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… the more confusing technology becomes, the more comfortable I am with death. Because when I’m dead, it won’t matter that I can’t turn on the TV. –Kristin van Ogtrop Technology has gotten so far ahead of me that it is not remotely possible that I will catch up. I think the last major innovation in technology that I truly understood and still know how to use is the Post-It note. When I was young, “remote” meant that something was far away like the moon or that something was improbable like becoming a rock star. But now much of our daily lives is remote. We have remote controls, remote access, remote learning, remote health care, and remote work. Remote is here, there, and everywhere. Ironically, connectivity is making us more remote. It seems that everywhere can be accessed from a person’s living room. The couch, which once symbolized the examination of one’s interior life, is the new symbol of the remote world. I find all of this confusing in theory as well as in practice. My remote devices are covered with buttons and apps that operate who-knows-what. I press the “on” button and algorithms get busy making choices for me. Technology has gotten inside my brain, spies on my activities, tracks my location, and listens to my conversations in order to recommend videos, music, movies, and most of all—advertisements. My phone auto-corrects my text messages so that I am never really sure that the message I sent was what I intended to express. All of this adds to my self-doubt and frustration. Recently, I received an automatic text message from my doctor’s office asking, “Have you arrived yet?” What?! I was still in the shower! When I did arrive, there were new signs posted that parking was no longer free and must be paid for with an app. I had no idea what to do next. I turned to the only remote relationship I have ever trusted: prayer. But that didn’t seem to be working. I wondered if I was behind the times on that too. Is God on Facebook now? Can I still reach him if I am not on Facebook? And if I am not on Facebook, can he still like me? And what are his statistics? How many friends does he have? And is he still the influencer he used to be? It was not a helpful flow of thought for dealing with a parking crisis. Even as I feared that I might die in the parking lot trying to figure out how to pay for my space, it occurred to me that my phone may have lured me to the remotest place possible. As I circled the block chanting the F-word, I had to accept that this was not just a parking dilemma but an existential crisis: God may no longer be in charge. And so I did the most technologically advanced thing I could think to do. I screamed into my phone: “Hey, Google! Am I in hell?”
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It was the best of times, it was the worst of times… - Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities Preparations for a mid-day meeting delayed my morning walk. By the time the meeting ended and I was free, rush hour had begun. As I stepped onto the shared-use path a cold wind whipped my face and stung my eyes. The whoosh of speeding cars, the squealing tires and the blaring horns were added blows to my bleeding senses. My spirit deflated like a punctured lung. I thought of turning around for home, but then I stopped, closed my eyes, and took a moment to center myself and reclaim my purpose and my enthusiasm. When I opened my eyes what I saw was a brilliant blue sky and puffy white clouds surrounded by haloes of gold from the setting sun. Crisp red and orange leaves skipped across the path in front of me, and I thought to myself, it is true: the best and the worst, they can both be present at the same time and in the same place. The daily news can be as jarring as the cold wind that whipped my face. Somedays it is easy to believe that the bad news is all the news there is, that it is indeed the worst of times in a Tale of Two Countries, but then something happens that expands my focus and restores my faith. Two such stories recently reached me. With all the worries about loss of essential benefits such as SNAP and healthcare amidst an affordable housing crisis and rising grocery costs, a friend sent me this story about a restaurant in Marion, Ohio where a few afternoons a week the restaurant offers free pasta dinners to families with the tag line, “Your children don’t need to know.” Quoting the article and Bucci’s Facebook post: Bucci’s said, “We love this community, and we’re thankful to be in a position to do something small that might make things a little easier for someone else. We can’t get through this without each other. Love you all.” A few days later, I saw another story about a man and his two young sons who live in Whitehall, Pennsylvania. They started a small food pantry on their front porch and received a nice donation from an anonymous donor. The Whitehall dad said, “Making a food pantry is no different than me inviting you over to my house for dinner. Come grab a meal. Come grab a drink. Come grab what you need. I’m happy to have you.” These stories were the medicine I needed, medicine that did not just restore my faith but invigorated it. I was reminded that God created man and placed that man in a garden. God saw that the man was lonely, and God created a companion for him. God never intended for us to face life alone even in paradise. Life was meant to be served up family style. I want to hold onto these stories whenever I am inclined to become a doubting Thomas. Just because there is a moment of darkness, I do not want to doubt that there is light ahead. I am a believer, and this is the hard work of faith: to keep believing even in the darkness, to trust in goodness even when the bad guys seem to be winning, and to act with conviction by committing ourselves to loving others with joy and enthusiasm. There is a story in the Book of Matthew about the apostles out at night on a stormy sea. They were far from shore and whipped by wind and waves. Exhausted, they looked into the darkness and they saw Jesus walking toward them on the water. Jesus said, “Take courage. Don’t be afraid.” I am thinking there are some folks in Marion, Ohio and Whitehall, Pennsylvania who have heard these same words from people they believe can walk on water. Days before she died, my cousin Marcia and I sat around her sister’s dining room table. The meal long finished, we chatted into the evening about old times. Perhaps it is the way karma works, but somehow the conversation came around to what people might say about each of us after we died. We both smiled at the thought that her brother born with cerebral palsy and a speech impediment would be the one who would draw the biggest crowd to his funeral, the one about whom there would be so much to say, a testimony to George’s beautiful nature and the unwavering devotion of his parents and siblings. I spoke with Marcia again the morning of her scheduled medical procedure, a procedure intended to clear a blocked artery. She felt a little “off” she told me, blaming the new medicine the doctor had prescribed prior to the surgery, but I had already heard it in her voice, and I felt it too. Something was off and it hovered. Marcia spent most of the day in surgery after a major blood vessel exploded during the procedure. She was delivered to intensive care in an unconscious state. She never spoke to us again. She died in the night after hospital visitation rules had sent us all home. Turns out Marcia drew a big crowd to her funeral. There was much to be said about her life, her significant accomplishments, and her beautiful nature. Yesterday in the mail I received a copy of the 2009 literary journal, Alimentum, containing Marcia’s first nonfiction essay, The Proof is in the Pudding, in which she described cooking and baking to keep busy after the death of her beloved father. She noted that she did not share the faith of those who offered condolences. She searched for God and proof of everlasting life in the mixture that would become dough for pies. She wrote: “Transfiguration. It is a miracle. I have witnessed a miracle. And what other comfort people derive from faith, I pour into my pie shell and begin to believe again that in the end we are transformed and we go on. I hold the proof here in my floured hands.” They come back to us these people we have loved. Today, I hold the proof in my hands: Alimentum, Issue Eight, Summer, 2009, pages seven through nine. A homeless man made his way into my apartment building where he hid beneath a stairwell. I suspected the man’s presence because of the body odor that drifted up the stairs and met me outside my door as I left to run an errand. I set about my business tormented by the moral dilemma of the man’s presence. Management had instructed all residents to call the police when these situations occur. After completing my errand, I purchased a sandwich at the local convenience store and ran home to add fruit, cookies and a drink to the bag even though I did not know if the man would still be hiding there by the time I returned and made my way down the stairs again. As I descended the steps, the man heard me coming and began to hastily layer on the clothes he had placed across the radiator to dry. Also on the radiator were four squares of pepperoni pizza that I had seen earlier frozen to the ground next to our overflowing dumpster. The man looked up. “I am supposed to call the police, but I am giving you some food and asking you to leave,” I said. “I understand. I just came in to get dry. I was so cold and wet.” “I understand too,” I said. I wish I could do more.” “Thank you,” the man said as he held out a purse that he had rescued from the trash—a purse still in good condition. “Take this, he said.” “Save it in case you need it later,” I said. I returned to my apartment and I cried. Already on edge from the hideous state of our politics, the unraveling of the world order, and the heartless but understandable public reaction to the recent execution of an insurance executive on a street in New York City, I asked myself, “What to do? What to do to live through such a desperate situation?” How do I protect my soul in times as troubled as these when there are far too many with way too little and a notable few with far too much? History has shown that it is an untenable situation. It is a recipe for revolution. “Who will save us?” I asked myself as I looked into the twinkling Christmas lights. And the voice of a revolutionary answered: “Today I was hungry and you gave me to eat. Come to me now all who are weary, and I will give you rest.” Dear God, It is me. I am feeling small and shaken today. As you know, there are powerful people calling my home, and one of your finest creations, a garbage can. They are threatening its people, your people, with harm and destruction. These people call so much attention to themselves Lord that I know they must keep you very busy. Many of these people call themselves believers. When they gather, they call it church. They invoke your name as though they have exclusive rights to you. While my faith tells me that is not so, sometimes I fear these folks keep you so busy that you can no longer see me. And so I will try to stand apart today, God, not to rail against what has been given, not to tell you what the Divine Agenda should be, but to reach out and say thank you for all that I have by the tremendous blessing of being born an American. I thank you for this land mass that is my home, a home that spreads from sea to shining sea within a geographic latitude that provides beautiful weather, flowing rivers, fertile soil, plentiful wildlife, and limited barriers. I know that so much of the world is constrained by its physical environment, heat, drought, infertile land, limited natural resources…And yet, you gave all of this to me, to Americans. How lucky are we to have it all—purple mountains majesty, fruited plains, the Grand Canyon and National Parks? You have indeed shed your grace on us. I do see it, God. I really, really do. And I thank you for the wisdom, the will, and the resources that created an expansive highway system that allows us to move freely with no border patrols or agents to slow us down or stop us, that give us the ability to enjoy freedom of movement and American road trips. I believe you gave this to us so that we could connect to one another, see ourselves as neighbors, as the American family. I thank you for our international friends and allies that extend the American family and that help to keep us safe. They open their doors so that we might partake of the majesty that exists in their countries. I thank you for the waterways they share, and the air space they open to American cargo and American travelers. We don’t ever want to be isolated without that. I thank you for yellow school buses that take our children to school each day and for the social safety net that keeps American children from having to beg on the streets as so many children around the world must do to survive. I thank you for public education that nourishes the mind and has grown the American genius, the genius that gave us sanitation, vaccines, and antibiotics. My own father grieved his entire life over the death of his young father from pneumonia in the time before antibiotics. My mother and her brother suffered polio and lived with the lifelong effects because there were no vaccines. Thank you, God, for sparing me, and thank you for America's extraordinary public health services. I thank you for the National Weather Service, the ability of a person to glimpse through God’s eyes and see what’s coming, to predict storms and weather events in time to move people out of harm’s way, and for government relief programs when the storms have passed. I thank you for public libraries and universities that make books and knowledge available to everyone who is interested. I thank you for postal workers who dodge raindrops, dogs, and traffic every day to bring news from loved ones, groceries, and medical supplies right to my door. I thank you for the genius of moving pictures and the entertainment industry, the magic of Disney, public television, public radio, Big Bird, Elmo, and Mr. Rogers. And I thank you for all of the other American mothers and fathers of invention who gave us the Ferris wheel, chocolate chip cookies, dental floss, zippers, hearing aids, cardiac defibrillators, traffic lights, chemotherapy, video games, computers, air conditioning, rubber, peanuts, sweet potatoes and crop rotation, bifocals, telephones, cortisone, air travel, electric power distribution, light bulbs, and so much more. Thank you, God, for all of the people, my own grandparents included, who came to the United States from faraway places in search of a better life in this marvelous country. I know they were grateful. I hope you are proud of their effort and hard work, their tremendous contribution to America’s greatness. I know that I am. Thanksgiving Day is coming, God, but please know that I am not thankful just one day a year. I am awestruck and grateful each morning when I arise in this land of the free. Please help me to be brave. Amen. PS: And, please, God, make America grateful again.  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.  Because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? (From: The Ox-Bow Incident) There is no end to the bad news. I end the year bewildered. If the headlines are true, the human race has become unteachable, unmanageable, and ungovernable. Each individual now operates in a “world of one” where the rules don’t apply to ME. At the same time, the headlines scream that loneliness has become an epidemic. It appears we cannot live in a world of one and be happy. Where shall we find hope? Despite my Catholic upbringing, my childhood image of God was not manifested by our priest, the Pope, or even Superman. God’s presence, His reassurance in our everyday lives was in our Uncle John. He was the benevolent omnipresent force, an idol we did not want to disappoint. He greeted us with the touch of his thumb pressed against ours, but we lived touched by his presence. We lived with faith in knowing he was out there, that the phone would ring at just the right time, that there would be a hand in hard times. Uncle John was not prone to lecture or to “stirring the pot,” as he would say. Never one to judge, his worst admonishment was a slight tension in his jaw, a wince of his right eye. His was the voice in our heads at weak moments when we were not thinking straight. We carried him with us on the inside, a conscience to our consciences. Not everyone believes in God, and among those who believe, there are different images of the One, The Force, the Something Greater. My own beliefs have evolved over the years. While I no longer accept all of the teachings of my early religious education, I cannot help but believe that there is something greater than me. Hope would not be possible otherwise. Sometimes on a hazy day when the sun breaks through the clouds and a beam of soft light shines down on the earth below, I expect to see the hand of God break through the clouds and reach down and touch me just as I have seen in beautiful paintings. I believe the beauty of our prayers and holy rituals is that they connect us to this helping hand and to all those who came before us and whispered, sang, and shouted these same words. And in those moments of shared prayer, we are one with the millions of others who, at the same time, are bent in prayer and reaching out with their hearts to the same Something Greater to say, ‘”Touch me. I am here.” I believe that the children of Gaza and the Ukraine and Sudan and so many places around the world are praying too. Some helpless child resting on the street in a border town in our own country trying to escape violence, famine, and hunger…they are praying too. They say the same prayers, ask for the same relief, hope for the same blessings. When I meet with them in prayer, holding hands with the One, there is no way I can see them as vermin or poison. And so, I pray to live more consciously and with conscience in the year ahead. I resolve to ask: “How can I be of service?”--rather than: “What’s wrong with these people?” I know I can be better. I can do better. And Uncle John is still watching. We have God’s phone number. Let’s keep in touch. Happy You Near! |
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January 2026
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