Family

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How Are the Children?

As a development officer at the University of Minnesota I was well aware that two-thirds of students enrolled in four-year colleges and universities nationwide take on student loans to help pay for their education. Each year I would soberly inform prospective donors the debt a typical student carries upon graduation, today nearly $30,000. The burden of such an obligation – especially for our grads in the College of Education and Human Development who generally enter careers at the low end of the salary range – was a good motivator for me to get up and go to work every day. I naively assumed that money I raised would really make a difference.

Now I recognize that our students are enmeshed in a system that is much more complex and resistant to meaningful reform. Here’s the harsh bind in which young people find themselves: Many wouldn’t be able to attend college at all without easy access to loans. Over the past thirty years the real cost of attending a four-year institution has at least tripled, far outpacing inflation. I saw this at the U of M and how available grants and scholarships just didn’t go as far as they used to. Besides, we fought an erroneous perception that as a “state school” costs at the U are relatively cheap and well subsidized by tax-payers. Not true! Combine all this with the fact that family income levels have been stagnant since the 1970s.

The squeeze placed on our young people ain’t pretty! An incisive article in the current issue of  Commonweal [link] by Hollis Phelps reports that 38 million individuals now hold a combined total of more than $1 trillion in student loan debt. That’s four times what it was ten years ago, and it surpasses total U.S. credit card debt. In fact, when it comes to what Americans owe, student loan debt is second only to mortgage debt. And generally, these obligations are virtually impossible to discharge in a bankruptcy proceeding. While many are struggling to keep their heads above water, at least 10 percent of recent borrowers are currently in default, the highest rate in almost twenty years.

Hollis describes a typical situation: Students, especially those with the greatest need who sometimes graduate with double the average debt, aren’t necessarily poor planners or irresponsible borrowers, misinformed about the debt they are taking on to finance their college education. They just come from homes that couldn’t afford to put money into a college savings account. They already have part-time jobs, but a typical minimum wage doesn’t make much of a dent in current tuition rates. They know what it means to tighten their belts, since they’ve done so all their lives.

Most of us are well aware of these challenging realities. But Hollis article opened my eyes to a shocking truth: moralistically shifting all responsibility onto the individual borrower conceals the fact that student loan debt is, in one way or another, a highly profitable business. The Congressional Budget Office has estimated that the federal government stands to make $175 billion in profit from student loans over the next decade, and profits for loan servicers and lenders have continued to rise. Investors and speculators are also in on the action, as student loan debts, like risky mortgages, are bundled and sold as securities in financial markets. The Wall Street Journal has reported that investors want more, with demand as much as fifteen times greater than supply.

Then there are the schools themselves. There are campuses to maintain, faculty and staff to pay and fierce competition out there for bodies, especially among the huge number of schools that are dependent on student tuition for operating revenue. The simple fact is that many institutions would likely cease to exist, at least in their current forms, without the reality of student debt. As with too much in our Free Market economy, we have “commodified” our students.

Hollis correctly observes that higher education functions similarly to our current healthcare system: it’s a complicated market composed of numerous actors that operate at various levels to sell a product that individuals in some sense have to consume. Opting out of either system isn’t really much of an option, and individuals will go to great lengths, including taking on exorbitant debt, to use the services both provide, because both have direct impacts on livelihood. All the while, those who run the systems profit from our needs and desires.

It’s a big mess! I suspect we will not muster the energy to resolve the economic, social, academic and political challenges until we recognize our moral responsibilites imbedded in the current state of affairs and accept, in justice, the obligation we have to more than our own biological children.

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Contours of Capacity

I landed in Phoenix seven days ago with a quote from Dag Hammarskjold’s Markings framing my arrival: “Each day a life. Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back.  It must be held out empty – for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.”  Enduring gifts of family, companionship, place, years and memory invited me to trust my emptiness as the markings of capacity.

For decades my brother Jerry made sure my sister-in-law had a fresh long-stem red rose on the coffee table. This was my first visit since his funeral in July so there was a boatload of apprehension about his absence. I arrived at Marilyn’s house on the first morning with a fresh red rose from the same Safeway that was Jerry’s source. We shared a tearful embrace in the family room within eye-shot of Jerry’s recliner, his mantra fresh in my ears: “Life on life’s terms.”

How proud he would be, and I am, of his sons! On Sunday evening, in the side yard of the home where the boys grew into men, 39 y/o Matt leapt with sweeping command of airspace tossing a football to a jumble of Jerry’s grandkids – unknown to Matt I recognized his father’s athleticism and good-looks flashing across his face. We had just returned from the zoo where the kids were strategically preoccupied with all-things exotic allowing this godfather to savor with approval stories of a godson’s incessant juggling of parenting, profession and priorities. What is “success”? How is its definition different at different times in our lives? Quantification, calculation are so inadequate, deficient. Marilyn had previously presented Jerry’s walking stick to me. I was grateful to lean upon its sturdy base while we made our way through the elephants, camels, flamingos, jaguars and macaws!

Before dinner Chris garnered an uncle’s unspoken praise and admiring attention when he dismissed his choice of ice water as a matter of Lenten abstinence. His eldest would later share her frustration with “giving up candy” but failing to “make it through Ash Wednesday.” She quickly shifted to excitement at the prospect of her fourth grade class being able to enact the Stations of the Cross at church on April 12. With an inward smile I commiserated with Ella’s frustration and delight – of course we fall short with even our best intentions. Perhaps the point is not our success or endurance but our need for God and enduring providence.  Enacting the Stations of the Cross will serve her well – hopefully a far distant time from now – when life inevitably presents them to her in a myriad of forms. But that avuncular wisdom should surely wait another time. We had a multiplicity of blessings before dinner as numerous children vied for the prestige of leading our family prayer. What goes through a grandparent’s heart at a moment like that?

My mind remains awash with the prospect of Ella’s class enacting the Stations of the Cross. I was reminded all too well throughout the week. Staying with a dear sister is a precious gift but provides yet another lesson in letting-go and moving-on. Claudia and her husband share a love strengthened by having grieved the loss of their first loves. Dean is an absolutely marvelous man! Thankfully, love is not a zero-sum game and he and Claudia have no need to disguise an enduring love for Carol and John. News on Saturday of a sister-in-law’s uterine cancer weighs heavy as another cross to bear with a tenacity only hope can inspire. The prospect of a favorite nephew’s move to Boston comes with the sobering reality of seeing much less of him, and his objectively adorable pre-school daughters. A weekend retreat at the Franciscan Renewal Center imprinted a resonant image of Moses – a man of privilege as a member of Pharaoh’s household whose fidelity to his core identity transformed him into a poor desert nomad with leadership and authority of a very different sort.

Lenten wisdom even sprang from the utter devastation ten and twelve-year-old grandnephews expressed after Creighton’s collapse in the NCAA basketball tournament. Their dad, another godson, used the occasion to introduce them to one of life’s hardest lessons: Very, very few people ever win their last game! Do the math… 68 teams, single elimination, only one team wins the championship, on that team perhaps only four or five are seniors for whom this is their final game.  So many compete, so very few finish with a victory. Perhaps the greatest lesson parents can teach children is the fine art of losing and that life is ultimately about loss, letting go… Lenten themes, Stations of the Cross, paschal mystery, emptiness marking the contour of our capacity.

I never shared Jerry’s athleticism and actually hated football. Perhaps now I can finally catch the wisdom he wanted to pass on to grandchildren. I leave PHX today with Jerry’s walking stick firmly in hand, grateful to lean on its steady base, with his mantra echoing still… Life on life’s terms!

Even more, as he never tired of saying… Thank you, thank you, thank you!

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From the Playground

Riley, my nephew’s senior Golden Retriever stood at the fence with tail wagging.  On the other side were young children on the playground of Villa Montessori.  Shouts of freedom, tromp of running feet and rhythmic squeaks of swing sets offered a consoling din to our conversation.   Lunch on the patio with a favorite sister-in-law marked another consoling ritual renewed.  Among memories recounted and updates feverishly made, Marilyn reminisced, “Remember how Mom used to love being out here when the kids were on the playground?  She loved their running, yelling and screaming!  She’d never tire of their energy and joy… reminded her of her own childhood, the kind she always wanted for kids.”

Nearly the age she was then, we affirmed her truth as gospel.  Perhaps a little wizened by age, it felt refreshing to cut through the flurry and noise of our lives – years – to cherish memories, reclaim life’s gift, reaffirm what matters.  Unknown to Marilyn I was distracted by another flash of memory.  A few weeks ago at a formal dinner preceding a panel discussion at a university, Rabbi David Wirtschafter grounded us with a quote by Reinhold Niebuhr: “Humor is, in fact, a prelude to faith; and laughter is the beginning of prayer.”   My overly primed intellect had resonated with the truth of Niebuhr’s insight and envied the rabbi’s brilliance.   Nussled with  sounds from the playground, recalling a mother’s joy, they were reconfirmed now by maternal wisdom.

With all this rippling through my day, I became intrigued with a story spotted during a routine iPad survey of favorite sites.  What really drew my attention were remarks by Jesuit Superior General Fr. Adolfo Nicolás marking the 100th anniversary of a Sophia University in Japan. Likening religious experience to a person who can appreciate the intricacies and variations of classical music, Nicolás explained that “religion is first of all very much more like this musical sense than a rational system of teachings and explanations.”  In this Jesuit’s teaching I heard the wisdom of Rabbi Wirtschafter and Pastor Niebuhr affirmed.  Even more, I heard music that charmed my mother’s ears. 

Here to escape the harshness of winter and soak up the warmth of Arizona family, I resonate with Nicolás’ lamenting how many people have lost our attentiveness to music because of the many other distractions of the modern technological age: “Just as this musical sense is being eroded and weakened by the noise, the pace, the self-images of the modern and postmodern world, so is religious sensitivity… [We] must first of all work toward helping people discover or rediscover this musical sense, this religious sensibility… This awareness and appreciation of dimensions of reality that are deeper than instrumental reason or materialist conceptions of life allow us.”  AMEN!

Being reminded of how Mom used to love hearing children at play – their running, yelling and screaming being music to her ears, renewed by their boundless energy and joy – I am again grateful for the way she taught me to pray.
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Joshua J. McElwee’s report on Fr. Adolfo Nicolás’ remarks may be found [here].
The quote by Reinhold Niebuhr is from Children of Light and the Children of Darkness.

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Our Capacity

Today I repeated a forty-year ritual – it began at 4 a.m.  In 1974 I drove my parents to their retirement in Arizona.    Today I am the age they were then and have begun taking early Social Security.  Rushing down Concourse F to catch a 7 a.m. flight to Phoenix I recognized the change.  I could readily identify the demographic – faded polo shirts ten years out of style, denim pant suits, either a profusion of jewelry or none at all, sensible soft-soled shoes, demeanor suggesting a 4 a.m. wake-up every morning, and all the gray hair …or cocker spaniel blonde.  Even before getting close to the gate I recognize my companions on Delta this morning.  How did we get here? …so soon?

My Dad died in Phoenix more than twenty years ago.  We are now in our fourth generation of Phoenicians.  It’s my first visit since my brother’s funeral in July.  His son took my grand-niece to a father-daughter dance last weekend.  Change imposes its will on all of us. I am staying with my sister who was the fourth sibling to flee the wily Midwest for winter warmth.  In the guest room where I write the flag that draped the casket of a brother-in-law I knew since age nine sits atop a bookcase.  Laughter from my sister and her “new” husband ripples from the living room.   Life changes quickly.

I need this break.  Forecasters anticipate consistency: lows in the upper 50s, highs in the lower 80s.  No chance of precipitation.  Humidity today was 4% — low even by desert standards.   It’s been a harsh winter in MSP with more than just a few storms along the way.  I need the warmth that Arizona family has afforded these many years.  Reflective of the season, I fell on the ice this morning at 4:45 when Jeb the Dog took me out for my morning walk.  Jeb can be left to roll in the anticipated four inches of additional snow by himself.  Some things just can’t end soon enough!

The aridity of a three-hour flight has a way of focusing attention.  Time to reflect.  Remember. Read.  It returned me to an accumulation of unfinished books on Kindle.  Today I found a long neglected biography of Dag Hammarskjold.  A quote from the Secretary General jumped off the screen:  “To remain a recipient – out of humility.  And preserve your flexibility. To remain a recipient – and be grateful. Grateful for being allowed to listen, to observe, to understand.”  Hammarskjold never had the luxury of a long life or the reminiscence proffered by retirement.  He died too soon in a plane crash at age 56.

For those given the gift, a quote from Hammarskjold’s Markings frames our arrival: “Each day a life. Each morning we must hold out the chalice of our being to receive, to carry, and give back.  It must be held out empty – for the past must only be reflected in its polish, its shape, its capacity.”  Today I arrive empty hoping to remain a recipient, to be grateful, to listen, to carry, to give back.  The gifts of family, companionship, place, years and memory dispose me to trust my emptiness as the markings of capacity.
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I highly recommend: Hammarskjold: A Life by Roger Lipsey, University of Michigan Press 2013.