A Lenten Lament

This past week an aunt died, a friend’s mother died, a too-young client started hospice care—barely a year after her husband’s sudden death and six months after her sister’s. Two weeks ago, I was called out twice as a chaplain to sit with families who had just experienced unexpected death. This week also marked forty-five years since cancer stole my teenage brother’s adulthood.

Death. An uninvited and unwelcome visitor whose looming shadow darkens the brightest of days.

In this season of Lent, Christians intentionally sit in the shadow of death, thoughtfully ponder the cost of our own sins, consider the One who endured rejection, mockery, and torture on the way to his own death … a death that, according to the Bible, should be ours. Lent is the night storm before the calm of Easter’s glorious resurrection sunrise. Lent is supposed to be dark.

I can’t do it. I can’t do the dark. Amidst a daily news cycle dominated by lies, anger, retribution, and hatred of anything other; punctuated by wars and earthquakes; surrounded by death near and far … it is hard to sit in the darkness and hold out hope even for an Easter celebration I know will come.

When I have spoken with friends about the times we are living in, I have most often heard the complaint that “no one is doing anything” or the bewildered question, “what can we do?” What action we might take see seems futile, fruitless, ineffective. We seem destined to wait it out—“this, too, shall pass”—and are left to wonder whether we will recognize anything when it does pass. These have all been my own complaints, questions, wonderings.

Hope. Hope is hard. It is hardest in the dark, when there is not even a flicker of light. I’m told the one thing worse than being alone is being in pitch black. In the deepest dark, there are no reference points, no direction, no way of knowing north from east, up from down. In the darkest deeps, hope is impossible to find … unless a light comes.

Here is what I know: the most life-giving lament holds onto something greater than hope—it clings desperately to faith … faith in something, Someone greater than all I know; greater than the darkness that surrounds me; greater than the evil that pervades the days; greater than any other power or authority; greater, even, than anything I can do on my own. That faith … that Someone … gives me strength to do what I can, no matter how little or trite it may seem. And so I do what I can.

What can I do? I can bring a flickering candle into dark spaces. How? For me, it might mean sitting after midnight with an old woman whose lifeless, twenty-year companion is still laying on her living room floor as she stares death in the face. Sometimes it’s by delivering a special treat to a client on hospice, or even the mundane task of helping order their financial affairs. Sometimes it’s attending a young friend’s performance and hanging around afterward to give her a hug.

When I stand on the drizzly sidelines to watch a former student’s soccer game, it’s a candle in the dark. When I get on the microphone and announce the next batter while the throbbing beat of her favorite rapper (ugh!) blares through the speakers, it brings just a little light to her life. When I ride with a police officer and allow him to be himself—with no judgment of his unfiltered language or complaints—the weight of the creative evil he sees every day becomes a shared, lightened burden.

When I can listen to the stories of those hurt by the hands or words of people badly representing Jesus, and simply say, “I’m so sorry you experienced that,” their pain is lessened just a bit.

I can’t bring light to every dark corner, but I can bring a little light to every place I go. If my candle can light someone else’s, and theirs can light another’s, and theirs yet another … then soon all the candles will shine in the darkness, and the darkness will not overcome. And with the hope of that ever-spreading light we can say with the ancient poet, In the dark shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for You are with me.

You may not be able to light the whole world, but you can bring light to a dark corner. So now a question: What dark corner will you encounter today, and how can you—how will you—light a candle there?

Go in grace. Go in peace. Be a light.

What Do You Love About America?

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My dad was an extrovert—he would talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything. Sometimes it was annoying, sometimes embarrassing, always it was just dad being dad. The rest of us in the family are introverts to varying degrees but I am my father’s son: I, too, will talk to anyone, anywhere, about anything. And more than anything else, accents will get me started … though I find myself increasingly inept at identifying them.

And so it was that accents were the opening for a conversation with a couple next to me at a coffee shop recently. Of course, they insisted that I guess where they were from; and of course, I was wrong. Twice. (I started with South Africa, then went to New Zealand, before correctly landing on Australia.)

The iced coffee having been broken, they dove right in: What do you love about America? It was an honest, probing question with no hint of malice toward the nation they were touring for weeks, if not months. (They briefly described an itinerary that had them visiting national parks from the southeast to California and back to the northeast.)

My hesitation in answering was revealing, both to them and to myself. It’s not that I don’t love America; it’s just that there’s so much not to love these days. Tucked between a depressing presidential debate and the nation’s 248th birthday, our deeply honest conversation began with three things I am grateful for as an American: *opportunity, *innovation, and *freedom. Each is a real strength inextricably connected to the others and each demands an asterisk, like a speed record aided by tailwinds or a home run record tainted by performance-enhancing drugs.

*Opportunity. Since long before her birth, America has been known as the land of opportunity. Vast landscapes invite farming and ranching, urban development and exploration. Thirteen years of “free” education for both boys and girls. (Mostly) equal rights, irrespective of gender, race, politics, religion, and so on.

The asterisk here is best summarized with the Orwellian line, “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” In spite of the Declaration of Independence’s bold claim that “all men are created equal,” slaves were not counted as equal even for census purposes for the first century of America’s existence. While opportunity in schools, sports, business, politics is theoretically unlimited, any number of factors still raise practical barriers for whole swaths of our citizenry. Clearly we are still a work in progress.

*Innovation. There is some question about who first suggested the idea of “adapt or die,” but it is an appropriate way to describe the endurance of what George Washington once described as a great experiment. Whether in politics or manufacturing, energy or healthcare, when America has faced crisis, her ability to innovate and adapt has ensured her survival. And yet this innovation has been practiced on our foundational rule of law, the Constitution, that has been amended only 17 times since the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791. It would seem that our Founding Fathers were not only innovative but also wary of excessive innovation; or at least they knew that innovation requires a strong and stable foundation.

The asterisk to innovation is the individualism it breeds. Though our money still declares “in God we trust,” a truer motto would be “in ourselves we trust” or the more common sentiment, “pull yourself up by the bootstraps.” Innovation breeds differentiation, which in turn breeds competition, suspicion, division. In the experiment that we call the United States, there is an ongoing tension between “united” and “states.”

*Freedom. America’s greatest strength is undoubtedly her freedom. Not only the specific freedoms enshrined in the Constitution—speech, religion, press, assembly, and the right to petition the government—but the broader environment of freedom that stems from those. We have the freedom to choose where to live, where to attend college, what type of work to do. We have the freedom to leave when we want and to return when we want. We even have freedom to do things that may not be healthy for us.

The asterisk on freedom is the incredible cost and immense responsibility that come with it. Freedom, of course, is never unlimited. Freedom of speech may include the freedom to lie, but not when the lie causes harm to someone’s reputation (defamation). Freedom of assembly includes anti-government rallies, but not when the rallies turn into riots. Freedom with limits is little more than anarchy.

Freedom may be America’s greatest strength, but it is also her greatest challenge. This is the most frequent theme when I talk with people in or from other nations: the social cost of freedom. On American news they see rampant crime, gun violence, political and religious scandals; they see rising division in our nation and candidates in a presidential debate (I use both terms—presidential and debate—very loosely) who sound more like junior high boys arguing on a playground about who is toughest. I long for the day when our nation finally awakens to the incredible cost—no, the insane cost—of our freedom to “keep and bear arms.”

Is this the best we have?

The second question asked by my new acquaintances from Down Under was phrased more incredulously: in a land of 350 million people, is this really the best you can offer the world? They recognize what so many others both at home and abroad know: for better or worse, America is a world leader. And also for better or worse, the individual we elect to lead our nation will be a de facto world leader.

One headline after last week’s debate was telling: one disappointed, one lied and deflected. And in four months, we have to choose between these two? This is the curse of our two-party system and reveals the lie spoken by so many well-meaning parents and pundits, that anyone can be president. If only that were true. If only, come the first Tuesday in November, America could write in anyone other than the two men whose names will be at the top of the ballot.

I know there are many Americans who don’t like our elevated place in the world, or at least don’t like the significant cost of that role to our own nation. But the fact is that we are a world leader and will be a world leader until we either hide ourselves under a rock or continue to behave so ludicrously that we become a laughingstock and a shadow of our once-great nation. And the cost of allowing either of those to happen will be exponentially greater in every way.

So what do I love about America? I love that in four years, we will have two different candidates. I love that—in spite of my profound concerns about what will happen in our nation and the world over those four years—I can still have hope that these United States of America will rise above where we are today.

Don’t let me down, America. Don’t let me down.

A Voice For Good

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“The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” —Frederick Buechner

I’m a PA announcer for high school sports. What started as an event—MC’ing a breast cancer awareness night for my daughter’s volleyball team—has turned into an eight-years-and-counting side gig, all volunteer, announcing four sports and a couple parades a year.

This year I was asked to add softball to my repertoire. The team had never had an announcer and the only audio they had was a single 12” karaoke speaker. I knew if we were going to take the program up a level like they wanted to, we were going to need something more, so I visited the boys baseball team, watched their announcer, saw what he did for music, and scoped out the sound system. Then I decided to see if I could get people to help me with the cost of buying a similar system.

As I planned a GoFundMe campaign, I set my sights on raising $1,000. But I needed a tag line, something to catch the ear, to quickly tell people the what and why behind the ask. I thought about what I do and why and landed on “A Voice For Good.” A little online sleuthing showed only one organization using that name—a nonprofit music group out of Utah with a similar motivation but different methods—and no apparent copyright issues, so I adopted it as my tag line. But the phrase has become so much more.

As I’ve reflected on the various jobs I’ve held and meaningful work I’ve done throughout my life, I’ve realized that “a voice for good” is an accurate summation of who I am and what I’ve done: teacher, trainer, radio operator, pastor, chaplain … all rely on using my voice, and all are aimed in one way or another at bringing good, whether that means truth, wisdom, and encouragement or peace, safety, and healing.

There are deeper lessons, too:

I’ve been given a gift (my voice); some gifts come with responsibility to use them for good and for others.
There’s a lot of bad in the world; people—especially kids—need to hear good.
I have fun doing what I do!

If what Frederick Buechner said is true (see the quote at the top of this post), I must be in the place God has for me. And that’s good.

Journey to the Air Force

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Forty years ago today, I began my enlistment in the U.S. Air Force. I don’t remember many details of the day I arrived at the Los Angeles MEPS (Military Enlistment Processing Station), but getting there was an interesting and unexpected journey….

As a teen, I had the privilege of living in Bonn, [West] Germany, the postwar capital, where I attended Bonn American High School. My fellow students were the kids of American Embassy staff, military, and, like me, civilian expats; as well as international diplomats and a few local Germans—overall, the upper crust of the international diplomatic community.

I played on the school’s football and soccer teams, wrestled for a year, and was the basketball team’s manager one season. Those teams traveled to countless American and international schools for games—Hahn Air Base, Bremerhaven, three different schools in Brussels, AFCENT in the Netherlands, and more—where I got glimpses of a different life: the enlisted men and women who make up the bulk of the military.

As much as I loved my experience in Bonn, nothing I saw on those bases attracted me. The buildings were boxy and lifeless; the airmen and soldiers no less so. The marching, the olive drab “pickle suits” … nothing called my name and said, “join us.” And nowhere in my family history was I aware of a military heritage. (Only years later would I learn of the Revolutionary War-era Fort Ehl in New York’s Mohawk Valley, or a great uncle(?) who had served in the Army.)

Memories of those bases were in my mind when, during my freshman year of college at Seattle Pacific University, I swore to my roommate that I would never enlist in the military.

But that year at college was hard for me. I loved the experiences and friendships I made on the crew team and I had fun working for the Seattle Repertory Theatre; but I was still lonely and disengaged both academically and spiritually. I had to leave.

After a second summer working at Forest Home, a family camp in the San Bernardino mountains, I decided to stay in Los Angeles to work. I found a job working nights in the photo processing plant of a grocery store chain: I spent eight hours putting stickers over the flaps of self-sealing envelopes with newly-developed photos. Not exactly a career track. (Funny thing, though: when I left after four months, my coworkers gave me a gold Cross pen and pencil set worth probably $50 at the time and over $100 now.)

That fall I rented a room in a house in La Puente. It was in my budget, but that’s about the only good thing about it. The owner’s husband (whom she’d married when she was 15) was a truck driver who’d been in a major accident and was in a rehab facility in Bakersfield. Just to survive, she rented out two of the three bedrooms in the house, forcing her 16-year-old kleptomaniac son to live in the garage. She lived in the master suite … and I mean lived: it was her bedroom, bath, living room, and kitchen. She kept nothing in the kitchen itself, saying that her son had stolen and sold most of the pots and pans for drugs. Her 19-year-old daughter lived elsewhere with her boyfriend.

I think I’d lived and worked there for just a couple months before the loneliness and longing for home got the best of me and I found myself walking into the Air Force recruiter’s office. My experiences during high school had made it easy to choose between the branches, my scores on the ASVAB (Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery) guaranteed me one of any five career fields I chose, and I would be able to leave for Basic Training not too soon and not too late … forty years ago today. January 27, 1984.

Lessons from Six Decades

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I’ve tried to personalize most of these as ongoing reminders to myself. A few, however, are lessons I wish I had learned earlier.

Be less sure of myself … without losing self-confidence. I don’t have to be right all the time. If I’m always right, I don’t need to learn anything more, and learning is half the fun and half the journey.

Explore … places, people, ideas, myself. In the exploring, look for what brings joy and what doesn’t; what gives life and what sucks it out; what is a fountain and what is a drain. Think deeply; find others who can help me.

Ask a lot of questions. Learn to ask better questions. Be curious about people, places, ideas. Learn without judgment. Keep an open mind.

Look for ways to unite rather than divide. Look for common ground; seek out the similarities between dissimilar things and people.

Be thoughtful and wise about who I listen to … whether news or social media, politicians or pastors. Don’t abdicate my responsibility to think; check out for myself what I hear. Listen to people who think differently; I can learn from their perspective, even if I don’t agree with their conclusions.

Listen to people younger than me … they have fresher and different perspectives, which will help keep my own thinking fresh. Besides, eventually almost everyone will be younger than me, so I might as well start early!

Invest more in the marriage than you spend on the wedding. Work hard to make it last … because any other option will be even harder.

Control of anything or anyone outside myself is a myth. (Thanks to M., who helped me think this through very practically one day when I was the substitute teacher in high school detention!) Some corollaries:

You, and only you, are in control of yourself.
If you’re not in control of yourself, you’ve either voluntarily given up some measure of control by, for example, enlisting in the military; or there’s a significant problem:
- your capacity for self-control is limited by some developmental issue; or,
- you’re a prisoner … most likely because you didn’t practice self-control; or,
- you’re a slave.
When it comes to other people, circumstances, and even pets, I need to shift my thinking from control to influence.

These are a few lessons that came to mind this week as I reflected back on 60 years of life. There are certainly more but I’ll turn it over to you no matter how long you’ve lived: what have you learned about yourself, about life, about others…?