Hosannah in our loneliness

Every Christmas eve, since our oldest was tiny, we've enacted the Christmas story with readings from Luke and Matthew and rough renditions of a mix of Christmas carols.

The tradition started with our very small daughter asking her stuffed animals: Who wants to be Joseph? Who wants to be Mary? 

This year, for the 36th year, that same dialogue unfolded, with discussion about typecasting, who would be King Herod, whether the same small person could be both shepherd and magi. 

But this year was a bit different. For the first time, the celebration took place outside, in a grey Phoenixville back yard, with light rain threatening.

The shed where chickens roost in snowy weather was the manger. The LED star was hung first on the chicken run, then moved to light the shed door.

Lentil, the rooster, joined the refrain of "Heaven and nature sing." Melvin, the rescue foxhound, happily joined the sheep and shepherds.

So we made it through Christmas Eve: outdoor, socially distanced, masks on except to eat some Christmas cookies and drink mulled wine under the patio roof.

Christmas Day was much colder, the festivities much shorter: backyard gift exchange with icy fingers. Air hugs. Roast chicken for two. Prayer for all who are ill, alone, anxious and afraid. 

It's been a much quieter season than usual, the first that Whitney and I spent alone, not visiting family, no children or grandchildren staying in our home. Lots of time to read and think.

What does it mean to rejoice in a season of sadness? 

What does it mean that God is with us, when so many are so very alone?

Reading through Christmas poems I found myself pausing on one I hadn't seen before, by Sister Chrysostom, first published in 1946: 

The winds were scornful,
Passing by;
And gathering Angels
Wondered why
A burdened Mother
Did not mind
That only animals
Were kind
For who in all the world
Could guess
That God would search out
Loneliness. 

One of the many mysteries of Christmas: God upended every notion of power and deity to be born as a helpless infant in a dark, dirty shed, surrounded by animal droppings, feed dust, the dank of dark places at night. Mary and Joseph were alone with their new baby, far from the comforts of family and friends, on the first phase of a long, difficult journey. 

Another poem, Descent, by Malcolm Guite, suggests the sheer strangeness of the story:

The other Gods demanded fear
But you gave love . . . 
They towered above our martial plain,
Dismissed this restless flesh with scorn,
Aloof from birth and death and pain,
But you were born.
Born to these burdens, borne by all. . .
Weak, to be with us when we fall,
And strong to save. 

In hospital rooms, prison cells, in refugee camps and shanty towns and every place where lonely hearts wait and pray, God comes near, not as a lofty, distant entity, unfamiliar with our grief, but as one of us: the Word became flesh and dwelt among us. 

From that first Christmas, there have been some who believe, and some who don't. John's gospel made that clear.

The True light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world. He was in the world, and thought the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. 

As the Message puts it, 

He came to his own people,
but they didn't want him. 
But whoever did want him,
who believed he was who he claimed
and would do what he said,
He made to be their true selves,
their child-of-God selves. 

The Word became flesh and blood and moved into the neighborhood.
We saw the glory with our own eyes, the one-of-a-kind glory, 
Like Father, like Son,
Generous inside and out,
True from start to finish.

No one has ever seen God,
not so much as a glimpse.
This one-of-a-kind God-Expression,
who exists at the very heart of the Father,
has made him plain as day. 

This year has been a hard one: political turmoil, deep division, raging pandemic, constant renegotiation of best ways forward. 

But there have been seasons of even greater grief, greater disruption, greater division.

In all of those, across centuries, across continent, across cultural divides, the great good news still sounds. 

Hosannah! Rejoice! 

The people who walk in darkness will see a great light.
Those who live in a dark land, the light will shine on them.

Emmanuel, God with us, is making his home with men and women on this weary earth.

          Rejoice!  Hosannah! 

Advent Four: Those Moments of Choice

Yesterday I was out much of the day scouting birds for the annual Christmas Bird Count. In the freezing cold on the Strubble Trail, a man paused to tell me of eagles he's seen in recent weeks. He mentioned a spot on the river where he often sees them fishing and pointed me toward the cell phone tower as a place where a pair often roosts.

It's interesting how often people will stop to tell about birds they've seen when they see me with binoculars, scanning the woods. I've had some great finds thanks to stories of strangers: a bittern along a reedy bank in Exton Park, a scarlet tanager near a dam on Pickering Creek. 

In Manhattan, in Central Park,  I've had strangers point me toward local secrets: a perfect bird blind for a rainy day. A surprising garden of homemade bird feeders. A sunny rock where a local resident feeds birds by hand and shares his seed with anyone wanting to hand a seed to a waiting chickadee.   

There's always a moment of choice: listen, say thank you, and enjoy the gift, or shrug and continue on my way. My default is to enjoy the gift. Those tiny decisions have yielded abundant treasures. 

Reading the gospel accounts of the days surrounding the birth of Christ, I'm reminded of those tiny moments of choice.

detail from Gabriel appears to Zecharias,
Nicolaes de Giselaer, Netherlands, 1625

Imagine Zechariah, the aging priest. It fell to him by lot to burn incense, alone, in the holiest part of the temple. And there, alone, in the inner, sacred space:

an angel of the Lord appeared to him, standing at the right side of the altar. When Zechariah saw him, he was startled and was gripped by fear. But the angel said to him: Do not be afraid, Zechariah; your prayer has been heard. Your wife Elizabeth will bear you a son, and you are to call him Joh. He will be a joy and delight to you, and many will rejoice because of his birth.

I wonder how long it took Zechariah to realize his response was all wrong: "How can I be sure of this?"

The angel's reply suggests exasperation. To paraphrase:

ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I'm Gabriel. I stand in the presence of God. He sent me here, to YOU, to give you this message (in the temple!) AND YOU WONDER IF I'M LYING? Give me a break. It will surely happen exactly as I told you. And YOU can be silent for the next nine months because you didn't believe me.

Did Zechariah tell that story to Luke? Or did he and and his wife Elizabeth share it with their beloved son John? Did John give the details to Luke for his account?

Elizabeth's own story is very different. Joyfully pregnant with the promised baby John, she was visited by Mary, newly pregnant with Jesus. 

When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed: Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the child you will bear! But why am I so favored that the mother of my Lord should come to me? As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy. Blessed is she who has believed that the Lord would fulfill his promises to her!

That promise of blessing cuts in two directions: to Elizabeth. To Mary. Both choosing belief and blessing. Did Elizabeth pass that story on to John? Did Mary tell it to Jesus? Did all tell Luke, as he gathered his accounts? 

I wonder as well with the wise men: who shared the details of that story? How long did they linger with Mary and Joseph? When did God warn them not to tell Herod what they'd found? Who did they tell, before they headed home, that God had warned them to go a different way?

Those pages of the gospels are a golden tapestry of blessings and sorrow, promises and warnings, stories told and repeated, believed and doubted, all echoing earlier promises, earlier stories. 

Each time, there's a moment of decision, a default position of belief or suspicion, hearts ready to leap toward joy, or holding a well-earned pattern of doubt, asking: How can I be sure of this?

In the geography of our own lives, we can point toward the moments of doubt or delight, the small turning points, the growing patterns, those moments of choice.

Our responses are not always as amusing as Zechariah's response to Gabriel. They are not always as immediate and joyful as Elizabeth's response to Mary's visit. They are not always as careful and deliberate as the wise men's decision to bypass King Herod on their travels home.

Sometimes we don't notice we're deciding, or asking, or doubting, until long after. By then the habits of heart are set and we live with the loss, not even knowing what we've lost.

Strange, isn't it, that two thousand years later, the world pauses to celebrate a baby's birth. Of course some of that is based on the capitalist delight in sales and profits and reasons to spend. And some is tradition: family gatherings around a tree, favorite meals, lights and decorations.

But across continents, across centuries, millions pause to read those accounts set down so carefully by Matthew and Luke: the genealogies, the visions, the dreams, the stories. And in those stories, we find ourselves stirred with joy, with delight, with the abiding mysteries: God spoke to a troubled world. God promised hope and healing. Then, mystery of mysteries, God, creator, sustainer, judge, became an homeless child.

How do we understand that? How do we explain it? I've wrestled with the question of miracles and virgin birth, but find that holds less and less interest. We all choose to believe things: that people are lying, or that they're telling the truth. That the universe is flat, and final, or that it's fused with mysteries we'll never understand.

Here are the stories I hold to this Christmas: God speaks in ways we all can hear. God keeps his promises, even when we don't believe. God's heart is love, toward this weary world. God came to live among us, to weep, to die, to conquer death. I choose to believe that. In the big moments, and the small. 

Blessed are all who believe!

As a Christmas gift, I'm sharing a concert from The Gospel Coalition: some old familiar favorites, some very new work, some artists I've known for years, some new discoveries. May your Christmas be joyful, hopeful, blessed in this strange pandemic season. May you choose well how to respond to every gift you're given. 

Advent Three: Joy

Both my husband and I were sick this week, with some of those symptoms we've all memorized and learned to dread: fever, chills, headache, cough. For five days straight we ate soup and crackers, napping mid-afternoon, doing little work.

My birthday was Thursday. Birthday dinner: half a can of soup. The big activity was registering for Medicare. I was in bed, asleep, by seven. 

The one other big activity this week was monitoring latest attempts to overturn PA election results. I was stunned to see that the PA House Republican caucus submitted an amicus brief in support of a suit by Texas and other states challenging PA election results. Every one of those legislators was returned to office in part thanks to those challenged ballots. The PA default position to other states has always been "stay out of our business." I've been grieving to see names of leaders I've met with supporting efforts to discard millions of PA ballots, including my own. 

The word for Advent Three is Joy. I confess, that's been a hard one for me this week. 

We had planned to gather today with children and grandchildren at Conowingo Dam to watch eagles and herons and eat some birthday cake. Not a normal celebration, but at least a remembrance. That idea was cancelled. 

I had also planned to take a day to visit local shops, finish Christmas shopping, then hike along a stretch of river to look for winter ducks. Instead, I ordered some books from Hearts and Minds Bookstore (spoiler alert!) and decided this will be an even more minimal Christmas than planned.

This year we've all had our plans rethought, and scrapped, and rethought again. 

Reading in the opening pages of Matthew this week I was struck by Joseph. His plans were set aside, then revised, then set aside again. He held them lightly and listened well to dreams: three in two chapters. 

Bethlehem, Egypt, Nazareth.

As he traveled, protecting his wife and child, he no doubt heard murmurs of sorrow: children massacred in the wake of Herod's jealous pride. Refugees camping on the banks of the Nile.

We struggle to live with our own fragile plans, but carry with us the knowledge of others whose stories led in different directions. Every day now more Americans die of Covid than died in the Twin Towers on 9-11. Globally the grief is even greater. Covid, war, poverty, displacement. 

What place does joy have in that?

In 1942, Dietrich Bonhoeffer write a circular Advent letter to a band of fellow pastors who stood together in opposition to Hitler and the Nazi regime. The letter began with a list of their friends who had died since the previous letter: ten names, then "“Everlasting joy shall be upon their heads”. 

From there he explored what it means to serve the Lord with joy, and probed the danger of becoming numb in the face of so much sorrow and pain: 

One person said to me recently, “I pray every day that I may not become numb.” That is by all means a good prayer.

And yet we must guard ourselves against confusing ourselves with Christ. Christ endured all suffering and all human guilt himself in full measure — indeed, this was what made him Christ, that he and he alone bore it all. But Christ was able to suffer along with others because he was simultaneously able to redeem from suffering. Out of his love and power to redeem people came his power to suffer with them.

We are not called to take upon ourselves the suffering of all the world; by ourselves we are fundamentally not able to suffer with others at all, because we are not able to redeem. But the wish to suffer with them by one’s own power will inevitably be crushed into resignation. We are called only to gaze full of joy at the One who in reality suffered with us and became the Redeemer.

It's easy to see the Christmas story as just that, a story. An irrelevant tale.

Yet across centuries and continents, people like Bonhoeffer have found comfort, sustenance, even joy in considering the mysteries of God born as human child. 

I have always loved Hebrew 11 and 12, the cloud of witnesses that suffered in faith, some with surprising miracles and wonderful escapes, but others with less joyful outcomes: 

I do not have time to tell about Gideon, Barak, Samson and Jephthah, about David and Samuel and the prophets, who through faith conquered kingdoms, administered justice, and gained what was promised; who shut the mouths of lions, quenched the fury of the flames, and escaped the edge of the sword; whose weakness was turned to strength; and who became powerful in battle and routed foreign armies. Women received back their dead, raised to life again. There were others who were tortured, refusing to be released so that they might gain an even better resurrection. Some faced jeers and flogging, and even chains and imprisonment. They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground.

Faith does not promise a positive outcome. Not in this life. I have a brother who suffers from grave mental illness and has for decades. His faith has always been stronger than mine. His suffering breaks my heart.

Bonhoeffer's faith did not deliver him from the Nazi prison. He was executed just weeks before the war ended, at the age of 39.

This pandemic will take from us people of great faith alongside the scoffers who refuse to wear masks and cough in others' faces. 

Throughout it all, we're invited to joy: 

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles. And let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us, fixing our eyes on Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of faith. For the joy set before him he endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinners, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart.

I confess, in these grey, wintry days it's easy to grow weary and lose heart. 

Praying for myself and others on my birthday, I came across a new recording posted just the day before by two artists I encountered through the Porter's Gate project, singer-songwriter Liz Vice and guitarist Madison Cunningham. 

I can't listen to the song without crying, and it says nothing at all about joy, yet it captures for me Bonhoeffer's wisdom:

We are not called to take upon ourselves the suffering of all the world; by ourselves we are fundamentally not able to suffer with others at all . . . . We are called only to gaze full of joy at the One who in reality suffered with us and became the Redeemer.

I pray we will rest in that reality in this strange Advent season, and know the joy that echoes in these moving harmonies. 

 

Advent Two: Walk in Love

And this was the manner of Christ's birth
Eugene Higgins, 1940s, New York

Under the boot of a tyrant empire, the hope for political rescue is great. 

Wouldn’t we all want leaders who share our values, echo our traditions, invite us into positions of power? 

Jesus came to an occupied people: angry, resentful, weary, afraid. Whatever tyranny American Christians may complain of dims to triviality in the light of Roman oppression. 

Surely a deliverer would come with force and fury to overturn the heathen warlords?

Yet instead of the hoped for political leader, God gave his people Jesus, a carpenter’s child. And that child as he grew called his friends to join him in a life of service and sacrificial love.

Not safety. Not wealth. Not privilege, for them or for himself. 

Advent derives from the Latin advenire, to come. The second advent candle traditionally represents love. Not just love of family or friends, love of country, love of our own circle or clan, but a love that exploded all notions of love. A love so startling and confrontational it offended even those whose lives were constructed on the idea of love for God and neighbor. 

This new love was for enemies too. For opponents, accusers, tyrants. For outcasts, lepers, migrants, beggars, prostitutes, thieves, madmen. 

The words are so familiar we sometimes miss their power: God so loved the world that he gave his only son.

This is no casual summer trip. No cheerful visit from one realm to another. The story, if we believe it, is this: heir and creator of the universe chose the indignity of birth, the burden of daily, dusty life, the humiliation of being stripped naked, flogged, ridiculed, then hung on a wooden cross with iron spikes through hands and feet. 

The poor have the gospel preached to them
Eugene Higgins, 1940s, New York

Weary of wearing a mask? 

Tired of offenses large and small? 

Angry that things aren't going your way?

 Frightened at forces you can't contain?

Jesus talked often of the painful, practical love that would turn the other cheek, carry the burdens of others, forgive again, and again, and again, and again.

He said “Greater love has no one than this: that they give their lives for their friends. You are my friends if you do what I ask. Love one another.” 

That’s the story we claim as Christians: a love that turns the world upside down, shatters pride, expectation, privilege and self-protection, demands complete sacrifice, no matter how painful, on behalf of others. 

In reality, on our own, that kind of love is impossible. We hold onto offense. We protect our own rights. We push back hard when challenged. We simmer with rage and hurt and pride.

Jesus said "By this will everyone know that you're my disciples, if you love one another." 

More than that. He said "You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven."

This week I've been struggling with sadness at the way people I know and once admired scoff at the need to protect each others' health, accuse others of lies, corruption, fraud, duplicity. 

I've been grieving at people of faith stirring death threats against their colleagues. Claiming guns are the foundation of our freedom. Insisting lies are true. Attacking faithful civil servants exhausted in their work to protect our health, our election, our democracy itself. 

In prayer each morning I've been asking God what love looks like in this time, in this place. How do I speak back against lies in a loving voice? How do I affirm what is true without sounding angry or abrasive?

I will never get it right. I see through a glass darkly. 

Yet in my early morning prayer, in the moments of gray at the start of the day, I've been overwhelmed by the knowledge that God's love is far greater than the sorrows that surround us. God's love is greater than the challenge of the day. If I ask to set aside anger, fear, anxiety, sorrow, if I wait for God to fill me with love, I find it bubbling up inside me,

I have long had this prayer from Ephesians taped inside my kitchen cupboard:  

And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lord’s holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God.

I pray that for myself, for my family, for my friends, for you. 

I pray it for all God's people, near and far, confused, alone, angry, uncertain.

In this strange advent season, in this time of political disruption, anxiety and grief, I pray we will walk in love: agents of love, recipients of love, healed, held, restored by love.

And I pray we will be known to all who watch us by this joyful, forgiving, implausible love. 

Advent One: We Will Feast

Sometimes we forget how fragile and fleeting we are. 

For some of us this pandemic season has shaken our casual belief in our own permanence. Over 1,440,000 deaths across the globe. Over 262,000 in the US so far this year. 

We also forget at times how fragile our institutions are. We assume our American democracy is sturdy and lasting. The 2020 election was a bleak reminder: our institutions are only as strong as the virtues that hold them in place. If we lose the ability to discern truth from propaganda, if we undermine the safeguards that block absolute power, democracy falters. No nation lasts forever. No political system is immune to abuse. 

Thanksgiving this year was strange and hard, even with much to be thankful for. Our family re-negotiated plans when a covid alert and new state guidelines warned against indoor gatherings. Plans changed again, day by day, almost hour by hour as we watched the weather. We had a family Turkey Trot Thanksgiving morning, then outdoor coffee and cider doughnuts. Later that afternoon, as the weather turned warmer, my husband and I enjoyed an unexpected dinner on our daughter’s patio, with our own table facing hers, generously distanced. A Zoom gathering brought a larger group together that evening. 

At the same time I was watching lawsuits here in Pennsylvania unfold. As Vice President of Government and Social Policy for the League of Women Voters of Pennsylvania, I’m involved in conversations about legal interventions. I also help manage social media for both the League and Fair Districts PA. And I was part of a social media monitoring team for the national Election Protection Coalition. So for weeks now I’ve been watching attempts to disrupt or dismantle the outcome of the 2020 election. 15 lawsuits in PA yielded no evidence of fraud. The last was dismissed just yesterday by a unanimous PA Supreme Court. 

But repeated accusations of a rigged election stirred death threats against county commissioners, election officials, employees of firms producing voting machines. Some of our most extreme PA legislators continue to stir trouble. From what they say and do, it seems they would gladly dismantle courts, state administration and every remaining check and balance in efforts to score points with their most partisan base. 

That’s my world of anxiety. For others, it’s the struggle to teach as schools move from in-person to hybrid back to virtual. Or the struggle to keep small businesses alive while firms like Amazon grab an ever larger piece of the economic pie. Or the struggle to manage staff shortages and flagging morale as the pandemic winter sets in. 

We all find ourselves longing for something like normalcy. 

Less conflict. Less stress. 

Less negotiation over what we can and can’t do, when, with whom. 

We want to hug our kids or have a peaceful meal with friends. We want to go to church and sing. 

 For some of us, those longings have no name: loved ones are gone and won’t be back. Relationships are shattered and may not be repaired. The illusion that all is well is gone, maybe forever. 

In The World Is Not Ours to Save, Tyler Wigg-Stevenson grieves injustice and loss of life in places like Syria and Nagasaki:

All this is permanent. It is done and cannot and will not and will never be undone. And while I am all for good politics, which is to say I am all for a good future, and so I am all for doing better by the refugees that yet live, I also refuse to let the past go as if it were merely the gravel under the sub-foundation of whatever shiny tomorrow we happen to build next. 

There is no politics that can redeem what time has irretrievably taken. To stand as witness to the past is to stand either in utter nihilism and despair, or in the desperate, desperate hope that in the end a Redeemer will walk upon the earth, who will bring forth those whose flesh was destroyed, to see and be loved forever by God. 

That is the hope we hold tightly in Advent: that this world, held captive to disease and anger and division and grief, will one day be set free. 

That those who sow with tears will reap with songs of joy. 

That our wailing will be turned to dancing.  

That we will dwell and feast together in the house of the Lord. 

On a retreat last February, I led our group in worship with the song, “We Will Feast in the House of Zion.” I explained that for me, in my own family of origin, the promise of a feast together is something to be held in hope. It will not happen in this lifetime.  

Just days later our world was shaken by the pandemic. Since then this song has gathered even greater meaning. We did not feast together this Thanksgiving.  Some we love will never feast with us again on earth. 

Yet the promise of Advent, of Christmas, of Christ, is that that day will come. 

We will feast, and weep no more. 

Grief, Grievance, Gratitude, Grace

This is the year when everyone lost.

All of us. 

A lot.

Far too many of us lost friends and family members. Almost 2,000 a day now. A 9-11 level tragedy every 36 hours. 

Some have lost health with debilitating long haul symptoms.

Some have lost jobs, businesses, savings. 

But even for us who have somehow escaped the more catastrophic loses, there are losses of trust, of friendship, of community, of plans and hopes and normalcy. 

There is no hoped for new normal. What worked for a few weeks, a few months, has shifted again as weather turns cold and Covid cases rise. 

National health experts urge us NOT to gather for Thanksgiving. Dr. Fauci urges "Hunker down."

I've been wondering how to stay grateful when our hearts are full of grief. 

Grief is not a new theme for me. According to Gregory of Nyssa (c. 335 –395): "It is impossible for one to live without tears who considers things exactly as they are."  

Looking back over my own posts about grief and lament, I came across a post I wrote in the wake of the 2012 election where I explored the movement from grief, to grievance, to gratitude:

A friend gave me Ann Voskamp's One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, and I"ve been struck by how Voskamp's determination to be thankful led her from deep depression into a life of joy, and how gratitude gradually undid the damage of a childhood locked in silent grief, 

I've experienced much of this myself. I grew up in a household beset with grievance. "If only" was a frequent refrain. I watched how "if only" can blossom into bitterness and resentment, rage, hatred, violence. 

Grievance feed grievance, until every incident, every word, is part of a narrative of injustice and deprivation. 

I've seen the same story play out in households I've been close to. Abandonment, resentment, jealousy, rage: once the dial is set to grievance, the story plays out toward a predictably disturbing end. 

On a larger stage the story is the same. The language of this past week, for those expecting a different end to our national election, is full of blame, bitterness, anger, hints of retribution. 

Is gratitude possible when the default mode is grievance? Is it possible to learn gratitude as a spiritual discipline that can reshape our hearts and open the way to emotional health?

Ir seems the first step toward gratitude is to let go: let go of our own ideas of how the story was to go, let go of the "if onlys," the sense of blame, the certainty that our way would have been best, that we've been denied the only happy ending. 

That was written eight years ago. We are in that place again, only worse, recovering from a divisive election with half the nation furious at the outcome, the other half grieving the past four years, the endless litigation, the cries of fraud. All of us are nursing grievance and the sad sense of "if only."

All while struggling with a global pandemic and divided leadership about the best way forward. 

If only we could go back to normal. 

If only we could gather for Thanksgiving. 

If only someone had done something different. 

We'd like to have things go our way. We'd like to fix blame and settle the grievance.

Yet grievance will never lead us out of grief. The first step out is to let grievance go. 

Some years Thanksgiving has lots of people. Lots of pie. This year will be different. 

But there are still things to give thanks for. 

Homes. Friends. Sunsets. 

A new book. A hot cup of coffee. 

Again from that 2012 post: 

A 2008 study by Jeffrey Froh, assistant professor of psychology at Hofstra University in New York, found that middle school students asked to list up to five things they were grateful for every day for two weeks “experienced a jump in optimism and overall well-being . . .  Furthermore, they were more satisfied with school even three weeks later 

Voskamp found that keeping a notebook of “gifts” forced her to pay attention, to see things she would not have seen. “I am a hunter of beauty and I move slow and I keep eyes wide."

In this strange season find myself trying harder to pay attention, to hunt beauty, to store up bright memories for the long winter nights ahead.

I pause on a walk with my grandchildren to savor the rosy sunset over their quiet town. 

I study faces around the bonfire in my daughter's back yard, knowing I'll see those sweet faces less often once winter cold sets in.

Now that in-person encounters are far fewer, I find myself watching for grace bubbling up unexpected ways: merry eyes over a bright mask in a grocery store aisle. A swirl of cedar waxwings high in a neighbor's tree. An ancient song reset with cello and mellow mix of voices, echoes of grace over continents and centuries.

A recent interaction with a young family member reminded me that if we think this moment is all there is, the grief of the moment grows large and grievance seems the right response. If this is it, this day, this season, this life here, now, then it makes total sense to rant and rage or bury ourselves in sorrow.

But gratitude reminds us: this world is much bigger. This life is much larger. This is a page in a ongoing story, a story that starts in love and ends in love, wrapped in grace from start to end, despite the moments of sadness.

So, hunker down! Stay safe. 

Practice gratitude. 

Listen for the songs of grace echoing around you.   

What We Share

I've been hearing a LOT about socialists.

In fact, I know people who voted solely out of fear of dangerous socialists who would destroy our country and make it just like Venezuela.

I'm a bit baffled at the reference to Venezuela.

And also baffled at the socialist accusations against obvious capitalists like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.

Socialism is one of those words that shifts and morphs, depending on who uses it and why.

Here's one generally accepted definition: "a political and economic theory of social organization which advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole."

By that definition, there are very few genuinely socialist nations. Cuba, China, Laos, Vietnam, and even those don't qualify as pure socialist nations. There are other countries with varying aspects of socialism along a continuum of cooperative production. Some mention socialism in their constitutions, some don't. Some have majority parties that identify themselves as socialist: Democratic Socialist, Christian Socialist, Labor parties, Green parties, Working Family Party.

They all seem to mean different things. 

What does Venezuela have to do with it? 

It's both sad and amusing to hear people say "you don't want that to happen to us!" 

What is the "THAT"? 

I've asked but am still not sure of the reply. Venezuela's is a familiar story about capitalism run amuck, over-dependence on extractive industry, various forms of corruption. It has little to tell us about socialism and almost no bearing on US politics. If that's really of interest, you can find a summary here. 

More interesting to me is how we think about what we share.

Pennsylvania is a commonwealth, formed with reference to the ideals of government by the people for the common good. Penn's woods were blessed with more miles of streams and rivers than any other region in the country, all held in common, all used for the common good. Fueled by those waterways and abundant coal and timber, Pennsylvania became the greatest manufacturing state in the nation and held that title well into the 20th century. 

Is it socialism to hold means of production and distribution in common? If so, PA was socialist from the start, with everyone dependent on those flowing waterways that fueled forges and mills, carried timber and food downstream and aided travel to central parts of the state. 

We still share those waterways, kayaking, fishing, generating energy. 

There are many other things we share. I'm thankful for many:

The US Postal Service.

Public libraries.

Public schools. 

Public high schools were decried as a socialist endeavor when the idea spread in the early 1900s. In some sectors of conservative evangelicalism, that accusation resurfaced in the 1980s: public schools are apparently hotbeds of socialism. 

I haven't seen that myself in my years of active volunteering in local schools, but I've been told by friends who would never enter a public school that they're godless places spewing socialism. Personally, I'm thankful for the great teachers my kids had in public school, thankful for my own public school education, thankful for dedicated teachers struggling now to educate safely in this strange pandemic time. 

Would it be socialism to carry public education through the next level? Many countries have taken that step, arguing that a well-educated public is essential to good governance and  economic stability. Since PA now spends more on incarceration than higher education, I think we'd be well-served to make college possible for kids from poor communities with no avenue out. Does that make me a socialist? I'll take the risk.

What else we share:

Roads. 

Bridges. 

Public parks.

The US was the first country to officially set aside wide tracts of land for public use. In some countries, communal lands have been used for hunting, gathering firewood. Capitalism in some places has decimated those public lands, allowing clearcutting of forests and criminalizing historic land use. Efforts to save public lands have often been led by socialist parties, insisting that common land be retained.

So -are Pennsylvania's vast tracts of state forest evidence of socialism?

If so, are our hunters and fishermen socialists?

I think about this when I kayak on Marsh Creek Lake. I love that that nearby, free-to-use state park is enjoyed by young and old, fishermen, boaters, picnicking families, a wonderful medley of languages exclaiming together over sunsets and bald eagles circling overhead. 

Park users rarely worry about socialism. The socialism accusation seems most often triggered around the question of health care. As if there's something in scripture that ties health care to employment. As if a large percentage of US citizens don't already enjoy state-funded care.

National health insurance for all was first proposed by Teddy Roosevelt when he ran for president in 1912. Harry Truman fought for the idea throughout his presidency, arguing:

Healthy citizens constitute our greatest natural resource, and prudence as well as justice demands that we husband that resource. … as a nation we should not reserve good health and long productive life for the well-to-do, only, but should strive to make good health equally available to all citizens.

The American Medical Association fought back, accusing Truman of socialism. In the first major advertising campaign of its kind, the AMA convinced the public that health insurance for all would destroy our freedom and lead us into communism.

Dwight Eisenhower ran in opposition to "socialized medicine," but also worried “Too many of our people live too far from adequate medical aid; too many of our people find the cost of adequate medical care too heavy.” His proposed solution was a form of subsidized insurance, very much like the current Affordable Care Act.

It would take a book to give the full history of the issue, but interesting to read the back and forth of accusations, propaganda, scrapped ideas, campaign rhetoric. 

In 1965 Lyndon Johnson signed Medicare into law for Americans 65 and older, despite warnings that it opened the door to dangerous loss of freedoms.  Ronald Reagan was widely quoted in his opposition to the program:  

behind it will come other government programs that will invade every area of freedom as we have known it in this country until one day . .  .  we will wake to find that we have socialism.

I'll be 65 next month and looking forward to signing up for federally funded health care. I have many friends and relatives who reached that magic age with relief. I haven't seen them losing their freedoms. I'm not sure they'd call themselves socialists.

And I know many younger workers tied to jobs they'd like to leave because they fear the loss of heath care. I know many who fear loss of coverage of pre-existing conditions. I've seen the bind of friends struggling with mental illness, afraid to lose their jobs because they'd also lose their coverage. I've seen families lose loved ones who couldn't afford medical care and I've seen families lose their homes because the care they chose was more costly than they knew.

Most other nations provide universal health care for a fraction of the cost of our current multi-layered strategy. They cut out the middle layer of insurance, remove the frustration of insurance agents deciding what care we need. From every logical point I can see, universal care would be more accessible, less expensive and yield better results. 

Loss of freedoms? Tel that to anyone struggling with insurance forms and medical bills while navigating serious illness. 

There is no perfect economic structure. No perfect political system. Every human institution can fall prey to thugs, con artists, powerful, greedy people looking out for their own good.

But there will always be things we share.

And whatever the system, scripture is clear that nations, leaders, people themselves are responsible for how they treat each other. Any system that fails to care for widows and orphans, for strangers and workers, for the sick and oppressed will be held to account. The prophets make that emphatically clear.

Jesus said the same when he talked of separating sheep from goats, not on the basis of theology or belief, but simply on the basis of care for the hungry, the naked, the sick and in prison. 

There are books suggesting Jesus was a socialist.

There are others insisting he wasn't.

I stumbled today on a challenging essay in response to one of those books: Was Jesus a Socialist? by Lawrence Reed, president of the Foundation for Economic Education, a libertarian think tank.

Reviewer Dan Walden responds: "Was Jesus a Socialist? Well, he wasn't a libertarian," then goes on to explain that our modern understanding of individualism and property rights would have made no sense in Biblical times. 

 Jesus is not a modern person, and it is not immediately clear why it matters whether he subscribed to a modern political ideology.

The response of Christians to the contemporary social order must necessarily look very different from our responses to previous ones: it must account for the particular evils of the present order and for our social capacity to rectify them.

Walden explores and dismantles Reed's arguments, then concludes: 

Jesus was not a socialist. But socialists, I think, understand something about Jesus that libertarians, even Christian ones like Lawrence Reed, do not: that the world at which we aim, the kingdom whose coming Christ proclaimed, will not settle our debts and contracts but abolish them completely.

Our struggle is not to raise ourselves above our enemies, but to love them fully, because to abolish class means abolishing what makes them our enemies at all. This is a hard task, demanding of us a revolutionary discipline that puts the most hardened Leninist to shame; it is always easier to entertain fantasies of violent retribution in which those who oppressed us finally face the other end of the gun or the other side of a prison bar. But the world that we want to build, the society of love, calls us beyond these impulses. It demands that even rapacious billionaires not be sent to prison. It demands that the children of those billionaires go to good schools for free. It shames those impulses, which we often see as a desire for justice, because it shows us that justice demands not the reversal of exploitation but its end. 

There's much to consider in that. And much to pray toward: a day when both capitalism and socialism are at an end, along with all forms of exploitation, and all forms of human need.   

Until that day comes, my goal is to stand clear of labels that divide and distort, to serve my neighbors with love, not fear, and to enjoy as fully as I can all the good things we share. 

Sunset over Marsh Creek Lake

Joy to the Polls

On Tuesday morning, November 3, I woke with a sense of dread.

I was grieving the divisiveness and misinformation surrounding the election and campaigns. I was concerned at the hints of violence that surfaced in the recent attempt to kidnap Michigan's Governor Whitmer, in the death threats against Dr. Fauci and his family, in social media posts urging physical removal of our Pennsylvania governor, Tom Wolf. 

I was aware of the tinder keg of grief and anger simmering in Philadelphia after the tragic death of Walter Wallace, Jr. I feared that long lines in urban neighborhoods, confronted by Trump supporters carrying guns, could easily explode. 

I had decided to fast and pray on Monday and Tuesday, hoping occasional pangs of hunger would remind me to continue in prayer. 

As I prayed on Tuesday morning, I found myself praying for joy, a strange thing to pray on election morning when I was working so hard to manage anxiety and dread. 

I often write my prayers in composition book journals.  On "Nov. 3, 2020, Tuesday, Election Day!" I wrote:

Lord, today, give us your joy. 
Help us be strong in the Lord and in your mighty strength, for we wrestle not with flesh and blood, but with the spirit of deception, division, rage, power. 
Open the eyes of our people.
Give wisdom, grace, joy, compassion.
Sing your song of grace to our hearts. 
Eternal God, give our hearts your joy this day. 

I had signed up for a shift with the Election Protection coalition, monitoring social media for disinformation, reporting attempts to suppress the vote and sharing positive posts with factual responses. While I saw much that concerned me, I also found myself encountering posts in Philadelphia that surprised and delighted me.

The first I saw was from days before at an early voting center somewhere in Philly. Comments acknowledged that lines shouldn't be so long, but the right to vote is worth waiting for. Democracy is worth celebrating. Hashtag: JoytothePolls

As I worked my election day 9 to noon shift, I saw more #JoytothePolls posts, with string quartets, gospel choirs, rappers, a harpist, klezmer bands serenading voters or inviting them to dance in their long socially-distanced lines.  

Some musicians stayed in one place, like the string quartet outside South Philadelphia High School.

Some moved on flatbed trucks from one polling place to another. 

Videos surfaced of impromptu dancing or rapping, of a 92 year old woman dancing her way to vote.

When I dug in a little, I learned that Joy to the Polls was a recent idea of artists and organizers, loosely associated with a non-partisan coalition called Election Defenders. All were concerned that anxieties around long lines, exposure to Covid-19, threats of armed militias, simmering racial tension could discourage voters. All wanted to encourage citizens who hadn't voted by mail to come cast their vote despite very real concerns. 

As organizer Natalie Stamp explained, 

Our approach is to try and focus on the positive, to ask ourselves, how can we be as positive as possible within a really scary situation? We wanted to figure out a way so while people are outside of the polling station, we can bring them a feeling of safety and a feeling of joy. 

On Election Day, Joy to the Polls musicians appeared in cities across the state and in states across the country. In Philadelphia, a few misunderstandings early in the day were sorted out quickly. In other parts of the state, a few threatening encounters were defused. As the polls closed on Tuesday evening, musicians reminded voters in long lines that anyone already in line could stay and vote, and the music continued. Reports of the day, from all parts of the state, were cheerful, even joyful. 

But Pennsylvania's election 2020 drama was only beginning. 

For months, election officials had been begging PA legislators to pass a bill allowing for pre-canvasing of ballots. Most states allow mail ballots to be opened as they come in and prepared for scanning before election day. It took days for counties to process mail ballots after the June primary. They warned it would take days, maybe weeks, to process a much higher volume of ballots after November 3. 

Despite the repeated requests, legislative leaders chose not to pass the needed change. A Reuters Special Report on October 23 warned that the Pennsylvania vote count could throw the country into "historical political crisis." 

Tensions were high on Wednesday as Trump supporters arrived outside the Philadelphia convention center where hundreds of thousands of ballots were being counted.

Joy showed up in response: musicians, DJs, clergy, rabbis. While Trump supporters shouted "Stop the count," a growing crowd sang and danced. Soon they were dancing a new "Count Every Vote" line dance. 

Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday morning, the music continued, more fanciful and joyful as time went on. The Eagles' mascot Gritty showed up to dance. Dancing ballot boxes and mailboxes appeared. The Trump protest slowly dwindled, eventually disappearing. 

I know there's more to this story than I could see from my narrow Twitter-feed window. And there's more than I can tell in a short Sunday afternoon blog post.

The election drama is still not over. President Trump has not yet conceded. While some lawsuits have already been dismissed, more litigation is brewing. Allegations of fraud will continue to circulate, although no evidence has surfaced. There are still rumblings of violence and plenty of need for prayer for a smooth transfer of power. And the white evangelical church has much work to do to in unraveling the tangled webs of righteous and unrighteous allegiance.

For me, this week, I caught a tiny slice of some things I hadn't seen before, or maybe had seen but not understood, or maybe knew but had forgotten: 

• Joy has far more power than anger.
• Love is far more convincing than reason.
• God is at work outside our narrow constructs.
• The American church is far larger than white evangelicalism.

For now, I celebrate. Every vote will be counted. Every voice will be heard. 

The joy of the Lord is our strength.

Peacemakers, not Peacekeepers

 “People who wink at wrong cause trouble, but a bold reproof promotes peace” (Proverbs 10:10)

We live in a time of great conflict, division, unrest and sorrow. Even simple interactions are occasions of disagreement and negotiation: can we worship inside? With or without masks? With or without singing? Can we put a yard sign in our yards? Will the neighbors steal it, spray paint it, target us and our homes?

Bible studies veer into political rants. Calls with much love family members end in tears and accusation. Articles shared on Facebook pages yield all-caps responses and sudden rupture in decade-long friendships.

We Will Make No Peace with Oppression

The songs of The Porter’s Gate have been my soundtrack during the past few months, and one recent song has become my prayer.

Lord, make me an instrument of peace, 
Where there is hatred, let me sow love;
Where there is darkness, let me sow light . . . 

It’s a reworking of the familiar words of a prayer attributed to Saint Francis, a beautiful prayer that seems right for this divided time.

Yet there’s another song in the same set of Justice Songs that seems to speak in contradiction, and echoes in my heart and mind as a response, even rebuke, to the more familiar song:

We will make no peace with oppression
We won’t turn away from our brothers, cries of our sisters, grieving of our mothers.
We won’t turn away from destructive politicians, overflowing prisons, corruption in our systems. Almighty God, help us not to be afraid.
Almighty God, give us Your Strength.

My inner tension between those songs exploded this week at the news of the death of Walter Wallace, Jr. Just blocks from where I once lived in West Philadelphia, a mother called 911 asking for help with a son suffering from bipolar disorder. Police showed up in force and within minutes her son was dead, shot ten times as the distraught mother pleaded for non-violent intervention. 

Reading responses on social media, I found myself sick at heart at the way some were quick to condone his death, to share mug shots from his many interactions with police, to write off our cities, to support the precipitous use of force. 

I have a brother who has struggled for years with bipolar disorder, who has had more interactions with police than I can count, who has dozens of mug shots, taken across decades.

He’s a large, loving guy who is scary when manic. He would likely have been dead years ago if he was black instead of white. 

Sam and Beca Lufi were part of our Urban Serve team in the last years I served as a full-time youth pastor and now live in Kensington, looking for ways to serve that beleaguered community. Sam’s email this week put my tension into perspective. With his permission I’m sharing part of that here:

The protests and violence in response to police killing Walter Wallace, Jr are not a knee-jerk reaction to a single incident but to centuries of frustration, pain, and hopelessness caused by explicit policies of injustice, racism, and economic oppression. . . .

I serve on a formal committee with the city that has advocated since the beginning of the year for specific policies that would increase police accountability, would build trust with community members, and would help create safety in our neighborhoods. One initiative, Police Assisted Diversion, has been piloted in our neighborhood. Mental health workers have joined police on patrols and police are supposed to refer clients to get housing, medical, and addiction help. Officers have consistently not offered this option, choosing to arrest individuals instead (only about 1/4 of eligible individuals were made aware of the opportunity and white people were more likely to be referred than black people). The social work professionals reported that requirements to wear body armor (imposed by the police on anyone accompanying them) escalated tension with those in the community. Police representatives have been unwilling to follow-up on these requests. 

I was on a call with community leaders last night who have been working tirelessly to meet with city leaders, to write policy recommendations, to meet with key stakeholders. Exhausted and saddened, there was a general consensus that government leaders have not taken community needs seriously and have only been willing to act when facing protests that threaten to damage property or make wealthy residents uncomfortable. To say "protest peacefully without breaking things" is really to say "continue living in desperation, despair, and neglect just don't bother me about it, I don't care." It is damning that breaking buildings and damaging property will make national news, but breaking people and damaging souls is not noteworthy. . .  

When protests have moved out of national visibility, have we continued to work on the issues - to create sustainable jobs, provide better access to education, strengthen mental health support and addiction treatment, and house those on the streets? In general, the answer has been "no." The plights of our marginalized brothers and sisters only matter to us when they disrupt our comfort.

This recognition, this perspective is new for me but is not new for our country. The perpetuation of two distinct America's - one with more than enough and one with barely enough - has been identified and named long before we began our humble mission to Philadelphia. Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. tried to call our collective attention to this reality decades ago, but we have refused to hear or learn.

But it is not enough for me to stand before you tonight and condemn riots. It would be morally irresponsible for me to do that without, at the same time, condemning the contingent, intolerable conditions that exist in our society. These conditions are the things that cause individuals to feel that they have no other alternative than to engage in violent rebellions to get attention. And I must say tonight that a riot is the language of the unheard. And what is it America has failed to hear? It has failed to hear that the plight of the negro poor has worsened over the last twelve or fifteen years. It has failed to hear that the promises of freedom and justice have not been met. And it has failed to hear that large segments of white society are more concerned about tranquility and the status quo than about justice and humanity.

Jesus was never concerned with tranquility and the status quo at the expense of the marginalized and oppressed. He stood up for those who were caught doing wrong, for those who were ethnically and economically marginalized, those whose health issues placed them outside the bounds of society. He opposed those who had religious and political influence and used it to keep people homeless while expecting them to continue religious giving.

From my perspective in Philadelphia, the situation is complex. I grieve humans created in God's image being injured - whether protestors or police. I am concerned about the loss of life - whether protestor or police. I also grieve a reality that has existed for centuries: White Americans have ignored the very real suffering of our Black brother and sisters. Rather than trying to understand why they vote differently from us or structure their church outreach differently, we have been content to critique their theology without examining our own. We have blamed laziness and fatherlessness without being willing to critique our own greed and complacency.

Peacekeeping is not the same thing as peace-making.

Peacekeepers will stand on the side of law and order every time.

Peacemakers understand that real peace is impossible until evil is addressed and oppression is ended.

What will that look like this week, as a contentious election unfolds and we face the damage done in this bitter election season?

It will look different for each of us, but this prayer, the basis of that challenging Porter’s Gate song, is a good place to begin:

Almighty God, who created us in your own image: Grant us grace fearlessly to contend against evil and to make no peace with oppression; and, that we may reverently use our freedom, help us to employ it in the maintenance of justice in our communities and among the nations, to the glory of your holy Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.  (Book of Common Prayer, 1979)