The Worst of Times and the Best of Times

I am deeply offended by three things covered on the national news today. First, Vice President Pence was shown in Mayo Clinic completely and totally unmasked. All others were masked up. And he wasn't practicing the social distancing thing of six feet apart. The implications for this error on his part are astounding, too much for one blog post.  Yes, that was nuts, and you can bet that it'll get some air time. Second, the President has issued an Executive Order demanding that the meat industry remain open. While I do not know what that means in terms of where who remains open, I do know that there are muliple reports of Tyson's or Smithfields closing down because way too many people are infected.

Three, and this hits closer to home, is that the governor of the State of Texas has issued various orders ending the shelter in place decision and beginning the process of opening up Texas for business. All of these things are happening here despite warning from CDC, folks at the University of Washington, and who knows where else, that doing so this soon invites more infected persons and a resulting spike in infections and deaths.

Did the death of the ER physician, Dr. Lorna Breen, hit you? For some reason, it caught me off guard. A highly respected physician, seeing mulitple patients on many days, experiencing too many deaths of too many of these patients. Did she sign up for this, the relentless day in and day out struggle to keep people alive? See her story here. And here. And here.  We know the edges of the story: overworked physician, contracted COVID-19, off work for a week and a half, hospitalized for exhaustion, went home to Virginia, died by suicide. She must have lost hope. Perhaps she did not see a way out of her own pain at the pain of others. You and I don't really know, but those closest to her know.

While many people are clamoring for opening up states and counties and cities and towns, people on the front lines are exhausted. Certainly the economy is important. There are distressed people left and right. Not enough work, not enough money coming in, not enough food on the table. I get it that people need to return to work.

While we work in that direction. I recommend that we make haste slowly. I recommend that we listen to the doctors and not the pundits and the politicians who have their agendas.

The earth is depending upon them.

On the brighter side of things, sheltering in place with someone I love, who has my interests at heart, who understands that as a two-time cancer survivor I am greatly at risk. You probably know a lot of us. We are everywhere though we may not have a blog or a FB page or even the words to tell the stories of how we feel.

So, if my town opens up too early, I won't be there.  If my church opens up too early, I won't be there. If friends have dinner parties and invite us, I won't be there.

Switch the "I" for a "we" and you'll know how seriously we are taking this thing. For our sake and for the sake of those we love and the community that we love.

Let's all take care of each other so that more physicians do not have to die, nurses do not have to become infected, and the folks in all essential services are taken care of, folks at the pharmacy, the meat packing plants, those who drive the city trucks through our streets, those who deliver our mail, and on and on and on and on.

Flip the "I" into a "we" and the world is a better place.

Reflections At Day 33 from Our Home, and What About You?

The coronavirus, or COVID-19, is still running rampant across our country and seems to be making inroads into our community here in North Texas. We listen to the news intently each evening for an update on infections, hospitalizations, deaths, and percentages. We get what the powers that be want us to know, but you and both know that not all people are tested, not all infections are reported, and that people die from medical conditions exacerbated by the virus, so COVID-19 may not always be blamed as the culprit for people's demise. Our local hospitals allegedly have numerous patients with the virus, but because they did not necessarily originate in this county, they will not be counted in this county. That does, however, bring things a little closer to home.

I have several reactions to where we are:

1) While I get it that people need to return to their jobs, that the economy is tanking, and that family income is hurting many of us, a too early return will in all likelihood hurt us even more.

2) The federal government could do a better job of keeping us informed, from the top in the WH to the agencies and those who speak for them. The same applies to the powers that be in Austin.

3) The federal government, if it can bail out huge corporations, can also bail out individual families. Sure, we received the stimulus money, and we'll save it for rainier days, but for working class families, that is a drop in the bucket.

4) I keep track of the news, but hopefully not obsessively. The first thing I do in the morning is to read up on things that have happened since I shut down last night.

5) I keep a routine much like I kept prior to the outbreak of this thing. Routines are important to me. That routine includes getting up early, catching up on the news, reading sacred texts and other things of encouragement, and then praying over them all, and writing those prayers down in the journal that I've been keeping for years.

6) I linger over breakfast with my Beloved as we eat, pray, and discuss things that matter. Her routine and rhythm are different than mine, and I respect her deeply and want to stay closed attached to her during these trying times.

7) My Beloved has things to do like sewing masks that go across this region.  I have written about that here on these pages. Her work and that of her friends move me deeply. So, I support her and do my share of household tasks so that she can do what she feels called to do.

8) I have things to do and things to accomplish.  Whether that is working on the text for the DVD cover, co-authoring documents for Biden's policy team (the way we did for Warren and Sanders), attemping to get in touch with Biden's team, developing materials for a radio blog on Black land loss and it economics, or any number of other things, I try to keep busy.  I am not eight hours busy in retirement-ville, but I keep busy.

9) I stay engaged with family, my extended family, my sons and their families; and I stay in touch with a few close friends. And I write for a few followers here and in other media platforms.

10) I try not to be hysterical about things, but measured about things that are of importance in social media such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter.

11) Exercise, that is important, at least 40 minutes per day.

12) As willful as I am, I pay attention to what my family has to say. From my Beloved to my boys to my extended family, I honor their requests that I stay indoors and away from crowds.  Given my history over the last year of surgeries and multiple medical events, my immune system is likely weakened (though I am taking supplements to strenghthen my system), so that means not going to grocery stores or to other places where large crowds gather.

13) I weary of those who theologize about God's punishment upon us.  Please place those words elsewhere. I am prone to theologize that we haven't taken care of our world, and that we disrespect the thin veil between and among all of God's creations, human and animal. I think that our struggles with the problem of evil fits in here. We have wrestled with that since the beginning of time.

13) And finally, keeping my mind clear and engaged in thoughtful pieces of information outside of the virus such as "The Fiery Trial," by Erick Foner, and how his ideas of slavery evolved from his youth to the presidency. That also includes podcasts by Loki Mulholland, Code Switching, AAMFT, and others.

14) Create space in your relationships to be separate, and then create a connection between you and others.  That ebb and flow thing is important. This shelter in place thing can exacerbate or enrich whatever is in the marriage or family or partnership.

These are just a few of things happening here in this house that promotes some sense of sanity and avoids the hysteria of the day, but what about you? What of your successes and failures can you share with us on this page?

And finally, and this is really a finally, please trust the physicians and the epidemiologists, and not the politicians for what is healthy here in our various parts of the world.  Science is a gift of God, in my opinion, for our good. It is not something that needs to conflict with our theology. When there is a conflict, either our science is wrong or our theology is wrong. When that happens, we can explore the differences.

Be safe.  Practice social distancing. Shelter in place. Avoid high risk areas.

Living With An Ongoing Grief

It occurs to me that we are a country and a people in the midst of grief. All of the emotions and cognitive responses of grief hang around with what is going on these days.  Unlike grief when a loved one passes, we cannot so easily resolve this grief because it is indeed ongoing and will stay with us for a while. For how long, nobody knows. Likely longer than we expect or would wish.

How long have you been in quarantine, in that "sheltering in place" mode, doing the "social distancing" thing? For me, other than an event or two, it has been 29 days.  That's a lot of days, 29 of them, consecutive, stacked end to end. Disease is all around us.  Maybe we know somebody, or we know somebody who knows somebody. Maybe we're vigilant with the news and are aware of the number of infected people and the number of deaths in our counties, state, and even nation and world.

Our grief is unresolved. We live in our grief. We cannot move on. We are stuck. Really stuck.

A colleague back in the day made a presentation at a TAMFT conference and then later published his ideas about grief in a journal. That journal is over there on the shelf.  The ideas are very familiar. I have used them to make sense of my own grief and that of others with whom I have grieved. This morning it dawned on me that those ideas might be useful constructs for what is going on now.

There are many faces of grief.  Our unique "face" of grief is shaped by three things:  1) did we anticipate the death of the loved one? 2) how attached were we to the loved one? 3) did the loved one fulfill her or his obligations toward us and others, such that "they lived a long and useful life," versus a child who died so young, with so much life yet to live.

These days, I think, we are grieving many things, large and small. We are grieving the loss of familiar routines. We may be grieving the loss of income or care about someone who has lost income. We are grieving the freedom to move about and to hang with whomever for as long as they or we wish. Rituals are important to us, and when they go by the wayside, we can be disoriented and lose our way. If we are a graduating senior in high school or college, we may be grieving all of the celebrations and activities. If our kids or grandkids are in sports or choirs or bands, we and they may be grieving the incompleteness of district or regional competition in sports, or choir, or band. That incompleteness lingers. It is not what we expected to be doing right about now.

We grief the contact with those people who love us, and people we love dearly. Maybe we grieve the loss of economic stability as we see our investments dropping off the table. Maybe we grieve because we need someone to lead us through the collective grief that we feel and the guy at the top is primarily concerned about economics and getting things opened again. We see that person railing against people who are doing their jobs by asking hard questions.

I would suspect that those who have had their routines more severely disrupted might experience a deeper set of griefs.  For some of us, the routines may not have been challenged much at all. As a retired person working at my desk here at the house, and as one who experienced a medical-imposed slow-down back after June, 2019 up until a few months ago, this routine is fairly normal, except for going wherever I want to go, spending time with the grandchildren, and going to church and the coffee shops. My routine has changed little by comparison to some.

I cannot wrap my head around the notion that some of our loved ones die alone. I cannot comprehend being unable to attend a loved one's wake, funeral, and fellowship meal following. I grieve for those who grieve in those unspeakable, incomprehensible ways.

So, did we see this pandemic coming? I didn't, but some did.  Some in our country have known about it since November. For you and me, and since we are not epidemiologists, we did not see it coming.

How attached were we to routines, activities, rituals, people, places? Very, very attached.

Are there things still left to do and to be done in terms of jobs, church, family, friends, and other things? Absolutely, yes, those things and people have not "fulfilled their obligations," and there is much to do.

We generally know Kubler-Ross's stages of grief:  shock, anger, denial, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Those emotions and all of the heavy thoughts within each phase or stage hang with us. At a larger level, those three shaping questions I mentioned up above help me to make sense of things. Within those things I experience a wide range of emotions.

So, what to do with all of that? Grieve and grieve well and fully, practice patience with yourself and others with whom you live, use the telephone and Skype or Zoom to stay connected with others, and if you are a person of faith, practice the practices of your faith. Read things that give you meaning and purpose. Exercise. Eat well. Go to bed and sleep in your routinized way. Enjoy distractions such as sports on tv, or reading a book, or walking in the park, or whatever takes you out and away. Avoid living in television or computer land for much of the day.

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Shalom in the Face of COVID-19: Fighting the Battle One Mask at a Time

I wept.

I dried my tears.

I wept again.

The thing that brought me to my emotional knees was the article that follows this one. Written back in January, 2019, it demands an update. The second thing that brought me to my knees was the whirr of the sewing machine in the other room and the conversation I had with my Beloved.

Oftentimes, I would imagine, those women have to wonder if they are doing any good as they spend hour after hour after hour of sewing. I have followed them for several years now at our church, the Park Avenue Church of Christ in  Denison, Texas.

In the article that follows, I shape that conversation around shalom and how each thing we do is a small break in that which rages around us breaking shalom. For me, encouraging a Black farmer who is weary of the struggle in bringing shalom. Writing the voice over script for the documentary is bringing shalom. When Shoun edits the massive amount of hours of interviews into a seamless narrative of narratives, he is bringing shalom. When you do the good that you do wherever and whenever you do it, you are bringing shalom into the world. The world yearns for shalom.

Outside our windows and doors there is a war raging. Some of us call it a hoax. Some of us say that we are blowing it all out of proportion. Some say we are watching too much of CNN or MSNBC or whatever we prefer.

It hit me today that the war is close at hand. Small hospitals around North Texas do not have the capacity to treat those infected with the coronavius. They send their patients to larger towns with larger hospitals.  One of those hospitals is about two miles from here. They have infected patients on their floors. Doctors and nurses are fighting for their lives.  Yes, COVID-19 has arrived in my home town.

The women who sew are bringing shalom into dangerous situations. Doctors and nurses are asking for the masks that they are making.  Today we have three men come and look at our tankless water heater and give us estimates on repairing it.  "Would you wear a mask if you were to have one?" my Beloved asked.  They all said yes, so she gifted them with several for themselves and for members of their teams.

Doctors, nurses, assistants, intake personnel, insurance personnel, all of them are being exposed to the virus. Their patients are facing life or death and they are entering the trenches with them. Some, so I am told, request to work with these patients.  That is a "lay down your life for another" sort of a thing.

My Beloved and her friends can't be nurses, so they sew.  They can't be physicians, so they sew.  They can't be med techs, so they sew. They can't install water heaters, so they sew.

They sew hours upon hours day after day.  I can hear the machine whirring as we speak. Her hands, her long fingers, cutting, sewing, stitching in elastic, one by one by one by one.

If you want to know who you are, follow your feet.  That tells us who we are, our feet and where they go. That's what Frederick Buechner said in one of his books.

I watch my wife's feet and they go to the sewing machine.  That tells me who she is.  That tells me who her friends are.  They know that a war is going on with an "enemy" that is very, very small. We will win the war, and it will take all of us, doing the social distancing thing and the sheltering in place thing.

We will win the war and shalom will be restored one mask at a time, one medical person's face at a time, one worker at a time.

I weep for America, for my state, my county, my city, and I weep for the world. I weep for those who are losing family members and friends.

I weep thankfully for those women whose sewing machines are whirring as we speak.

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Showing Our Humanness These Days

Back in 1998 I wrote a chapter in a volume dedicated to my former graduate school professor, Dr. Harold Hazelip.  The volume was edited by three gentlemen that I respected, Gary Holloway, Randy Harris, and Mark Black. All three of us were university profs at the time. They assigned to me probably the most complicated topic I’d written on, before or after.  The topic? “What Does It Mean to Be Human?”  As a family therapy and psychologist, I knew first hand how complicated the topic was. I’d dealt with many fragile human beings and their families or their marriages.  I had seen what I thought were some of the worst of what it means to be human. I had also seen what I thought were some of the best of what it means to be human.

The first paragraph of that chapter goes like this:

“Jean Valjean, thief, victim, and saint in Victor Hugo’s Les Miserables, leaves prison, steals from a priest who forgives his misdeed, and eventually becomes both mayor of Montreuil and a successful entrepreneur. His life is complicated by a host of characters including Fantine and her illegitimate child, Cossette, but most of all by Javert, an incorruptible and obsessive policeman who seeks to punish Valjean for his past. In his former life Valjean symbolizes the dark side of humanity, but in his new life he represents the good in people as he recues the downtrodden, endows a hospital, protects a parentless child, and avoids the relentless pursuit of Javert. Javert, the symbol of law and order who is tormented by his own demand for perfection, eventually commits suicide while Valjean dies in the presence of those whose lives he has blessed. The contrast between the two characters is striking: one man evolved from thief to saint, while the other went from rigid orthodoxy to despair and suicide (p. 91." 

You and I may be like Victor Hugo as we look upon things these days, in our own lives and on the television screen and in the newspaper.  We see the best of people and we see the worst of people. We see those who hoard and then sell items at exorbitant prices.  Thankfully eBay and Amazon caught them. We also see those who spend all day long sewing masks for hospitals, nursing homes, and medical clinics, and even caps for physicians going into surgery. We see a range of heroes keeping people alive all the way from those who stock our shelves, pick up our trash at the appointed day and time, those who risk life and limb to save us in our more dire moments, nurses and doctors. All work is noble. All work is important. All work in valuable. Everyone deserves respect. Everyone deserves to be paid a decent wage for labor.

In the chapter that I mentioned above, I write about contemporary and not so contemporary psychological and theological views of human nature. I won’t bore you with those. If you’re interested, go to Amazon and see if you can read all or part of this chapter there. Then, I attempt to deconstruct a Biblical view of human nature. This is where it gets interesting. The Bible was never, in my opinion, designed to articulate a fully thought out theology of humankind. It makes inferences left and right, but you won’t find in one specific book, chapter, and verse a note that says, “This is what it means to be human.” We are left to search and study.

The article nuances creation, the Fall, Hebraic views of human nature, sin and its effects, and then I attempt to tease out Hebrew and Greek words of human nature. I am then left with how to put it all together? Love God with all of what? Love my neighbor as who? I boil it down to the fact that Jewish thought did not subdivide humans into parts, rather, they spun out notions around “Hebraic holism.” 

That said, are we evil, are we good? Yes. And yes. At the end, I write, “When we know that we are created in the image of God, even though we are fallen, self-centered, and self-seeking, then we are free to act……(we can therefore) live graciously with other human beings….By doing so we can understand what it means to be a human, created in the image of God, in a world which is estranged from God but never forgotten by the creator (p. 104).”

Why write that long of an introduction to simple and complicated questions?

How could a person preach the word of God on Sundays and then run the KKK? Check out Jerry Mitchell’s book, Race Against Time, and you’ll learn more about that person as well as others.

How could a person obliged to help all farmers tell Willie Head, “Yes, there’s money there but not for you people.”

How could a county official in the office of the USDA tell the Grant family, “No matter what you do, we are going to sell you out.”

How could a bank officer, the FSA county supervisor, and the owner of the local tractor supply collaborate behind closed doors to seize the farmers’ (yes, there were two of them, partners in the farming business) assets and sell them for pennies on the dollar? 

Those are just four stories. There are more. Maybe I’ll write some more about them in a day or two. One farmer that comes to mind is that of a farmer, near death, lying in his hospital bed in his living room, talking with me. His caretaker listened nearby. I had no idea about his condition before walking into his home. It was a short but poignant conversation. I wish we had met earlier.

So, we discriminate against people and then we go to church on Sunday mornings. We may even be a deacon or an elder in the church, or maybe a Sunday school teacher.

Maybe some of us can recognize our dividedness and come around to a more gracious way of living in these times.