Month: November 2021

by

How Bad Is It?

Now ensconced in that “curmudgeonly old uncle” demographic, I’ve become particularly attentive to holiday gatherings, weddings, even the birth of great-grand-nieces and nephews. I envy the prospects, insights and opportunities of younger generations. And though I try not to belie my trepidation, I twitch at some cultural practices beyond my comprehension or those that jolt my moral conscience.

Being of the generation we are, my husband and I recently delighted in the chance to fold an embossed wedding program into our suit pockets. It seems we reenact that gesture much more often with memorial cards these days! We celebrated all the more in the warm glow of our grandniece’s wedding — the couple’s promises of faithful love, long awaited reunions with family, surprise encounters with friends we haven’t seen in decades.

Only the birth of a baby is better than a wedding! Fortunately we have a family flurry of these as well — flashes of unmitigated joy hold us in an embrace of love. These are all special occasions, liminal moments, transitory times grounding us before an inevitable return to the hum-drum of a daily routine — what we typically call “reality”.

That confounding admixture of exuberant revelry with that which love really looks like day-to-day, moved me to pull aside a favorite nephew-in-law for some honest talk. He’s a career meteorologist with the National Weather Service. Witnessing the youth, promise and expectations filling the banquet room, I needed to know, “How bad is it?” His professional perspective would be unvarnished — if only because we will soon be celebrating the marriage of his son and a fiancé who charmed us with their presence at our table.

Pat’s ever present smile and the Irish glint in his eye revealed his indomitable good humor. “It’s serious, Richard!” With dance music muffling his words, he explained that his attention is focused on North America. Still, he soberly reported that we are “well on our way” to an increase of 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. We will have winters when Minnesota lakes do not freeze over. It will be worse in the northern part of the hemisphere. The poor will be especially hard hit! My mind reeled while recognizing this is a mere 28 years from today.

Perhaps it is best to hear such sobering assessments in the context of a family celebration of birth or while witnessing the exchange of promises to love one another in good times and bad, in sickness and health, forever! In none of this are we to be naive, delusional or unrealistic. As in marriage, that is not an option!

Whatever hope we may muster has to be grounded in a love that — finally, in the end — is really what its all about! Am I an old curmudgeon for worrying and questioning what gift we are giving to young couples and our newly born?

by

Surviving Success

Of course, success is to be desired. By virtue of writing or reading a blog such as this we belie, ipso facto, a certain good fortune. This should be a cause for gratitude! Never do we want to take our success for granted.

What follows, at best, should be read as an invitation to reflect a bit more deeply about that good fortune. Without guilt or shame-throwing, how might we look more honestly and holistically at the condition of our lives? No conclusions or prescriptions are offered, no moral judgments, no smug conclusions.

Rather, this invitation follows an intriguing proposition that has continued to rattle my thoughts while reading James Baldwin, A Biography by David Leeming — success carries consequences, some undesirable, some endangering, some we would do well to survive. Of course, Baldwin is not unique in needing to navigate these currents. All truly successful people would likely recount pitfalls strewn along their road to achievement. But here the really provocative issue is how we are to survive success after it is achieved!

What’s so incriminating about the proposition that success needs to be survived is that I am infinitely better at assessing — I resist using the more accurate term, judging — those society clearly deems to be unsuccessful. Who, me? I too easily, and unreflectively, take my personal success and consequent prerogatives for granted. After all, “success” is self-validating is it not?

What has this disquieting awareness and challenge awakened? Well, first, I and most of us are unwitting prisoners of our own story. I look in the mirror and uncritically presume the world looks like me, shares my cultural values and understanding of what constitutes a good life, no less what it means to be human. Preoccupied with my own reflection I fail to appreciate that truth, goodness and success in living encompass far more than “me” exponentially multiplied.

A further self-indictment challenges me to admit that I float along in a dangerous naïveté. Categories, labels, stereotypes easily become my default for making sense of the world. Thus, I am blind to others and to much of creation — never bothering to consider who or what remains invisible in my purview. What kind of imprisonment accompanies a failure to ask what or who is missing from the universe of my creation and awareness?

The full range of consequences accompanying our success will yield realizations and responses as numerous as those who hazard to call the question. Perhaps the only constant is that our successes have tremendous consequences, some we would do no better than to survive.

And truly, the most fortunate to whom success is granted recognize that it never really belongs to us alone.

by

Spring of Hope or Winter of Despair

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Charles Dickens would be hard pressed to find any who would say these are the best of times…

Despite optimism projected out of Scotland, the world’s top climate analysis coalition warns we are on track for disastrous global heating of 2.4C;

As a retired person living off limited assets I shuttered to learn that prices climbed 6.2 percent in October compared to last year, the largest increase in 30 years;

Action by bishops of my church individually and collectively bely an anti-intellectualism that is, sadly, not uncommon in other sectors of American society today. Many church leaders — not just Catholic — believe themselves to be sufficiently situated to make moral judgments about things they know nothing about and to distrust actual experts and professionals.

A former President recklessly undermines confidence in our elections while the Electoral College, equal State representation in the Senate, passage of laws to suppress voting and carefully crafted gerrymandering assures that we will be a “democracy” where the minority rules;

And there is Covid-19. No longer is there realistic discussion of eradicating the virus. Rather, efforts are directed at transforming the pandemic into a “manageable” epidemic.

Ufduh!!! as we say in Minnesota. There appears to be plenty of evidence to suggest these are the worst of times.

Wisdom broke through the gloom’n’doom in words spoken by Bryan Stevenson in the rebroadcast of a late 2020 interview: “The reckoning that has to happen in the country has to be rooted in a moral awareness, a moral awakening; a consciousness that evolves in a way that we begin to do things that we must do if we’re going to not only save the country, but save ourselves.”

Stevenson, author of Just Mercy, notes what we understand or forget at our peril… injustice, despair and violence prevail where hopelessness persists! Are there solutions for our societal and global crises? Do we have enough hope, confidence and resolve to believe we can do better? Do we? Really?

We truly do become that which we live and believe. Those who despair, hate, exclude or are consumed by fear and anger come to embody it. Scenes from January 6 flash through my mind. Those who truly dialogue, remain curious, build bridges, weave community, embody hope come to personify that which they practice. Teachers in classrooms, volunteers of all stripes, most local government officials, those who quietly do the heavy lifting of caring for others or restoring justice are among the many who call me to hope.

The future — if there is to be one — rests in our individual and collective hands. Will we reap a winter of despair or a spring of hope? Will ours be an age of wisdom, an epoch of belief? It feels perilously up for grabs.

_______________

The On Being interview with Bryan Stevenson and Krista Tippett can be found at: https://onbeing.org/programs/bryan-stevenson-finding-the-courage-for-whats-redemptive/

Credit goes to Brian P Horan, OFM for the insightful critique of Catholic bishops and other church leaders. https://www.ncronline.org/news/opinion/archbishop-gomezs-comments-reveal-anti-intellectualism-among-church-leaders