Amid the Flood of Mortal Ills

the pandemic seems to go on forever.  we live with the restrictions is has imposed on us and long for a return to what life was like before it struck.  we tire of wearing masks every time we go out.  we long to be able to shake hands, hug, and to sit and stand near others, but we know that we endanger ourselves and them if our personal contact is too close.  we want to be able to sing in choirs and in our church services, to attend concerts, to take part in group activities, but we know all those pursuits are dangerous.  we wish we could travel, going away to see loved ones or to see sights we've never visited before, but we are fearful that we might be a party to spreading the virus or might become infected.

we watch as our leaders fail us, refusing to take the tough actions that would slow the spread of the disease.  we fear for the safety of school employees and students as schools reopen for in-person learning despite the warnings that this will cause the virus to infect staff and children unnecessarily.  we see how our health care facilities and those who staff them are overwhelmed and wonder what will happen when they must deal with both influenza and covid-19 at the same time.  we weep for those who are jobless, who cannot pay their bills, who are being forced out of their homes, and who cannot feed themselves and their loved ones, as some in the government block efforts to assist them in the belief that providing financial assistance will make workers lazy.  we shake our heads in disgust and amazement as the advice of experts is ignored or contradicted by some in power to promote their own re-election and financial gain.

it seems that this whole affair has been bungled from the start.  our leaders refused to take the hard actions required at the beginning and rushed to end the meager steps that had been taken.  we've dithered as the virus became rampant and, even when we knew that we needed to take drastic actions, we lacked the national leadership that was necessary.  now we find ourselves in circumstances as dire as they were at the start of the virus's spread.  it is as if nothing was ever done and the virus was allowed to infect millions with little effort to stop it.

there is not much we can do as individuals, other than take the precautions needed to keep ourselves safe.  we can hope that in november there will be a change in the national government that may bring about a nationwide effort to improve our situation and can work towards that end.  we can offer help to those who need it.  beyond that, we are at the mercy of the virus and those whom we've elected.

may we do what we can to make the best of the situation.  may we be filled with lovingkindness and compassion.  if we and our loved ones are free of the virus, may we be grateful that we have escaped so far.  beyond that, may we be grateful for all that we have.  may we share our bounty with those who are struggling.  shalom.

Each Loving Life A Psalm of Gratitude

my wife and i witnessed a conversation between a mother and her son a few days ago that has been on my mind ever since.  we are related to these two, and both are wonderful people of whom we are quite fond.  the son, who is just shy of fifty, lives in his parents' home.  he has suffered life-threatening accidents twice in his adult life, both the results of poor judgment on his part.  these injuries have left him with some physical and mental handicaps that make it difficult for him to hold a full-time job, so he is dependent on his parents for the necessities of life.  though his parents have three extra bedrooms in their home, he has chosen to live in their basement lawn mower garage because he wants to have an indoor cat.  his father is allergic to cats, so they cannot have a cat in the house.

his mother worries about him constantly.  it is a source of great aggravation to her that he refuses to keep his garage/bedroom clean and tidy.  when it is cleaned, it is she who must do it.  as we were visiting with them, she made a comment about the state of his living quarters, and he took offense that she would bring the matter up in front of us.  his mother usually changes the subject when he takes umbrage at what she is saying, but this time she reminded him that he is living in her house and therefore should conform to her expectations about how he keeps his room.  my wife and i were glad that she stuck to her position.  in her mid-seventies she should not have to be picking up and cleaning up after a man who is in his late forties.

as we talked about the conversation later, we both felt the same way.  if the son truly loves his mother and cares about her well being as much as she does about his, he would do the simple tasks she asks of him, knowing that in so doing he is relieving her of a burden that weighs on her.  at her age she should not have to climb up and down the stairs to his basement living quarters to take care of what he should be taking care of himself.  by relieving her of this worrisome task, he would be creating a healthier environment for himself and his cat and contributing to a more harmonious household for all three of them.

thinking about this reminded me that we all can ease the burdens of others by paying attention to the things that we do that cause them to suffer.  i know that each of us causes our own suffering, but as we live in society with others there is no need for us to continue with actions that bother others when stopping those actions would not harm us and might even help us, as is the case with our male relative who continues to act as if his mother is his maid.  so often, a simple act of kindness that costs us nothing makes a world of difference to another.

it is much the same with the mask-wearing controversy in our country.  even if one doesn't believe that wearing a mask when out in public prevents the spread of disease, it is a simple act to wear one, an act that costs us little, but wearing a mask may help another person to feel safer and more secure.  indeed, refusal to wear a mask ignores the possibility that we are protecting ourselves and others.

may we try to look at life through the eyes of others, seeking to understand things from their perspective.  may we not be so quick to judge or to insist on our own way.  may we learn to listen with compassion and may our actions be guided by love both for ourselves and for others.  shalom.

Everybody Get Together

the other day, i found an article from the washington post in apple news.   the article described the experience of a young man who had come to our town, spending several days here holding up a sign that said "black lives matter."  some of the time, he held the sign at the foot of a billboard near the southern border of our town.  the billboard advertised "whiteprideradio.com" and "altrighttv.com," and the words "for the family" with a picture of a white family beside a flaming cross, an obvious reference to the ku klux klan, appeared in the center.

i'm always disturbed by the sign when i pass it.  unfortunately, the area that includes the town in which i live has a reputation for racism of the most vile kind.  at the beginning of the 20th century, the black population of the town was terrorized by a mob of angry whites to the point that the black residents fled, never to return.  not far from our town and in the same county is a small hamlet, the remains of a zinc mining town, that is reputed to be the headquarters of one branch of the kkk.  just before you reach this town, there is a church that espouses white supremacy as essential to the christian religion, and the pastor of the church is said to be a high officer in the kkk.

it is not uncommon to see confederate flags being flown outside homes and even a few businesses here.  there used to be several other racist billboards outside town, but under pressure from some of the town leaders, those have been taken down.  apparently, the owner of the one remaining billboard, pictured in this article, cannot be persuaded to remove it.  the town has been struggling to erase the images of racism that have given it the reputation of being "America's most racist town."  among those championing the fight against the tradition of racism here are the leaders of the church to which i belong.  our church has a few black members, employs two black staff members, and has just called a black woman to be our pastor.

after reading the article and watching the accompanying video, it is quite evident that there is still much work to be done.  the verbal abuse the young man suffers at the hands of several people who drive past him hurling insults, some of which are quite threatening and vulgar, demonstrate the deep-seated prejudices that are slow to disappear.  one has hope that there is a generation of young people who reject this racist tradition, as a young woman comes up to the man and hands him a note that reads "ignore the haters.  you’re being peaceful.  what you’re doing is good."  in the days following the killing of george floyd two peaceful demonstrations in support of the black lives matter movement took place on the town square.  on the second day of the protests, a group of mostly young white men showed up waving confederate flags and heckling the protestors, using some of the same language that was directed against the young man in the article, but there was no physical violence directed at the blm demonstrators.

i don't know why this young man came here.  i know little about him, other than what appears in the article.  perhaps he was conducting an experiment to see if our town lives up to its reputation as a bastion of white supremacy.  perhaps he had other motives that were less idealistic.  whatever his reasons for being here with his sign, he didn't deserve the treatment he received.  attempts by some in the community to defend the town by impugning his integrity or questioning the authenticity of the video miss the point.  no one ought to be subjected to the insults hurled at him.  the way this man was abused proves the point of the blm movement: there are forces at work, even in small town america, that thrive on hatred directed at black people and their allies.  there is a deep-seated racism that infects our society that flows from the indefensible practice of enslaving other human beings, and it must be recognized for what it is and rooted out.  like an insidious infection, it grows inside us if we don't take steps to stop it, and  every white american, no matter how much we try to deny it, is infected by it to some degree or other.

may we see the kinship of us all, a kinship that is beyond superficial appearances, religion, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation.  may we love even those who are filled with hate, those who are difficult to love.  may we not believe that any of us are too good to harbor unreasonable thoughts of the "other-ness" of anyone or any group.  may we recognize our own prejudices and let them go along with the emotions that cause them in us.  shalom.

When You Worry You Make It Double

for several days now, we've had repairmen working at our home.  we discovered that an area around our garage doors had been attacked by termites, so we've been having the damaged wood removed, the area treated for termites, and new wood put back.  inside the house, we've been having some improvements made that we've been wanting to do since buying our home.  the men who have been doing the work on both jobs have been very agreeable, and they've done fine work, so we're quite pleased.  the inside work has been completed, and the work on the garage is almost finished.

despite the professionalism of the men we employed and their care to make certain that we are pleased with their work, it has been incredibly stressful for my wife and i.  whenever anything like this is going on, it seems as if the whole house is turned topsy-turvy, and to have both the garage and the house in disorder at the same time was almost more than we could handle.  we're both cleanliness and order freaks, and we were on edge the whole time the work was being done.  we spent the entire day after the work in the house was completed putting things back in order and cleaning every room in the house.  now that is done, we feel at ease once more.  in a few days, i'll be able to get the garage back in order and do some cleaning up out there, so all will be just as we want it to be, at least until the next time we need to have some home repairs or improvements done.

as i sit and think about how stressed we were, i wonder what it is that puts us on edge about a situation like this.  those doing the work couldn't have been more pleasant or more concerned with doing work that was just what we wanted.  the repairs and improvements were done well and left our home in much better shape than before.  i suppose that we were concerned that some aspect of the work might be subpar, leading to a potential confrontation with one of the workers, that there might be some dispute about the cost of the completed work, or that some unforeseen difficulties might arise that would make the work more difficult and more costly.  none of those things happened, so our stress and worry were completely unnecessary.  the root cause of our anxiety was that the orderliness of our home was disturbed for a protracted length of time.  as always, we were resistant to changes that disturbed the flow of our lives.  that, in addition to the changes mandated by the virus outbreak and our country's many mistakes in dealing with it, made us miserable.  i wonder, now that the home repairs are done for the time being, how we could better have dealt with the disturbances to our daily routine.

may we learn to accept that change is a part of life, that everything cannot always be just as we want it to be.  may we look to the results that beneficial changes bring, rather than the disruptions that are passing and transitory.  may we be grateful for those who are the agents of change that make our lives better.  may we accept that we are humans who feel stress and worry instead of feeling guilty for having those very human traits.  shalom.

She Has Her Grief and Care

it puzzles me that we often are most hurtful to those we love, to the members of our own families.  several days ago, a close relative of my wife called her.  my wife could tell her relative was angry when she began talking.  almost immediately in the conversation, this person began lashing out at my wife over a perceived slight.  as my wife tried to explain the circumstances, the relative kept interrupting, refusing to hear my wife.  i heard my wife say to her caller that she ought to just calm down so they could talk more rationally.  her request to let go of the anger was ignored.  at the end of the conversation, the relative told my wife that she would just call back another time when "they were both calmer," as if my wife had  initiated the anger.

soon after, my wife had occasion to visit with another close relative who reported getting a call from the same relative who was angry with my wife.  she, too, reported that this person was angry and "chewed her out," accusing her of having listened in on the earlier call to my wife, though she was not with my wife when the first call took place.  the two recipients of their common relative's tirades handled them very differently.  my wife had tried to explain why her relative's anger was unwarranted, while the second victim of her ire just listened until the angry caller had finished venting.  i'm not sure which approach was best--my wife let her disagreeable relation know that she wasn't going to be intimidated by her, while the patient listener left the impression that the abusive relative's anger was justified, but she at least got the anger out of her system for a brief period of time.

she reported that this caller went on to complain that no one ever called her, that no one suffered as she did, that her life was a miserable round of taking her ailing, elderly husband from one doctor's appointment to another.  both my wife and her patient relative bemoaned this woman's unhappiness and wished they could help her.  i pointed out that it was she who had to fix what was wrong in her life, that her suffering stemmed from her own refusal to let go of her victimhood.  she believes that her suffering stems from her treatment by an abusive father and first husband, from her abandonment by her only child though they have since reconciled, from her "crazy" neighbor, from her aging husband, from the failure of her relations to call or visit her, while in the end it is she who pushes others away and makes time spent with her a misery.  it is true that she was abused by her father and first husband but her refusal to let go of her bitterness and anger towards them and her failure to forgive or come to terms with her history has made her someone who is angry at the world and all who want to love and care for her.  she pushes others away as if she believes she is unworthy of love and suspicious of those who try to show her compassion.  in the end, her actions towards others cause them to behave towards her as she expects them to, further confirming her belief that all her problems are caused by those around her rather than by herself.

may we understand that we often get what we expect.  maybe this is part of the truth in jesus' words when he said, "ask and it shall be given to you, seek and you shall find."  if we act with kindness and compassion and believe that others will respond to us in the same way, that is usually what we receive from them.  may we see the hurting child in those who treat us with contempt, thus changing our attitudes toward them and perhaps in the process changing them as well.  shalom.

I Am Old But I'm Happy

we were talking with another couple our age a few days ago about how our views of our parents have changed as we've gotten older.  this came up when one of us made a remark about one of our children never coming to help us with anything.  we all remembered that as our fathers aged, we never thought of them as getting old.  in our younger days, we seemed to think that our fathers would be with us forever, that they were just as capable of handling all their responsibilities like mowing the yard and trimming the shrubs as they had been when we were growing up.  now that we are up in years, we see that they could have used our help.  their stamina made it more difficult for them to take care of everything around their homes, but we couldn't see that until we ourselves were at the same point in our lives.

our attitudes towards our mothers were different, though.  as our mothers aged, we felt the need to help them and made many trips to do things for them that we didn't do for our fathers.  i was the only participant in the conversation whose father had outlived his wife.  my wife and i did many things for her mother after my wife's father died, but we didn't do any of those things for my father after my mother died.  it wasn't that i didn't love my father.  i just had a different attitude about him and his needs than i did about my wife's mother.  as i look back, i can see that much of that had to do with sexism.  in my mind, my wife's mother was weaker and needed help; my father, being a male, was stronger and, because he was a man, was able to look after himself without my help.  i know now that i was wrong.  he could have used my help but i failed to see it.

now i am in the same position.  i don't blame my son for not coming over to help me with chores that are difficult for me.  i'm sure he feels as i did--that his father is indestructible, forever young.  if i were to die, he would probably come to his mother's aid to see that physically demanding chores around the house were taken care of.  one day, he will see, as i do now, that as we get older we can't get things done as quickly as we used to and some things must be left for others to do because we can't do them for ourselves.  i don't regret not helping my dad.  he probably would have resented me "taking over" those tasks that had become difficult for him, just as i resist asking my own son for help.  i'm simply amazed that i see through different eyes now than i did not so many years ago.  in many ways i have become my dad and my son has become me.

may we understand how we are all related, how each of us changes with the passage of time.  may we see that the vantage point of youth is different from that of old age and have compassion for one another no matter at what stage of life we find ourselves.  may we know that we are all sons and fathers, daughters and mothers, each of us part of the same family.  may we be slow to condemn and quick to love.  shalom.

Try to Love One Another Right Now

the other day i went into a local pizza shop to pick up a pizza i had ordered.  as i walked along the side of the shop to the entrance, i noticed several signs posted that said masks were required inside the building.  at the door, the same sign was posted, and just inside the door was a large chalkboard with "masks required" written on it in large letters.  as i waited at the counter, another customer came in without a mask on.  i pointed to the sign, and she smiled back at me, obviously not intending to return to her car and put on a mask.  i pointed to the sign once more and got the same reaction.

as i left the shop with my pizza, a group of older folks were getting out of their car.  noticing the sign, one of them asked, "do you really have to wear a mask inside?"  i pointed to one of the signs, and said, "that's what the sign says."  one of the women in the group turned to the driver of the car and asked him to retrieve their masks, while she and the rest of the group proceeded to the door.  the driver followed behind with several masks in his hand, but none of them stopped to put the masks on.  as i got in my car, i wondered if they ever donned their masks.

i don't understand the attitudes of people who refuse to wear masks in public.  do they believe that the masks are of no use in spreading the virus?  do they have no regard for those around them?  do they think that the reports about the virus and its ease of transmission are "fake news?"  are they making a political statement in support of a president who ignores the advice of health experts, encourages risky behavior on the part of the population by presiding over large gatherings that make social distancing impossible, and refuses to wear a mask himself?  maybe all of these reasons apply.

as i meditated this morning, i repeated the phrase, "may i be filled with lovingkindness and compassion, may i be well."  as the words went through my mind, i thought of the unmasked woman in the pizza place, and the group of older people who entered without wearing their masks.  a sense of lovingkindness and compassion for those who worked in the restaurant would compel its patrons to wear masks.  if we wish to be well and to help others to be well, then we will wear a mask when we are among others outside our own homes.  our own health and the health of others are inextricably wed.  wearing a mask is a simple way of protecting one another as virus infections increase in so many places.

may we all be filled with lovingkindness and compassion so that we may be well.  may we tolerate some inconvenience and discomfort if, in doing so, we can make life better for others.  may our interconnectedness lead us to see that we must not think only of ourselves, that indeed we are all part of one great Self.  shalom.