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Just before he died on the cross, Jesus cried out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Forsaken. It is a word so potent that I fear to say it out loud. But on this day when I am filled with grief, I cry out, “Where are you, God?” There is no immediate answer. And so, as I do when I am troubled, I go for a walk. On my third lap around an enormous parking lot a woman steps out of the lone car parked there and asks me, “May I walk with you? My name is Rita.” Rita explains that she is waiting for her roommate to finish work on the building’s security detail. Happy for some company to interrupt my thoughts in the desolate lot, I eagerly say, “Yes!” I slow to Rita’s pace and to her conversation. The woman quickly opens up about her life and family. As we approach a beautiful courtyard, she asks, “Can we sit down?” We enter the courtyard and sit on facing benches. She tells me about her 90-year-old mother who suffers from dementia. Rita’s mother no longer remembers Rita when they are face-to-face, but she remembers a daughter named Rita and describes her daughter to this stranger that adult Rita has become. Rita laughs at the insights these conversations provide about how her mother feels about the daughter she remembers. Rita speaks of her love for her mother and about leaving home as a young bride. She speaks about missing her mother and then begins to tell me something: “After I left, I heard that my mother set the table…” but Rita cannot go on. Her eyes well up with tears, and she turns her face away from mine. Rita covers her quivering lips with her hand, and then she does it…she apologizes for her sadness, for becoming emotional. I lean in and wait. Rita collects herself and turns back to face me. I see that she is embarrassed and fears resuming the conversation. I say, “It is clear that your mother missed you too.” This acknowledgment and acceptance remove the emotional chokehold on Rita’s throat, and the conversation continues. Rita has lived away from her mother’s home for a lifetime. In the intervening years, Rita has become a mother, a grandmother, and a great grandmother, and yet she is moved to tears by this memory of being loved, being missed, being longed for, and feeling responsible for that longing, and now, she feels the way her mother once did as her mother’s dementia leaves Rita feeling forsaken. We live in a time when people are feeling overwhelmed by events and some are dying of loneliness, and yet the expression of sadness seems to be the only form of speech that is not acceptable. Nothing is more threatening than to hear that someone is sad or scared or empty. We sense that sadness is dangerous, that we might have to act, and so sadness festers in silence. “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Jesus’ last words before he died--a stunning demonstration of his bravery and his humanity. I asked, “Where are you, God?” He answered, “May I walk with you?” And now my question is this: With 8.2 billion people in the world, need any of us feel forsaken? Walk with someone today.
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Back to the shoes…
Now that my fingers do most of the walking, my feet are having a word. That word is “No!” My feet have gotten louder and more opinionated as I age--nothing like six-plus decades of weight-bearing to embolden sagging arches. Now, my feet stage a daily coup against cramped, harsh quarters. They don’t want to be cute or trendy they say. They demand their right to be comfortable. So, I traded in my heels, pointed-toe flats, and trendy boots for new athletic shoes. The moment I tried them on, the ecstasy was X-rated. The salesperson had to lower the blinds and close the store to other customers. I was born again! Comfort, bounce, and lift are the holy trinity of my new religion. And just when I thought it couldn’t get better, along came slip-on athletic shoes! I didn’t even know that was possible. Lives have been changed. Someone deserves the Nobel Prize in Physics for this quantum leap in footwear. Let’s face it; we’ve got enough other reasons to be tied in knots. We don’t need our shoes resisting us too. I would call my new shoes a big bang for the buck--expensive but worth the dough. When I put on my new athletic shoes, the universe expands. No longer am I a body at rest. I eagerly defy gravity by getting up from the couch. My spreading mass is exchanged for energy proving the theory of relativity and that I am much smarter when my feet don’t hurt. Who knows, there just might be a little Einstein in each of us. Get the shoes and see for yourselves. A prisoner of winter and freezing temperatures, I take to cleaning out the closets for physical activity. Every time I engage in this effort, I ask myself, “Why am I still holding onto this stuff?” Then I toss out .01% and congratulate myself. Despite the thousands of times I have been through this effort, I manage to convince myself that what I am discarding is “enough for now.” I tell myself that I might “need” the remaining stuff “someday.” The fact that I am 68 years old is leaving me with less and less “somedays,” but I ignore the math, and then I congratulate myself on being an optimist, a personality trait for which no one who knows me ever gives me enough credit. In my wardrobe closet there is a row of shoes that I haven’t worn in years. I need a carbon dating system to recall the years of purchase. There are some jeans in there that I purchased in 2010 and haven’t worn much since. For some reason, I keep these items “just in case.” In case of what I wonder as I stare them down for the millionth time. Maybe in case the daily news isn’t torture enough. Working people seem to love their blue jeans. They can’t wait for a jeans day at work. Jeans symbolize down time, me time, free time. Somehow wearing jeans to work can make work seem like, well, not work, like folks chose to come in and hang out on their own time. A Friday jeans day and you’ve got a long weekend. Not me. I’ve never had that kind of relationship with jeans. Somehow they never seem to feel quite right despite so many style options. And when I say “quite right,” I mean wearable. And does anyone just slip into a pair of jeans anymore? Seems more like a wrestling match thanks to both style and spandex. I guess my mother’s critique of clothes worn too tight stuck with me: “Those clothes look painted on” or “they look like a stuffed sausage in that outfit.” Thankfully, my mother did not live to see jeggings. It would have killed her or caused her to go blind. Allegedly, jeans “go with everything.” You can pair them with high heels or strappy sandals, blazers and silk blouses, expensive jewelry. Maybe. If you are the size of a Barbie doll. But my Barbie never wore jeans, and I always loved her. And my other idol, Nancy Drew was never described as wearing jeans. Instead, she slipped into a speedy roadster for a life of adventure. Take that Levi! Perhaps I just didn’t get the gene for jeans. I didn’t get the gene for high fashion either. Karl Lagerfeld, the famous fashion icon, said “Sweatpants are a sign of defeat. You lost control of your life, so you bought some sweatpants.” It hurts to admit it, but yes, that’s me. I guess I just gave up too soon—sometime in childhood I must have thought haute couture was the French pastry responsible for making jeans too tight. If I am ever convicted of a crime, I won’t need prison. Put me in a pair of jeans and call it solitary confinement. I won’t be able to move, eat, or breathe. In addition, I will have the mental torture of thinking of nothing more than how miserable I am. The authorities won’t have to worry about me causing a prison brawl. All I will be able to do is roll with the punches. Maybe the Geneva Convention prohibits prisoners from wearing jeans and that’s why they get the comfy orange jumpsuits. The only thing I can say in favor of jeans is that the holes, shredded fabric, and faded spots do hide a lot of laundry failures and mistakes, but that’s not me either. I am a pro at laundry. It has been my life’s work. Thank you very much. And yet, here I am, standing in the closet holding onto the jeans just in case “someday” I am an undefeated, tall, thin, high-fashion model. It could happen… I save the shoes for another day. You have been a refuge for the poor, a refuge for the needy in his distress, a shelter from the storm and a shade from the heat. For the breath of the ruthless is like a storm driving against a wall and like the heat of the desert. Isaiah 24:4 Trying to keep up with Trump’s well-practiced strategy of flooding the zone is exhausting. Overnight, he upended 250 years of government of the people, by the people, and for the people. Less than a month into his term, the flood waters are so deep, we are in need of an ark. I am not sure how the simple word “groceries” turned into all of this chaos. Maybe Trump is afraid that if he lowers the price of eggs people will begin throwing bird-flu-infected ova at him. Hate to tell you, #47, but you already have egg on your face—critical Day One promises have been broken: groceries are more expensive. There is still a war in Ukraine. In one of Trump’s latest moves, he fired the Chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and named himself Chairman despite the fact that he’s never seen a performance there. I guess #47 is planning a revival of Jesus Christ Superstar and wants to ensure he gets the title role surrounded by The 12 Village People. I am willing to give the guy a break; he probably just wants to show off his dance moves and his Jesus complex. In another puzzling move, even as he shuttered government offices and dismantled USAID, #47 established an Office for Faith. He wants to Make America Christian Again. He even appointed a woman to head this new office. No D-E-I there, just a gospel of P-R-O-S-P-E-R-I-T-Y. That, along with his new merit system L-O-Y-A-L-T-Y, form the foundation of his religion. Even the fundamentalist Christians of Trump’s base responded with fury. They have called the appointee a heretic, and a W-O-M-A-N. In their view, God does not want women as preachers or church leaders. Why, #47 has even taken it upon himself to speak up for my homies, the Catholics, saying that Democrats have abandoned us. I had no idea... Finding this all very confusing, I turned to the Catholic reference manual to see how all of this lines up with the actual word of God. I began searching my Bible for relevant passages that could explain #47’s character, words, and behavior in light of his pronouncements about faith and Christianity. I even scoured the internet and sought the help of ChatGPT, but there was nothing to explain the paradox. Later, during a night of restless sleep, it came to me in a dream. I pictured a day in June 2020 when #47 was still #45 and people had taken to the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd. I saw a man in a suit standing in front of St. John’s Church in Washington, D. C. My foggy brain zeroed in—Yes! That was him! #45 was holding a Bible. Upside down. The revelation jarred me from my sleep and I jumped out of bed. Grabbing the family Bible from the shelf, I turned to the Ten Commandments and began reading: Commandment 1: You shall have no other gods before me. Turning the heavy book upside down, I could see #47’s interpretation. There were no other gods before him. How about Commandment 4: Keep holy the Sabbath? Upside down it could be interpreted as “Play a few holes on Sunday.” I was getting somewhere, a much deeper understanding, but then... Commandment 6: You shall not murder. I am still struggling with this one. No matter how I turned the Bible, even standing on my head, I just couldn’t see how that might read: “Hang Mike Pence.” On to Commandment 7: You shall not commit adultery. Giving #47 the benefit of the doubt, and going with the possibility that he has read more of the Bible, I found at least 30 passages about the storms of life. It’s quite possible, in an upside down world, that he summarized and came to the conclusion that he had permission to do Stormy Daniels. Down to Commandment 8: Thou shall not steal. From the reporting of staff during #47’s first administration, #47 is not much of a reader. He prefers to keep things short and to scan for the details. I can see how, at a quick glance, Commandment 8 might seem like an order to “Stop the Steal.” And finally, how about Commandment 10: Thou shalt not covet your neighbor’s house or anything that is your neighbors?” Again, in all fairness, it didn’t specifically say Canada, Mexico, or Panama. And Greenland isn’t technically a “neighbor.” Maybe #47 isn’t the fascist we fear. Maybe he just needs some glasses and some Ritalin…and maybe a heart transplant. I’m no priest or preacher, but I read my Bible right side up. And I am sure of two things that will get us through this storm: God’s greatest commandment recorded in John 13: As I have loved you, so you must love one another. And it was Jesus who spoke of fear even more times than he spoke of love. I keep this passage from Matthew 17:7 on a poster in my bedroom where I see it when I open my eyes each morning: Arise, and do not be afraid. 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! 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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