A new dawn...

“A baby is God’s opinion

that life should go on.”

- Carl Sandburg

It was an unusual phone call. It’s not that we don’t have a deep and rich relationship, but getting calls from her is not a usual event. I knew something was up…

I wonder if she is…I thought just as she said. “I’m pregnant Teddy.”

____________________

This week an additional little one appeared in the city of Baltimore, Maryland. She was late and I understand the journey was difficult at the end, but when all was said and done, mother and child were well.

My niece Nancy Ellen married the love of her life Jessie a few short years ago.  While both women are quite different, they are exceedingly compatible. Jess is an attorney and Nancy a hospital social worker. They are smart and deliberate and above all a great couple.

I’m not sure when the decision was made to have a child, but it was…Nancy would conceive and carry the new life. This, of course, required some ‘outside help’ to bring their desire to fruition. I am also not exactly sure how they chose the donor, but knowing them, I am certain it was thoughtful and deliberate.

Having found such a man, Nancy was fertilized, and as it turns out, a child of unknown gender was conceived and gestated in her tummy. I remember Nancy’s birth and known Jessie from pre marriage days…there could not be a more loving couple than they. Great planners, as much as is possible with these things, they got ready for the arrival of this child.

Blessings abound…

On Wednesday, February 24^th, Noa Lillian made her entrance center stage with all systems go…all fingers and toes at hand (and feet)…to a group of waiting admirers, not the least of which were Jessie and Nancy.

There were of course a multitude of well-wishers…Noa patiently let her grand mothers (among others I am sure) hold her. She posed for pictures with her two proud mothers, seeming to take all of this adulation in stride. You see at this age, life comes so fast, it is all a blur…Okay, until her eyes begin to focus a little better – after 3 months or so – most everything further than eight to ten inches in front of her will be a blur.

It’s a cultural thing…

While I am seldom at loss for words, I am somewhat at a loss to express how patient and kind Nancy and Jessie have been with me in my journey of transcendent enlightenment.  As mentioned above, I have known Nancy from her emergence into the world. She is one of the most loving, thoughtful and gentle human beings that I know.

It’s not that I have no exposure to the LGBT community. My maternal family has had members living the life as long as I can remember. My best friend in high school came out in his early twenties. I have been around the gay community most of my life – male and female – and embraced with enthusiasm my friends who have co-habited, some by now for decades.

I have considered myself to be a progressive on this subject. If, however, confession is good for the soul, I struggled with the topic of marriage between same sex couples. Somehow I just couldn’t get my head around it.

And then came this marvelous Nancy and Jessie into my life. Spending time with them as a couple and appreciating the depth of respect and love they have for each other caused me to ask, “Why would I struggle with this?”

Asking ‘why’ is powerful. Well, it is powerful if one then attempts to answer the question with honesty and openness. If one simply asks the rhetorical ‘why’ for the sake of attempting to elicit agreement with one’s own belief system, I suppose there is really no reason to ask the question.

I was internally encouraged to answer the ‘why’ I thought marriage should be resisted, while civil union not so. Hmmm – I found no legitimate answer.  It’s not that I had any discussions or ‘come to Jesus’ chats with either of the girls…the example of their lives forced an internal dialogue.

My brain said, Why, it’s the status Quo? Because that’s the way it has always been?

There were a number of other paper tiger thoughts that bubbled to the surface…none any good, really.  Commitment and love are what make relationships work, no matter what you call them.  I honestly don’t know any couples that have more commitment and love, deeper than these two women.

No agenda here…

This piece is not in the defense of any life style. It is about the shared excitement that two people I love deeply have brought a child into the world. Further, I have no doubt Noa Lillian will receive the kind of care she deserves from her smart, strong parents.

My other niece, Mariah Lynn and her hubby Dan, will celebrate a year in the life of their son Coen in a couple of months or so.  They also live in Baltimore. What a lucky young boy he has been to have two exceptional cousins in the form of Nancy and Jessie. What a lucky young boy he will be to know Noa Lillian as they both grow in nurturing families.

What a lucky couple Molly and I are to be the ‘old folks’ – Grand Uncle/Aunt, as it were, to be able to play with these children in coming years AND be able to return home after spoiling them as much as possible.

- ted

Suffering unnecessary loss...

“Goodnight you princes of Maine,

you kings of New England.”

- John Irving,

The Cider House Rules

Susan and I have been friends for some 55 years. This week she asked me to not communicate with her anymore.

This was not the Shakespeare’s Juliet: “Parting is such sweet sorrow that I shall say goodnight til it be morrow.”

Nope it was a real kiss off:  “Thanks for the memories. I would appreciate it if you would please delete me from any further blogs or correspondence in the future!”

OUCH!!

Nothing here about the “…morrow…” or until the ‘…next time…’ – no sir, it was as “…clear as mud…” – “fare thee well” – actually, I am uncertain about the ‘fare’ part.

Pretty clear, eh?

The backstory…

Nothing is ever as simple as it seems, nor apparently was it with my friend Susan. I suppose I should say ‘ex-friend,’ but I love her still and while we have not seen each other much in recent decades, she is one of those folk for whom I am grateful.

For many years we were in pretty regular contact through mail (I mean actually hand written letter, mail), visits to her homes and mine, her three husbands and a daughter I saw as extended family.

The end was abrupt…

Over the years, I have wondered at the ease with which we categorize those with whom we differ. Maybe categorization should come second.  For Susan, as best I can tell without judging, there always seemed to be an ‘other’ to fear. It might have been particular Christian religions or ethnic groups. Apparently, of late it has been a fear that Muslims have infiltrated the U.S. government beginning with the President and any number of others, all of whom have but one intent, and that is to bring our way of life to a grinding halt.

There is little doubt there are many who see America as a bastion of evil and who spend their time and energies doing all they can to destroy our way of life. There is little doubt that diligence and care are important in order to protect the homeland.

Having said that, the conflation of conspiracy theorists that expand patchworks of concern into the presence of evildoers behind every rock and tree is a bit much for my sensibilities.

The easiest thing to do, when confronted with complicated issues requiring thought, is to NOT think and simply slip everyone of a certain race, culture, gender, political party, economic or educational status into ideological mailboxes and move on. After all it takes time to ask questions and ferret out fact from fiction. It is so much easier to let someone else do it and simply agree.

Very seldom are these sorts of comments made about folks who look and sound like us, because…well, they look and sound like us (whoever ‘we’ are)!

After having received a few ‘…fear, fear, fear…’ the boogeyman is coming emails, I suggested maybe it would be better if we communicated on the things that are going on in our lives…the kinds of things we used to…I suggested that xenophobic (racial/cultural intolerance), ideological writings from either side of the political/social fringes, only promoted fear and doubt.

Social media is a great example of this. People post and agree with the things that they believe.  One might argue as it relates to ideological postings that they are pointless exercises in self-flagellation.  Gratifying only to the writer and those that agree.

In the bigger picture, Carl Sagan (the late astrophysicist) commented on a photo taken of the earth from 3.7 billion miles away. The photo became famously known as ‘The Pale Blue Dot.’ He writes in his book of the same title:

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there--on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The great Mandala…

It is not as if the universe has not seen this story played again and again and again. It is after all a struggle to find the good and disdain the evil that has occupied the minds of many seekers through time. All of us are part of the fabric of humanity, and yet we often seem to become so deeply focused on the background noise of difference, we neglect the common humanity we share.

This brings me back to my old – both in depth and length of time we have known one another – friend Susan. 

I have an aversion to dogmatic emails of any ilk that are filled with ideology for the sake of making a point, rather than reason.  I see these divisions of religious, cultural, political or gender related spectrums, as background noise keeping people…individual thinking, breathing, laughing, singing, loving people…from taking the small amount of effort and courage it takes to explore one another’s lives.

Danger lurks…

You see the trap, don’t you?

Because of my ‘Susan situation,’ it would be easy to be seduced into categorizing one of my oldest living friends and the ‘…horse she rides in on…’ into a mailbox labeled xenophobic.  YES, it would be so easy to label her as an unthinking ideologue – patting my enlightened self on the back. But that, of course, would only cause me to become content in my own self-righteousness and turn her into something that she is not, nor has ever been.

She, that soul with whom I have found decades of resonance is a loving, caring and thoughtful human being. I choose to continue to think of her that way.

While she appears to be willing to judge me for my apparent blindness to all that is clear to her and those with whom she recycles material that labels and fosters distrust and fear, I refuse to return the favor.

I’ll get over this, but I am in mourning….

- ted

Just around the corner...

“Life is always a rich and steady

time when you are waiting for

something to happen or to hatch.”

- E.B. White, Charlotte’s Web

We are waiting!

It’s always the waiting…hurry up, hurry up…then wait!

I grew up with two sisters – Margaret Anne, my elder and Nancy Jeanne, my younger. I was the ice cream in the ‘ice cream sandwich’ of the off spring in my family.

Both of my sisters, remarkable in their own ways, had daughters. Nancy’s daughter Mariah Lynn and Anne’s daughter Nancy Ellen. We lost sister Nancy much too early four years ago on the 12^th of February, a day we celebrated her life and mourned our loss.

Molly and I have no children. No, it isn’t because we couldn’t; it is because we made a deliberate and conscious choice to not bring a child (-ren) into the world. In those child bearing years, we made the decision to dedicate our lives in the service of others, wanting to be available as much as we could to those efforts. As we look back, both in our 6^th decade, it was the right choice and one for which we are grateful having made.

We are impatiently tapping our toes here!!

Fortunately, in the early childless years, we had lots of time which I filled with hundreds of hours (over several decades) as a youth group co-director for the church community we were serving.  Acting in this capacity, I had the privilege of working with some of the great kids I have known in my life. You know what I mean…kind of like grand parenting…you play with them, do interesting and fun things, and when you are done, just send ‘em home!

Along the way, Mariah Lynn and Nancy shared a home with us for the first 14 years of the Mariah’s life. It was wonderful. I got to be a surrogate dad and saw the girls every day. It was like having a daughter that just showed up. When the two of them moved to their own home just before high school, I mourned the empty nest.

Mariah grew up in to a strong, vibrant woman, finished medical school, married a fellow named Dan (great guy), had a baby boy (Coen) nearly a year ago and is doing her residency in Baltimore, Maryland.

We are getting kind of antsy – if you know what I mean!!!

Baltimore, now here is where this all gets interesting.

Nancy Ellen, you might recall being just previously mentioned, my older sister’s daughter, also grew up into a strong vibrant woman. She became a compassionate and smart hospital social worker, married a gal named Jessie and lives in Baltimore!

Here is what all this waiting is about!!!!

Nancy is about as pregnant as she can get and we were hoping she would deliver her baby a couple of days ago.  We ARE waiting for the delivery.

Like Coen, this little creature in the spaceship of its mother’s tummy (gender unknown to me), is running a little late and causing all of us to hold our collective breaths, waiting for it’s appearance.

It’s not just us, of course, but a chorus of folk who love these young women and look forward to meeting this child as it begins its journey on the planet we have come to love…

I have tried incantations, holding my breath, quietly meditating in prayer and consorting with my Tibetan souvenir prayer beads…

In the end, it (she/he) will be what it (she/he) will be.

I suppose I need to relax and just “…breathe…”

- ted

Be still my heart - please...

“I am a man of constant sorrow
I've seen trouble all my days…
But there's one promise, darling:
I'll see you on God's golden shore.”

- Bob Dylan: Music & Lyrics

Dateline:

Tucson, Arizona – February 2, 2016

“I’m grateful for this opportunity, because it will give you the chance to meet my daughter Jennifer,” she began.

The conference room looked like it might hold a little more than 100 people. It was one of those venues where the ascending seats were in a semi-circle from the front of the room, up to the entrance in the back. Twenty-five or so folk were scattered on either side of the center aisle.

On the large dual screens on either side and behind the woman was a picture of a beautiful young girl…beautiful might not be exactly the right words. Brown of hair and eye, she was cute with sparkling eyes, and at somewhere around the age of 14, had one of those faces that ‘owned the camera.’

The moment the woman began, I was mesmerized.

I wasn’t sure why, but everything seemed to slip away and it felt like there were only two people in the room and I was one of them. This doesn’t happen to me often, but there was a seriousness…a gravitational foreboding from her presence that was magnetic.

She was a quiet 50ish woman with a nondescript look…so much so, I cannot even conjure her appearance in my mind.

Her voice was not particularly rich, nor compelling, but the spirit emerging from her words held my mind like a pair of industrial grade vice grips.

The story…

“I was teaching kindergarten in 1999 and preparing to take a large group of children on a field trip the next day. What person in their right mind would do that?” she said with a small ironic smile.

“Jennifer was a fixer, someone who was drawn to people who needed help.”

Her boyfriend had gotten into trouble and had ‘friends’ that said they knew someone who could help him. They set an appointment with this person and told Jennifer’s boyfriend they would take him. Jennifer said she would go along for support…she didn’t need to do this.

“See you when I get home Mom,” the girl said and off she went.

She never came home....

On the way, the driver pulled off the road and on some unknown pretense they all got out. You see these people had never intended to take Jennifer or her boyfriend anywhere.

“They shot Jennifer in her right upper chest,” she said.

Using a laser pointer, she then directed the red dot to a spot under the smiling girl’s right eye and said, “This was the bullet that killed her.”

I was stunned as my eye drifted from the speaker back to the picture of this ‘full of life’ young girl in the photo.  The woman was so quietly expressive I could not help envisioning the wounds on this young girl’s body…I felt a tremor.

“Her boyfriend ran and collapsed on the doorstep of a house a mile and a half away. He was shot six times. I don’t know how a boy runs a mile and a half with six bullets in him, but he did and he survived," she said.

I felt a claustrophobic tightening in my chest.  It was almost as if I had suffered this intimate and personal loss.

How this came about…

Anne (not real name) was part of a team of presenters at an introductory seminar for the Victim Advocate program of the Tucson Prosecutor’s office.

This innovative program, begun in 1974, was the first in the United States to provide personal and legal advocacy for victims of traumatic events (e.g. domestic violence, rape, auto accidents, accidental death or murder of loved one).

They work with the police and are on call 24/7... available for whatever might be needed for someone in shock from an unexpected traumatic event. This is not a counseling service, but rather an acute intervention team of volunteers.

This organization teaches courses on the language of crisis management. I had heard about it during a Citizen’s Academy presented by the Oro Valley Police Department, in the small town in Arizona where we live. One of the directors of the Victim Advocate program spoke to us during one of the evening presentations.

I was interested in taking this course and possibly becoming a volunteer, so I showed up for the introductory program Tuesday evening at the appointed time. It was a curiosity as much as anything else…until…until Anne began to tell her story.

The story of Jennifer’s murder came with an uncomfortable intimacy, but when she spoke of the positive role of the victim advocate that arrived with the police, she burst into tears.

“I am here tonight, because were it not for the Victim Advocate program, I don’t know that I could have made it.”

“I had no one. This person [speaking of the advocate]…someone I didn’t even know, sat with me, got me some water and provided an anchor at a moment when my life had completely collapsed.  I do not have words to describe how meaningful this was for me. All these years later, I still feel a sense of gratitude.”

“Five years before this, I lost Jennifer’s older sister to cancer, now I had nothing…I was completely empty…”

The impact…

How does this happen? I thought.

What cosmic forces allow these things that rob one of everything?

How is it we as human beings are able to give of our spiritual bodies and provide real sustenance to another human being by word or touch?

How is one able to receive help that unlocks our own deeply buried reserves of strength?

There is no understood mechanism of action for the power of the unseen…no formula…no recipe. There is only the human heart that seems so constructed that it is able to give of itself in moments of need and able to receive when all seems lost.

On the drive down into the city, I was thinking about what was on the schedule for the next day and the rest of the week. The Victim Advocacy course just another adventure in exploring a little more about opportunities in the Tucson…that was the drive down…

The drive home, the rest of the week and to this day…I have not been able to put the starkly intimate image of Anne’s story out of my mind. 

I have seen a lot in my life, but somehow the image of this young girl and the quiet urgency with which Anne told her story touched me deeply.

“I’m grateful for this opportunity, because it will give you the chance to meet my daughter Jennifer…”

I did, and I still ache...

- ted