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Sometimes lovely things do come in small packages—a nugget of gold, a sparkling diamond. They form quietly deep inside the earth out of sight and under pressure, but when they emerge, they dazzle our eyes with their rarity and everlasting splendor. In nature, small things like honey bees, butterflies and hummingbirds busy themselves with making the world more beautiful and more magical. I have a petite and dear friend whose rare, beautiful and lasting good nature were formed out of my sight long before I met her. She grew up under the pressure of a mother’s deterioration from multiple sclerosis and a father’s sometimes bizarre behavior due to an unnamed illness. She grew up a caregiver with her dreams of becoming an engineer denied. She became a nurse instead and cared for people inside and outside her home for most of her life. In the irony and tragedy of life, at the peak of her career, my friend was diagnosed with Huntington’s Disease, a neurodegenerative illness that causes involuntary movements leading to problems with speech, mobility, and independence, the same disease that accounted for her father’s strange behaviors. When the news of this terrible inheritance came, she called me and said, “I really need a friend right now.” Already a close colleague, I eagerly signed on for the lifetime friendship membership program. We spent a few years regularly meeting up for movies and lunches out, then COVID came along and we had to restrict our activities for her safety. By the time the epidemic passed, her condition was such that our outings were no longer possible. Now, we email throughout the week. Sometimes she texts me photos of her grandchildren. She stays engaged with others through social media, listens to hours of audio books, and watches DVDs that I send to her—a way to keep taking her to the movies. She has a matter-of-fact acceptance of the bombs life throws, and yet, as a nurse, she was always aware of the patients’ fears, coming birthdays, anniversaries, and last wishes. We did some amazing things for our patients because of her insights, insights that came from her own life experiences. Once, when we were called to the death of a patient in a long-term care facility, she and I stepped out into the hallway to allow the family to gather around the bedside. Inside the room, the family members talked and laughed about what the deceased was probably already busy doing in heaven. My friend looked at me and quietly said, “My mother is probably running.” Her unforgettable words gripped my heart. I wondered, did she think of her mother every time she saw a patient? Her own sorrows informed her practice as a nurse and shaped her gentle, accepting, good nature, her quiet competence, and her desire to see her patients’ wishes granted. Like a nugget of gold or a sparkling diamond, Susan is a rare and beautiful creation formed from a life under pressure. Like a hummingbird, Susan is petite in stature and delicate in features. She works very hard to stay in one place now, but regardless of circumstances, she always seems to know how to pull the simple, sweet nectar from life. I wish to be more like her. You are my hero, Susan. This one is for you!
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When there is very little else left to believe in, one can still believe in an honest loaf of fragrant home-baked bread. --Anna Thomas Bread is my favorite food. Always has been. Always will be. There is no aroma more pleasing than the smell of baking bread. Perhaps the scent is programmed into our DNA for survival. I grew up watching my grandmother mix and knead raisin bread in a large wooden bowl on the kitchen counter. It was a treat so special, so delicious, so connected to home and family that even the memory is a magical food for me, a bread of life. I am from an immigrant people who ate their food wrapped in flat bread. Long before Middle-eastern food became popular in American restaurants, my uncles would return from the Syrian bakery in the city with a flatbread we all loved. We tore off pieces to scoop up rice and lentils, bits of lamb, or tabbouleh, the bread absorbing all of the delicious, savory juices from our plates on a table in a house where food was served in proportion to the love. I have lived most of my life in the American Midwest, and I grew up traveling extensively throughout America’s wider bread basket awed by its amber waves of grain. A trail of bread crumbs always brought me home, and it was sandwiches that made sustenance possible while on the move. Back at home, we were sustained by the Midwesterner’s favorite mid-day meal: a grilled cheese sandwich alongside a bowl of hearty, cream soup. Even stale, bread was full of possibilities—a delicious bread pudding, stuffing for poultry, or food to feed the ducks down at the pond or crumbs to sprinkle about the yard for the birds. Thanks to Wonder Bread, all unique and fabulous things are now compared to the wonder of sliced bread. As a child I played with that bread and marveled at how, with its soft texture, it easily could be pinched or squeezed back into little balls of dough. I memorized the jingle: “Wonder Bread builds strong bodies 12 ways” with its combination of added vitamins and minerals. On sick days throughout my early childhood there was no better medicine than sweet cinnamon toast made from Wonder Bread and delivered to me on the couch. Later, in my adult years, and to my great delight, Panera entered the scene. A fast food restaurant devoted to BREAD—a preview of heaven as far as I was concerned. I love it all: the pitas and flatbreads, the baguettes, the bagels, and the hearty, chewy artisan breads made by skilled bakers like my grandmother. Whether or not I need it, I am drawn to the bread aisle of my giant grocery store. A fragrant bouquet emanates from there despite all of the plastic packaging. The vast array of breads tantalizes my senses, and I wander the bread aisle drinking in the scent like a sommelier sniffing the cork from a bottle of fine wine. In poetry and literature, bread is the embodiment of ideas about abundance and love. In church, bread symbolizes God’s presence and provision. Receiving the blessed bread is a sacrament. We share bread in communion, coming together in faith, trust, compassion, and solidarity with Christ. On this cold inauguration day when it seems possible that hell has frozen over, I am drawn to bread, the great symbol of comfort, nourishment, and community. Today, the inaugural stage will be occupied by men of great wealth and power who seem to care greatly about their dough while the rest of the masses are starving for bread. And so it is we the people who must cast our bread upon the waters today and join with the Living Bread letting divine words take hold of our hearts. As we go forward, come what may, let us break bread together and be nourished by the Bread of Life even as we pray: Give us this day our daily bread… …and deliver us from evil. Amen. Bread for myself is a material question…Bread for my neighbor is a spiritual one. –Nikolai Berdyaev Through the centuries, we faced down death by daring to hope. – Maya Angelou In 2012 Brene Brown published the book Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way we Live, Love, Parent, and Lead. The subject of this work is vulnerability, and Brown took her inspiration from a quote by President Theodore Roosevelt: It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly…who at best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. Brown’s book has been wildly popular as are her TED Talks, but there is another example, an earlier one that stands out in my memory and one that has been updated more recently. Back in the 1990s, Robert Reich served as the Secretary of Labor under President Bill Clinton. Reich stepped down from the post in 1996, and I recall reading the reason for his decision in a Parade Magazine tucked inside my Sunday newspaper. The gist of the story was this: Reich had two teenage sons, and he wanted to spend more time with them. He said something like this: “Teenage boys are like oysters. They only open up once in a while. When they do, you have to be there to see the pearl.” I’ve never forgotten that wisdom, and back in the 1990s, it would have been a big deal for a man to step out of the suite of power for the sake of his children. Reich has remained active in his field and currently hosts a podcast. Sometime ago, he was interviewed and spoke about his time as Secretary of Labor. One of his statements that again grabbed me was that he wished he had done more when he had the power of his position. He said that, at that time, he did as much as he dared. He now has some regret that, perhaps, he did not dare greatly. We are entering an unprecedented time in American history. Each day the news of the upcoming administration’s plans, appointments, relationships, and rhetoric increases my alarm. I have never felt more vulnerable. I fear we may be on the cusp of an American holocaust manufactured and aided by the hate-proliferating algorithms of social media. While many have analyzed the outcome of the presidential election and criticized Kamala Harris’s and the Democrat’s messaging, the truth is that hope, optimism, and reason do not get the same traction on social media that hate and conspiracy theories do. These sites are built to manipulate the users in order to increase engagement. This is well documented, and Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans know this and mine it like gold. They are master manipulators themselves. Today the headlines shout that Meta will no longer being doing fact-checking because Trump and the MAGA Republicans consider fact-checking an attack on free speech. Honesty is not their brand. Relentless lying and hate are. A vocal, angry, hate-filled minority now influence all decisions that disrupt the common good. We are losing our minds, civility, and our country for the sake of selling ads on social media. I never intended for this blog to become a political one. I realize now that from the moment we draw our first breaths, air quality becomes an issue. We become political. Now, with the stakes so high, I fear for the future of my children and yours. I see now that the gift of older age is daring. There is little time left and much less to lose, and so I commit now to daring greatly in the days, weeks, months, and, if God provides, the years to come. Individually, we do not have the power of a single oligarch. But collectively, we do. They made their fortunes from us, and we can each do something toward the greater good. We have choices to make. Posting on X is a choice. What to post is a choice. Reading the Washington Post is a choice. Buying from Amazon is a choice. Commenting on Facebook is a choice. How to comment and what to share are choices. Giving away our healthy minds and mental health to participate in conspiracy theories to sell ads is a choice. Words have power--some words more than others. Hateful words and distorted facts grab us and the social media oligarchs know this. Our brains are tuned to discrepancies and resentment—turning those thoughts over and over again in our minds, we try to make sense of them and we become increasingly emotional and less rational in the process. But we can all choose and use our words more carefully. We must find a way to be heard without being hate-filled. “What about the other guy” provides neither an excuse nor an explanation. Pointing out someone else’s faults and bad behavior is a way of getting away with murder and creating helplessness. We must stay focused on the actions, words, and behaviors that are troublesome. And we must dare to speak out, to write letters, to send emails. The 85% of thoughtful, informed Americans who care about issues must find a voice to speak over the vocal 15% influencing public discourse and decisions. It is exhausting, I know. But it is necessary. My constant mental companions and advisors are the voices of the actual Holocaust survivors I have known. The measure of daring will be unique to each of us and to our circumstances, but every day we have an opportunity to, in some way, elevate and transform the world we live in. Please join me in the arena in the days to come. I double dog dare you. |
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June 2025
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