lot is said nowadays about the Americanization of the foreigner; but the only thing that will do the thing is to work with the foreigner, as I worked with Magnus—let him help me, and be active in helping him. The Americanization motto is, “Look upon the foreigner as an equal. Help him. Let him help you. Make each other’s problems mutual problems—and then he is no longer a foreigner.” When Magnus Thorkelson came back on foot across the prairie from Monterey Centre, to lay his hand on the head of that weeping boy alone on the prairie, and to offer to live with him and help him, his English was good enough for me, and to me he was as fully naturalized as if all the judges in the world had made him lift his hand while he swore to support the Constitution of the United States and of the State of Iowa. He was a good enough American for Jacobus Teunis Vandemark.

Might we make progress in resolving our persistent immigration challenges if we approached them with the openness Jacob Vandemark and Magnus Thorkelson showed to one other?

By the way, if you’d like to know more about Herbert Quick (1861-1925), there is quite a bit available on line. I posted an essay about him on this blog on February 13, 2014. I know of him because he was born in Grundy County, Iowa, where I grew up.

Between Easters

This is the week between Easter as it is celebrated in the “Western” Church and Easter as it is celebrated in the “Eastern” Church. Very broadly speaking, Roman Catholicism and Protestantism are considered Western and Orthodoxy is considered Eastern. It’s a long, long story.

Last Sunday in our church we sang “Christ is Alive” by 20th century hymn writer Brian Wren. One stanza particularly struck me when churches and nations are bitterly divided between and within themselves, and when two largely Orthodox nations, Russia and Ukraine, are engaged in a bloody war that threatens us all. I will simply quote that stanza here. Take from it whatever it gives to you…

In every insult, rift, and war

where color, scorn, or wealth divide,

(Christ) suffers still, yet loves the more,

and lives, though ever crucified.

The glass in the grass: green

This old man canes his way
upon late March’s greening grass,
neither slow nor fast,

around and over lumps in earth’s carpet,

and the mini wetlands cradled between them.

He looks up toward his goal:

the paved parking lot beyond this green expanse

that separates it from the gravel trail to its north.

Maybe a hundred yards of earth,

a shortcut through spring.

He recalls the exhilaration of his childhood’s spring,

felt for all its confidence and hope.

Now above all else he fears falling.

But he needs to be here—

this sun, this air,

these birds singing spring into being on this grass.

Now! A new green—a shiny, flashy

glint of green—spikes his eyes.

He focuses just ahead where,

in the grass, a broken shard of a bottle

—a Coke bottle, the old kind?—

hides among the blades.

He stops, examines it and its surroundings.

Experience teaches that where there’s one glass sliver

there certainly lurk two and three and more.

As there are, as he knew there would be.

He winces: behind his eyes he sees

a barefoot child (not a care in the world!)

outrun their parents into the grass

only to stab their foot upon glass

and bleed and scream…

…and, the man hopes, to be comforted by love.

Calmed.

(He does not know that child.)

What will he do? For the good of that child

he will remove the glass from the grass.

He can balance three, maybe four, pieces

between his left hand’s thumb and fingers,

make his way to the parking lot,

then cross it to the trash can framed by parked cars.

Steadied by the cane in his right hand, he bends his lanky frame,

picks up first, one piece, then two more.

He clasps them as best he can,

then steps out—so carefully—maintaining

just the right amount of pressure on the hurt he carries.

Walking these last few yards he sees still more glass

strewn randomly, as if on purpose,

here and there in the grass along his way.

A car is parked on the lot’s near side,

motor running, person sitting at the wheel.

Will they notice me and wonder what on earth I’m doing?

Why, at my age, my cane and I are doing it?

Is not this cane problem enough for me, and my years?

On the far side two figures sit inside

another car flanking the trash can,

its rap deafening them to birds’ songs.

They must see him open the trash can’s cover

and drop something small and green into it.

Look at that strange old man.

Done, should he do more?

More glass is out there. He saw it.

If he has saved the child

from the cut of the glass he’s carried away,

their foot could still land on what he left behind.

Well, he couldn’t get it all even if he were

fifty years younger a man. No sense trying.

And anyway, he needs something to carry

all these pieces in. He can make only so many trips.

His car’s trash container is lined with a plastic bag.

He yanks it out, balls it in his left fist,

and carries it back across the lot and into the grass,

where he stops to wonder where

the glass he saw not a minute ago has gone.

How foolish, this old man!

No rightly-thinking one would do this.

But he would, and is—a lesser good deed

than some he might have done in younger years, he knows.

Yet a good deed, foolish as they can be.

He finds caches of shattered Coke bottle glass

scattered all around in small piles,

even the bottle’s bottom cradles its top,

as if buried together.

This park’s mine field is no accident.

He finds what he finds without going far—

he collects enough to make him feel good about his day

walking and enjoying spring,

asking how many he has left to enjoy

before spring and he disappear in the march of change and time.

He puts his retrieved green glass into the bag

with the candy wrappers already there,

and carries it all back to and through the lot,

passing slightly amused drivers,

and lowers it to the floor beneath the seat

the passenger would sit in if he had a passenger.

He drives home, where he feels just okay about his little good deed

as he deposits the plastic bag of glass and wrappings

into the trash can in his garage.

Will this old man’s way

save a child from at least one

of the dangers of life?

No one will ever know.

As this old man will never know who

will pick up after him, or what.

Broken.

Sometimes—he reflects to himself that evening

because the glass in the grass is his secret—

sometimes all he can do is pick up shards

and hope he's found enough of them

to save another from his pain.

(Keith Dean Myers)