He Do It Himself

“Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news–it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year of record!” (@realDonaldTrump, Jan 2, 2018) 

Among the most important and challenging experiences of raising children are when they insist on “doing it myself.” Whether it’s tying shoes, writing their names, or climbing a ladder on a slide, a parent can be pleased, frustrated, annoyed, and/or terminally impatient when his or her child insists, “I do it myself.”

You want your children to do so many things themselves, of course; but sometimes you don’t want them to do them–or to try to learn to do them–at this particular time.

There are times and places for taking care of things on our own, and times and places when we need others and need to acknowledge that we need others. Part of growing up is learning to tell the difference, and to make appropriate choices based on that difference.

President Trump seems to have a insatiable need to “do it myself.” We knew this when he insisted during the campaign (and after it) that only he could make America great again. He maintains an endless drum-beat of self-recognition and self-congratulation, turning every bit of good news back to himself and every bit of bad news toward someone else.

That is why the tweet at the start of this post is so instructive. It gives revealing insight into the psyche of the man who sits in the Oval Office, at least to those who will see.

Instead of congratulating the governmental agencies and the airlines’ leadership for a job well done over the course of many years and under different administrations (the last fatal crash of a U.S. airliner was in 2009), he begins by drawing attention to himself, and ends without mention of anyone else.

It’s as if Mr. Trump was sitting in control towers throughout 2017 monitoring the blips and guiding them to safe landings. Before that, chaos and death. I doubt his tweet did little to improve the morale of those who work so hard to keep flying as safe as it is.

The chaos swirling around the White House threatens to engulf us all, and at the heart of it is a man who has no sense of his own place or of his responsibilities to others. If he conducted his business affairs the way he is running the country it’s a wonder his ventures didn’t go bankrupt more often than they did.

But he’s not making deals for glitzy casinos any more; the stakes are far bigger than he realizes because he doesn’t really acknowledge anyone but himself or any interests beyond his own. And I do not believe he is capable making that crucial move into real maturity.

Perched in the tallest control tower on the planet, Donald Trump do it all himself. And all of us are in deep do-do.

My New Year's Resolution

Within a few hours of the end of 2017 I read something that I am bold to adopt as my marching orders for 2018. First, some background:

Sculptor Karen Swenholt’s work and life are subject of a piece in the Fall, 2017 issue of Image (Mark Sprinkle: Lost and Found: Karen Swenholt Unmakes Identity Politics). Swenholt has created compelling human forms that challenge our assumptions and complacencies. The article centers on her own self-image as a sculptor, and tells how the image which she had of herself was existentially challenged by brain injuries she suffered in an automobile accident. Those injuries “robbed her of cognitive, creative, and even perceptual faculties for the better part of three years.”

Fortunately, she is able to work again. And here is something she wrote as a result of her devastating experience being redeemed:

“There comes a time when [making art] may become impossible; when the gift is crippled, when the leg breaks and you will never dance like that again. Then the immortal grace of the silk-ribboned foot turns back to the decaying flesh it always was. The bunions morph from trophies formed in triumph back to only pain. It is a privilege to make art. Make it while you can. Make it if you can. Make it.”

Pretty sobering. Sobering like an enemy ship’s warning shot across the bow: do what you have to do now, or you may not get it done. Sobering as in challenging.

For several years I have been writing a little book about Ghost Ranch, the Presbyterian-owned retreat and educational center just north of Abiquiu, New Mexico. The manuscript has gone through dozens of iterations, and is far different from what it started out to be, though some precious original lines and paragraphs attest to the initial inspiration.

Ghosts and Gold: Stories from a Magic Place has gone into hiding and come out of it several times through those years. This past fall I revived it again with a visit to Ghost Ranch, aided by some encouraging words. I have big plans for this little book, but right now the biggest plan of all its to get it done. To make it while I can, if I can.

And yes, I can.

I think of myself as having a more than tolerable way with words, but as far, far from being an accomplished writer, or word-artist if you will. But I do not need to be an artist to welcome Karen Swenholt’s invitation to get this thing done. I just need the resolve to work it until it is the best I can make it and offer it to any who would receive it.

You can help, which is why I am writing this blog. You can encourage my resolve, by checking in with me (How’s the Ghost Ranch book coming along, Dean?), and then admonishing me to be true to my own resolve when I hem and haw and act as if I don’t understand the question.

I will thank you. I really will.

On Our Way to The Inn

Friday afternoon is never a good time to drive Philadelphia's Schuylkill Expressway. Fact is, there's hardly ever a good time to enter that sometime parking lot, sometime race track that winds its way along the river after which it is named.

But there we were a week and a day before Christmas Eve, in a snow storm. We were headed down (literally) toward the heart of the city, and so was everyone else in the world. Snow was blowing across the roadway and sticking to it. Traffic was moving…perhaps ten miles per hour. Drivers were being uncharacteristically cautious. We would get to the Airbnb in West Philly that we’d booked, but when?

Not being very familiar with the area we were listening carefully to Ms. GPS’s calm voice. About an hour into our slow descent, she advised that we’d save seven minutes by taking the next exit and cutting through neighborhoods to our destination. That sounded very good to us, not only because of the shorter time, but also because (and even more urgently) I had to find a bathroom quick. Surely there’d be a convenient gas station near the exit.

Not to be. We exited, and pushed slowly up a hill in a thick stream of cars moving by fits and starts, nothing but city parkland all around us. We finally came to an intersection, turned left, crept our way through fairly down-and-out neighborhoods, and turned this way and that on a route that seemed intentionally circuitous. Not a gas station in sight. I grew desperate. I told Maxine I had to stop. She suggested a bar that we were approaching. I didn’t have to go that bad.

Finally, around some corner under some commuter rail tracks we saw a CVS Drugstore. A drug store, where health is dispensed, surely would meet my need. I turned into the snowy parking lot, frantically found a place to park, and abandoned my wife in the car as I ran in to seek a bathroom. It was then I realized I was outside my comfort zone in more than one way. I was in a strange, inner city, and yes, largely black, community. Would THIS drug store respond to my need?

Of course it did. Unlike our local suburban CVS, it did not openly offer restroom facilities to the public. You had to ask to be let into a locked area to get to them. I will never know whether they let me in because they let in everyone who asks, or because I looked as if I posed no danger of doing something in them other than what they were intended for.

Much relieved, I said thank you to every employee I saw on the way out of the store, and returned to Maxine in the car. At least I could relax as we finished our tortuous trip to a residence we’d never before seen.

As usual in Philadelphia, there were few places to park within sight of our place, but we did find one. I squeezed into it, then walked to the sign to see what kind of restrictions the city placed on parking in my spot. It was something like two-hour parking during weekday day-time hours until 10:00 pm. It was 4:00 pm Friday. The snow was still falling; traffic everywhere was a mess. Surely every traffic cop (including every meter maid, or whoever checks the meters) had more important things to do than give parking tickets to hapless out-of-town visitors, who might be in town to spend money, as visitors do. I decided to risk it: make it to 10:00 pm and we’d be in free for the weekend.

Of course we didn’t make it. Later that evening I found an envelope stuck under a wiper blade. The law had noted our parked Prius just after 5 pm and issued a ticket two hours and one minute later. That will be $26, you who apparently cannot read. No warning, no welcome to Philadelphia, please note the parking restrictions on this street.

I am sure residents of that street truly need and want the powers-that-be to enforce the laws so they can park there, but there is more than one way to tell otherwise benign persons that they’ve made a mistake. And it’s not a big deal for me, that parking ticket. Actually, $26 does seem too small even to cover the cost of issuing the citation.

But the message from the CVS staff and the message from the city authorities are quite different, and made me think about the journey of the holy family to the stable. Ordinary folk offered them welcome and helped them address their urgent need. The Roman Empire collected what they owed, not caring a bit about them as persons until they realized that they represented a threat to its oppressive law and order. Things operate just about the same way 2,000+ years later.

What if we learned to do more than say Merry Christmas?

The rest of the weekend was wonderful, and included two fine concerts of seasonal music, quality time with our daughter and friend, and a reunion with two long-time friends we had not seen for years. Philadelphia is a great city for us to visit, from its music scene to just the right CVS when you need it.

Let’s do more Merry Christmas-ing, friends. It’s needed now, perhaps more than ever.

Give a me gun for Christmas, Jesus

Sad the Plain Dealer cannot give up wrapping front page in hand gun ads. Desperate for revenue, I guess. Really hope they will resist temptation to do it again on Christmas Eve, although being forced to see all those instruments of death will make the contrast with the message of Jesus even clearer. (It is Herod and his warriors who carry the guns in the story. But perhaps if Mary had had one...I can’t think it.)

The power behind the church's mission

This one's for my more religious-type friends.

One of the joys (and frustrations) of worshipping in a church tradition different from your own is that the hymns are hardly ever quite the same. Today at Christ Episcopal Church we sang Rusty Edwards', "We All Are One in Mission." I've sung it dozens of times in Presbyterian settings, but this was the first time I sang this stanza:

We all behold one vision,
A stark reality:
The steward of salvation
Was nailed upon a tree.
Yet resurrected Justice
Gives rise that we may share
Free reconciliation
And hope amid despair.

It is in the original hymn, according to the web, nestled between our usual Presbyterian second and third stanzas. Seems to offer theological justification for being "one in mission." I wonder why we Presbyterians omit it? Not enough room on the page? Theological considerations? Other reasons? I invite your comments.

(BTW, today's homilist quoted Karl Barth, with approval!)

Another Gun Massacre

The Cleveland Plain Dealer rejected the following letter to the editor because it is too long, and they didn't print my shortened version, either. So here it is, all 340 words of it. Maybe in memory of the 20+ worshippers in Texas who lost their lives this morning because someone . . . I don't know what to say. 

Perhaps the most telling sentences in Stephen Halbrook’s October 27 opinion piece (“More Gun Control Laws Won’t Stop Vegas-type Massacres”) are these: “Pseudo protection offered by paper laws guarantees nothing. Every person is ultimately responsible for his or her safety.”

Halbrook disdains the rule of law because laws don’t guarantee anything. He believes in the law of the old West, the law of the gun. He and no one eise is responsible for his own safety, and he is apparently not responsible in any way for the safety of others.

It’s true, I admit: laws do not guarantee anything. But they sure make life a lot safer on a daily basis for all of us. Traffic laws don’t guarantee I will not be killed in a head-on crash, but knowing that almost all drivers will stay on their side of the road and not drive on my side makes me a lot safer than if everyone could drive wherever they felt like. The beauty of laws regarding who drives where is that I do not have to confront and deal with life-threatening chaos every time I get behind the wheel. I am safer, and my life is easier, and I like that.

I assume that Mr. Halbrook would never think of contacting law enforcement if he received a death threat in the mail, or if someone were stalking his house. After all, he is ultimately responsible for his own safety. “Real men” need no one else.

The gun lobby apparently wants a return to the good old days before the sheriff came to town, when everyone had a six gun and was free to use it without fear of the consequences. I do not want that, Mr. Halbrook, either for myself or my children or grandchildren. Frankly, thinking like yours make me fear for their future, and for the future of the rule of law. For your sake and mine, I hope you and yours do not get the kind of world you are trying to create.

Way Behind

I confess that I am way behind in commenting on the antics and terrors of President Trump and the Bannon-entralled Republican Party.

I further confess that I cannot keep up with the disaster. Every day, two or three new horrors assault common-sense.

Lord, have mercy. That's about all I can say, or pray.