Open letter to granddaughters #4

Dear loves,

I was talking on the phone to a woman who I know from one of the three little churches I serve. The woman's mother died about a year ago. The woman who died--let's call her Sarah--was a wonderful person. I visited her half-a-dozen or so times before she died. Until the last time she was sitting in her living room surrounded by pictures of family and funny little toys she collected. She had figures of Rocky and Bullwinkle (who  you don't know, I don't think) that I would have given a lot to own!

At any rate, Sarah was a dear. Kind, decent, funny, caring, loving--on and on of qualities like that.

The last time I saw her she was in bed, never to rise again, and asked me if I could pray for her to die. She was simply ready. She had a long and full life and wasn't dreading entering that door into whatever comes next. She apologized for asking, but asked me if I would, please, ask God for her death.

I couldn't do that, I just couldn't. So I asked God to let Sarah's wish reach the Heart of God. It must have. She was dead in a matter of hours after I left. I mourned her. I officiated at her funeral and held her family close. I miss her.

Then, a couple of days ago, Sarah's daughter told me over the phone that the family had stayed up all night watching the election results. "Mama wanted Donald Trump to win so badly," she told me, "we just had to root for him!"

Sarah, this paragon of virtue in my eye, had been a fan of Trump since the day he announced until the day she died.

I've pondered that for a few days. Someone I admired and liked so much wanted Trump to be her President....

I'm torn by the knowledge. I don't know how to process it--like so much of what has happened during this election.

I just didn't know what to say to Sarah's daughter who was so happy that Sarah's dying wish had been fulfilled. I was torn.

"Torn" is an apt word for how I feel these days....

Love you girls, Grampa

Open letter to granddaughters #3

Hey girls,

Last night (Thursday) I had what psychologists call 'an anxiety dream'. According to Carl Jung, such dreams are messages from our unconscious "Dream Maker" designed to help us deal with unresolved conflict in our waking lives. I've certainly had a lot of 'unresolved conflict' since Donald Trump was elected! So, as troubling as it was, I needed an anxiety dream. Thank you Dr. Jung....

The dream took place in Morgantown, West Virginia at a reunion of graduates of West Virginia University. I've never been to such a gathering, but the dream did send me back to a place in my past (though little of it looked familiar). Most unresolved conflict reaches back to the past, I've discovered.

I was at the reunion to present the award of  "most successful alumnus" of the University. There was a large ballroom with hundreds of people all dressed up. I was scheduled to be the final speaker, so I really didn't have to be in the room all the time.

Which is what happened! I kept leaving on what seemed like frivolous errands while others were eating dinner and hearing other speakers. I dropped in once in a while to make sure it wasn't my turn yet. The MC of the evening kept assuring me I had plenty of time. He looked like someone from my past, but I can't remember who.

So, I drifted in and out of the banquet.

*I went to a gift shop to buy something for the person I was awarding the honor to and picked out several things but never bought any of them.

*I went on a canoe trip on the streets of Morgantown, which are very steep, with a man who appeared to be Mike Pence, Vice-President elect. That was the only clue about what the dream was speaking to in my real life. My Dream Maker had us rowing up a roaring stream on University Avenue. I didn't remember getting back to the banquet but I did.

*I got back and noticed many people had left the ballroom but the MC assured me it was okay.

*Then I met a bunch of people I supposedly went to college with and we talked for a while. (I recognized one or two of them, but in the dream knew them all.) It turned out the guy I was making the speech about had gotten a job with an old friend of mine. So that seemed fine.

*However, when I went to the platform to make my speech, the lights were off and the MC was angry at me for missing the time I was going to speak.

*I did find the man I was to honor, sitting with a group in a lounge off the ballroom, but when I opened the folder to give my speech, all I found was a pound of unwrapped, thick-sliced, raw bacon I couldn't even manage to pick  up to give it to him. Everyone drifted away....

I woke up then, dear granddaughters. It was 3:30 a.m. I laid awake for an hour or so, going over the dream so I could remember it and write a letter to you about it.

When I was in Jungian analysis, it took several sessions to sort through such a complicated anxiety dream. I have work to do pondering things with my Dream Maker. But writing it down is important and I wanted to write it down for you....

Love you, Grampy

open letter to my granddaughters #2

Dear Morgan, Emma, Tegan and Baby Ellie,

Thanks for letting me write to you to work through my emotions and thoughts about the election of Donald Trump as President. I have a lot to ponder and writing is a good way to do it. I don't know if you'll ever read these ponderings, but I am writing them because of you--you are the Future to me. I'm longing to be hopeful about your future in this confusing and painful moment.

"Rural white working class people" is a term that must be said thousands of times a day on TV and radio and in print to try to understand what happened Tuesday. "Rural White working class people" we are told, gave Trump the edge he needed.

I know the older three of you know where I come from (Ellie's just 4 months old, so she doesn't yet....) I come from southern West Virginia. Both my grandfathers were farmers. My maternal grandmother ran a boarding house for single coal miners for several years. My Grandmother Bradley raised my father and his siblings. My father had an 8th grade education. He was a farm boy who worked in the coal mines until 4 years in World War II damaged his lungs. After that, he was a bar keeper, worked in a grocery store, drove a dry cleaning truck and, in his last years, sold insurance. My mother taught elementary school--beginning before she had a BA!

The town I grew up in was Anawalt. There were 400 people there and about.

I 'was' from "rural white working class people".

That's who I am down deep.

So, why didn't I understand them more accurately before the election?

Did all my education and urban living divorce me from my roots in some radical way? I think many people would think that.

But I'm not sure. I wasn't really 'comfortable' and 'myself' at Harvard Divinity School. I'm still baffled by New York City. I'm ill at ease in many gatherings of Episcopalians--my chosen people!--because they sometimes are from a social class and level of wealth that makes me anxious. Even the town I live in--Cheshire, CT--sometimes makes me nervous because it is so upper middle class and white.

I think I spent all my full-time ministry is cities and among minorities and the poor because I am more at ease there.

The election, as you can see, has made me question 'who I am?' in a profound way.

Maybe I'm caught between two worlds: my mountain roots and my comfortable New England adopted life--in ways I didn't understand before Tuesday's election. And in ways that make me an 'outsider' to both. I have been thrown into a deep place of  reflection unlike anything I've known before.

I know 'understanding' is the 'booby-prize' but I write, trying to get a handle on what threw me for such a loop two days ago.

If you don't mind, I'll keep pondering by writing to you...to the future....OK?

Open letter to my granddaughters--#1

Dear Morgan, Emma, Tegan and Baby Ellie,

Back in October of 1962, when I was fifteen--older than any of you are now or will be for a few years (quite a few in Ellie's case!)--I was riding a school bus to Gary High School when Woodrow Wilson (honest, that was his name!) pulled off the road and got up to read the bus 'evacuation schedule'. A girl named Gwen, two years older than me, went a bit crazy and ran to the front of the bus and tried to push Mr. Wilson out of the way so she could get off. Two Senior boys got her back to her seat and I sat with her the rest of the way to school, patting her arm and telling her it was all okay.

That was called the Cuban Missile Crisis and was the closest our country has come, to my knowledge, to a nuclear war. That day, the Russian ships stopped and turned around and everything was okay.

That morning came back to me this morning--November 9, 2016--54 years later as I tried to come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump is the President elect.

I wish I could run to the bus and try to get by Mr. Wilson and run away. I wish I could scream and cry like Gwen did, so long ago. I wish someone would pat my arm and tell me it was all okay.

This morning, when I woke up, it was into a country I don't quite recognize. I've said for over a year that Donald Trump lived in an 'alternate universe'. This morning I woke up into that 'alternate universe'.

I'm writing to you girls so thinking of you can convince me there IS a future worth hoping for while I try to comprehend how I so radically misunderstood the present I was living in until last night. I think best by writing, so I'll be continuing to reach out of my love for you are I figure out how to love a country I no longer quite recognize.

More later, I promise....I promise you and myself....

a little hope in a dark time

Yesterday I had a conversation with a man I deeply respect and admire who is voting for Donald Trump.

I asked him to 'make me a better person' by telling me why he supports Trump. I simply don't talk with Trump supporters much. It is a sign of the division in our country that we are, most of us, so isolated from those who disagree with us. I had a stereotype for Trump voters that this friend in no way fit. He is intelligent, thoughtful, compassionate, highly educated and a voice for those in need. How could he vote for Trump, I wondered? So, holding back my opinions, I asked him to tell me.

I was surprised to find that his support for Trump was solely on economic issues. My friend is a fiscal conservative and a social issue moderate. He feels that Trump is a horrible person but trusts he will back fiscally conservative stances. My friend is as disgusted as I am with the tenor of the campaign and even agrees that many of Trump's statements would--if he weren't running against Hillary--prevent him from voting for him.

In the end, my friend said, his vote is as much against Clinton as for Trump.

My hope is that there are many Trump voters that fit my friend's profile rather than the profile of Nationalistic, racist, anti-women, anti-immigration stances I assume people have who will vote for Trump. My friend is not angry or belligerent in any way. In fact, he is a tad embarrassed  it has come down to this choice. He will not 'take up his musket' (as one Trump supporter suggested they do if Hillary wins). He will live with the decision of the people and continue to be the admirable man he has always been.

My fears for November 9th outweigh my fears about November 8th.

My greatest fear is that after the election, the United States will be ungovernable.

Talking with my Trump supporting friend gave me hope that my fears will not be realized--that the US will (though deeply divided) BE the country I hope and pray and believe it truly is, in spite of our deep and painful divisions.

I feel better and more hopeful after my conversation with a friend I deeply disagree with.

Maybe such conversations are what we need now, more than ever.

The walls between us as Americans are of our own making. Only we can take them down.

What is needed is for Americans to draw circles to include others rather than build walls to divide us.

Go vote!

And cast your vote with hope....

asparagus

Most folks in southern West Virginia of my age did not grow up eating asparagus. People like Bern did since her family was Italian and Hungarian.

It's probable that I tasted asparagus for the first time at Bern's house.

I love it now. Grilled is how I like it best. Or roasted. Boiling is low on my list of how to cook asparagus--too limp. Searing it in a frying pan works. But even canned asparagus is remarkable when Bern breads and fries it....

Cold grilled or roasted asparagus is great in salads too.

But what I've never been able to figure out is how quickly it changes the smell of your urine.

Almost instantly, as far as I can tell.

Pretty amazing vegetable.

It's over!!!

No, not the election (God help us, 5 days...) but the drought of World Series wins for the lovable, but over a century hapless Chicago Cubs.

Chicago or Cleveland: a hard choice for someone outside those two cities. I liked the Indians a tad better, but with two such hard-lucked franchises, how could you lose?

Cleveland, at least, had won in my lifetime--though I was only 7 months old. Chicago's woes went back another 40 years.

I left the game in the 8th last night--too sleepy to watch anymore. And lucky for me--if I'd seen the Indians tie what seemed like an impossible game, I would (just to show my baseball love) had stayed up into the wee hours...through the rain delay, to the end.

Bern watched much of the Series with me.

When we were first married, I took her to a Yankee/Red Sox game at Fenway  Park and she gave up on watching ("nothing happens," she said) with the score 0-0 in the bottom of the 9th. We were barely outside when Frank Malzone (yes, that long ago!!!) hit a home run to win the game.

This year, at some point in one of the low scoring games, Bern said, "baseball is a beautiful game".

Baseball--anyone can come to love it!

Good try, Tribe.

Go Cubbies....!