Voyages of Another Kind 9-20-9

St. Mary Abbots, Kensington

When it was decided by officials in British Airways that I should be granted the opportunity to travel anywhere in the world for thirty days, it soon became evident that there was to be much more to this experience than hopping on free airplanes and doing the tourist thing. The world in its titanic struggles was certainly not in need of more tourists. Perhaps it does need more explorers making a very special kind of voyage. After nearly a week into my expedition, I gained powerful evidence of the true nature of my voyage.

In ancient writings, dating as far back as twenty six centuries, during the Babylonian captivity, the prophet Daniel prayed that the king’s officials would have a change of heart and allow him and his companions to observe Jewish practices that were important in their devotional lives. It is recorded that the commissioners had favor on Daniel and granted him his wish, contrary to all the accepted practices in Nebuchadnezzar’s palace. These early writings also document that Daniel and his companions became highly effective in their appointed roles in Nebuchadnezzar’s government.

Some years ago I was facing a situation in my own life that required a decision by government authorities; one that would have long lasting financial consequences of great magnitude in my life. For a number of weeks before this decision was to be forthcoming, I found myself praying exactly as Daniel did; that the hearts of the officials concerning me would have a favorable disposition towards me. With no legal representation I was granted a profoundly favorable decision. I found myself thinking of the ancient imperative, attributed to Paul, a former member of the Jewish Sanhedrin, “Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us,”

Today I found myself again doing exactly the same thing, praying for a change of heart, only this time it was not with respect to those in authority; it was with regards to a common thief. One does not think of thieves as listening to prayers of the disenfranchised, but I had few other options.

At mid-day I was again drawn into one of those quiet numinous sanctuaries that provide repose for the soul. Twelve and a half million people crowded into a small space can create a lot of noise and chaos. I had just completed several hours of tedious photo work in a poorly lit palace, work requiring me to get down on all fours and to perform contortions of all sorts. While walking back to the subway station I noticed a gothic portal leading into a vaulted cloister. Ever curious, I followed it through to find myself alone in a vast space illuminated with the iridescent glow of ancient stained glass. Instantly, I was in the moment, perhaps too much so. The sunlight cascading through the million prisms of brilliantly colored glass along with clear light from above created a pearlescent sensibility that was almost breath taking. Alone in this grand sanctuary, armed with two cameras, I endeavored to capture the visual essence of this magnificent parish church.

At one point I turned around to look at a magnificent window in the transept and make an image of it with my secondary camera. Turning back around seconds later my primary, very expensive camera was gone. No one had even been near me, as the church was nearly empty, except two women who wandered into the back of the church. With a leaden dismay I knew that some of my best photo work ever had been taken from me. I had been ‘worked.’ Those images could have no possible value to anyone else and that camera would quickly prove useless without the special voltage adapters and chargers needed to make it work on European current. All I wanted was the images on that little blue chip of plastic, worth perhaps $6 on a good day.

I thought back to the miraculous healing of my leg and deliverance from surgery six weeks ago. I thought back to other amazing documented miracles I have experienced. Could there be yet one more? Could a thief actually be compelled to bring my camera back? Did God really care if one tourist got his camera back? Thieves bag cameras all the time and people don’t get them back. But, this wasn’t about cameras, not at all. There are ten thousand cameras for sale within walking distant of St Mary Abbots and I have plenty of credit cards. A better replacement could be had in five minutes. It became profoundly important to know that God was operating this far down into the affairs of my life.

For an hour I and several others paced up and down every part of St Mary Abbots looking for that camera, knowing that it really was gone. One of the women praying up front even offered to let me search her purse. I swiftly declined. I finally left the church, disheartened that my numinous experience of such a sacred place had been sullied by a thief who really didn’t know anything about taking her shoes off on holy ground. Over reactive, I wondered why I had bothered to come.

Taking the subway back to the university, it occurred to me it could have been far worse. I took inventory. I am in the habit of uploading and indexing all of my photo work each night. I have a couple thousand other images already safely archived. I could have lost them all. In my secondary camera I still have some images of my morning work in the palace and even some of St. Mary Abbot. The purpose of my journey was not in jeopardy. I had not been mugged and injured in a dark alley. My wallet had not been stolen. I had options. I could get another camera and go back to the palace, and even come back here, if I wanted to.

After writing some correspondence and taking a bit of lunch, I remembered that I am on a journey of a life time, and sulking in my room was not part of my itinerary. I decided I would go to the zoo, an activity especially suited to a Sunday afternoon. I eventually got to the zoo, where I was quite taken with the quality of the education work going on in the exhibitions. I fell into rather pleasing conversation with a zoologist in charge of a walk-through butterfly house. Distracted by his commanding knowledge of butterflies and the cooperation of the butterflies, I was able to get some really fine images of them with my remaining camera. There I was in one of the world’s great zoos after all the other visitors were gone, being a rapt student of entomology. Life was evening out again for me.

After finally being tossed out of the zoo so the staff could go home for dinner, I rode three trains back to St. Mary Abbots. The whole time I was wandering in the zoo I was asking that God might prove He really does have the last word and that it is always a good one. I wanted to know he was in charge of my life, not a thief. Even Zbignew Drecki was able to figure out that God was in charge of his life, and not his Nazi keepers who kept him locked up and tortured in death camps for five years. He said that he knew God had a plan for his life despite it including a detour through a man-made hell. Losing a camera is not hell, but if Drecki could make such a declaration about God’s omniscience, then I wanted to be able to do so in the trivial matter of being detoured by this theft. I knew the answer would be found in my returning to St. Mary Abbots.

Could there actually be waiting there this incredible miracle of a thief having had a change of heart, coming back to this church, and depositing aluminum and plastic proof that prayer works? I wasn’t going to miss finding out? The evening service was already started by the time I arrived, so would have to wait an hour to make inquiry of the staff. I slipped into a pew and had only intermittent attentiveness to the proceedings. Would this camera turn up so that I could declare the goodness of God? Does declaring the goodness of God require the retrieval of my camera? Obviously not, but some of us are a bit infantile in our faith. Is there something here in the midst of these two dozen old people in this vast space that can speak to those vast cosmopolitan young hordes outside chasing a thousand vanities?

During the communion I attempted to remind myself of what really is important. My spiritual well being and serenity are far more important. Nurturing the faith of others is far more compelling than my touristic pastimes. After the service a hospitable woman asked me how I was, sensing a bit of discomfiture in my affect. I gave her a brief account of my loss. She then suggested I see the priest. The priest suggested I see the Verger. The Verger suggested I see the Warden. All were gracious and the Warden suggested I leave my e-mail in case something turned up. Fat chance. Thieves don’t usually repent.

Again, the whole place cleared and I was alone with the staff. They agreed it would be really important for a miracle of some sort to happen. They sensed the need for something to de-stain my experience in their parish. I actually had a season of pleasing fellowship in the sacristy with Susan, the Warden, who commiserated with me. We agreed meeting was a happy business, only for the wrong reason.

This hospitable staff too wanted to go home to dinner. I felt compelled to walk around the back of the sanctuary despite the main door already being closed and locked; the staff waiting at the other door for me to get moving. Rounding the back I saw my camera sitting in absolutely plain open view, in a place I and others had looked a dozen times in full daylight. Suddenly there was no great urgency to closing up, just yet.

In this vast city of frenzied, often lonely millions, God is still speaking to hearts. The same God who talked to Nebuchadnezzar’s commissioners, to Nazi prisoners, and to United States government officials, talks to thieves who lurk in church, even telling them to come back for the evening service and to make an offering. Those two dozen old people really are on the inside track. It seems that the One who really can hear their prayers shows up in this place, staying ahead of the thieves.

Recently while on a plane I met a theoretical physicist who has lived an immense life, blessed in all measures beyond the conception of most of us lesser mortals. She describes working in the most prestigious scientific facilities on earth and working with stimulating people who will capture the next crop of Nobel prizes in physics. She is one of the most intelligent intuitive people I have crossed in all my journeys. Here I was on the beginning of a thirty-day dream voyage around the world, and what she described in her life made mine seem utterly trivial and ordinary. Yet, she tells me “I am in a country where I truly am completely alone and isolated”. Yes, really bad things happen; she has had some really difficult things happen, far beyond thieves snagging cameras in church. Yet, I can’t but wonder who is having the last word on her behalf. Is some kind of thief stealing her hope and dreams? Has she been sold a bill of goods? Something that defies analysis in the greatest cyclotrons on earth? She tells me “I've run out of the good stuff. I believe the rest of my life to be rather troublesome and full of worries.” I wonder what little wizard is behind the curtain pulling levers to make this message even believable.

Daniel and his companions experienced the anxiety of long-term foreign exile and captivity, to begin with. Drecki was certainly isolated and lonely in the hell of Auschwitz, to begin with. I have had plenty of abject loneliness in big cities where I could not even read street signs. Yet, as did these others, I have recently come to a place where I can experience serene contented solitude rather than desperate loneliness and isolation. I am in a city of more than twelve million and don’t know a soul here to call on the phone, yet I am now content. Curiously, ‘my’ physicist wonders if I am involved in the world I write about, if I feel it. She eloquently observes the ‘narrator’s voice’ is a bit detached from the world I describe; perhaps I am merely a voyeur. This is the misunderstood luxury of solitude. I can very much enjoy being an observer, as a dear minister friend describes me, a flaneur; one who wanders and collects experiences to share with others.

Henri Nouwen so well described the essential primary spiritual journey from loneliness to solitude and its sequel, a journey from hostility to hospitality, and finally an ultimate journey from illusion to prayer. With these journeys completed we become whole contented people able to enjoy sublime communion with the One who has the last word. This communion is the ultimate voyage we can make. Even British Airways can’t help me with this one.

In 1840 Thomas Cole completed an epic series of four paintings called “The Voyages of Life”. In each painting, accompanied by a guardian angel, the voyager rides in a boat on the River of Life. The landscape, corresponding to seasons of the year, plays a major role in telling the story. In each image, the boat's direction of travel is reversed from the prior painting. In childhood, the infant flows from a dark cave into a rich, green landscape. As a youth, he takes control of the boat and aims for a gleaming castle in the sky. In manhood, he relies on prayer and religious faith to sustain him through rough waters and a threatening landscape. Finally, the man becomes old and the angel guides him to heaven across the waters of eternity.

The reality depicted in these paintings is inevitable. I can expect troubles in life, stolen cameras and much worse, but I have it on good authority from declarations written down nearly thirty centuries ago, that He who guides my boat along the River of Life “knows the thoughts I have for you, thoughts for good, not for evil, and plans that will give you hope and a future.”
Prayer works. Just ask a repentant thief.

Craig C. Johnson
2009 Winner, British Airways Face to Face

Community - Shared Journeys to Heaven 9-17-9

Westminster Cathedral, London

It is so very easy to get caught up in the heady experiences of self-importance when living out an ultimate dream. Being granted a gift of seeing the entire world from the vantage point of the heavens and then being asked by a large prestigious ad agency to talk about it on camera is heady. It puts one at risk for the unbecoming self-polishing of halos.

After four hours of intense work, going out for a long walk along the Thames made good sense. Despite dozens of languid happy wanderings around Westminster over the past twenty-five years, I had never even glimpsed Westminster Cathedral. It happens to be in the next block from where I am residing. In late afternoon the three hundred foot Byzantine bell tower of terra cotta brick was afire with that glorious aureate light of last sun. In proper reactive tourist mode I pulled out cameras and ‘collected’ the ascendant images before me. A powerful feeling of goodness washed over me. Something important was about to happen.

I walked around to the front entrance of this most imposing cathedral and found it open, wandered in, realized a mass was in progress, and immediately put away my cameras. Almost at once a men’s choir erupted into ethereal melodies that set up shimmering waves of wonderment in my soul. In an instant I was transmuted from gawking tourist into expectant pilgrim. Instantaneously, I was back in the imposing Durham Cathedral at sunset nineteen years ago when the same transformation occurred. The sanctuary I found in St Stephens in Vienna on a hot summer day twenty five years ago crystallized in my consciousness. In a flash, I was reliving St. John’s Passion in the grand St. Catherine’s in Eindhoven.

I walked a bit more than halfway down the center aisle to find a seat. Suddenly I was back in my own dear church, walking down its aisle for a hundred different reasons, all leading to the Altar that offers promise of light at dawn. Quietly, I took a seat. An old arthritic woman in front of me was on her knees on the hard floor the entire service. Immediately, I was back in the Cathedral at Avignon eighteen years ago where I had been astounded with a profound display of devotion - one I have tried to emulate over the years, never with much success.

An extraordinary life review of some kind was underway. I found myself breathless; gaining a small understanding of why it is told in scriptures that we cannot in our present form withstand exposure to the full glory of God. I was rather overwhelmed. At the appointed time, I joined hundreds of others on the journey across those old worn floor boards to the altar to take the sacraments that can give true refuge from the hunger and thirst of soul. No longer a fifteen-minute celebrity or tourist, I was merely a member of a holy community joining others in a fine meal at sunset.

Following the mass, I felt a strong urge to ‘collect’ the interior with my cameras but successfully fought off the urge; feeling it would be sacrilegious to the numinous experience just granted to me. I was not there to photograph ancient buildings. An old man standing next to one of the great columns supporting the vast structure was wearing a small yellow flower and gold cross.

John Casano, seventy-nine years old, from Malta, devout beyond measure, took me on a journey through his sacred world. Long after the parishioners and stray tourists had departed, this gracious diplomat and ambassador shared his love for this holy space. I was no longer photographer, writer, or the quick-grits celebrity - just a seeker looking for the Bread of Life. I listened. He taught. An hour later, two hours, we stood. I paid attention.

John didn’t give me architecture or art lessons. Yes, he did make some rather well-informed comments about the building and its art, but mostly he told me about the wondrous beauty to be found in personal relationships. John never preached to me. He lives a life of attraction rather than promotion. In describing his experiences with his brothers and cousins, an admixture of priests, prime ministers, deputies, and educators, I was easily convinced John knows what matters in life. Beneath the fabric of this terra cotta edifice is an enduring strong foundation of community. Watching John’s interactions with others who make this cathedral home, I knew that a gracious respect and love for each other gave these men and women a profound sense of belonging.

Finally, the compulsion to ‘collect’ night images and an ever more insistent appetite had me excuse myself. I told John I would see him tomorrow in the cathedral. A small gathering of octogenarians shared mutual farewells. It is grand to be off the tourist grid and part of a community that will endure for eternity.

Talk to old people. They might just take you on the journey of a lifetime.

Community - Love Has the Last Word 9-11-9

Community - Love Has the Last Word
New York City

Eight years ago today vain attempts were made to destroy our national community. Fearful people, “strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God”, who did not have any concept of how to offer a safe place for others to be themselves, detonated sheer terror and panic in the psyche of millions of people. The infection of fear and rage knows no boundaries, not stopping for a passport stamp and visa. Tsunami of fear washed around the world. As dreadful and horrific as the visual images of two iconic engineering marvels undergoing progressive structural collapse are; far worse is the idea that fear might actually be more powerful than love and trust, that xenophobia in any of its hideous forms might actually have the last word.

Each year at this time we are reminded of who our true heroes are. Stunning accounts in word and picture of the countless occurrence of ultimate personal sacrifice clarify again how deep and transformative love can be in building a powerful response of community. A picture of a disabled woman, being carried down 110 floors in her wheelchair by strangers is perhaps the image we should paint on the ceiling of our lives. Perhaps images of firefighters ascending with rescue gear, knowing there was no return should be painted on the altarpiece. They contain a message we dare not become refractory too, lest history repeat itself. On this ‘holiday’ I am reminded that due diligence is required to keep the fragile fabric of community from being ripped into linty shreds.

Going out for my ride at sunrise, a dense ether of fog created a rather cozy sensibility to the world, especially for the several moments when colorized to a luscious pink by the concealed sunrise. Alas, as I began my circadian journey, I could not help but notice unknown individuals had ‘celebrated’ their own anger and frustration by destroying many mail boxes, mine included. What detonated this rage that seemed best expressed by violating the sanctity of community? Was this to be my bon voyage as I set off on my world journey?

During the day others ‘celebrated’ by performing acts of exclusion, closing ranks to those unlike themselves. The magnitude of my personal pain from the experience of being excluded from something I very much wanted to be part of, by people who forgot how “to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings” was surprising and sobering. Subsequent e-mails confirm that many in that group are not seeing past their own intense pain and no longer feel safe with those who are different.

I have to admit to experiencing some reactive rage, despite all my ranting about community. Fortunately, nothing worse than a pointed e-mail erupted. I was excluded from something trivial, merely a social recreational outlet. For those excluded from the whole of life because they happen to be black, the opposite sex, the other religion, the other anything; the angst must be staggering; certainly as staggering as the blows that occurred when jet kerosene burned down the dreams and serenity of millions.

“We witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found.” During our search, there are those living their lives in community who make sure the mail goes through and that we have sustenance for the journey.

In the Gospel of Luke we are presented with the most revered example of hospitality and community recorded in the world’s literature. While on a journey through a dangerous mountain pass, a man was robbed, beaten to a pulp, and left for dead in the ditch along a dusty deserted road. Several travelers with the accepted genetic and educational credentials of proper society passed along the same road and crossed over to the other side, lest any involvement or inconvenience be required of them. Another traveler, not only lacking proper pedigree, but also being blatantly ‘other’, being Samaritan, being persona non gratis, made his way to the ditch and greatly inconvenienced himself by offering hospitality and community to one left for dead. Using his own animal and his own resources, this anonymous Samaritan man insured the safe return of a hapless traveler to life and community. Xenophobia, rage, and fear did not have the last word.

When I returned from my morning ride an unknown person had celebrated this ignominious date in history by crossing over to my side of the road, carefully placing my plundered mailbox up on my porch; telling me that those who rage and destroy do not have the last word. I have not yet moved the mailbox, wanting to keep a small altar to remind me of the loving deed of the Good Samaritan who did not pass me by.

Later a neighbor, seeing beyond her own rather intense struggles and challenges, extended me true hospitality and community with her profoundly kind words and a very large bowl of the most succulent meaty soup. Suddenly, it was as if I were in the gilded opulence of Louis XV in Monaco, dining on Osetra Iranian caviar with blini served on Limoges china set on 1000 count Egyptian linen. Actually, it was better. I was being reminded that love really does have the last word.

Jesus said :”For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you invited me in; naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me. Then the righteous will answer Him, saying ‘When did we see you hungry, and feed you, or thirsty, and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger, and invite you in, or naked, and clothe you? And when did we see you sick, or in prison, and come to you?’ And the King will answer and say to them, ‘Truly I say to you, to the extent that you did it to one of these brothers of Mine, even the least of them, you did it to me.’”

Building Community - A Scrap at a Time 9-11-9

Anderson, South Carolina

One year for Christmas I was given a pallet of ordinary red brick. This pallet of 500 bricks cost $25; a nickel apiece. These bricks might as well have been gold bullion. This was the most glorious of Christmas prizes, except for one. When I was nearly nine years old, almost ready to apply for my contractor’s license, my older brother went down to The Pantry; a local grocery store, and bought about thirty orange crates for 15 cents each; the really good kind that had a single wood slat on either side, two uniform slats on the bottom, and a ¾ inch piece of wood on either end. He carefully dismantled these, took out all the nails, and then neatly stacked them inside a gift wrapped box. Now this was the most glorious possible Christmas gift in all the known universe. I have been a builder ever since.

Every morning while riding my bike; besides gaining cardiovascular conditioning, I am conducting surveillance. On Mondays and Tuesdays, the days before trash gets picked up in the neighborhoods I ride in, I take extra vitamins and fish oil; to insure having high functioning memory so I can recall where as many as six or eight piles of treasure have accreted curbside during the previous night. After my bike ride I revisit these high-yield veins with a car or truck and make an abundant harvest of the detritus of a secular consumer culture.

The returns can be astounding. Not long ago a fellow discarded nearly the entire contents of his house. I ended up with his dining room table and six chairs, beds, bookcases, stereos, paints, exercise equipment, and all sorts of good books, DVDs, CDs. It took a 24 foot box truck to haul off this lode. Over the past year at least six really fine oriental carpets have appeared in the roadside depositories. Even cars with clear titles have been proffered to me. Along with this kind of premium treasure, the more ‘usual’ sorts of things present themselves, $37 a gallon paint from abandoned decorating projects, all manner of lumber from failed do-it-yourself engineering works, and a lot of perfectly good porcelain bathroom fixtures from flushed plumbing efforts.

The Habitat for Humanity thrift store where most of this consumer largesse ends up is now making about $40,000 a month. The staff there loves to see me coming. A 12,000 square foot building full of discarded and unwanted building materials, home furnishings, books, and family treasures has become a major shopping destination in our town. Sometimes as many as several dozen people are in there at a time trolling for the next uncut Star of India sapphire. More than one piece of fine sterling has turned up in there. Habitat in turns keep a bunch of people employed and earns enough profit to keep the county-wide Habitat volunteer program busy building dreams for people that never learned how to.

I am not utterly altruistic in my salvage operation. I have long since progressed from orange crates and need more substantial feed stock for my assorted projects; keeping nearly all the really good timber that manifests in my world. This wood has turned into hundreds of book cabinets, other furniture pieces, gifts, and various capital home improvement projects. All the casework in my house is made of 13-ply furniture grade birch that once lived in a nursing dorm at the local hospital. Old kitchen cabinets torn out of a lock smith shop became oak-clad home-theater sound cabinets. Being a bit entrepreneurial, the book cabinets get converted into real money and most of it then funneled overseas into some projects in Asia and Africa. I have to keep part of it for boy toy tools.

The next tier down in quality in my timber harvest goes to the cultural advancement of our town; having found new life in perhaps a hundred stage sets in the local community playhouse. For fifteen years the theater has been spared the harsh fiscal realities of paying retail for wood and paint in one of our modern indoor lumber yards. Really marginal solid waste from roadside repositories is easily transformed into the magic of illusion on the theater stage, at no cost. A stage set only has to last three weeks indoors and it is only viewed from a distance. Illusion, masking tape, and distance are grand allies in the theater business. All those gallons of unwanted paint work perfectly for set decorating.

My re-manufacturing itself produces solid waste, wood scraps that would in most circumstances go to the wood stove on crispy January days. A fellow I met in the YMCA ‘reprocesses’ my small wood scraps into the most amazing children’s toys. This beneficiary of my salvage has always had an ethic of environmental sustainability and his craft/toy business has been fueled entirely by 100% post consumer waste wood. Periodically, Tom meets me at the Y and we transfer my latest treasures from my old Toyota Corolla into his gas-sipping hybrid. He especially liked the new unused 4/4 pine stock that would work perfectly for his pull toys.

There are many invisible people living just below the radar of an individualistic society - people who do not have the means to furnish their lives with pretty basic stuff. The trash in many of our lives really is treasure to the marginalized living among us.

Recently I hauled the scraps of a destroyed book cabinet home, rebuilt it, and then hauled it to two women who don’t have luxuries like money for even cheap furniture. Rebuilding it took perhaps two hours and about a dollar’s worth of glue and nails. You might have thought I had just given these women a $250,000 Sheraton sideboard. Scraps can be the building blocks of community. Just glue them together with love and you can build bridges of community to those around you.

Next time you haul your trash cans to the road; think about what is in them. There might just be scraps of community in there.

Cantaloupe - The Fruit of Community 9-10-9

A Front Lawn in Anderson, South Carolina

Abraham Maslow was celebrated in the academic world for his deep insights into human nature and motivation. He is best known for his defining work on motivational hierarchies. His so-called “Maslow Needs Hierarchy” describes the five need levels we have in life. The bottom four are referred to as deficiency needs. The lowest level includes physical needs such as food shelter, sex, and water. When these are met, attention shifts to a concern for safety in an orderly predictable world. As one feels well fed and safe, consideration is given to friendship, intimacy, and family connections. As one experiences a physically satisfied safe life with stable relationships, a powerful need for belonging emerges; the need for acceptance and value from others. The need for self-actualization is one that emerges only when all four deficiency needs have been met. Maximizing one’s own potential and possibility may be thought of as the only true motivator, all other needs or motives merely being assistive to this need for actualization.

The take-away message from Maslow’ insightful analysis is that people simply cannot and will not “pass go” and go on to buy the next side of the board until the basic stuff in life is in place, especially things like food, shelter, a bit of money, and a sense that the world is mostly safe. We have a hard time listening to motivational industrial psychologists on Nightingale-Conant cassettes while our stomach is growling in a dark apartment after the power has been turned off and we can’t afford to buy the medicine we need to keep our cancer in remission.

Meals-on-Wheels must be one of the coolest organizations going. Every week I go to the kitchens in the old high school and put on a frayed, but clean, apron and join a substantial community of other volunteers to build six-hundred and fifty meals that are dispersed by an army of volunteer drivers to the far reaches of our county. This efficiently run organization has it down to a science as to the feeding of six-hundred and fifty invisible people who have fallen through the cracks of the richest society on earth. These hundreds of recipients have the vast luxury of not thinking about food for another day. We think about it for them. The highlight of my week is probably the time I spend on a rubber mat in a hot kitchen cutting and dressing meat to go in those aluminum trays. The recipients are getting a level one need taken care of. I am getting a strong level five need taken care of. For me maximum possibility comes from building community, especially among those that are short on the necessary ingredients to bake bread in their lives.

Many groceries partner with us and we often find ourselves with copious amounts of things - some days almost too much. We scramble to conserve and distribute everything possible before its safe shelf life expires. So it was that I found myself partaking of mountains of fruit in five large fruit crates and hauling a good bit of this home with me; figuring to set up an ad hoc distribution in my neighborhood. In my haul there were a lot of cantaloupes.

Cantaloupes are a bit like geodes; one is not quite sure what is inside until they are sawn open. These cantaloupes were mottled and dented on the outside, not unlike geodes. With baited breath, I cut one of these open and was elated to find a firm orange interior, fragrant with nutrition and succulent flavor. These were a definite go. I cut up the bunch of them for distribution. A lot of people are uncertain about sawing open geodes, especially ones they are considering eating. With food, presentation matters big time, even at Maslow level one.

Normally communion is done with wafers and fermented grape juice. I just found one can have profoundly deep spiritual communion with another using cantaloupe. I went out the front door to find a neighbor lady in her nightgown, walking her teacup poodle. In my hand I had a Tupperware box full of fragrance, nutrition and succulent flavor. Wordlessly, I wrapped myself around her as she sublimated into dark fierce tears of utter despair. A phone call from another neighbor had told me she watched her son die yesterday from a torture battle with congestive heart failure. I opened the lid of the box and wafted that fragrance under her nose. There really is something to aromatherapy. I closed the box, commiserated with her, held her as I prayed and conclude our church service on her lawn. I felt like I should have taken off my shoes; having been on holy ground.

Keeping my shoes on, I went back in my house and filled another box with fragrance, nutrition, and succulent flavor. I headed down to the corner house where a dear friend climbs the night, almost every night. Night terrors often have her waking, screaming, and fleeing dysphoria. At some deep level, her level two needs for safety did not happen. Perhaps there is something in one of God’s orange geode’s that will crystallize a sense of safety that will yield deep sublime sleep for her.

In the middle of the block I have new neighbors; having arrived by U-haul a few weeks ago. These two fiscally challenged women have long struggled with the existential question, “Is the universe a fundamentally friendly place?” I try to help them answer that question with minor repairs to their house, the salvage of furniture that was destroyed by the homeless men hired to move it who then stole $600 in cash from these women. Somehow, fresh fruit seemed to offer more potential for meeting an immediate deficiency in their lives than my drill bits and screws. It sure smells good in that house now.

Next time you do neighborhood visitation, consider cantaloupe. And see if Meals on Wheels needs you.

Pathway to Heaven 9-9-9

Anderson, South Carolina

About one hundred and fifty of us attend a church that is truly cozy, especially on dull cloudy days. The darkly stained open rafters and Victorian stained glass windows in the side aisles of our hundred year old sanctuary add a quiet, visual, and safe sensibility to our liturgical worship experience. The brilliant 19th century gothic stained glass in the apse and the luminous aureate lighting over the oak altar and rood screen create a compelling visual invitation to come forward and partake of the Numinous. It is an easy place to let go and place one’s brain in neutral.

Today found me ushering during the early service. In this capacity, I spend nearly the entire service standing in the back of the sanctuary looking down the oak floor of the center aisle to our beautiful altar with its magnificent tapestries, candlesticks, burse and veil, and other accoutrements of worship. In a moment of free association, I began wondering about all of the different reasons people would pass down that center aisle. I wondered about the various reasons I have passed down that aisle. The worn finish on the oak floor boards suggested to me that many people have passed down this aisle over the past century, some as willing participants in moments of great joy, others as despairing witnesses to the severe brevity and challenge of life.

Infants in christening garb are carried into the bright lights to be acknowledged as grand blessings from God. Young happy parents give their children to the care of God and ask for our help as a congregation to lead them into good upright living.

Newly minted graduates from local high schools and universities are invited forward to receive new bibles and prayer books, perhaps a cross. Their lives are clean slates filled with infinite possibilities.

Young women in their white satin dresses and veils make the journey of their deepest romantic dreams, going to the fore to meet the love of their young lives at the altar. Their white knights share with them their first conjoined communion.

Those who recently have found a new faith or resurrected an old one will find their way to the holy space before the altar where they make public testimony of their faith and receive the sacrament of baptism or make a commitment to our community by way of confirmation.

Some of us process towards the luminous image of Jesus the Shepherd as part of the choir or as part of those who find satisfaction and calling in serving the congregation as vested thurifers, crucifers, chalice bearers, acolytes, or priests. Young torchbearers will light the way for the gospel message as it is carried into our midst.

Others will come forward alone to proclaim the Words of Life as lectors. Others will declare words of hope and comfort as intercessors. We will hurry up and down the aisle passing the Peace to as many as we can in a short span of time. Today I went up and down the aisle to take up our offerings and gifts and present them to the celebrant, who then offered them up to God.

Presenters will bring the holy gifts of the creatures of bread and wine to the communion table. There we become one body because we share one bread and one cup. All of us will join together and walk across those old floor boards to corporately acknowledge our faith and trust in the Father Almighty. In sharing the sacrament of the Eucharist, we join the millions who have gone before us and those who are yet unborn.

Young children, youth, perhaps even some spouses feel compelled to be in the sanctuary, to make the journey to the altar. Even as the paralytic was let down through the roof and the faith of those who brought him was honored, the faith of those who bring their sometimes resistant children, youth, and spouses will be honored.

Perhaps some of the hardest journeys down the aisle are made by individuals facing dark nights of the soul. They quietly slip into the sanctuary when no one is around and nearly crawl down to the altar for consolation and perhaps a glimmer of hope. Many times over the years I have made these secret journeys down the aisle to the altar. I have the good fortune of having a key to the kingdom. Dark nights don’t schedule themselves for convenience or church opening hours.

Some of us are wheeled down the aisle in our coffins, covered with a satin burial shroud. Unwillingly, perhaps, we make our last journey to the altar we so willingly visited throughout our lives. Even so, we participate in a journey that gives hope to those we have left behind. We are then wheeled back up the aisle to another place of repose. A number of us are carried forward in small urns or carve boxes for internment in the memorial garden. Last communion is shared in our presence by those who have come to say their farewells to us.

The scriptures tell us that broad is the way that leads to destruction and narrow is the way that leads to the Kingdom of God. Much debate rages about the exclusivity of the Christian message and just what are the ways one can get to Heaven. I am not sure myself about much of this debate, but what I am sure of is that by going down the center aisle of our church for any of the various reasons we do so, we will better for it. We celebrate, grieve, worship, and explore life and faith together. Going down the center aisle doesn’t buy a ticket to heaven but I suspect the intentionality that goes with making our journeys forward will make it easier to find a ticket to eternal life and a place in His Kingdom. In the meantime we can feel like we are drawing closer to God and to each other by making this journey often, and for a variety of reasons. We always end up at the memorial of His Redemption.

I gain some real comfort from knowing that my feet have traversed that aisle hundreds of times for a variety of reasons and that I have helped wear the varnish of those oak boards down to a comfortable semi-gloss finish.

True Community - You Can’t Buy It 9-8-9

Anderson, South Carolina

During my high school years I found much joy and adventure as a member of an Air Explorer Squadron. Rather than camping, this variant of scouting allowed me to fly in all manner of Air Force planes, to be an observer at missile launches, and tour most of the Air Force bases in southern California - a glorious thing for a heavenly-minded kid who built telescopes and watched the race to the moon in the 1960s. Part of this cosmic journey were biannual ceremonial meetings in Air Force dress blues at the local Sheraton Hotel; walking distance from my house. These were splendid and truly comfortable experiences in that old somewhat shopworn hotel. My first puppy loves were even found at our dances in the old moldy ballroom.

Nearly twenty five years later I had reason to return to that hotel under very different circumstances. The original hotel was severely damaged in an earthquake during the intervening years, condemned, and rebuilt as a lavish Ritz Carlton. My return was precipitated by the occasion of my brother’s marriage. In the course of this event he chose to rent this hotel and several of its catering halls for meals for family and out-of-town guests.

I and a dear friend decided to make a camping journey out of this wedding and spent about ten days in national parks both ways on the 5,500 mile drive from Alabama to California. We showed up at the reception desk of this place, not having showered in a few days, having used our trouser legs to wipe off excess peanut butter from our life sustaining PBJs in the deserts, and giving evidence of other major lapses in personal grooming. The staff at the reception desk was not certain whether to call the local police and have vagrants removed or to get out the nearest can of Raid and eradicate stray desert bugs. There was no sense of hospitality forthcoming. Only when I suggested that my brother had rented the place were we offered the key to the kingdom, and even then with some hesitation. Over the next several days there I felt like a total bumbling idiot - wondering what faux pas I was committing. Even with my brother renting the joint, I felt quite unwelcome. I wondered if the comfortable spirit of that old Sheraton fell into the San Andreas Fault that runs under the place. It was grand to get back into the desert.

There is a proverb that has worked well for thousands of years to describe human behavior. It essentially says, “We will be nice and show up as long as you can put out shrimp and caviar on the table.” A more modern interpretation would say “If you spread your money around, you will never really be sure who your true friends are, but when your money runs out, you will know for sure.”

Recent experiences overseas in upscale environments suggested to me that as long as my credit card was not declined then I could come in and play and enjoy the hospitality. Or could I? For weeks on end I felt like a wallet disguised as a human.

I received and exchanged several e-mails in the past days about my participating in some kind of Labor Day event in one of the South Carolina state parks. During the course of this exchange I suggested that I might not know anyone there and wondered if I should attend. It was suggested that I knew no strangers, and would leave with a bunch of new friends. With temerity, I drove twenty miles out to the state park, not having a clue who or what I was looking for. Several mostly random turns had me driving up to a lakeside picnic pavilion where I could hear wondrous strands of the happiest foot-stomping music in the world. I parked in a grove of trees and cautiously walked to the pavilion. A woman standing outside the pavilion erupted in smile - one known well to me and immensely pleased I had strayed in from the stand of trees. No can of Raid here.

I found myself suddenly inducted into a 51st wedding anniversary celebration for people I did not know. The reigning matriarch of this gala event extended the purest form of southern hospitality and community I have yet experienced. As a total stranger, I was admitted into sharing a sacred milestone in her life and an epic meal of grand proportions, one that gave me cause to wish I had brought mountains of Tupperware for leftovers. A truly happy band of fiddlers, banjo players, guitar and mandolin pickers, and a bass player preached a soft comfortable southern country theology in song that reminded me of what really matters in life.

I could have dining on porcelain, using Baccarat and sterling, set on Egyptian linen, but it would not have held a candle to the meal I enjoyed with new friends on Styrofoam, using polystyrene plastic ware on disposable table covers. The waterfront view was the equal of that at Louis 15 in Monaco, and we had live music.

Henri Nouwen describes the true nature of hospitality and community in much of his writing. True hospitality is not about being nice to nice people we already know and think we might get returns from. It is about being nice to strangers and creating safe spaces for them. “In our world full of strangers, estranged from their own past, culture and country, from their neighbors, friends and family, from their deepest self and their God, we witness a painful search for a hospitable place where life can be lived without fear and where community can be found.” Nouwen goes on to say that it is imperative for us “to offer an open and hospitable space where strangers can cast off their strangeness and become our fellow human beings”, even if they wipe peanut butter on their pants in the desert.

Those fiddlers and pickers have got their theology straight. My credit card did not work here.

Community - It Ain’t Black and White 9-7-9

Anderson, South Carolina

As a kid I was utterly enraptured by color. I remember taking those little transparent colored tabs that come on three-ring dividers and looking at the world through them; entranced by the magic to be seen through those tiny 3/8” x 1” specks of brilliant color. Even better was the reckless waste of chemicals in my Lionel chemistry set. I didn’t really care about making advances in science. More important was being able to mix two colorless solutions together and having them instantly turn an intense crimson color. Indiscriminate experimentation led to the knowledge that almost any shade on the spectrum could be produced - cobalt blues and purples were the best. For years small jars of these spectral wonders added color to a drab childhood in an alcoholic family. I have no idea to this day as to whether I inadvertently created chemical weapons of mass destruction or not.

As I advanced in years and made it to the ascendant age of twelve, my thoughtless experimentation gave way to a more rigorous scientific approach that had me hooked on the magic of science. In seventh grade, Mr. Frederick showed us the coolest possible stuff. One could take a chunk of sodium metal and drop it into a pipe containing water. It exploded like a grenade launcher!! No boredom in this afternoon class. Potassium permanganate and other chemical elixirs created the most beautiful and intense colors imaginable, with the application of fire. A pyro was born. There simply couldn’t be anything cooler in the universe that fire, explosives, detonators, and such.

As I matured into early midlife, the explosive properties of rockets came to my attention and interest. Most of my high school years were spent building things that could be detonated, launched, or in some fashion brought to life with fire. This somewhat expensive hobby did allow me to build some pretty cool multi-stage munitions. The most upscale device was a stainless steel rocket chamber from General Dynamics; generating about 8,000 pounds of thrust with a mixture of powdered aluminum and sulfur as fuel. This may have driven my mom to drinking. I don’t recall exactly how a pre-adolescent child came into possession of such a device. Life was simpler back then.

Perhaps the most cost-effective engineering project I engaged in was the construction of a UFO. Two sticks of balsa wood, a dry cleaners plastic bag, birthday candles, and matches allowed me to get airborne a magnificent vessel, almost like a miniature dirigible. I could not believe I had effectively defied gravity at so little cost. Ground-based tracking with my telescopes and binoculars followed this aerial wonder for about four miles across a Los Angeles suburb before the envelope made of flammable plastic caught fire and rained down - someplace. ‘Someplace’ was mostly expensive houses with cedar shingle roofs. I never heard sirens so figured my heavenly fire had safely landed in one of the many swimming pools. I remembered to breathe again and decided forthwith to leave aeronautical engineering to others in the future. LA has enough challenges with wildfires.

In middle age my interest in combustible aspects of the universe became a good bit more passive and decidedly safer for others in the community. I adopted an observer status and gave up the hands-on engineering.

Each year during the summer people who actually know what they are doing gather from many nations at English Bay in Vancouver, British Columbia to demonstrate that they know what they are doing with fire. The International Fireworks Celebration of Light competition is an amazing pyro-musical demonstration of the magic that comes about when people who are experts apply really good science to their craft. For four days each summer about 1.4 million people show up at English Bay to experience this amazing fireworks event, synchronized to music broadcast across the city via simulcast. As stunning as the shimming aerial displays over the water are, even more so is the transformation of a large city into a giant community where everyone is out, basking in revelry and, greeting one another, sharing a peak life experience. A profound sense of flow washed over the crowds with goodwill. I was carried along in child-like bliss.

Friday night a group of us had the All-American experience of baseball, hot dogs, and good laughs. Fortunately, pyrotechnics has caught on and we now have many practitioners closer to home. At the end of the game we were treated to an aerial display that transported me back to the magic of English Bay. Quite to my surprise, there was an amazing sense of community and camaraderie that developed among the five thousand fans and stadium staff as we delighted in the nocturnal illuminations above us. For one that recently had emergency eye surgery to stave off blindness, being able to enjoy brilliant fireworks with good friends is a really big deal. Absorbing those brilliant colors and sharing joy with people who were strangers a mere two hours earlier was even better than looking through those divider tabs in childhood.

Saturday night I took a new friend for a sunset canoe paddle on a nearby lake. Actually, sunset was long done by the time we got on the water and our slightly-hurried paddle was completed in the dark. The upside of this was a harvest moon and a mostly dark sky - suited to fireworks. While returning to town on the state highway we noticed the work of a pyrologist being launched into the sky. Like moths to light, we chased down the source and found ourselves in a neighborhood where people who use sunscreen don’t go in daylight, less at night. Somehow, the magic of fireworks made it seem ok to be in this place that normally would not welcome us. We even pulled off to watch the transmutation of the harvest moon into an ascendant platinum orb. Alas, a state sheriff pulled over and ran my tag number through his computer, mystified as to how I could be where I was unless I was up to something sinister. We moved on, still seeing brilliant stars and moons. My tag must have come up clean. After following me closely several miles, he went on to sniff out other misdeeds. I was spared the blue lights.

Sunday night our town had its annual Labor Day celebration. A couple of phone calls in the afternoon resulted in a group of 14 assembled for dinner in the park. We set up our little encampment about 10 feet from the stage where a full symphony and a gifted Celtic band plied us with a couple of hours of epic dinner music. We dined on Grape Ambrosia, chicken salad, hot smoked cheddar macaroni, chicken tender deli sandwiches, hot boneless chicken breasts, chicken quesadillas, chilled fruits, and cakes. It was a bad day for the chickens. About 8,000 people sitting directly behind us gave a profound sense of enclosure and connection to our ad hoc culinary community. As I was collecting my portable polystyrene ware in a bag to take home, the Zambelli family lit up the sky with their pyrotechnic wizardry. There was instantaneous consensus of attention and every one of us adults reverted to the magic of childhood engineering. The magic of fire, explosives, detonators, and such washed up through fifty years into my present. No one was seeing black or white. We were just one big happy family enjoying life together.

Get on the phone and share it with someone. They need you.

Community in the Time-Space Continuum 9-6-9

Fluor Stadium, South Carolina

After having used up several passports, traversing the Panama Canal eight times, visiting fifty countries, and exploring and climbing on most of the things NASA ever built in Florida, Alabama, or Texas, I figured I had a reasonable working knowledge of the universe and especially those parts of it in my own solar system. Nyet! I have just now discovered an incredible region of the universe that I seem to be the last to know about.

Astrophysicists have long speculated that nothing can go faster than the speed of light or about 186,282 miles per second. The theorems of quantum mechanics suggest this will never be exceeded because matter would actually return whence it came before it left, if it were travelling faster than light speed. This is a strange world in which it is difficult to wrap ones’ intuition around the idea of arriving before one leaves. Observational data indicates that strange galaxies called blazars are detonating and spitting out planet sized blobs at 99.9% of the speed of light. Other studies show cosmic particles slamming into earth at almost the speed of light - 99.999999999999999999999999999% but not 100%. There is some fast moving stuff out there but it has it limits.

Imagine a universe in which the fastest moving object travels at a rather paltry 0.028 miles per second. Scientists report that the laws of physics and biomechanics insure this to be a fairly confident limit on maximum particle velocity. Exceeding this theoretical limit can be expected to cause a structural failure. Observational data in 1974 reported the highest particle velocity ever seen - 100.9 MPH. The white particle was ejected from the right hand of Ryan Nolan, the celebrated fastball pitcher in the major leagues. No one has ever been officially reported to throw a baseball faster.

On the centerfield fence at Fluor Stadium is the splendid admonition, “Enjoy Life at the Speed of Baseball.” How grand to be a visitor to a universe where things happen slowly and with grace. On some hearsay from another traveler, I invited a group to journey with me to this farm club stadium about twenty five miles distant for a Friday evening of baseball, hot dogs, peanuts; and fireworks; an experience of quintessential Americana. I only learned of the existence of this stadium and ball team two weeks ago.

I was astounded with what we found here. We arrived at the stadium in late afternoon as the sun was beginning its descent in the cerulean sky. A most hospitable young man at the gate to the ball park offered to take our van and park it across the street for us - at no cost for the valet service or parking. We walked a mere fifty feet to the box office and acquired tickets from a most helpful and happy attendant for a meager $6. There seemed to be some kind of very pleasant economic anomaly operating in this universe. I was on the edge of fiscal elation.

Entering into the stadium I took a double take. Was the second law of thermodynamics in suspension? The second law says it is natural for stuff in the universe to get dirty, disordered, random, and pretty unkempt. I was stunned with how absolutely pristine and attractive everything about this stadium and its environs are. The rim of the cerulean sky was now taking on aureate hues and the shadows of the stadium were stretching across the meticulously raked terra cotta soil of the infield. The emerald realm of the outfield looked like a putting green at Pebble Beach - absolutely perfect. The facility is so perfectly maintained and clean; I asked if it was new. I was told white particles had been getting ejected here by pitchers for five years.

We decided our little team needed refueling and again we found staff in the concessions amazingly friendly and purveyors of really good food at very fair prices. I began to wonder if the minor leagues were anteing up and sending personnel to Disney’s guest relations training. The generosity and hospitality of the staff was eclipsing anything I had experienced elsewhere.

Before the game I was standing behind home plate when an usher came up to me and was pleasantly chatty. I proclaimed to her that I found the stadium to be extraordinary and really user-friendly. She then said “I am about to make it more user friendly. Where are your seats?” I pointed out the red bleachers at the far end of the first base line. She said “Would you like to sit here behind the plate? I would be glad to bring you three cushioned chairs for you and your friends?” From a shock-induced fugue I said that would be really grand. Jenny disappeared into an unknown region and several minutes later appeared with three really fine chairs. I was instantly reminded of the curator at the Hermitage in St Petersburg who brought Henri Nouwen a red velvet chair so he could spend hours sitting in front of Rembrandt’s epic painting “Return of the Prodigal Son.” When Jenny returned with those chairs I felt like the returning son who had a robe wrapped around him, a signet ring placed on his finger, and sandals put on his feet.

In a place where the fastest thing goes only .028 miles per second, people seem to find time to be nice to each other, really really nice to each other, offering hospitality and community. Throughout the ballgame Jenny provided us with a companionable chattiness, commenting on the game, taking care of our concession-generated solid waste, being attentive in a way my own mother was clueless about. A full moon arose in the indigo sky over the outfield wall. I found myself having a rather splendid peak life experience. Everything was exactly right in this universe. The general theory of community building and hospitality was quite in force. At the end of this game we received sincere sustained hugs from Jenny, an usher in a baseball stadium who sees her job as a calling, as an opportunity to make people feel like special guests. I cannot imagine not returning to experience this splendid graciousness in the near future.

As I waited for the happy animated jockey to go for the van after the game, I wondered about this oasis of hospitality and wholesomeness that has bloomed in what was once a ghetto. Are there things I can do back in my own world to make people feel like I have time for them? To make them feel welcome and included? For starters I can start living my life at the speed of baseball instead of the speed of light. And then invite someone to the ballgame.

Sprouting Seeds of Community 9-4-9

Cater’s Lake, Anderson, South Carolina

The first hints of autumn crispness were in the air at sunrise, providing a renewed enthusiasm for life. A cerulean sky filled with mottled tuffs of cotton candy provided a fine easel for the emerging sunrise. Even the basset hound on Fenwall Road was liberated from his August torpor and showed more enthusiasm in his sonorous bark as I passed by.

The men on the roof I saw the past several days were most enthusiastic in their greetings to me. Today we even exchanged words - good words. I was now a ‘regular’ in their lives, riding by their job site each day, as they worked at their craft. They were nearly finished with their job and were happy with the fine autumnal morning and a project well done. A desultory house with its moldy stained roof was now fresh and renewed. Their little ascendant community had included me this week as I rode.

Could it be? Were those two women back in the park again with their folding chairs set up in a safe space between their two cars? Yes! Would I get a bit more of a greeting this time? Would they realize I really wanted their park to feel friendly and safe? For several days I have ‘worked’ at conveying this message. Today I took a chance and offered a forthright salutation, not a skittish tentative one like I have done previously. Today one of these women was actually enthusiastic and responded with a fine smile and greeting. Her friend ventured forth with a tentative smile of her own and even a verbal response with some animation. I am on a roll now.

I could not have been thirty feet from their little safe haven when I came upon a woman and her mother walking their fine white Highland Terriers. Both of these women erupted into vociferous greeting. One immediately congratulated me on my good fortune. Yesterday between bids, the women in her bridge club had been talking about my winning a free rip around the world. I guess it is not everyday someone in this small town wins the world. They were elated for me. Their enthusiasm was a grand generous gift.

Lucy lost her elegant and very cultured father some years ago. Lucy’s mother lost as fine a husband as a woman could ever hope to find. Standing there with their terriers, they reminded me of a splendid encounter I had years ago with this gentleman, a very short time before he died. This dear man had once shared a hospitality and gracious community with me in the park that has not faded from my memory over the years. Arthur certainly would have done very well in the state department as a diplomatic officer.

That encounter, that seed of community, was so powerful for me; it compelled me to write an essay about it that has circulated locally. I am told that essay about Arthur was most helpful to his family when the time came to let him go to the next life. Today they spoke of what became an unwitting eulogy I had written to this man so dear in their lives. It was a most affirming speck of community for me to have today in the park at sunrise. At least twice I have had, as GK Chesterton would have said, flecks of paradise wash up on the shores of my life through this family. Both times in the park.

Most importantly, two women, complete strangers, sitting in their folding chairs in their little sanctuary between their cars, were within ear shot. They were able to see us share a sacred space of community; celebrate our good fortunes, even reminisce about people once so profoundly important in our lives. Perhaps these strangers will get the all important message that true safety comes from community and not from their glass and steel get-away vehicles. I almost feel like bringing flowers on my next ride. I might actually get away with it.

In my front garden is a stand of hundreds of black eyed Susan’s. These happy bright yellow flowers create a most welcoming, almost whimsical ambience. Years ago I bought exactly two of these plants, not knowing they spawn thousands of seeds that so easily germinate and sprout the following year. These have to be the ultimate, low maintenance high yield perennials in existence, even better than dandelion. For no additional investment I have hundreds of plants, each full of seeds containing a universe of spectral delights.

It occurs to me that seeds of community are much like those in my yard. Even the smallest amount of effort can result in colorful flecks of paradise washing up on the shores of our souls, year after year. We know we have a good crop when we see these colorful blooms washing up in the souls of those around us, even those sitting in folding metal chairs.

Now I just need to figure out how to market these seeds. Their yield is phenomenal and the return on investment spectacular. One day the whole world can be a garden.

Celebrations - Sharing Community a Year at a Time 9-4-9

Anderson, South Carolina

I had just entered the Y, intent on connecting with a new found friend for lunch in the park. We had agreed to meet at the Y, halfway between our houses; the place where we recently ceased being unknown strangers. Barely into the facility, I encountered a dozen septuagenarians and octogenarians gathered around a table engaged in happy animated conversation. Before I could offer anything other than a generic greeting addressed to the group at large, a man got up and offered me a seat and a platinum-haired woman on the other side of the crowded table offered me a fragrant chunk of moist chocolate birthday cake.

Happily, I took my place, wanting to be nowhere else in the world. I had just been inducted into something truly sacred. For one who has just been given free access to the entire world, not wanting to be anywhere else is a big deal when I say so. I have the vast good fortune of being able to drive to the airport and make a journey anywhere I want. Here a mere couple of miles from my house I was given the elixir that makes life succulent and fragrant. As good as a well made chocolate cake tastes, it does not compare to the taste of a deep generous smile and the hand of friendship. Perhaps one of the most intensely pleasurable feelings a person can have is the sense of being wanted and included by a group of happy beings one respects; and I did not have to get a visa to immigrate.

For nearly an hour I sat with this group enjoying the hospitality of people who have learned what really matters in life. Jack just turned eighty-eight and was in the Y in vibrant good health eating birthday cake after having completed a strenuous workout. Along the way he has learned to celebrate many of the things that make life work - a happy marriage to a truly excellent woman, exercise, faith, accepting with serenity those things he cannot change, changing the ones he can, and moving forward. Bits of conversation about medical challenges are almost inevitable with the elderly. Jack has had challenges thrown at him, things that he could not change. He did have the freedom to choose his responses. I cannot think of a higher measure of success than to make it to august old age with a cloud of loving people celebrating one’s birthday as one cools down from hard exercise. Jack chose the right responses and is a better person for his choices. When lemons came his way he added sugar and shared the lemonade with the rest of us. Today his wife shared chocolate with us.

My ex-stranger, Rebecca, appeared in our midst, and soon found herself welcomed into the happy crowd. As ex-officio youngsters needing another twenty years before we can become official members, we were powerfully informed that getting old can be a blast - a major celebration, every day. As the crescendo of merriment diminished to a pianissimo, the players began quietly dispersing to assorted eating establishments for lunch. My ex-stranger, who is already finishing my sentences for me, joined me on a journey to the city park near my house where we worked at becoming less strangers and making the park a safe friendly place.
For nearly three hours we sat under a cerulean canopy with high cirrus clouds at an old green picnic table next to a large pond and fed my stash of has-been old crescent rolls and bread fragments to a large congregation of Canada Geese, regular geese, standard white ducks, and other irregular and regular birds that had a penchant for the stale in life. An admixture of assorted turtles bought into our collection of delectable peels, cores, and too-green fruit fragments. For certain none of our PBJ on fifteen grain bread or cold milk ended up in birds or turtles. We just have to be selfish and set boundaries about some things in life.

Against the backdrop of this gentle feeding frenzy, with a large cloud of witnesses, we proclaimed that being ex-strangers is a really cool thing to become, learning that each person we discover in life contains a treasury of experience, wisdom, thoughts, dreams, hopes, and even traumas.

A couple of weeks ago while attending a funeral I met a stranger in the breakfast room of a hotel south of Pittsburgh. We fell into very animated conversation about all sorts of things. It seemed that we were on the threshold of becoming ex-strangers, so much so that I offered her the world. At the time I was actively seeking God’s choice for someone to share in a grand prize from an airline that provides for air travel for two people for thirty days anywhere in the world. I desperately wanted to pay-it-forward, to give something of extreme value to a stranger who needed to be given the world. I really felt this fellow diner was the right one out of millions of possibilities. I still do weeks later. Yet, my phone calls and e-mails were never answered. Her fear kept her from becoming an ex-stranger and she walked away from the world. Risk means taking the boat out of the harbor and getting out of sight of land. It is the only way to get anywhere. Next time you encounter a stranger, pay attention; he might offer you cake, even the world.

Celebrate community and life, but it works better if you are not a stranger.

The Commerce of Community 9-3-9

Highway 81, Anderson, South Carolina

This morning I was out driving after my ‘usual’ bike ride, my destination being one of the ubiquitous neighborhood pharmacies that have suddenly sprung up over night; like mushrooms in a damp climate. These pharmacies are in continual price wars to garner market share, with food and cleaning supplies often heavily discounted. Because of a major craving for cold cereal I was on a mission to take advantage of the two for one deal at one of these pharmacies for Kellogg’s raisin bran. Alas, it was the only cereal out of stock. Apparently it is used as medication - acting as a mild laxative.

A most helpful stocker was using her infra-red wireless data capture device to inventory the cereals. With an amazingly radiant smile, she offered to write me a rain check, sensing my raisin deficiency. She went in back and several minutes later emerged with a filled out coupon. It seemed important to her to have done this. I suddenly realized the great prize was not cheap raisin bran; rather it was the opportunity to experience a fleck of community that happens when someone does her job really well in providing service to a patron. I knew I would use that rain check, even if I found generic cereal twenty three cents cheaper somewhere else; feeling a need to invest in our speck of temporary community.

For many years there has been a ‘funny’ man walking up and down the highway and the nearby crossroads. ‘Funny’ in that he walks countless miles with a peculiar strut; wears an unusual little hat and blackout glasses and always seems overdressed for the climate. I and others who see him have always figured something was not quite right about him. But isn’t that true of all of us? As it is, we tend to stay away from those who are even remotely a bit different than ourselves - xenophobic to the max.

As I left the pharmacy with my rain check for cereal, I saw this man walking along the pedestrian-toxic highway. While driving about forty miles per hour I found myself trying to catch his eye. For a fraction of a second, our eyes locked despite those dark glasses. I raised my index finger from the steering wheel to acknowledge him. Amazingly, he noticed this and raised his, surprised and uncertain if I was really greeting him. Suddenly, we were two acquainted people who recognized each others’ being. Suddenly he is no longer this funny little man on the street but a fellow being who reflected gratitude at being seen, visible and significant; not just a curiosity slinking along the verges of the highway. It cost me nothing to raise my finger to a strange stranger on the road and it cost nothing for an inventory clerk to be helpful. Community usually costs nothing to build.

There are about one hundred people on the east coast of India who have a major deficiency of all things material and relational in their life. Indian society at large has declared these people to be disposable funny little men; orphaned, destitute, uneducated, and infected and disfigured with leprosy. Every month I go down the funny man’s highway to the Western Union in the local grocery, just beyond the pharmacy, and wire enough money to allow these one hundred disenfranchised beings to eat for the next month and buy a few other things such as fabric to make clothing; to even maintain a bit of dignity. I just raise my index finger to these people through the agency of Western Union. Images sent to me regularly by the headmaster of the facility suggest it is really possible to have a form of community and solidarity with these people that is very substantial, even at such a great distance. Next year it is my goal to cross twelve time zones and sit on the floor and eat rice with them, out of stainless steel bowls with my hands, just as they do.

The funny highway man here is like many in India, lonely in a crowd, excluded from the mainstream, shunned, because of some perceived short coming or defect. So many of us in the most affluent land in the world have our own personal, often invisible deficiencies. All of the consumer gadgets, boy toys, and diamonds do not touch the profound need we have to be connected and belong to each other. Of themselves, they are but solid waste in a secular consumer culture.

On Monday I was in the YMCA on one of the rowing machines on the fitness floor. I fell into a bit of conversation with a total stranger. Thirty e-mails, several phone calls, and a couple of meals later, there are two fewer strangers on the planet. We have a community of two that has read all the same books, likes the same movies, ad infinitum. The YMCA is a truly safe place to experience friendship and to nurture seeds of friendship so I went out on a limb and offered my friend a lunch special - via e-mail. She could have both chunks of flounder. I would get both piles of shrimp and a cheap date. She took the bait and was quite happy with the arrangement as she does not eat shrimp. The $5.34 investment (including tax and tip) has paid off spectacularly. So often experiences of community might last a very short time; even a single second, as with the funny man. This investment has yielded a community experience lasting five days now.

In little more than a week I will climb up into the cerulean sky to experience the world as a gift from … the world. For a month the world is mine courtesy of British Airways which decided I needed to experience the world their way. Rebecca will gas up her RV and again take her vision quest to the road. She is an intrepid soul and lives in an RV and explores the world solo. We may never cross paths again but we have made a little proof, to ourselves at least, that small investments can pay off big time, even in the short term.

Next time you encounter a stranger - be really nice. And keep five bucks in your pocket. You might be talking to your best friend.

Nurturing Nascent Seeds of Community 9-2-9

Anderson, South Carolina

One of the grandest things about Europe is the presence of safe well utilized city parks. These grand emerald oases create a comfortable margin of livability in often very densely populated cities. Young mothers with their strollers, young lovers on their blankets, retiring types with their good books, dog owners flicking Frisbees to their energetic charges; I am reminded of Chicago’s hit song “Saturday in the Park”. Glorious places for spontaneous flecks of community to coalesce.

Saturday in the park
I think it was the fourth of July
People dancing, people laughing
A man selling ice cream
Singing Italian songs
Can you dig it (yes, I can)
And I’ve been waiting such a long time
For Saturday

Saturday in the park
You’d think it was the fourth of July
People talking, really smiling
A man playing guitar
Singing for us all
Will you help him change the world
Can you dig it (yes, I can)
And I’ve been waiting such a long time
For today

Alas, Americans now tend to be afraid of their parks for assorted reasons. So often I have seen large parks in metro areas quite devoid of people, even on warm spring days with newly emergent blooms everywhere. Even here in small town rural America I most often find the pleasant little parks quite empty of people.

As the song says, “I’ve been waiting such a long time for today”. While riding my bike through the park the past several mornings I have noticed a curious phenomenon - curious because of it being so unusual here. At 7 AM two days ago a woman drove up to the edge of the park, set up a folding chair by her car and was engrossed in a book. She did not want to acknowledge the reality of my presence. Presumably, rapists often show up on road racing bikes wearing helmets and offering happy greetings. Yesterday she was there again in her chair with the same book. Another car was present and its driver had set up a chair and was also reading a book. I received a single tentative syllable in response to my greeting. Today the first woman actually acknowledged me by looking up for a second and giving me a two syllable response. It seems like a seed of community was planted. Tomorrow I will make sure to pass through at the right time to see if this seed might actually have germinated overnight - perhaps yielding a tentative smile; I am, after all, harmless.

While working in a large hospital many years ago, one of the house keepers was assigned to clean my suite of offices. When I first met her, the only response I could elicit from Martha was silence and special attention to the avoidance of eye contact. I was white. She was African American. I’d been to medical school. She made eighth grade. It was the American South. This presented a challenge to me. This social boundary, class sensitivity, racial isolation, caste kind of rubbish was going to be cleared away from the spaces we shared at the hospital.

Over the months this sullen impasse was broken, not by eloquent words or condescending attempts at creating economic or racial equity. I simply got my butt out of my office chair instantly when she came into my room and moved my chair so she could vacuum the carpet; having made sure there were no paperclips or other administrative solid wastes on the floor to clog her vacuum. I collected my trash cans and emptied them into her cart. I made sure the bathroom was already clean before Martha ever got to it.

Over the next couple of years we moved from one syllable grunts to fluent conversation that went far beyond her custodial responsibilities. She shared freely about the challenges of raising two generations in her house as a single mother working as a hospital housekeeper. We commiserated about employment security when the hospital entered into merger talks. Over the years I made sure to include Martha in my distribution of Christmas gifts to co-workers.

I knew the rubbish had been successfully cleared out of our space when my brother came from Idaho for a visit. I was invited to bring him to Martha’s house where she had prepared a multi-cheese macaroni pie for my brother. I wanted him to have a taste of southern hospitality. He got it. We had two spoons in the car and that large dish was emptied before we ever made it home. An important thread had been woven into the fabric of community.

Time and nurture allowed single mumbled grunts to germinate and grow into a mutually respecting and validating friendship that created an island of community in a facility where a strong culture of distrust was often evident. A culture of distrust exists in the little park a mile from my house. I want those women to feel safe in their park, not having to keep one eye in the back of their head, watching for the enemy to make a stealth attack via ten-speed bike. Perhaps these women can come to know that the universe is a fundamentally friendly place. Perhaps tomorrow I will be able to share a complete sentence with them - but in their time.

One day I just might find myself in a vibrant park where young mothers with their strollers, young lovers on their blankets, retiring types with their good books, and dog owners flicking Frisbees to their energetic charges are enjoying community. Every time I offer a kind word I increase the likelihood of those seeds of community sprouting and bringing forth a sweet fragrance; dispelling the stench of fear and mistrust.

Reach out and touch someone. You don’t need a phone.

Emerging Images of Community 9-1-9

Emerging Images of Community
Anderson, South Carolina

In an increasingly over-populated world where isolation, loneliness, and hostility escalate pursuant to ever intensifying competition for scarcer natural resources, financial capital, food, shelter, and even clean water, the vision of safe inclusive community for all is difficult to keep in focus. Yet, seeds of it are all around us. With a bit of nurture they will sprout and bloom with life-giving hospitality.

I had just begun my morning bike ride when I came upon the city refuse collectors with their tractor and several trailers used to pick up the large detritus of consumer society that does not fit into standard trash cans. They were blocking the road and it was necessary for me to wait for perhaps forty-five seconds before continuing my ride. Suddenly, these five men were a micro-community for me. They were efficiently and safely cleaning up my neighborhood. Images came to mind of the nearly naked garbage scavengers who live in the Kafkaesque landscape of the trash colonies outside Mexico City and Cairo. Seeing generations of families skitter across the surfaces of these fetid mountains, just to stay alive, is perhaps one of the most sobering of experiences one can have. Suddenly the men before me and the men in Cairo and Mexico City were one and the same. I greeted them and in the space of ten seconds we were brothers in community. I appreciated them doing their work and they appreciated the fact that they were not perceived of as nearly invisible nuisances in my life. I had a choice of offering the hospitality of community or the hostility of inconvenience. Perhaps their brothers overseas caught the tiniest whiff of a cooling breeze.

A short distance further on I encountered an older woman with her two dogs. She has always had a vivacious greeting for me, when I ride through her neighborhood. Curiously, one of her dogs rides in a baby carriage. One day recently a quip on my part yielded the information that this dog rides in the carriage because of incapacitating arthritis. It has often been said that civility can be measured by how people care for their animals. Media outlets here in the South often report episodes of large scale animal abuse and neglect. By this measure we are doomed. Fortunately for me, I saw many cases today of animals being well cared for and loved. A woman taking her dog for a morning ride and offering a virtual stranger happy greeting tells me a seed of community is at hand. We were sharing the exact same experience that many dog owners and their charges are enjoying in the emerald oasis of Hyde Park in London.

A couple of men were unloading boxes of plumbing supplies from their truck. Suddenly, there was this sense of esprit de corps. Diverse people were helping others prepare for their day. Haulers were cleaning the neighborhood. Others were getting their pets sorted out for the day. These plumbers were repairing toilets; working ones being most helpful to a good start to the day. Images came to mind of assorted trades people and purveyors in their small trucks unloading their supplies in the narrow medieval streets of the thousand year old Gamla Stan. Here in South Carolina we are doing exactly the same thing as those living in the Gamla Stan - embracing the magic of an ordinary day of life, in community.

Workers were unloading supplies at a house from a contractor’s truck with the slogan “creating custom environments and enduring relationships” painted on it. Tracy Kidder in his masterfully written House, describes the great challenges and rewards that come from a temporary community of architect, contractor, trades people, and artisans coming together to build a sacred space called home. These men before me today were doing the same thing - working in a temporary community to create a sacred space. Suddenly I was in Auroville India where a grand vision of community has brought together thousands from dozens of countries to build a new reality of cooperation. Just today I have received grand words of hospitality from several in that distant yet present community.

Some miles further down the road I came upon a runner in the middle of the road. We have no sidewalks here. A bright greeting from him confirmed him to be a fellow I often see in the locker room at the YMCA and on the fitness floor. Suddenly we were about the same thing, maintaining the precious gift of physical health and well being. This great treasure of health allowed us to have micro-community for three seconds, as we passed. My sense of community with the YMCA strengthened a bit in that moment. I thought of the happy times I had in the YMCA in Victoria, British Columbia.

Just seconds later I attempted to cross a fairly busy main road. A substantial number of cars travelling in both directions forced me to wait perhaps twenty seconds. Alas, the hospitality of community I had been basking in was burned off by the hostility of personal inconvenience. Thirty-five minutes earlier I freely gave forty-five seconds to the collectors. Now I was incenses at being asked of twenty seconds. Did a life-long habit of individualism suddenly rear its ugly head? Perhaps a well-oiled psychological trigger fired. Hospitality thrives in community. Hostility thrives in the soil of selfish individualism. Perhaps a young mother was on her way to the hospital four blocks away to say farewell to a dying husband. A young man in a truck might have been on his way to repair a tractor in my neighbor that had been collecting our solid waste. Ad infinitum.

Two miles beyond that road about six men were replacing a roof. They initiated greeting with me as I rode past. Suddenly I was back on the roof of Habitat Houses air nailing shingles. The heat of hostility cooled off. I would have enjoyed being up there working with those guys - until it got hot again.

In a mere eleven miles and fifty minutes I have been back to Mexico City, Cairo, Hyde Park, the Gamla Stan, Victoria, India, and the hood. Perhaps I might even have learned something along the way - hospitality instead of hostility. Community is a choice I get to make every moment.

Think I will go home and eat breakfast.

People Who Need People 8-29-9

Anderson, South Carolina

In 1964 a song written by Jule Styne and Bob Merrill, ultimately included in the Broadway musical “Funny Girl”, proclaimed that “people, people who need people are the luckiest people in the world.” Are they? The haunting version of this song I listened to repeatedly reached deep into a place in my soul that still itches, sometimes to a tormenting degree. For those of us who never had a father and had only a custodial mother who’s emotional presence was stolen from us by the ravages of drug and alcoholic addiction, our relational neediness was often unchecked and unbounded. We launched ourselves on a search for the Holy Grail that contains the elixir that promises self-confidence, esteem, purpose, and a sense of belonging; things in short supply for those of us who aren’t sure of where we came from.

The need for children to receive copious amounts of emotional attentiveness from their primary caregivers has been the substance of uncounted academic articles, monographs, and discussions. Experts intrigued with the developmental challenges of those of us not growing up in nice happy houses shaded by maple trees have filled many hours of airtime on afternoon talk shows. Psycho-pathology sells lots of soap. Perhaps there is a lot of identification going on here.

As I wander around our grand world, it is so easy to believe that somewhere I am going to find the perfect salve to stop the torment of my affective itch. Perhaps up one of those intriguing narrow medieval staircases in Tallinn I will find a sense of place and belonging a thousand years old. Perhaps a great sage living on the expansive steppes of Borodin’s Asia will give me a life changing ah ha moment that turbo-charges me with a sense of purpose and single-mindedness. New Zealand may offer the grand hospitality and sense of safety that can only be found in an unsullied paradise.

A recent experience suggests to me that my need for people is still often unbounded and in need of further attention. We are not talking about the open easy need of people that causes us to delight in gatherings of happy people, holding people with an easy open hand; the magic of true romance that gives inspiration to a million song writers; rather, the kind of need that has us leaving finger prints on the necks of those who innocently offer us a cup of cold water.

I recently returned from a retreat center in another state where I thought I had found everything that couldn’t be found in Tallinn, Asia, and New Zealand. When one comes off the torrid desert for a long-overdue draught of cold water, one is not necessarily minding one’s table manners; instead grabbing for the cup with desperation, even spilling some of the precious drops into the parched sands under our burned soles. It seems I once again grabbed for that cup with too much vigor and the bearer has said - no more.

Years ago I was in England in a very dark space as a result of a disruption of an important relationship. A dear friend on the continent offered me his cup of spacious hospitality and friendship. I couldn’t get on the next plane fast enough. My spirits ascended and I had one of the most glorious months possible. I was living in the fine happy house with shade provided by maple trees. Alas, I spilled the water repeatedly during that month and our friendship has never been the same since. Even when things are carefully glued back together, fine hairline cracks are still evident.

Henri Nouwen entered the darkest season in his life, becoming almost suicidal, because he had severely damaged an important relationship with his neediness. As Nouwen found out and I am finding out, people do not like fingerprints left on their necks. These dear friends, Nouwen’s and mine, had to withdraw to protect themselves from being washed away by our sea of neediness.

Paradoxically, when we no longer desperately need people, we are then free to need them as the song writers Styne and Merrill intended. We are no longer cut off emotionally from others and are free to embrace them - easily. As I progress in learning to be comfortable in my own skin and finding my own good company, I can then with grace receive your hospitality … with hospitality instead of hostility driven by unfulfilled neediness. As I progress from loneliness to a comfortable solitude and from frenzied hostility to easy hospitality, I can receive your cup of cold water without spilling it on both of us … and remember to thank you for it.

Jesus told the story of ten men who received an immensely valuable life changing gift - healing from a disease that made the stigma of AIDS seem almost trivial. Ten lepers were healed and only one of them could be bothered to stop and offer thanks for this incredible pardon from an inevitable life of social ostracism and progressive disability ending in a lonely death in the wilderness. Jesus wondered out loud about the nine who simply took the goods and ran. It would seem that gratitude didn’t happen in 90% of the cases.

Compelling as miraculous physical healing is, even more significant is the healing of our spirits that come from finding refuge and completion in the sanctuary of the divine. I recall once going into the cool interior of a beautiful church on a torrid summer day after being in the unrelenting heat of August for hours. The relief and serenity that flooded over me was life-giving. Gratitude for His sanctuary was next for me. As I find my beginning and end in the Alpha and Omega of my Creator, I can actually expect my table manners to improve, and I will be less likely to spill on the table cloth. I might even get invited back.

“And He who sits on the throne said, ‘Behold, I am making all things new.’ And He said, ‘Write for these words are faithful and true.’ And He said to me, ‘It is done. I am the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the one who thirsts from the spring of the water of life at no cost.’”