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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
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 Fall is my favorite time of the year. I take to the walking path with a renewed energy after the weariness imposed by the summer’s heat. A trail of tiny yellow and orange leaves lines the path offering a brand of magical candy corn that adds sweetness to every step. The trees rustle their leaves in unison providing me with my own Rocky theme song. Everyone I pass seems friendlier. The trade-off to the splendor of fall is early sunsets and shorter days. Daylight saving time ends at 2 AM on Sunday, November 3rd. For one night, we will “fall back,” and gain an extra hour of sleep. I recall a time in my life when that extra hour of darkness and sleep felt delicious. However, I am now at an age where my own days are growing shorter in number. I wonder if sleeping them away in darkness is the best use of what is left. Throughout my working life there were many people interested my retirement savings. I was bombarded with information about IRAs, 401(k)s, and qualified retirement accounts. There were constant reminders to save along with the contradictory warnings that no matter how much I saved, it might not be enough to get me through a long retirement. But no one spoke to me about my daylight savings. No one asked me if I was putting back enough to get me through any future darkness. Youth is all about the present. There is still so much future, so much hope. There will be time, we think. In our young minds, the future is always bright, and sometimes money and daylight get away from us. Too soon, it is the future, and the vault is low on funds. Busy and optimistic with early dreams of retirement, I never considered that my daylight situation could become precarious. I am wishing I had been a better daylight saver for when the sun goes down, the lights are dim and it is hard to see clearly or at all. The world feels unstable right now. We are ill at ease in our own country. There is so much political turbulence and distrust that it no longer even feels like home. We are blinded by the eerie darkness of so much uncertainty and deliberate misinformation. We are counting down the days to the election, trying to prepare ourselves for an aftermath we cannot quite imagine. Like many, I am fearful of what is to come not just for me but for all of us. I don’t know if I have enough daylight saved. If my daylight savings account runs low, I will have to rely on my social security alone. I will have to hope that good neighbors are watching, the bus driver stops, and the kids call home. And so I ask this of you: be someone’s social security. Share the light you have saved. Make hospitality common again. Let us dazzle the darkness with the light that comes from within.  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.  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 waited patiently in line to vote today. The room filled with people as my eyes filled with tears. I feared that at any moment I would burst into sobs. Never in my lifetime has an election been so important, and never before have I felt so helpless and so hopeless. A repetitive thought circled my brain, “I can’t leave my children to some of these people.” That’s what we do when we vote--we choose to whom we will leave our children. The line at the church was long as was the ballot—many offices to fill, many issues to decide. I tried to be conscientious and remember that God was watching from the sanctuary nearby as I reviewed each name and each issue. I sniffled my way through. When I got home and was tucked inside my apartment, I wept. It seems the bad guys are winning everywhere we turn. They silently creep into our email accounts and our bank accounts. They snatch our identity and steal our cars. By and large, they get away with it. And now they are positioned to steal our democracy. It did not help my frame of mind that just last night the local news reported that our City Attorney was joining with other cities in filing lawsuits against Kia and Hyundai in light of the recent and rampant thefts of vehicles manufactured and sold by these corporations. According to the news reports, the theft issue is “due to the manufacturers’ failure to install anti-theft technology in the vehicles.” Is this some sleight of hand? I thought thieves were responsible for “theft issues.” While I am all for government standing up to industry and demanding and ensuring safety standards for everything these companies produce and sell to consumers, this strategy is reminiscent of rape victims being blamed for their abuse because their clothes were deemed too provocative, or of the neighbor accused of being careless for leaving his garage door open while he mowed the grass. Wasn’t the theft or home invasion the man’s own fault? What did he expect when he left his garage door open? These are examples of the kind of thinking that symbolizes so much of what is wrong in our world and why it is that the bad guys are winning. Going after the car companies makes people think that elected officials are “being tough on crime,” when, in fact, this strategy encourages crime by shifting the blame and the responsibility. It is sexy and makes headlines. Going after big corporations feels satisfying to the worried small guy, but it does not solve the actual problem. Many people have been victims of the Kia Boys. I know some of these victims personally. These good people are hurt, angry, and frightened by all of this theft. They feel deeply and personally violated and ill-at-ease in their own homes and neighborhoods. Many of these targeted victims are people who can least afford to lose their source of transportation during this difficult economic time. Some of them have been so traumatized, they have had to move. How did we get to a place where it is up to the innocent, good citizens to anticipate what the bad guys will do next and who they will influence? Ideally, each of us should be able to park our cars in our own driveways with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition and expect that the car will still be there in the morning. That’s the kind of world we need to be working toward not one in which the innocent and kind are labeled fools and the bad guys get away with everything. The problems have become so large, so numerous, and so relentless in the digital age, that people are exhausted and don’t know where to begin. They shrug and say, “Oh, well.” We are being buried alive by “influencers” with poor judgment who seek popularity and income from advertising. Our fascination with likes, followers, and money is blinding people to law, order, and basic decency. Too many politicians are among the bad guys. They seem to see voters as prey. They want attention, popularity, and power without any real plan or effort toward solving problems. They distract voters with their hate speech aimed at the opposition instead of addressing the real sources of the problems. Let’s stop lying to ourselves: THIEVES are responsible for THEFT. It doesn’t matter if the thief is a 12 year old stealing a car or a 74 year old stealing top secret documents. In the case of the Kia Boys, these mostly young people educated themselves on how to commit crime by watching Tik Tok and You Tube videos. Aren’t these companies complicit in the crime and in corrupting minors? Why are they still operating unrestrained, full steam ahead? Making billions of dollars? And what do we need to do to shore up our juvenile criminal justice system? Why aren’t those teens experiencing lasting consequences? They spend one night in juvenile detention and are back on the street committing the same crime over and over again. The police are exhausted and frustrated. When we fail to address bad behavior, we encourage it. Most often, offenders start small and engage in an escalating pattern of behavior until they are stopped. This is true of teens and true of adults. These problems do not belong to someone else. They belong to each of us and to all of us. I am too exhausted and too traumatized to face it all alone. We have to see past the hate speech and face this together. The bad guys can’t be given all of the air time. The polls will close tonight. When we wake up tomorrow, will there be anything left to lose?  Law enforcement responds to a call. It is from a day care center, a grade school, a high school, a college campus, a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a concert, a festival, a public protest, a movie theater, a nightclub, a bar, a restaurant, a grocery store, a convenience store, a subway station, an Interstate Highway, a gas station, a military base, a Congressional baseball game, a campaign event, a Veterans Home, a municipal building, a manufacturing plant, a park, a bank, a shopping mall, a jewelry store, a city street, a birthday party, a block party, a football watch party, a post office, a FedEx facility, a factory, an office park, a newspaper office, a library, a massage parlor, a yoga studio, a health care facility, a hotel, a trailer park, a home, an apartment complex, a neighborhood door-to-door rampage. There is an intruder. He has guns. And body armor. He has a plan. And a belief system. He is influenced by hate-filled public discourse and an on-line community of like-minded individuals who provide him with an audience for this act, an act for which his audience will dub him a hero. Is he mentally ill? Maybe. Maybe not. It is difficult to assess in this digital age in which inattention, thought disturbances, paranoia, and personality disorders have become main stream, an age in which many have willingly surrendered the higher powers of the human mind, gifts such as impulse control, empathy, and insight. We are trading our humanity for followers and likes. It is becoming cool to be unkind. We ask ourselves what must be done about mass shootings. And the truth is that we need intervention at every level. Law enforcement needs to be better prepared and more vigilant as do we in our comings and goings from all of the normal places we live and frequent. The list above is a list of all the places mass shootings have occurred in this country. There is no place untouched. We must do something to stop the proliferation and use of guns, especially assault weapons. We must be vigilant for signs and reports of planning. And most basic of all, we must stop the hate-filled, divisive public discourse that is overwhelming all of us in person, in print, on television, and on-line. We are exhausted by it, but there are some minds more fragile and more susceptible, people who will be damaged and act out in ways that harm us all. We need to prioritize human rights and human safety over gun rights and gun safety. The people who fill our legislatures need to represent the good people of America. There are enough of us to really show our power at the polls. And while we are at it, maybe we should change the rules of the game. Let’s show our elected officials to whom we have given good salaries, Cadillac health insurance, and big pensions what the gig economy we face looks like. Let’s limit their pay to the work they get done. If they want to represent special interests, let them go to work in corporate America. In the mean time, there are enough of us. If we have to, we can lock arms and form a human chain around every school in America so that our children will know they are safe, that grown-ups are in charge, that parents are not defenseless, that they can believe in us again. My children are grown, but sign me up. I’ve got the rest of my life to give for something that matters so much.  our It has been a stressful week. Our citizen-selves seemed fully engaged. With all eyes on the presidential election results, it was difficult to get any shut-eye. We all rejoice when we our team wins, but every American can relate to the agony of defeat. Each of us has a history of disappointments, losses, and experiences that wound and hurt. For all of us, it begins in childhood, and we navigate those waters throughout our lives. No matter our age or accomplishments, a loss can makes us feel like that scolded child who could never do anything right in the eyes of his father, or like the rejected school girl who never got picked for the teams, or, perhaps, like the humiliated teen who wets his pants as he runs from a snarling dog while his friends stand on the sidewalk and laugh. We each have our defining stories. I can’t say we always get over them, but most of us get through them. Some keep reliving those experiences to feed their anger, hatred, and retaliation. Others become paralyzed with self-doubt, anxiety, and withdrawal. For most of us, the hurts eventually lead to insight, empathy, and resilience. Thankfully, most of us lick our wounds in private. Our losses are not on public display for the entire world to see and exploit for entertainment value. I have heard President Trump poke fun at empathy, and yet, I imagine he could use some today. The agony of defeat can cloud our thinking, but losing the game does not make us losers. Sometimes we have to put on our magnanimous hats to restore normalcy and reach for greatness. Each of us would like to be remembered not for those silly moments when we were real characters, but for the important moments when we revealed our real characters. Most of us survive our falls by getting up before the bus runs over us. Even with our legs broken, we eventually find a way to put our best foot forward and keep walking. As Dr. Claire Weekes once counseled an anxious client who was afraid to cross the street, “Even rubber legs will get you there.” That has been my mantra in the thirty years since I first read those words. I have tried many things in my life. None of them made me rich or famous. By objective assessments, many of them were failures. But all of them made me friends. That is the currency with which I measure my success, and friendship is the ointment that has healed all of my wounds. If you are suffering some agony, Dr. Weekes would say, “It is never too late to give yourself another chance.” * * * * Some other tips for coping with anxiety from Dr. Claire Weeks in Hope and Help for Your Nerves (1990):
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