How To Be Miserable … And Make your Kids That Way, Too.

I have been seeing a lot of couples, and doing individual counseling lately and I continue to see some ideas that I can’t believe people have put into action and I just want to say, “NO, DON’T DO THAT!”, but it’s not professional to do that, and it’s far more healthy to let people have realizations on their own. Some of the problems that individuals have come from decisions their parents have made, so I include those here, too.  If you want to avoid the pain of therapy that so many people fear, don’t do these things and you’ll stand a much better chance. These are things that people can control so I thought I’d just give them early warning.

I’ve tried to arrange them in developmental order so people can know what (not) to do next.

1) Don’t go to school.

2) Have sex at a young age.

3) Drink at a young age.

4) Do drugs at a young age — any and all of them

5) Join a gang.

Do any of those things and you can pretty much guarantee trouble by the time you’re 14 or 15. Do all of them and make a mess of your life pretty much forever.

6) Don’t graduate from High School. Most likely guarantee poverty for the rest of your life.

7) Don’t ever get a job. See above.

8) Don’t do things for others or think about the wider world. This one is kind of sneaky. If you do this one, you can lose perspective on people and things, you can gain no empathy and have no sympathy and stay focused on your own problems without ever meeting someone who might have a solution.  That pretty much guarantees a miserable life because, even if you have a really decent life, you won’t know it.

9) Engage in criminal activities just for the fun of it — or to support your addiction.

Do these and you can mess your life up before your twenties.

As an adult, in order to be mentally ill or miserable…

10) Worry far more about what people will think about you having a problem than you do about fixing it.

11) Keep up with the Joneses, even if you don’t like the Joneses  or  you don’t know why you should.

If you want to then be miserable in marriage:

12) Choose a partner that you want to change to spend your life with.

13)  Stay with a bully.

14) Stay with someone who’s never the same person twice — or is never who you’d expect them to be.

15) Live for drama. Say mean things on Facebook to people you barely know. Keep it going after you do know them.

16) Spend lots of money you don’t have.

17) Pay no attention to any warning signs that there are problems — especially by focusing on things that don’t matter or don’t make you happy.

 

(Be warned: if your parents did these things, you probably have to see me to undo the damages).

Now, to affect the next generation, do these things:

1) Most important of all: choose from a specific gene pool — one that guarantees trouble. Have children by someone in jail or in an asylum, or has a history of physical or mental problems.

2) Once the child is born, physically, emotionally, or sexually abuse them. If you can’t manage that, do those things in front of them.

3) Teach your kids to do drugs or drink.

4) Bring your friends around to drugs or drink. Make sure your kids befriend these people.

5) Keep your kids poor.

6) Neglect or avoid them.

7) Tell them it’s their fault that you did any of the above.

8) Don’t make them go to school. Don’task or  figure out why they don’t want to.

9) Tell them to be who you want them to be, rather than what they have talents to be.

10) Frighten them about the outside world.

11) Tell them nothing about how to live.

12) Never admit to a mistake.

13) Tell them that having a problem will make life difficult for you.

14) Move them to a bad neighborhood.

15) Leave them to go to jail and blame it on them.

16) Make sure they know that looks are more important than acceptance.

17) Never let them get help — or keep interrupting the help they get.

Do these things and you can set them up for a world of hurt.   Avoid doing these and save yourself and your kids a world of hurt.

 

Peace,

 

John

13)

 

The Road To Recovery Is Paved With A Blog (5,000 “Thank You”s)

Something happened the other day that kind of caught me off guard — having not written anything for awhile, the stats for this blog were toodling along slowly. Then, suddenly, something I’d thought would happen in 2011 happened about a week into the new year — the “stats” counter on my blog went wild and I shpt across the 5,000 + line.  What that means is that, since July of 2010, five thousand people have checked in this blog!

It breaks down to: 5122 views, 176 posts over 29  months or — on average 29  readers for everything I have written, some far more and some far less. In case you’re curious, these are the Top 10.  Posts in general have more than the numbers listed there, because “home page” — whatever was posted that day–  has about 1,800 hits.  Still, here they are:

Title		Views
Guess Again: The Top 100 Albums of All Time		99
What If Good News Prevailed?		89
Do Your Own Theology — The Bible and Its Authority		79
South Church — Better Than It Has To Be		76
Liner Notes — Beebs and Her Money Makers, “Welcome to Barter Town”		63
Surprise! People Are Mad! Oops, Wrong People!		59
I’m sad, but this IS America…		53
A Theology of Ordination		53
Trucks Going Both Ways — Maine and the WHOLE gay thing…		52
Didn’t See That One Coming…		48

The reason I tell you all this is that I like numbers. Numbers are facts. Numbers are markers. Numbers are somehow more real than feelings, thoughts, etc, even if they are not more important.

So what does this have to do with recovery? 47 years ago, when I was 4, some God-awful things happened to me that kind of turned my mental world upside down. I don’t find any reason to say more than that, because, as of Tuesday, January 10,2011 — when the numbers hit 5, 000 — I am officially back from those events.

The long and short of how it all affected me is this: My good side became my “Shadow” and I unwittingly hung out an invisible  ”kick me” sign, which people have taken the opportunity to use over the course of my lifetime.  For those of you not acquainted with the concept, Carl Jung coined the phrase, “Shadow” to describe the part of ourselves which we don’t acknowledge or accept.  So, for about the last 47 years, I could acknowledge that there was Good in the world, but mentally I couldn’t accept that it could come from me.  This blog — your readership — helped me change that.  So, for everyone who ever cared enough to read my work, I owe a profound “thank you”.

For probably the first 10 years after what happened, I was the kid that people (I think) loved to hate. I was awkward,” too smart” for some, too nerdy for others, too greasy and too smelly for others,  too “gay” in Junior High (I didn’t like to beat people up and –more often than not — couldn’t).  And somehow, it all made sense to me, because I was those things.  If it was bad, I was it. Everybody said so, so it must have been true.

An experience with God and my mother’s insistence  kept me interested in church, and I almost had a girlfriend — (a girl who didn’t laugh at me when I hung out with her in the nursery, named Lynn Anderson), but I remained — for most kids — “weird”.

Freshman year in High School promised much the same thing. Even the kids no one would hang out with wouldn’t want to hang out with me. Then the world changed. We moved to Wilbraham, Mass (in the suburbs)  just up the road from Springfield (the  city, where we lived), which was just up the road from Chicopee (the poorer, smaller city where we had lived for my childhood).  School wasn’t really different, but the Wilbraham United Church certainly was. There was a healthy, fun-loving Youth Group and short curly-haired Youth Minister named Bob Kyte.

One day, Bob showed up at our house and asked my mother if it was OK that I go to “Leadership Camp”. As recently as a few months ago, I thought that Bob was BS-ing my mother.  Today, I consider the possibility that he might have actually seen something. In any case, that visit to the house sent me to Deering, my spiritual and emotional home for all-time. The Deering Camp and Conference Center’s Sr. High Camp #2 stunned me. I honestly didn’t know what to think for the first few days, because I had never seen such a community.  They didn’t think I “had five heads”. The campers and the staff treated me like an actual human being. They loved me — not because I was this or that, not because I earned it or didn’t. They loved me simply because God created me and that was good enough for them.  I don’t remember a person, for the entire week, picking on me. Not one.  While I probably thought I had five heads, they wouldn’t have cared if I did. In addition to my call to ministry happening that week with the wonderful Peter Wells there, I cam across a book that would change my life: Peoplemaking by Virginia Satir, which I somehow connect with Mike Gatchell (maybe he brought it there or something. I don’t know). Satir’s book changed my life because it said that families could be whatever they wanted and they could be happy. I had experienced a new world at Deering, and I could dream about a new world via Peoplemaking. (Yes, I’m sure I thought the book was about sex. What else does a 14-year-old boy think about?)

From that time on, I knew there could be Good in the world,  and I was determined to make it be that way.  But my spirit remained the way it had always been: There was Good in the world, but somehow — no matter what they said — it didn’t apply to me. I could soak up the holiness at Deering,  but in my heart of hearts, I “knew” I didn’t fit there, with those wonderful people.

But I made it to seminary, Gordon gave me a good recommendation, and I was on my way.  I didn’t really fit there, either. I wasn’t female enough, gay enough, foreign enough, Black enough or whatever to understand what life was “really like”.  I was, as Charlie Crook and I used to say, “The White Male Oppressor”.  But, for a guy who was racist, sexist, homophobic and whatever I was believed to be, I suddenly had friends — Todd Farnsworth (who was really holy) and Joe Tripp and I became fast friends. Without really knowing what I was doing, I was leading the biggest prayer group on campus — and the only one, I gather for years before that.  I thought that’s what you did at seminary, and so it’s what we did at seminary. And I knew in my heart that I wasn’t any of those “isms” because I had learned about Women’s Liberation and Men’s Liberation ten years before that at Deering.  And I knew what health looked like from Satir’s work.

But I still believed I was weird — lucky to be surrounded by friends — but generally weird. My first internship confirmed that, but I sent my first bunch of kids to Deering and they were changed, just as I knew they would be. I had done something right.

I talked with my friend Leigh McCaffrey (from Prayer Group) one night about the dreams I’d had every night since I was a kid, when she said, “That’s not normal” and my past demons sprung to life. All the love that Deering-ites had shown me was now being changed with something new — honesty.  While Deering folks would have liked me if I had five heads, I didn’t like myself having them. I wanted to be “normal”, whatever that was.

For a year I was out of the Parish and wrestling with those demons while attending school and being miserable. I was ready to drop out. Maybe I was wrong about God’s call. Then Gordon showed up and gave me perspective. Later,  Todd called me from his former internship and asked if was interested in a staff position at Centre Congregational Church in Lynnfield.  This, too, changed my life. Having done some good for kids prior, I was confident I could do something there. The staff there was wonderful. Mark Strickland let me do my own thing. Marilyn the Associate Pastor didn’t “get” me, but she realized she didn’t have to. The kids and I clicked and I have been absolutely blessed to have them and their families in my life since then. At my ordination, they were there. At my wedding, they were there. When they go married, I was invited. Bob, Derek, Dawn and the rest of the Cunninghams, I owe you soo much. Rob and Bill McCarthy, I can’t imagine life without you. Matt and Camille Utterback , the same. Lisa Dodge, Ken Warnock, wherever you are, I have been soo blessed by you, especially at my first church in Upstate, NY when you came up to visit. Oh, and special “Hi!” to Shawn Murphy and SAC. In seminary, when my peers told me I wouldn’t be a good minister because I didn’t think like they did, that Youth Group proved otherwise. They were changed and I was changed by that ministry — by the grace of God, not me, but God in me. And, yes, they too made the Deering connection and were changed.

In my last semester at seminary, a woman from one of my classes — Mary Dean-Lee pulled me aside and said, “I’m sorry to have missed you before this. You’re not who people think. You’re going to be a great minister”.  And my outlook about myself — because she had nothing to gain from that comment — began to change.

I had my first church and — somewhat because I wasn’t used to “normal” —  I failed.  Looking back on it, the church was working through a trauma of its own and I made every possible mis-step I could. But the Youth Group was wonderful. The Sloths, the Christensens,  (all of them), the Ripleys  and Lisa’s family were great and remain treasured friends to this day.

A few years after that, in Rochester, I came into contact with AA and the 12-Step model and began to realize that God could forgive whatever I done in my lifetime — whatever that was, and I was sure I’d done something.

Years later, I went to grad school, tried a new-church start, and in each place, my sense of self (my IALAC sign, for those in the know) got stronger.

I wrote a book (Thanks Liz and Leigh. I sold another one this month!) and later decided to write a blog. With Liz’s and Cathi Chapin-Bishop’s help, I began doing this. I thought I’d write one thing, get it off my chest, and go on with life. Alas, it didn’t work out that way.  People began thinking I knew what I was doing as a blogger!

In 2010, something changed, finally. I had begun to write this blog around that time, and I found myself with my very own “in-care student” (someone on  their way to becoming ordained).  Char Corbett is a fantastic, holy person and yet, here she was coming to me for guidance. I began to think that I might actually have something worth giving. After all, you can’t give what you don’t have. When Char got ordained, the blog had continued to grow. Now, after all those years in the parish, I was a minister.  Thanks to Char who never realized what I secretly believed — that I had nothing to offer her, because she was a better minister than I was.

And the blog grew. Bob and I fought. Val and I agreed. Bob and I agreed. Rob wrote in. Cathi wrote in.  I was someone, sort of, and not just in my own head. The numbers proved it.

Then my friend from California, Craig Hames, called and told me that I was some sort of holy person to him — the person who said the right thing at the right time, even if I didn’t know it.  A while later, I figured it out. While I was never going to be the Gordon Sherman, I fit the same function for Craig: the one God sends to help when in trouble.  I wasn’t the real Gordon, but I was somebody’s “Gordon”. All of these things integrated into my being and I was nearly recovered after 46 years of trying.  I was blessed, fresh on the heels of my triumph wih Char, with Carrol Cyr as a new “member in discernment”. And the blog continued our development. She could argue with it, get mad at it, agree with it, “wonder where that came from” or whatever, but we both grew because of it.  In a few weeks, Carrol will probably get to be a Commissioned Minister in the UCC.

Finally topping  off the ministry thing was Susan Townsley at Ron Brown’s installation. I had known Susan from Bridgeport where — while I did some good work, I felt like a colossal failure. She had been on the church and ministry committee when they had put my standing “on the back burner”. There were two possibilities here: 1) They were organizing and had to because I was out of state or 2) I really was a bad minister and they were trying to cover themselves by politely withdrawing my standing.  That day, she was there and gave  me a hug and seemed generally glad to see me.  She gave no sense of “ooh, what an idiot”.  Maybe I’m conflating events, but I think that members of the Bridgeport Church were actually there that day, and they were happy to see me — or at least didn’t vomit or run away.  However good or bad I had been, I had not been evil or destructive. I hadn’t destroyed God’s gift.  If I wasn’t evil and I was doing something good in the world, maybe I was a good person. Maybe I did fit in the church. Maybe I did fit in with the Deering folks — and what could that mean but that I was a human being after all?!

The Deering Reunion this year and David Hauser’s just simple acceptance made me know that it might be true. It turns out that David was in my very first living group all those years ago and he remembered me as a seemingly  normal person –even back then! If I have even some of the spark within me that Paula Richards and Sue Tatem and Buzz and Gary have, it’s possible that I’m way more human than I would have guessed. It astounds me that it’s taken me this long to figure it out, but that’s what abuse does, I guess.

In any case, I was ready to say I was back to full human status at the end of last year because people thought highly of my blog when I ran out of steam at year’s end. Then something happened that I didn’t expect — even without writing, the stats took off. Somebody was reading this. Suddenly, out of nowhere, I hit the 5,ooo mark!  Looking back, my wife has liked it, my friends have liked it, Helen Caldicott liked it for goodness sake! Ed Smith said some nice things the other day. Clients have seen it and liked it.  People I don’t even know have liked it — not always, but that’s to be expected.

It shouldn’t take 47 years and 5,000 people reading this blog for me to get over my past, but it did. For those of you who have read it, each little click of care, every good comment, every reasonable argument or simple “huh?” meant my ideas and I mattered. Every passing comment of “I like your writing” or “I like your blog” put back a piece of me. And so, I thank you, for all you have meant to me, readers.

And as it has been for me, I remind you that no kind word, gesture, or action ever goes un-noticed. It may confuse people. It may even, when people are really twisted, anger them. But it never, ever goes un-noticed. Know that all your kindness, your care, your support have helped me like myself and feel human. For people that already start off as human, your words, your kindness, your caring propel them into the stratosphere of love.  You are truly miracle workers in my life and the lives of others. I’m good for awhile. Whether you ever  read this blog again or not, keep up the good work.

Peace,

 

John

P.S. Since they weren’t explicitly mentioned in here, Thanks to my best friend Alan Bercovici for all the golf games through the years and thanks to Tony Briand for always being sane during High School. My brother’s a great guy and my sister rocks. And my kids love “Florida grandpa”.

Bedford Falls Is The 99%, Faith Is A Choice: Christmas Movie Reviews

In the few hours I had yesterday to relax post-gift explosion, post paperwork, and post a really good dinner, the family and I watched two movies: one of my favorites of all time (“It’s A Wonderful Life”) and an over-the-top Spielberg animation movie (“The Polar Express”).  I was in one of those philosophical moods — not exactly sleep deprived but not all bright and cheery either. Anyway, these are my thoughts.

It began with The Polar Express — a movie I had seen in 3D with the kids when it first came out. A warning — NEVER bring little kids to see this movie in 3d with full-sense-around sound. When the train drives over your head, it looks, sounds, and scares the life out of you as though it were real.  Try holding a shaking while YOUR heart-rate is still above normal and see how fun it is.

At home, on our TV screen at least, the movie takes on a gentler tone, and becomes a movie about — of all things — faith.  The beginning of the movie features two different boys struggling with the same question: Do I believe and get on the train or do I let my disbelief get the best of me and let it go? One boy gets on after deciding “no” and changing his mind. The other one pretty much stays with his “no” answer until the others stop the train and wait for him. In a theme reminiscent of Walter Wangerin’s Ragman, the “believers” stop the train and go back and get the little boy for whom “Christmas just doesn’t work out”.  This boy doesn’t really make it to the big train cars, even after he gets on the train — because he doesn’t think he fits, and he doesn’t want to pretend he does, which is, of course, his choice.  The community of kids stop the train, go and get the kid, bring him hot chocolate and still he  doesn’t leave his car to check out the big train where all the fancy things happen.  But the community respects him enough, generally, to let him stay where he chooses and lets him come to them at his own pace. They bring him to the North Pole and he has to choose to move, to get out of the car he’s in, and to go see The Big Man Himself.

Whatever has happened to this child, it seems to be more than “I didn’t get a sled last year”. maybe it was the story on the news of the family that died in a Christmas fire, and maybe it was the look of the boy’s house in the movie that did it, but I was thinking real trauma from real life had taken away this boy’s reason to even hope for a better life.  This is the kind of thing that happens in people’s lives all the time. This (to use the psycholical term) “learned helplessness” requires extra care and work from an outsider to allow hope (and later choice) to happen. First comes rescue, then maybe daring to hope, then hope itself, then daring to try, then actual belief.

The other boy — the one called “Hero Boy” in the subtitles —  is too smart for belief. For him, much like Thomas in the gospels, only seeing will work to create belief and hope. But there is a part of him that wants to believe, just as I think Thomas did. Experience, “reality”, intellect, “growing up”, puberty, whatever it is, gets in the way and covers over his heart and his hope and his belief, but the spark of hope still burns somewhere within him until he’s left with, “what’s the worse thing that could happen if I believed?”.  Turns out you could die on a mountain railroad or a frozen over pond, or see a ghost hit his head on a low tunnel, or be stopped by elks, but — in the end — the North Pole actually does exist — and far more incredibly than anyone could have imagined.

As I watched, I thought of how much of faith is like that.  As we begin to remember the preposterous that we once knew , we begin to hope that castles and fairies and Santa and a beautiful reality  exists somewhere. We know too well that life makes sense most of the time. Still, love and hope and the Creator of it all aren’t always sensible — they’re extravagant and real.  So first, we get on the train because we woke up, then because we could escape the cold and get comfortable, then for some period of time, things get dangerous as reality itself gets unhinged for the smart person and the depressed one, the black one, the white one, the male and female, the courageous and the disliked know-it-all.  And if you stay on the journey long enough you get to see something like what you’ve dreamed about — only way, way better in ways and degrees you couldn’t even imagine. This is what faith promises, or hopes for, or believes in. It makes the crazy impossible train and the long walk through the snow to help others soooo worth it. What the boy was hoping for was a local town fair. What he gets is Disneyland, 6 Flags, and the Cathedral all in one. As Christians, we like to think the same way. Buddhists, Taoists, Jews, Muslims all (I think) look at faith the same way. So here’s the deal: you don’t have to get on the train. In fact,  if you get on because other people “made” you, you’re probably not going to enjoy it anyway.  But if you get on, and it’s even slightly your choice, I can promise you a pretty amazing ride to where ever that thing goes.

The second movie we watched is the classic “It’s a Wonderful Life”. Though it is (horrors!) in black and white, and clearly set in another time, it looks so familiar where it shouldn’t  be. Further, critics have called it “hokum” in the past and talked about “Capra corn” and they — as snivelling cynics often do — miss the point. When we as a society lose track of this, we are in serious trouble, which is how we got to here.

Clearly, the movie is about a man (Jimmy Stewart)’s innner demons and his struggle to have a better life away from the people around him whom he doesn’t exactly fit with, but is called to nonetheless. Yes, the themes of “one man’s life impacts those around him” and “life is worth living” are great ones that the movie conveys extremely well, but that’s not what I want to focus on here.

The thing that makes the movie both great and “corny” to cynics is it’s realism. In the town of Bedford Falls, we have the taxi driver and the cop, the librarian and the banker. We also have the immigrant in the slums, the factory worker, and the factory owner who’s lucky to “get in on the ground floor”. We have the forgetful and the deaf, the High School hero and the supposedly “loose woman”. We have the drunken and the sorrowful who either escape their fate or don’t. We have children who catch colds while playing and others who are lucky to survive them. There are people simply trying to get by (George Bailey and his family), there are people making progress for their family (like Martini’s new house), and there are people in Mr. Potter’s slum — and they all live together in the world that is Bedford Falls. All of these folks make up what we now refer to as “the 99%” while one man — Mr. Potter — owns nearly all of it and wants it all.

He is the man at the draft board who determines who will live and who will die, just as he is the man who sets the rents and rates at home that could determine who lives or dies. He is the man who owns it all, but has nothing. He’s the man who makes the Congressman wait til he’s done.  He’s the man that calls the police over one act of bad banking while he lives his entire life acting unethically. As Jimmy Stewart’s George says in a time of economic crisis, “Potter’s not selling, he’s buying”. What he’s trying to buy is control over their “measly little riff-raff” lives while they “do most of the working and living and dying in [that] town”. As George says, “Isn’t it fair that they should do that with a roof over their heads?”

Those of us who are like George have every right to want to leave all of that working and living and dying behind and live out our dreams. We have every right to live out our destinies. But if we leave behind the rest of Bedford Falls behind mentally, if we forget that the drunk and the floozie are connected to us, if we forget that the world is made up of all those other people — with their shades of good and bad, smart and not-so-smart, we leave the world of Bedford Falls to people like Mr. Potter.

Pretty soon, children are dying from “regular life” accidents like kids playing on the pond, houses are taken away or never built, and corruption reigns in the streets — all of the things that could have been prevented if we had cared enough to know both the Sam Wainrights and the Mr. Gowers of the world and formed a bridge between them in our community, both Bert the cop and Violet the “it” girl.

The picture of community in “It’s A Wonderful Life” is what America used to be — a connected mass of one life touching and building up another. It’s a tough life, as much as it is a wonderful one, but people make progress because they know and care about each other, and they protect each other from the Mr. Potters of the world, who care nothing about them and threaten\ “offer” to dislodge people from each other.

Bedford Falls is the Social Contract in action, the psychology of community vs. our fear of co-dependence. It is the best of America for the most people, but it isn’t always fair for the George Baileys out there. It’s so unfair at times that we may want to die, but in the end it’s that very community that saves us.

We need to protect ourselves from the Mr. Potters of the world who take but give little back, who divide and conquer, who remove the very thing that keeps us going after a hard day working and living and dying. But we need to do that by accepting that George Bailey has a job to do right here at home in Bedford Falls.

Peace,

 

John

 

 

 

2011: The Bipolar Year

“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, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only.Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities
English novelist (1812 – 1870)” 

You know those insurance charts that give points to events and — if you’ve had so many, you’re likely to suffer health consequences? If they’re true, 2012 is primed to be a year of health consequences. The thing that surprises people about these charts is that both bad and good events are stressors, especially if they are “big” events.  So here’s the list of big events from 2011 (and yes, I know, it’s not over yet…)

Weather:

First part of the year: Largest snowfall on record in Connecticut.

Middle of the Year: First tornado in 50 years hits Springfield. I was two blocks away from the center of storm.

3/4 of the way through the year: first Earthquake in memory hits Springfield area.

October: Power outage for 10 days.

End of the year: Wettest year on record in Connecticut — just reached in the last month or so.

Health

First part of the year: found out I needed neck surgery and if I had whiplash just once before the surgery, I could be paralyzed.

Through June: worried I’d be paralyzed.

May or June: Had surgery on my neck which could have resulted in paralysis or death.

June: I found out it didn’t. Now I’m fine.

Ministry:

June: after years of languishing in document limbo, I was given standing again in my denomination. Nothing bad, just lost in the shuffle. A wonderful thing to get back, though. Thanks, John Clarke, Jack Cooke, and Committee on Ministry!

April through July/August: majorly ministered to by Kyle Watson, Stephen’s Minister at South Church, also George Harris at South Church

Spring through present: Personell Committee, South Church — tough work, but important, not always my best, not always my worst.

July: I preach at Plantsville Congregational. Had a great time. Consider preaching and parish ministry again. Thanks, Barbara!

September through now: Emely Goodnow, field ed student gives two really good, deep sermons at South Church. I was lucky enough to catch them both.

August: re-connect with Charlie Crook from seminary to do Bible study for Carrol. Also included: Leigh McCaffery for the Spiritual Side

October: Charlie dies suddenly.  On the positive side, reconnected with his sister and connected for the first time with his brother and sister-in-law. On the negative side, his death still sucks the life out of me. I just grieve.

December: Second “in-care” student nearly through “the pipeline” — Congrads Carrol !

Work:

Private Practice grows quite a bit.  Agency work up and down and up.

Jan through May: Taught a new class on Biology of Addiction. June: Stopped teaching for the foreseeable future.Until surgery: busy, busy, busy, extremely busy.

After surgery: tired, tired, tired, not so tired.

Since then: busy, busy, busy, extremely busy.

Soon: Not busy at all, really.

New year: some balance?

Political Scene:

First part of the year: sort of hopeful. Obama still president, economy bad.

Second part of the year: totally hopeless. Obama still president, caves in on everything, economy worse.

Occupy Wall Street happens: A renewal of hope (wasn’t that the subtitle to Star Wars?). Obama still president, says nothing, but stops caving.

Post Occupy encampments: Obama still president, says a lot, acts like the man I voted for. The people lead and at least one leader follows. I am hopeful for the first time in years! Who knew?

Friends:

My best friend, Al: didn’t see nearly enough of him. My fault.

Todd Farnsworth: Good to be with you.  Good to have you back.

Deering friends: wonderful to reconnect! I can’t even express that love.

David Hauser, Sue Tatem and AbilityPlus

John Odams: Back in my life.

Hall, NY folks: again, wonderful to re-connect.  Derek is growing so much internally, I’m so impressed. All the Sloths and former Sloths are so warm and incredible and doing great things with their lives. My daughters felt immediately comfortable with them.

Charlie Crook: Still dead. OK, it depends on what you mean by that.

Usually, I talk about how cool my friends are and feel like a “hanger-on” to their fame. This year, Ron Bottitta is by far the person I’m most proud to know — not because he’s a great actor (he apparently is), but because he’s a great citizen. The number of times he was at Occupy LA this year impresses me. I never made it to Hartford.  Also, Bitsy Eddy — arrested at Occupy Oakland!  Incredibly brave people.

Boston folks: I miss you greatly and want to spend time with you.

Family:

Michelle, my wife: 19 years married, grew a lot this year, a great chaplain, did CPE this year, plus great ministry at South Church. It’s good to be married.

Daughters: growing like weeds.  absolutely incredible children that make me proud of them all the time — in school, at church, at home, just wonderful.

Lisa, our housemate: Nice, friendly third parent to two wonderful children. Thanks for everything.

Sister Michelle: Is already a BIG local star, first album out this year. Next year, conquering the world!

Dad: still as funny and great as ever.

Scott: I’m glad we celebrated your birthday this year. You’re a good man.

So, that’s the synopsis. Enough HUGE losses, enough wonderful surprises. Can’t wait to see my insurance chart.

Peace,

John

In Praise of Laura Ingalls Wilder, (for Michelle, on 11-11-11)

There are plenty of reasons for a man to get married. Mine apparently has something to do with Laura Ingalls Wilder, though I wouldn’t have believed it until last week. As my wife approaches her 43^rd birthday, I have become glad and gladder that she is a reader, and that she has a fondness for the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder.

My wife and I are very different people. She’s from the West, I am from the East. I’m from the city and she’s from… I’m not sure what you’d call it, near the Silicon Valley.  She’s moving into in her mid 40’s now and I’m in my early 50’s. Reagan was president when she was in her teens, so conservatives ruled her world. Carter was president in my teens, so I remember real liberals. My folks worked in factories, hers in a lab and in computers.  She’s a voracious reader, and I seem to be turning into a voracious writer.

And as we dated and learned stories of each other’s childhoods, there came what would become an ongoing theme — the idyllic picture of my future wife, sitting in her father-built tree-house, reading. Occupying a special place in books she read numerous times were the “Little House On The Prairie” books, by Laura Ingalls Wilder. And when she was done reading them, she’d come in and watch TV with the family – you guessed it – Little House On The Prairie with Michael Landon as “Pa”. I learned my lessons about justice and family from such fare as “Batman” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father”, she was into that more “girly” stuff while I was into the more “masculine” images, of course.

If I were to write a book on life lessons, it would be “Everything I Needed to Know Was Found in Folk\Rock Music”.  If Michelle was to write a book, it would be “Everything I Needed to Know is in The Little House Books”.

In the summer of 2010, this bi-focused life was experienced in the “Rock and Roll Prairie Tour” – the first few days on our westward vacation were dedicated to Rock Music – Martin Guitars, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and later a history of Oklahoma Rock and Roll at a museum in Oklahoma. The rest of the trip was about “Laura”, whom we would get to know as a person over the course of days. We saw Laura’s house when she was an author, a replica of the actual “Little House” described in one of the books. There was a play about the Little House books and how they came to be writer. I think we took the same general path of Laura’s life. My wife took a piece of grass from the prairie near the cabin. It was like that. All of that seemed a bit much to me, but I’m sure the entire history of Rock and Roll in the car seemed a bit much to her.

One of the other differences that had to be worked out in our marriage was gender roles and expectations. I had been told that I might be better off to marry a feminine, dumb woman, but it didn’t fit me. What would we talk about if I had to spend the rest of my life with her? So, I married a genius or near genius and, at times, it’s a challenge because she can argue me under the table even if I’m right. But she likes men and I like women, so for nearly twenty years, we’ve been trying to make it work with all those differences.

She has thought a lot about being a woman and I… well, I’m just a guy. I never wanted to be a MAN (grunt, grunt). I want to be a GUY (hand me that wrench and pass me my beer after I watch the Three Stooges). I mostly took male “normalcy” for granted until I got married and I still try to, but in a house of two daughters, a female cat, a female dog, and a female housemate, it gets harder and harder to do.  My “guy-ness” never had any interest in dominating women and I always thought women could be anything they wanted to, so I’m not threatened by them, but their world is still weird.

As you may have guessed by now, women were, are, and remain, a mystery to me. What they do in “women’s world” (when they’re by myself) is a giant Black Hole in my knowledge base. I feel like Sargeant Shultz from the old “Hogan’s Heroes” TV show – I know nothing. As my children approach their teenage years, I see more of what goes on, on that planet, but it’s still weird.  All those years of, “It’s a woman thing, you wouldn’t understand” – said by men or women – led to this weirdness.

Prior to our meeting some twenty years ago, I had always assumed that growing up and “being a woman” meant “being feminine” – all dainty and unable or unwilling to work at hard physical labor – certainly un-required to do all that. In the East, it’s what “ladies” in the Big City aspire to be, at least as far as I know. As I’ve said, I’m not a “real” macho man, so I don’t really like “feminine” women. I don’t want to work that hard. I wanted a partner – an equal.

But, the Western woman – and the mid-Western woman — is very different, especially when it comes to being “dainty”. She is “female” and “a good woman”, but she is not a “lady” per se, averse to hard work. She doesn’t expect to be fawned over, even if it would be nice every once in a while.  Fawning and the “dropping of the handkerchief” thing is not all that practical. The western woman of literature is practical, and a partner.

Now, I want to be a leader and be a Beta-male. She wants to lead in the world, and the whole gender thing gets funky at times, but it’s a good thing it does. So, here we are, going through life as “Harry Chapin meets Laura Ingalls Wilder” – which leads us to last week.

Last Saturday night, (two Saturdays ago, by the time you read this) we had a nasty, nasty storm. There was– a week before Halloween – 6 inches of snow, mixed with rain, on top of the leaves in our trees. There were loud “booms” in the neighborhood and my daughter would announce “transformer” as each one nearby blew. She also announced “flicker!” each time the lights did, until they didn’t do anything at all.  On Sunday, we didn’t have power, so Michelle emptied the freezer and the fridge “until the power comes back on”.  Would I have done that?  No. It wouldn’t have even occurred to me.  The only part of food I know anything about is eating it – and cooking it if it’s something I grew up with. Picking it, storing it, worrying about it? Not my deal.  If it was winterizing the car, I’d know what to do. (So there.)

Anyway, that was Sunday. Monday, we still didn’t have any power, and my wife knew just what to do.  She got out the grill and the briquettes.  Then she went looking for wood, just like Laura would do, though she, of course, did it with a car. She came home (while I was at work) and lit a fire in the fireplace, just like Laura would do. The next day, I had the kids while she went and taught a class, just like Laura did later in life. Tuesday night there still was no power, and we had a funeral to go to, so — like the family in the covered wagon — we packed up many of our worldly goods in the station wagon and went.

Wednesday, she had class, so she got to combine teaching (as Laura did) with traveling with the family in a wagon (as Laura did) only to return home and cook over an open fire, (as Laura did).  I came home from counseling people to her discussing the finer points of grilling and food spoilage with family friends. Did it bother her to be grilling in the cold and the dark? Not so you’d know it. After the company left, she lit the fire using a variety of materials, pulled out the lanterns and candles and sectioned off the rest of the house so we could all huddle in the one room with a fire. Did I mention she’s not afraid to work? My wife generally has more energy than the Energizer Bunny and this past week was no different. She was in direct contrast to the house with no energy and the family that required it.

Thursday, this whole thing was getting tiring, but I had an office with electricity and new internet to go to and I stayed there most of the day. When I came home, I was sure the power must be on. CL & P had said it would by last night at midnight. It wasn’t on, but my wife had gotten better at keeping the house warm – opening the windows during the day, closing them at night, blocking off sections of the house, lighting a fire (and probably a few other things as well) all kept the house a nearly warm 55 degrees at night. We had also begun offering hot showers to our friends, as part of the western hospitality thing that Laura would have practiced. There weren’t as few people in our neighborhood as Laura would have seen in her little prairie house, but it did seem like were in the middle of nowhere without any neighbors or modern conveniences. Thank goodness no one came over the ridge into our neighborhood wearing only their union suit, like in the Christmas episode of the TV show.

Friday, it was back to teaching class, taking the kids with her and reviewing their schoolwork\projects afterwards.

Saturday, while I went to work cold and groggy, she got up and took the kids once again. But this time she took them to a place that used to be more rustic than our house – Camp Wightman – where she and the kids cleaned up around cabins, buildings, and other places.  After that, she and the kids moved into one of the cabins overnight. The cabin had heat, and electricity, and the promise of internet – three things that our actual house no longer did. In addition to all of this, she stayed up and worked on sermon she was preaching the next day and doing laundry. (I can do laundry, and have done so for years, I just don’t know where to find washing machines unless they are a) in my basement or b) at the Laundromat in our neighborhood. I was impressed that she found the machine and did the clothes before I got there from a long day of working and driving.

Sunday morning was difficult. She had plans and knew how to pack and move and do all those things and I couldn’t think clearly. Anyone that knows me can tell you, I’m not a morning person. Also, as the one who was giving to hope to people all day in my office and trying to give hope about the house lights, I was all out of hope. When someone at the camp asked when power was coming on, I said, (with my morning voice, but quite seriously) “Never ever”.  So she went off to preach and I took the kids hither, skither, and yon to all the places they had to be – church, choir, special meal after church, etc. Sometimes, we’re the good modern couple (remember, Harry Chapin always wanted to spend time with his kid in “Cat’s In The Cradle”). Sunday was one of those times.  By mid- afternoon, it became apparent that neither hope nor our electric lights were coming back on. I was fit to be tied. (Pa never got mad, at least on TV, but I sure was that day and she handled it).

Our friends had gotten their power back on so the girls went to their house while we adults toughed it out at the house. Our housemate lit the fireplace while we went and had a change of pace – dinner and a movie, out. Harry’s not as comfortable on the prairie as he is with all the modern conveniences. It was a good night, but our neighborhood still had no power and I had moved onto the third stage of grief – after denial, and bargaining with the new life. I had moved into anger, but kept it together while Laura didn’t seem to mind at all.

Monday night, I needed creature comforts and went to our friends while she needed alone time and stayed at the house for the night. By Tuesday, power was on and “Laura” had toughed it all out.

So, as I said, I married a thrown-out-of-time, real life, Laura Ingalls Wilder. I still haven’t read the books, but she doesn’t have the entire Harry Chapin catalog, either. We manage. So now, in the 20^th year of our marriage (20 years in May, 2012), I am singing the praises of someone from a “girl” book, someone I thought was kind of silly and boring for years, someone who is female, but not necessarily a “lady”, someone who picked up the slack when her husband was out doing his job, (which includes raising the family).  I think highly of that woman who survived our “winter” in the wilderness. I celebrate Laura Ingalls Wilder.

 

Peace,

 

John

Some Demands

People keep asking me “What does Occupy Wall Street want exactly?”  The various news organizations say that OWS won’t be taken seriously until they have a list of demands. I don’t know anybody actually involved in “Occupy” (fill in the blank. I saw the tents in Hartford from the highway yesterday, and I read the actual liberal press, so I know a little bit, but that doesn’t qualify me to speak for them.  I don’t know what their demands are, but I can say what I would demand if I ran a movement and it will include some of the other things I read in other people’s columns. So here they are:

1)  I never want to hear that “The Golden Rule” is “He(she) who has the gold makes the rules” again. The Golden Rule is “love your neighbor as yourself” or “Do unto others as you’d like done to you”.  There’s a big difference between the two and it’s important.

2) There should be a maximum amount an individual can have — and a minimum people have for working.  The minimum should include food, clothing, and shelter, and real access to  necessary medical care and access to medically (psychologically, as well)  necessary medicines, as well. The maximum should be “when you don’t know how much you have or care how much you spend, it’s too much”.  If it’s not contributing to your welfare, you don’t need it.

3) No one should be removed from their home if the bank or institution that is doing the evicting can’t prove that they own the house.

4) The maximum fee for an overdraft should not be more than the actual overdraft and what it actually costs to process it.  That processing cost  should be published — and monitored by the government, so that the banks don’t say “it costs a thousand dollars” when it actually costs a nickel.

5) Adding on daily fees or interest to money owed (overdraft fees, taxes, child support) to an institution should not be legal. If we already know a person doesn’t have the money, adding more to what they owe is going to discourage their payment. Let’s stop that.

6) Banks should create jobs by hiring tellers at least  as often as they install an ATM. Any fee the bank would have charged for the transaction can pay their salary and insurance costs.

7) Immediate repeal by the president and congress of the “Citizens United” decision of the Supreme Court in whatever way that needs to happen.

8) Further legal description of “usury” (exorbitant interest on a loan) and stiff penalties for committing it.

9) No war\”police action”\ military attack should be contemplated without a way to pay for it in advance.  The US can defend itself without worrying about money, but it cannot attack others without doing so. “Defense” stays on these shores. “Attack” takes place elsewhere.

10) All people who don’t complete High School should be trained to — and expected to — do a craft\work for the greater good. In exchange, they should be given enough income to have food, clothing, shelter and medical care.  If this seems too much, consider that it costs $80,000 per year to keep them in jail.  Two jobs to avoid one incarceration seems a better option for people who could go into gangs, or feel they have the right to steal for a living.

11) No one should be given a house loan without documentation of income.

12) Planning to make money on a planet that doesn’t exist is absurd. All economic growth must be environmentally sustainable.

13) White collar crime should carry the same penalties as blue-collar crime.  If a person steals $1,000 worth of material and is given a 5 year sentence, for instance, then a a man who defrauded a million dollars should be given the same ratio of value to years served — a 5,000 year sentence.  Laws should be equally enforced across socio-economic strata.

14) All communities in America should have fire equipment, police,  rescue teams and Post Offices. They don’t need to be much, but they need to be enough to service the needs of the community. Perhaps people who drop out of school should become volunteer fire-fighters in exchange for their living wage.

15)  All loans should be given by local banks and people giving loans should know the people they are giving the loans to.

I f we did all of this, things would be closer to equitable. It’s assumed that we’ll never get it totally right, but it’s a start.

Peace,

John

Simply Against Legalizing Marijuana

I understand from news sources that there is a push toward legalizing marijuana which recently made it to “suggestions for the White House” or something like that. I have to say that I don’t understand all the details, but I am NOT for legalizing pot, not for taxing it for revenue, not for saying it’s good in any way — with the possible medical use of cancer patients and patients with other diseases that make a person “waste away” like HIV.

I was one of those voters who didn’t want to decriminalize pot, because I thought it was the first step toward legalizing it, regardless of what the police or sheriff on the radio said. Sure enough, here we are.  That said, I’m actually more in favor of decriminalizing pot than I used to be, because there are some realities I didn’t know about.  For example, if possession was a felony and you were found guilty, it was harder — if not impossible –to get student loans.  I never knew there was a connection between student loans and drug convictions, but apparently there is.  Decriminalizing it meant that such nonsense changed. Decriminalization also meant that people didn’t go away to prison forever for smoking a joint or two or even ten.  The cost of keeping somebody in prison is a ridiculous amount of money per year, and there so many better things to be done with that money — plus putting people who aren’t violent in with violent criminals makes more violent criminals and more traumatized people.  The legal system and the punishment system in this country are so messed up right now that the fewer people we can put in jail, the better off we are as a society.  Let people who are really psychopaths or violent go there, but other than that,  keep people unlike that away.  But that’s a whole other blog.

Back to marijuana — here are my reasons against it.

1) Today’s marijuana is “not your father’s marijuana”. It is 1o times (at least) more potent than it used to be.  It is far, far from the “innocuous little weed” my teacher in college talked about smoking.

2) It is way more expensive than it used to be — by factors I can’t even imagine. My clients tell me about the wide variety of pot that’s out there — from “dirt” which probably was your father’s pot — to “cush” which costs some incredible amount – hundreds of dollars — for a bud of marijuana.  The people I know who smoke marijuana don’t have that kind of money and they don’t have any time to waste blotto out of their mind.  Between spending a lot for it, and making nothing while using it, marijuana use destroys any financial stability a person might have.  We don’t need another way to keep the poor  poor.

3) It is addictive. Because teachers years ago spoke of it as “innocuous”, and because nobody I knew in the day had to have any, I assumed it wasn’t addictive. Back in the day, I knew lots of  ”stoners” and “burnies” who lost a lot of brain cells and thinking capacity smoking all the time, but not of them got violent if they didn’t have it. About six years ago, I met my first guy who was “addicted to marijuana” and it took a bit to get used to his existence. I doubted that he was actually addicted, but if he thought so, that was good enough for me. It was his life, and his experience. Recently, I read an article that talks about withdrawal symptoms from marijuana, so  the science is there.

Besides that, I have plenty of experience with pot addicts. Since then, I have come to know people who truly are addicted to pot, who get violent and aggressive and act like jerks to their families and children because they don’t have pot.  I knew a man on disability who received $700 or so per month, spent $400+ per month on pot and couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t able to pay his bills! The same man gets really, really nasty to his wife and deprives his child of food because of it — and I know many of “him” in various locations, with various families.

4) People like the man in #3  can’t tell the difference between “decriminalized” and “legal”. The day  that Massachusuetts voted to change the law and make it a $100 fine for possession of less than an an ounce of marijuana, — that very day I had clients telling me it was legal.  People who think that way already will use any excuse to use a drug. “Not being punished harshly” is the same thing as saying  ”its good” ! If we make it legal, people will start saying it’s good for you — aka “healthy” – to smoke pot.

Again, there are all kinds of subtleties and plans about tax money and lower costs for pot, etc. Those things would require a lot more than I’m ready to — or capable of — discussing.  But just purely on a “is marijuana good or bad” and “should society condone it?” basis, I see nothing good coming of the legalization of pot.  People don’t need another way to die — smoking pot destroys the lungs faster than cigarettes. People don’t need another way to get poor — or another tax for poor people to pay like beer and cigarette taxes. Children and families don’t need another way to be denied what they need.  Being stoned out of your mind is not a way to live — it’s a way to avoid living.

I welcome responsible opposing viewpoints, but — for now, and for simplicity’s sake — I’m against legalizing marijuana.

Peace,

John

Illness Cuts A Swath Through Life…

You know how you know something, but you don’t really know something? For years, I have worked with people who life has hit hard — or even slightly hard. Tragedy, trauma, addictions, illness, and coping with all of them are my stock-in-trade.  And while I would say I had it rough during various times in my life, for the past few years my life has been getting better — not by leaps and bounds, but on an uphill trajectory. My business is going well or at least getting better. My agency work comes and goes, but pays for insurance and brings in some income. My ministry standing is officially back. Family life is stable and my kids are growing up to be good people.  In short, I visit the problems in other people’s lives most days and come home to my relatively problem-free life. And if you had asked me a few days ago, “Is illness a good or a bad thing?” I would have said, “That’s easy. Of course illness is bad. No duh.”  But what did I know?

Two days ago (Tuesday) , I was having lunch with my pastor and I said I was coming down with something — I was a little achy in the ribs. Later that day, I felt worse, and had a 101 degree temp. But I had plans — a little Airborne, extra Vitamin C, and I was off to a fabulous day of relatively good-paying, hard-work. And, as a special bonus, I’d further my career even more by going to a conference in Boston for a couple hours and CEUs on Assessment in Family Court.  That was Tuesday night. I paid for the conference and planned to go to work, thinking, “What would I do at home? Sit. I can go to work and get paid for the same thing. As long as I use hand sanitizer and sit a few feet away (which I already do), what could possibly happen?”.

The next day, I woke up with a bit higher fever having had the chills and sweats all night. The generic Tylenol seemed to help. Both my wife and our housemate (a camp nurse) said I should see the doctor or stay home. Inside, I thought, “Great, I’ll go see the doctor, he’ll say I have a virus, and I can continue off to work. Or — depending on the schedule — I can see clients, then see the doctor then see a new client and go home. Sure I had a headache, but so what? I had plans — and there was money to be made.

None of this worked out — not a single thing – the way I had planned. The doctor got me in mid-morning, so I had to cancel two appointments.  He said my temperature was pretty high for a guy who’d had Tylenol 3 hours before, and that I should drink plenty of liquids and take some time off of work — probably the next three days. Ok. now I’d had enough. I was going to get something out of this day, so I drove to my office (10 minutes away) to get a “guaranteed going-to-get-there” check. It wasn’t there. What was there was a man I know who asked me for a referral to a detox. I made one phone call after talking to the man for five minutes — and didn’t get through. I think the Brattleboro Retreat (a good detox nearby) is still inaccessible from the recent hurricane.  I was starting to feel ill at this point, and headed home.  By the end of the day, I had a 103 degree temperature, was shivering under blankets in September, alternating with Tylenol and massive sweats. I took a shower to feel human again, and nearly could climb the stairs back to bed.

Today (Thursday), I cancelled my clients at the agency and — just to be on the safe side, cancelled my first client for Friday. You see, my health insurance (the health insurance for my family) is based on how many clients I see. If I don’t see enough, I’d lose the insurance.  I’m not in any danger, mind you, but I’m aware that I can’t afford to take too much time off and it’s a fine line, juggling jobs.  But at four o’clock this morning — fresh from worrying, fever, chills, sweats, and a shower (upstairs this time) — it occurred to me.  I could picture was an image from my dream — a corn field that a tornado had ripped through.  That was my life during this flu/bug/virus thing I have!  It was as though the illness had (or would) pages of dreams and plans right off of my calendar!  Then I realized I wasn’t the only one.

When I was a kid, my grandparents introduced me to a girl, long lost in the family tree now, who had migraines. They came, they went, and she didn’t have any clue when — or why. I have had friends since then with migraines as well and I never thought much about it, except “that stinks” and “how can I help?”.  I have a friend who, last year had mini-strokes or something like them. I knew it was a bad thing to happen — she makes her living with her brain — but I didn’t get how disruptive it is.  How does she plan anything? And I have a family. What if some kind of long-running illness strikes you and you don’t have family?  Now what do you do? It’s a scary world in my brain at 4am with the flu.

Why hadn’t this occurred to me before?  When I was in the parish, preaching every week, I got sick and/or had laryngitis maybe three times in five years. A hymn sing or some other back up plan was ok for that week, but I was expected to preach the next week. Further, there was always somebody who thought I took too much time off and wanted to consider this my “vacation time”. After dealing with that minor annoyance, I went back to work, good as new. I never had to cancel a wedding or a funeral because of it, so I guess it never occurred to me.

But what do you do if you get this flu on your wedding day? Do you cancel and reschedule and have to re-plan the reception?  And what do you do if — like some of my clients — you end up with a long-term illness? What if you’re living paycheck-to-paycheck and can’t miss a day at work?  I teach my clients that work (even a little bit, even volunteering) brings meaning to your life — plus it gives you some freedom to choose your own destiny. Paid work means you don’t have to live in that place, you don’t have to wait for the bus, you can choose where you go, etc.  That — in itself — gives them hope.

Suddenly, Mr. Obama looked smarter than he first appeared. (He’s been on my doo-doo list lately). I was all for the health-care proposal — but not because people needed catastrophic care so much as they needed care they could afford on their meager salaries.  The poor folks I serve at the agency can see me because they qualify for state insurance or medicare.  And make no mistake about it, their lives are tough. Not everyone will take those cases and — whatever got them to qualify is usually God-awful-no one-should-have-to-deal-with-it.  Yes, there are cases I know where people work the system and qualify, but they are few and far between, and they are fools because the money they get is barely enough to live on, and their options are so very limited, so they settle for less than life offers.

But that shrinking middle-class you hear so much about lately? Those people — what few of them there are — are in deep trouble if an illness strikes. At some point, their insurance will run out, and their company will not pay for it because they – of course — are no longer employed.  Then they will be able to access the same kind of limited options that the poor have now — provided the poor still have them, and they are willing to get rid of all of their assets and/or humble themselves to complain about how hard this is — to people like myself, who don’t have the experience of having their lives ripped apart by some weird quirk of fate.

If you’re able to, make financial plans, buy catastrophic insurance, take care of yourself, put money aside, do all the right healthy things.  Know, though, that it doesn’t matter. Illness — any serious illness — will cut a swath from your life. That part of the experience no insurance can cover. And try to have compassion on people who are disabled — physically or mentally — whatever it is that caused it, this swath cuts through their whole lives. Even try to have compassion for people who have made bad choices. We’ve all been stupid or taken risks at some point and the wrong stupid choice or risky behavior on the wrong day would have put us in the same position as well.

I noticed in Mr. Obama’s speech tonight, by the way, that he talked about the old American formula of  ”work hard, make a decent living, you deserve to have a good life”. I remember hearing stories of little old ladies who never missed a day of work in … let’s say thirty years… and thinking “that’s not a standard I could live up to, but it is cool, I guess”. Most of us will never be that little old lady. Apparently, I won’t anyway. But, on the other side of the spectrum, there are people out there who don’t even get talked about when we talk about the American dream, because they can’t work — not because they don’t want to, because they can’t. Let’s try to have some compassion on them, even while we don’t stop hoping a better future for them. I have believed for years what Richard Bach once wrote: “Here’s a test to see if your mission in life is over. If you’re alive, it isn’t.”  I still think that about most people. Alzheimer’s patients in nursing homes make no sense to me. but that’s about all, using that philosophy.  Dang, though, this illness stuff is hard.

On Saturday, I plan to be back at work. This stupid bug will have passed. I will have drank enough fluids to drown somebody and rested enough for the week by then. Antibiotics will kill any secondary infection, and I’ll be good as new, with the knowledge that a few days  have been ripped from my plans for an upwardly mobile life, and I’ll go back to being relatively stable at it. But I hope that I never forget just what kind of damage an illness does — especially to my clients, with and without insurance.

Peace,

 

John

Signs of Hope

I woke up this morning to an NPR (maybe only in CT NPR) story about a new state law that gives restaurant workers and others paid sick days.  The story continued that polls said that there was bipartisan support for the bill (among citizens) and that people who voted against it were viewed  ”unfavorably”.

Yesterday, the Hartford Courant had an article about the riots in Britain that said there was widespread problems with morality there. It was not just that the vandals and looters showed no respect for property or others, as the Prime Minister had said recently. Both a conservative paper and a liberal paper there had written op-ed pieces that said there were problems everywhere — at all class levels, at all ages, across color lines, etc.  In short, these papers said that there had been moral bankruptcy at all levels of society and it wasn’t working well for anybody anymore. “Perhaps”, said one of the articles, “the era of ‘Greed is Good’ is over”.

In more national news,  more than a thousand people, including friends of our family, Tom Carr and Judy Allen have been arrested protesting the Obama administrations decision to send tar sands (a controversial method of getting oil) to Texas from Canada. Likewise, environmentalists who are upset that Mr. Obama decided to wait a few more years to lower emissions standards. Robert Redford, who supported Obama, is now re-thinking that decision based on environmental concerns.  Obama apparently decided to stall the emissions changes to help businesses.  Regardless of how you see Obama’s decision, there are real changes in the wind.

People are starting to think of others. People are starting to look at themselves and take responsibility for their own failings. People are starting to  realize that, politicians in Washington are not the end-all-be-all of getting things done.  In a year when every known catastrophe has happened in some place we don’t normally expect, people outside of Washington think there’s something wrong with the environment. Politics and economics and arguing who’s right/who’s wrong don’t much matter if we’re all dead or there’s not a planet to put industry on.  And in Washington itself, people are starting to demand that those who govern actually do something, rather than posturing about various issues.

It’s not just the actions that people are taking, it’s that people are taking action at all. They see that it’s up to them to make a difference rather than politicians doing it for them (even if, like me, they wish politicians would help). In addition to that, there seems to be an attitude change. Maybe enough people have become poor or unemployed now that they understand how hard life is for those who need assistance.  Maybe now, enough folks have compassion because they’ve been there. Maybe people are trusting their own experience more than what they’re told by people with a chance to make a dollar.  Whatever it is, these stories tell us we are caring more about the big things like each other or the planet, rather than little things like who wore the same dress or how much money Donald Trump is giving to his most recent wife.

I know that this is a random sampling of news and that things may actually be getting worse, but I like thinking there might be more to it.

Peace,

 

John

Making Meaning in A Hurricane

I guess Glenn Beck said that the coming Hurricane Irene was a “blessing” . Having read a brief snippet about it, I can’t agree with the whole “blessing” concept. Tragedy is never a good thing.  Beck says it proves his point that “emergency preparedness is a good idea” and that he’s not delusional, disruptions in the food chain could happen. Anybody that needs a tragedy to make their opinion valid has got their priorities wrong. Opinions aren’t worth that much.

Having said that,  people make blessings out of tragedies all the time by making meaning out of them. Nobody wishes for an addiction in their present or future, but people transform themselves because of one daily in little rooms in church basements and detoxes and sober houses around the globe.   No one wants sudden death of a family member or the end of an era — no one. And yet, from these ashes of the tragedies can, often, come newer and deeper, more meaningful lives.  Mostly, it is because tragedies sweep everything from our lives, including the frivolous — and we have a lot of frivolous in our lives today. Somehow our souls know what’s really important in our lives and we keep it locked in our hearts and minds and we can pick it out of the wreckage and ashes of our lives

After I wrote the blog about the Sabbath, a Jewish friend wrote back and explained what it was like  to experience Sabbath and I joked that “that kind of a Sabbath would take unions(for the time) and a lot of power outages (for a technology-free Sabbath)”.  Mr. Beck was right about one thing: the coming hurricane (if it materializes) will remind us that we’re not in control around here. Even if corporations or our bosses want us to go to work, when the 100 mile an hour winds come through, we can’t.  Even the unions couldn’t give us that kind of time at home, though I’m not sure I’d callit a holiday.

The power outages will apparently come with the storm, according to local news reports. If we have blackouts, after some period of time, we here will be iPod-less, computer-less, internet-less and so on. The only thing left at home will be us — and natural sunlight when we have it. What’s left will be what’s important — the stuff that God created.  Even if — due to traffic jams, flight delays, work schedules, and so on — we can’t be with the things that matter, our hearts will find them. We call our kids or our parents, we worry about loved ones and friends. We protect important things.

Remember all those in-class assignments about what would you put in the boat? This is the time when we actually do just that. Whatever you think about, whoever you think about, as the hurricane approaches – that is where meaning lies for you. That is what’s important. Realize that it’s from God, and treasure it with everything you’ve got while you’ve got it.

Peace,

John