all of the selves we Have ever been
![]() Outside my window the streetlamp flickers. In rapid-fire succession, it turns on and off, on and off, on and off, unable to commit in a David-and-Goliath match-up with the sun. Though subdued, the waning sun mocks the timid streetlamp daring it to take a stand. The sun has a hard time letting go on a summer’s evening, and so do I. As that giant spotlight dims and the soft aisle lights come on, I linger in the empty theater of the day, the music still playing in my ears. If I dawdle, will there be an encore? As I embrace the peace and the quiet, my mind slowly releases the echoes of the day. For that brief time just before total darkness, I live in the fairy tale world of twilight, a world that gives birth to imagination and sets the stage for dreams. What I most love about a late summer evening is the way it melts into a puddle of sleepy darkness for small, sweaty children exhausted from outdoor play, children who, like the sun, are unable to give up on the day, unwilling to go to bed. Each evening in my twilight zone, I remember the bath times and the bubbles that washed away the sooty remnants of the day and the stretchy, footed pajamas that became the uniform of the night. I relive the hours spent in an old wooden chair, its hypnotic rocking motion closing resistant but tired eyes. I see the tiny mouths quivering, each gentle breath a kiss blown to the departing day. And the scent! Oh, that exquisite, unforgettable scent of a sleeping child! Surely, it is a perfume called Enchantment. In my quiet, empty theater of today, I wonder: where did all of those yesterdays go? They were spent so quickly. Now, in the twilight of my life, those yesterdays return to me in the twilight of the day. Surely, twilight is nature’s master class on letting go. Outside my window the fireflies rejoice as they come out to dance upon the late evening air. The emerging stars wink back. And without a fight, they put the sun to bed.
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![]() “When the famous scholar (Matthew Henry) was accosted by thieves and robbed of his purse, he wrote in his diary: ‘Let me be thankful first, because I was never robbed before; second, because, although they took my purse, they did not take my life; third, although they took my all, it was not much; and fourthly, because it was I who was robbed, and not I who robbed.’” Live Loved: Experiencing God’s Presence in Everyday Life - Max Lucado Be good. Because it matters. Happy Independence Day! May there be many more. ![]() In one diabolical final attempt, Hitler reached back from his grave to get them. They were aging Holocaust survivors in their eighth and ninth decades of life. Some were patients in nursing homes, frail and in need of both personal and medical care, each traumatized anew by being made so vulnerable to someone else’s hands. Some were experiencing dementia with new memories vanishing as soon as they appeared and terrible old experiences becoming their lived reality once again. A noisy truck outside on the street would send them cowering beneath tables or hiding in closets. They hid food and refused showers. Others who were still of sound mind began experiencing the normal life-review process of old age. Some found they could not sleep at night. In the haze just before sleep the memories became vivid and real again. The heartache choked their breath. The events played over and over again in their minds like an old LP on repeat. They couldn’t seem to move the needle. Shame and regrets overwhelmed any hope of sleep. One man told me how he feared facing his departed family members should there be an afterlife. He feared living this way but he feared dying too. For him, there would be no relief in this life or in the next. Despite the fact that he had been just a school boy himself and went on to live through terrible torment, this beautiful man was guilt-ridden for having survived when his mother and sister were the first of his family to go to the gas chambers. “What will I tell them about why I survived and they didn’t,” he asked me. He relived the morning line-ups in the camps and those too-frequent moments when open wagons drove past, wagons overflowing with the lifeless bodies of loved ones fresh from the gas chambers, limp arms and legs flapping against the wagon’s wooden sides. “We were an emotional people, but we were so traumatized, so empty, we could not even cry.” He wept in grief and in shame and relived the memories of the suicides after the war was over, the additional losses of extended family members who could not live with what they had seen, could not live with the grief, the fear, the anguish, could not live with their survivor’s guilt. Over the months that I helped to care for these remarkable and suffering people I asked one man, “Why wasn’t their more resistance when there were still six million more of you?” “We thought that if we were good, kept our heads down, did what we were told, didn’t make any trouble, it would be okay.” Until it wasn’t. Until it was too late. The entire world is on edge right now. Authoritarianism is on the ballot all over the free world. Coups are taking place in countries where democracy is fragile or non-existent. There is a growing lawlessness and sense of chaos bordering on anarchy even in our own country. Just this week, a political candidate, a convicted felon, called for a military tribunal to publicly try a former Congressional colleague. One of his chief henchmen was ushered off to prison promising the reporters that he would see them all in The Gulag upon his release from prison. For the past week, I have felt like I’ve been beaten, on edge, ready to weep. I have asked myself over and over: How? How can this be happening when I know so many good people? During his 1867 inaugural address at the University of St. Andrews, John Stuart Mill said: “Let not any one pacify his conscience by the delusion that he can do no harm if he takes no part, and forms no opinion. Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends than that good men should look on and do nothing. He is not a good man who, without a protest, allows wrong to be committed in his name, and with the means which he helps to supply, because he will not trouble himself to use his mind on the subject.” It is time to take off our sunglasses and stop looking on the bright side. It is time to hold up a flame in the darkness and tell ourselves the truth. This will not get better on its own if good people do nothing. We are the six million still standing. We must do something. We live in a time and in a country where degrading and humiliating our fellow citizens and institutions, our neighbors and allies, other suffering citizens around the world is all that is on the mind of many in power. That is not leadership. That is psychopathy. And too many of us are becoming willing accomplices sacrificing own humanity for the personal gain of cultish leaders, authoritarians, and fanatics. In my mind I can hear Patrick Henry convincing the Second Virginia Convention to deliver troops to Virginia in the American Revolution. “Give me liberty or give me death,” he said. Maybe our new cry should be “Give me dignity or give me death.” Supply the dignity, and liberty will be assured for all people. I beg you today to re-commit to dignity for all people whether or not you like them or agree with them. I beg you today to re-commit to law and order even if it is as small an act as obeying the speed limit. I beg you to take care of what you have. Do not be careless or mindless with your resources, the resource of others, or the resources of the earth. Set about each day with the intention of doing right even if it costs you something. Lawsuits and insurance don’t resolve anything. They make companies and institutions more careless when insurance companies can settle claims for large sums. In this system of no accountability and no consequence, doing wrong becomes lucrative. Let the media know we don’t need or want our eyes filled with horrible sensational stories that do not need to be shared, stories that make human beings look like feral animals and turn us into voyeurs. Ask your local officials to take action against landlords and property owners who allow buildings to fall to ruin and leave people homeless and defeated with their possessions destroyed. Pick up the litter when you see it. It doesn’t matter if you were not the one to drop it. We all have to live here. Be an example to others of what can be, what should be. It all matters. Freedom of speech, freedom of living is not saying or doing whatever I want. It is about living in community and supporting the common good so that the system works for all of us. If you think freedom is tearing through a STOP sign because you want to, just wait until you are laying in an ICU permanently disabled. Technology will easily strip us of the higher powers of our minds: insight, empathy, and self-control. Don’t be so willing to give it away. PUT DOWN YOUR PHONE. Hold an actual conversation that takes time, patience, listening skills, and empathy. Right makes might. Do what is right. Ask that others do it too. It has become a comedic joke that nothing works. Well, why doesn’t it work? From politics to health care, we expect broken and expensive systems. We no longer expect things to work. We shrug our shoulders and say, "Oh, well." EXPECT MORE. If you want to make America Great Again, stop demeaning it, stop humiliating your fellow citizens. Do things with care and grace. Make America good again and the greatness will come. Presently, it feels like we are in a shit-show with no intermission. The bad guys are taking encore after encore expecting our applause. Why are we still watching? TURN IT OFF. The answers lay in the space between helplessness and outrage. One of our presidential candidates is hocking Bibles. Perhaps he should open the cover. I have learned that the Old Testament of the Bible is about the law. The New Testament is about grace. Law and grace. We need them both. Let us encourage one another and build up one another through law and grace. Write to me and share your efforts and the efforts of others to make America good again. Let us fill our eyes and ears with hope that invigorates. Don’t let us be another aging generation that lives to cower under tables and inside closets filled with shame, and pain, and regret. ![]() My friends are the beings through whom God loves me. - St. Martin I schedule a long phone call with an old friend. We talk for two hours. Though there are years between our in-person visits, we speak regularly on the telephone now that we are both retired. Once, a long time ago, we were young professionals who worked together and lived in the same neighborhood. I rose every morning at 4:30 AM to meet her at the corner for a long walk before the start of our work day. Under the magical spell of friendship, we never ran out of things to say. Each step became a spot of glue that cemented our bond. That was 36 years ago. Time marched on, and both of us moved away, married, raised children, and worked a full career. Each time I dial my old friend’s number, I am young again and back on the corner eagerly awaiting the sight of her. In this early summer season as I set out alone on my daily walks, I think of those days and the summer game of baseball, all those home teams on fire and cheering one another on from the dugout. Life is so much like baseball. The point of the game is to hit the ball, leave home, take the risk of running the bases, and then to return safely to home plate. Some players hit the ball so far they make it home all on their own. Others strike out; they are thrown out at home plate. Some of them pout on the bench of life while others get back into the game. Some are eventually traded. There are some who come sliding back in on the seat of their pants chased by another who seeks to eliminate them. Others just aren’t fast enough; they are thrown out despite their best efforts. Some get injured and hobble home on the shoulders of their teammates. But there is glory for those who hit the ball and even for the ones who get hit by it--the ones who leave home and make it safely back. Leaving home requires individual skill and effort, but winning is about who takes the field with you, who comes up to bat before you and after you, who subs from the bench when you are down. A lot can happen along the way, but returning to home a winner is a team event. And it takes pals to remember the glory days. Home can be a place, but even more so, it is a feeling and an experience. It is where the important things never change. It is the place where the furniture holds our people and our memories, a place where the walls speak to us, but it also can be the people who share those memories. They themselves are an attic filled with all of the tender yesterdays. Home is an enchanted place in my heart where all the people I love live in the same neighborhood. As I enter the homestretch of my life, I realize the fallacy of leaving home to find our fortunes. We think that we are the ones who find happiness—always in hot pursuit, but truth be told, happiness finds us. We leave home to find our fortunes unaware that our fortunes are being built in this enchanted place in our hearts. Now, I wish I could gather all the people I love and plant us all in the same neighborhood, a neighborhood with the best combination of privacy and proximity. I am not sure I would care if I saw all of my neighbors each day, but just knowing they were near would be so satisfying. It is growing more difficult to travel. Sometimes the years or the distance are too much, but memory is a soft path, a familiar, well-worn road. I round the bases often and find that it always brings me back to the street where you live. ![]() With minds full and all keyed up about the state of the world and the coming presidential election, my friends and I compare notes about our studied efforts to find peace of mind. It quickly becomes apparent that we are not very good at it. The strategies all look and sound so easy on YouTube and yet there is something in each of us that resists. I sit for meditation, and Om… my mind thinks about what I am going to do next or maybe eat next. I save my mantras for driving in urban traffic where the anarchists are equipped with wheels and probably have guns under their seats. I silently chant to the speeding driver behind me who is also on his phone: “Please don’t hit me. Please don’t hit me.” Or beg the traffic lights: “Please stay green, stay green…” I call a friend to see if she is doing any better. “How was your meditation class last night?” “I don’t know, I tuned in and fell asleep.” This is a woman who has mastered napping. She could fall asleep during child birth, but it’s not a strategy that will help us in rush hour traffic or save us from the detention camps to which all Democratic voters will be sent should the election go a certain way. I check in with another friend who is taking an eight-week Tai Chi class. I find no wisdom here. She is miserable and now dreads the dawn of each new morning. Being the super-responsible sort, she pushes herself to be tuned in by 8 AM and to attend every class even though it is virtual. Old fears of being denied graduation due to poor attendance haunt her. For this woman who is accustomed to getting things done, the slow motion is pure torture. She is reminded of having been a cheerleader in her youth: “This is like doing all of the cheers in slow motion.” She finds her peace of mind when the program ends: “Thank God that’s over,” she says. I make a mental note that God does answer prayers, and I wonder where mine are on His to-do list for I am pretty faithful about prayer which is mostly me begging and pleading along with giving God a list of people and things that need fixed, like He doesn’t already know… My friends and I are no better at mindfulness practices than we are at sky diving, but we are better practiced. There is a healing that comes through our failures. They become rich fodder for conversations that provide us with plenty of laughter. We give voices to what troubles us and release it in howls and giggles. Sometimes we laugh until we can no longer speak which is probably the answer to someone else’s prayers. Drained of our stress, we carry on—at least until the next news bulletin and the next YouTube video. Perhaps our true natures are revealed in the self-preservation methods we choose: rest and disconnect, ask questions and seek answers, beg and plead even, get things done and cheer on others. Laugh until we feel better. Let’s face it--we need to look after ourselves. We need to get out the rubbish we ingest before it festers inside us leading us to the very behaviors we despise. So, back to begging and pleading… My prayer today is that there are enough of us who are keyed up about the state of the world and not just badly practicing mindfulness but also trying to live the definition of mindful: watchful, aware, careful, attentive, sensible, and thoughtful. I say let’s make that a ballot requirement. Om… ![]() I finally bowed to the g force and got a new phone, but no matter how beautiful or capable the phone it does not change what’s on the menu. I had my fresh and fancy 5g phone on board the day I passed a man who had pulled his car into the center lane of a busy four lane highway. He was on the ground next to his vehicle and appeared to be looking underneath, perhaps to identify a problem or to fix one. “Good, Lord,” I said and began praying out loud as it seemed probable that the man would be killed or cause a terrible accident in this very busy high-speed, high-access zone. I pulled over at the first opportunity and dialed the non-emergency number of the nearest police station to see if assistance or safety could be offered to the man with the disabled vehicle. To my surprise and consternation, I discovered that the rascals who invented the phone menu had infiltrated the police department. A lengthy menu of dialing options was offered. After about ten minutes, I gave up on getting help, but curious, I pressed 4 to complete my peace officer training while I waited. When I realized the amount of time that had passed, I figured the man on the road had likely gotten on his way or was dead at the scene. Either way, my Good Samaritan efforts were pointless, and I had had enough time to reconsider a second career in law enforcement. I hung up just before the exam. I now feel the need to swallow some nitroglycerin every time I hear the words: “Please listen carefully to the following as our menu options have recently changed.” Those words offend my moral senses. It should be against the law to lie to the public so flagrantly and so frequently. Do they take the dialing public for fools? I want to call them out on this and scream into the phone, “Liars!” I know the menu has not changed. They are just trying to prevent people from immediately dialing 0 or saying “speak to a representative” or getting any satisfaction whatsoever. By now, we all know there is no representative, no one is listening, no one cares, and the strategy is to discourage people and keep them from calling. The phone number itself is a ruse. Here’s what the truth might sound like:
What’s on the phone menu? Frustration and despair seasoned by outrage. I don’t care much for the entrées, but please may I see the whine list? ![]() I need some Viagra for my mind. I can’t seem to keep up. Desire is not enough. The pace of change seems to be accelerating just as my mind is cruising to a stop—blocked mental arteries. I never seem to know what’s going on or who’s who. Worse, I can’t seem to unpack the cluttered trunk that is my mind. Where is all that stuff I used to know? It doesn’t bode well for any hopes of thrilling intellectual intercourse. Often, things go downhill during the foreplay. For example, I sit down to watch a movie that I’ve selected. The intro plays and I say, “That character looks familiar.” “Uh, we’ve seen this movie before,” says my film partner who is already losing interest. This leads me to more efforts at less-than-stimulating conversation. I say, “Remember that other movie, the one with…oh…what’s her name? The one with the blonde hair? She was popular at the same time as that other actress with the blonde hair?” My partner feigns a headache and goes home. That doesn’t stop me from trying on my own. While I can’t think of the name of either formerly popular movie actress, I can picture both of them in my mind’s eye, and I can’t let it go. I keep trying, but my thoughts circle around the debris field that is my aging mind like water swirling around in a backed up toilet bowl. It just won’t come. My mind continues to work on it even in my sleep. Their names, even some of their movie titles settle thick on the on the tip of my tongue, but I can’t spit it out, and I can’t seem to concentrate on anything else. A day later, when I am least expecting it, Reese Witherspoon and Cameron Diaz come to mind. Triumphant and ecstatic from the pleasure of recall, I shout out their names while I am pumping gas. I am not alone in this. Sometimes it happens during group intercourse. For example, we might be sitting around the table at our monthly book club meeting discussing books or current events when someone else tries to recall a name or event. We all dive in deep shouting out the possibilities. We each acknowledge, “I know what you mean.” It becomes a game of mental charades. The conversation could just go on since we all really do know what she means, but, darn, we are on the edge of climax. We will keep going until we find that word and then gasp and giggle in delighted relief. These minor memory lapses seem to happen more often with each passing month--things, names, events, some so personal I really should be able to retrieve them quickly What was that old co-worker’s name? I worked with her for 10 years when I was in my thirties… And then there are the ordinary everyday words. I seem to remember butter, but I can’t seem to grab a hold of cream cheese until, for some unknown reason while I am laying on the butter, my mind unexpectedly cries out the name of that other delicious spread, “Philadelphia!” More and more, my most in-depth conversations seem to be with myself. Am I losing it? I don’t know, but somehow I remember to ask myself that question many times a day. It fills up the moments it takes me to remember why I just walked into the kitchen. |
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