Just under 8,000 miles

The caption on the photo of our home planet at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History shocked me: The diameter of the earth is 7,917 miles. The fact was not one I’d never known, but the stark statement of it so caught my attention that afternoon that I have not been able to get it out of my mind.

Can it be? Can it really be that this earth, massive as it is to us, filled with principalities and powers and Democrats and Republicans, home to 8 billion or so of us and untold trillions of other living organisms, whirling through space in an orbit 93 million miles from its insignificant star…that this earth is under 8,000 miles “through” as the crow would fly if the crow could fly through rock, solid and molten?

7,917 miles is shorter than the distance from Washington, D.C. to Johannesburg, South Africa via jet. In 2015, we made made that trip in about 18 hours. Not long. No wonder my childhood friends and I thought it might be possible to dig a hole from Iowa to China. It’s really not all that far.

It is stunning to come to terms with the smallness of our planet.

We are terrifyingly vulnerable. And yet we treat earth and ourselves as if we are indestructible. Ego-maniac political leaders inflate their importance to cosmic dimensions; armies of tens of thousands massively kill and destroy; buildings stretch taller and cities sprawl farther; untold quantities of natural resources are consumed and their waste products dumped into the waters or pumped into the air our buried in the ground as if there’s no end to nature’s capacity to store our junk.

We ooh and aah over our achievements, inflating ourselves into thinking there’s just no stopping us, no end to our power, no limits on our ability to control the world.

Yet one errant asteroid of just enough mass could bring it all to a quick end…and should someone be watching they would probably say, Earth? Oh that…never amounted to much anyway.

Some of our ancestors had a better sense of our smallness and our vulnerability than do most of us. Not pharaohs and caesars and priests and all their kind…but poets, and prophets, and the poor. They knew their need, and they often held on to belief in something or someone bigger than the mind can fathom in order to try to make sense of the fact that we are here at all. The Jewish and Christian scriptures—the only ones I dare speak about with any authority—claim a creator God who made it all for a purpose and who will bring it all—us all—to our end.

Much of “western” humanity has given up any notion of deity, some of us by carefully thinking and working through relevant issues. Some have posited ultimate determiners other than a god or gods. But I suspect many of us moderns simply find divinities other than ones we make ourselves too damned inconvenient. They push us off our pedestals, and shove us far from being the center of things, and we don’t like that all all.

Perhaps no area of human enterprise is more prone to ignoring anything beyond itself than is politics. That’s why political power aided by religious trappings is the most dangerous of human arrogances.

Earth…not even 8,000 miles from one side to the other? It’s tiny, and we are tinier. Think about it, and pause for a moment to wonder over it…just to wonder.

Thanks to everyone who has been following my journey through and beyond left knee replacement surgery. I want to let you know that my 6-week post-op appointment with the surgeon's PA this morning was all good news. X-ray was excellent, and she was very pleased with my range of motion. Still quite a bit of swelling, perhaps persisting because I am on blood thinner, but that should be much better in two or three months. Have to keep icing and elevating knee. Hard work is the PT and home exercises, but I try to regard them as my "job" for now, so I get them done. Best of all, it feels better all the time. And, I can drive again!

I've learned a lot through this. One thing I've learned is that knee replacement surgery, while common, is not a small matter, at least for me. The combination of anesthesia, drugs, sharp pain you have to push through, trauma to the body, etc., feels as if it affected and troubled every part of my body and psyche. It's all getting better, but I wasn't really prepared for the range of feelings and unpleasantries it would visit upon me. Maybe most people don't experience it the same way. Everyone processes such life events differently. I'd be interested to know others' experiences.

Today's x-ray also showed that my right knee is not magically getting less likely to need the same surgery some day. I'll try to hold it off as long as I can, but perhaps be better prepared next time around. Until then, I will try to keep as healthy as possible. I think that's had a lot to do with my good progress.

All in all, I am one grateful person this evening. And I am grateful to no one more than to Maxine, who has been a great nurse, caregiver, comforter, and encourager. I don't know how I would have gotten this far without her!

Needing a New Knee

I need a new knee, and am about to get it.

       I have known this was coming for several years, but since spring the need has become painfully obvious. I walk a short distance and have to sit a spell to let the sharp ache subside. It’s time to do something about it, a surgery I am not excited about, but am grateful can be done.

Not getting it done would increasingly limit what I am able to do, and I guess could eventually making walking all but impossible. As it is, it tends to throw me off balance, which could lead to a fall. Not a good thing at my age.

X-rays show that both knees are “bone on bone.” The cartilage that has greased the skids between the femur and the tibia in both legs has disappeared, somewhere. But at this point, the pain is most acute in the left side so that’s where we will start. (I guess if the surgeon accidentally replaces the right knee, that will be okay, too, because one day it will come to that, should I live long enough. But to make sure he won’t do that now, he has suggested I scrawl a bold “no” on my right knee the night before the operation.)

So, this means abandoning the natural knee I was born with over 78 years ago for a knee manufactured (maybe last week?) out of inanimate materials. Living pieces of me that have always been part of me will be forcibly removed, set aside, and destroyed to be replaced by lifeless objects designed and fashioned by people I will never know and who have no idea who I am or what my life has been and still hopes to be. It’s disconcerting.

Even my surgeon will hardly know me beyond my left knee, and I certainly know little about him except that I’ve heard good reports about his work, which is all I really need to know about him anyway. Not quite the same relationship as I have with the One from whom “my frame was not hidden…when I was being made in secret”—Psalm 139:15—the One whose surgical practice is generally limited to the rib cage and heart, and who also does good work.

Then there’s the fact that I am taller than average. Having been 6’6” in my prime, my longish legs have been part of who I am to everyone who sees me, many of whom, after scanning me from head to toe, have asked if I played basketball, often expressing extreme disappointment in my answer, as if it were theirs to judge.

I’m a couple of inches shorter now, mostly a matter of my spine compressing, so my legs are probably a larger percentage of my height than when I was younger. Finding clothes and furniture that actually fit me has always been a challenge.

If my legs have been subject of more attention than many peoples’ legs are, it is not because of any beauty or muscles. It's just that Monday someone will be messing with one of them while I snooze. Hey, that’s my leg, my knee, my divinely-wrought frame!

Of course, my concerns are nothing compared to the concerns of people who must contemplate having a limb amputated…who lose a limb to illness, accident, or violence, maybe getting it replaced with a prosthesis. Mine is controlled removal and carefully planned replacement, wholly within my power to accept or decline. I have it easy, and am not looking for your sympathy.

But, if you have the time and inclination, send a good thought or prayer my way on Monday. I will be as grateful to you as I expect to be grateful to all those who are directly involved with my surgery, recovery, and care…beginning with my wonderful wife and first responder, Maxine, who may need your generous thoughts and prayers more than I do the next two or three weeks.

Talk to you when I’m awake again.

Can we help you?

A recent exchange about whether it is a Christian duty to help people who do not want to help themselves reminded me of a favorite section of Norman Maclean’s great book, A River Runs Through It.

It’s the story of a Presbyterian minister’s family in early 20th-century Montana. The minister loves fly fishing almost as much as he loves Jesus, and teaches his two sons the same love. The older, Norman, is a model eldest child, while the younger, Paul, becomes addicted to alcohol and gambling and eventually is killed in a fight. Paul is also clearly the best fisherman of the three.

Here, Norman and his father discuss Paul’s struggles, and whether and how anyone might be able to help him. Norman’s father speaks first:

“You are too young to help anybody and I am too old,” he said. “By help I don’t mean a courtesy like serving chokecherry jelly or giving money.

“Help,” he said, “is giving part of yourself to somebody who comes to accept it willingly and needs it badly.

“So it is,” he said, using an old homiletic transition, “that we can seldom help anybody. Either we don’t know what part to give or maybe we don’t like to give any part of ourselves. Then, more often than not, the part that is needed is not wanted. And even more often, we do not have the part that is needed. It is like the auto-supply shop over town where they always say, ‘Sorry, we are just out of that part.’”

I told him, “You make it too tough. Help doesn’t have to be anything that big.”

He asked me, “Do you think your mother helps him by buttering his rolls?”

“She might,” I told him. “In fact, yes, I think she does.”

“Do you think you help him?” he asked me.

“I try to,” I said. “My trouble is I don’t know him. In fact, one of my troubles is that I don’t even know whether he needs help. I don’t know, that’s my trouble.”

“That should have been my text,” my father said. “We are willing to help, Lord, but what if anything is needed?”

“I still know how to fish,” he concluded. “Tomorrow we will go fishing with him.”

Does the passage cast light on the question that brought it to my mind? Perhaps there’s a clue in the father’s announcement that the three of them will go fishing together the next day, to go where they are free to be most themselves. There, on that common ground/river, the would-be helpers and the one seeming to need help might find what they all really need. It’s a step they have to take, together.

+++++++

Totally unrelated post script that I just found on Wikipedia—

“The following quote from the (1992) film version of A River Runs Through It, which is not present in the novella, is displayed at the base of the statue of Michael Jordan at Chicago’s United Center.” (It is Norman’s reflection on Paul’s expertise as a fly fisherman, I think from that day the three of them fished together.)

At that moment I knew, surely and clearly, that I was witnessing perfection. He stood before us, suspended above the earth, free from all its laws like a work of art, and I knew, just as surely and clearly, that life is not a work of art, and that the moment could not last.

Don’t you dare stand in the middle of the road!

Liberals think problems are solved by government fixing the system.

Conservatives think problems are solved by individuals fixing themselves.

Of course, it’s not that simple. But listen to what people in both camps do not say.

Liberals rarely hold individuals responsible for how their lives are turning out. The last thing a real liberal would dare suggest is that a Black person, or a female person, or any other “category” of person had made a bad choice or chosen a wrong path. To suggest such is to call their own liberal creds into question, to risk the wrath of the left.

Conservatives, on the other hand, rarely hold that “the system” plays a role in how individuals’ lives turn out. The last thing a real conservative would dare suggest is that unregulated capitalism, or systemic racism, or any other “ism” was a factor in the lives of people who suffer or hurt or just don’t make it. To suggest such is to call their own conservative creds into question, to risk the wrath of the right.

Think it’s not that simple?

Try stepping outside your political box to suggest the other side may have a valid point or two. Or even just that some middle-of-the-road, more moderate or centrist, articulation of a problem might be the best way to begin addressing it. Try it, and then be prepared to take heat from outraged partisans from the right and the left. Be prepared to be shot down before you even start.

No wonder we cannot get along, much less craft solutions to what ails us and our beloved nation.

 

Post-pandemic reentry

Reentering public life after 15 months of quarantine is a process. It is as process we are going through, one day at a time. Each day we ask ourselves and one another what full reentry will be like. Each day gives us a new piece of an answer.

My friend, Eric—incarcerated for 28 years—often pondered his reentry into society, and prepared for it, prior to his release in January.

Astronauts, trained and practiced as they are, must nevertheless ask themselves that question as they prepare for about their high-speed, high-risk, earth-ward dive back into our planet’s atmosphere.

Everyone who has been in the thrall of this global pandemic must wonder what it will be like to reenter a world more or less safe from COVID-19. I know I am.

Will I ever be sure the pandemic is fully over? (News that some are saying we will not achieve “herd immunity” may answer that question.) When and how can I safely return to where I hope I still belong? Who will be there and how will we react to seeing one another, maskless? What structures and institutions and schedules that were the scaffolding of daily living will still stand, and will I ever again have the luxury of taking them for granted?

We may be sure things will not be as they were, or feel as they used to feel, nor will we. More than human hesitancy will make everything somehow different and our responses to it all different as well. For how long will everything seem strange—foreign even—including myself as best I know myself?

My wife and I have eaten in two restaurants since pandemic restrictions began, and have ordered out only about a dozen times. But, after a couple of early attempts at online grocery ordering, she decided the risks of in-person, early morning, grocery shopping were worth taking. We last attended a live concert in August of 2020—an outdoor event, socially-distanced, masked, etc. A couple of weeks ago, we were actually excited to walk into Target, not to casually “shop,” but for specific, planned purchases. No wandering the aisles, just looking—something I have never been very good at anyway.

Being a cautious person serves me, if no-one else, quite well. Now the challenge is not to be overly judgmental of those who more easily throw caution to the wind, even if that wind might carry a virus my way. It would best to get through this reentry together, somehow.

We are watching our daughters for clues, just as they have been watching us for the past year, albeit from a distance. Liz’s unvaccinated school-aged children are back to in-person classes, being as careful as children can be. (But when they both had the sniffles over the weekend, they had to be tested, and were back to online learning until their—thankfully—negative test results came back.) Rebecca flew to Miami Monday for her first singing gig with a non Philadelphia-based group in 14 months. Though fully vaccinated, she must now quarantine for a week. We are talking about all getting together this summer, but where and how and under what circumstances must be settled to everyone’s satisfaction, and could always change. We will not rush headlong into family reentry. We are a fairly cautious family, I guess.

We will reenter slowly because we don’t want to be like the deep-sea diver who rises to the surface too fast and gets “the bends,” or like the chunk of rock from outer space that flames out when it hits the atmosphere at many multiple times the speed of sound. We want to make it home safe, and we think we will, given enough time.

But there are unknowns out there. In the one world we all live in, no one can ignore the horrendous toll COVID is taking on far-way India or close-by Latin America. Borders are porous when it comes to diseases, and COVID’s variants scare us. We move forward, slowly.

And then there was that email from our retirement community’s Executive Director late last week telling us that four people—two residents, two staff members—recently tested positive for the virus, and that three of the four of them had been fully vaccinated.

Reentry may be tougher than we’d thought. And slower than we’d hoped. What will reentry be like? How will we know when we are there?

Friendship and the delicate business of composing a self

The following paragraph from Megan O’Grady’s essay, A Shared Devotion, speaks to me. It was published in the April 18, 2021, New York Times Style Magazine as a reflection on the magazine’s theme—how friends who are creative people (or, creative people who are friends) bonded during the pandemic.

“I’ve come to believe that friendship—not the Facebook kind, but the real kind—is a kind of romance, and that its resilience to … unadorned truths is its test of strength. (“Better to be a nettle in the side of your friend, than his echo,” as Ralph Waldo Emerson put it.) At the same time, a real friend can also be counted on to tenderly shelter our idealism in a transactional world: That person who might help us believe, against all odds, in our own consequence as we go about the delicate business of composing a self—an act of imagination in large part, after all. The moral anxiety of any creative practice—standing, as it does, uncredentialed and fiscally insecure, in dubious relation to necessity—can be acute, and it does something to you when someone else believes in you. I think of Margery William’s 1922 children’s book, The Velveteen Rabbit, in which a young boy’s devotion makes the titular stuffed animal believe itself to be real—despite what the rabbits in the forest, the kind that hop nimbly about on their hind legs, might say. We all know the pain of having our dreams dispelled by pedestrian day jobs, student loans, family obligations and amiable philistines. An artist’s self-conception depends on the durability of our private mythologies, our sense of the possible ignited by those who believe in it, and in us.”