Teaching Someone to Dream

Hello from my corner,

Often I am asked if my life turned out as I expected, and my unequivocal answer is immediately “no; not at all.” There is no statement I have ever spoken or written that is more truthful than that. And of course, a reasonable response would be why not? I think for me it is simple (and perhaps simultaneously complex). I had no idea of what I would do, what I wanted, or where I might go. The simple answer is I had no plan,and I had no dreams. My childhood, which had a number of positive things in terms of having some sense of stability was equally difficult as an adopted child. I have noted that in a thread that has been visited many times over the past decade-plus of writing, but I see it quite differently now. I was not taught to dream as a child or, at least, I do not remember being encouraged to do so. This is not to disparage my parents in any manner, but I do not think they were dreamers either. My father worked hard to make enough money to support his family, purchasing a larger house during my latter elementary years to make sure each of us, and especially my sister, had our own bedroom. My mother was a simple person, again not to speak unfairly of her, but she saw things as either this or that. There was no real grey area. When I faced graduation from high school, during my last semester, I skipped school one day (not a regular practice) and tagged along with another friend to the Armed Forces Recruiting Center. This was never something I had imagined myself doing. Long story short, I ended up enlisting in the Marine Corps.

Even though I did well in my service time, I came back to my hometown, still misguided and more directionless than I hoped, and the next couple years including the untimely deaths of a brother and my hero, my grandmother. I spiraled into smoking way too much pot and drinking too much Jack Daniels. An unexpected and fortunately not-life altering situation with a firearm on a New Year’s Eve was a serious wakeup call for me, and revised my life trajectory. Perhaps, like I am wont to say, “God works in spite of us.” Traveling on a LYE team was another one of those spur-of-the-moment decisions that would somehow transpire and lead me to enrolling in Dana College as a 24 year old freshman, starting my post-secondary studies from scratch, even though it was my second time in college. That acceptance at Dana College, and working with Richard (George) Schuler and the Director of Admissions, Dennis Barnum, created the possibility of dreams and opened me to experiences that would change my life. From incredible classmates, from freshmen to seniors because I was older, provided both academic and social experiences that inspired me. People like Kathy Swenson, Paulette Strecker, Barb Kalal, Sandy Barnum, Tom Kendall, Merle Brockhoff, or a roommate, Peter Bonde, kept me grounded. People in my actual class like Leanne Danahy, Shelly Peterson, Kevin Johnson, Sarah Hansen, or Michael Keenan were all more important to me than they will ever realize. I remember staying in on Friday and Saturday nights to study, and at times, people would come and drag me out of my room because they believed I needed to do something other than study. A trip to Europe for an interim, a transfer to the University of Iowa’s honors program and back to Dana woiuld propel me to seminary. And while I began to believe I had the intellectual capability to succeed in the academic world, I still had little idea where I was called, to what I should focus my energies. While I struggled with the choice of law school or seminary, I chose seminary because I was still trying to gain my mother’s approval, and foregoing seminary for her meant I no longer believed in God. And yet seminary and that first summer Greek class, the incredible classmates again, Sheryl Nielsen, Mary Jorgensen, Mark Van House, John Valentine, David Mattson, Lee Herberg from that summer, and those during junior year would change my understanding of faith and my decision, my sense of calling. Perhaps for the first time I began to dream.

The significance of beginning to dream, the willingness to believe in dreams, the taking the leap to dream creates an important consequence that is basic to life. The result of dreaming is to hope. It is connected to a faith, that something extraordinary is possible. My time at Dana started that for me; my professors, the things they taught as well as how they instructed us took all the disparate pieces of my life and established a foundation that has kept me grounded. My professors, who were pastors and mentors at Luther Northwestern Seminary taught me that faith needed to be both understood and practiced. Many of the things they offered from my Confessions class to that Constructive Theology class, incredible minds from Drs. Juel, Harrisville, Gaiser, Nestigen and Forde, Tiede and Fretheim imparted both wisdom and grace in ways that I am still understanding. And yet again, life would take unexpected turns from health to relationships, from leaving the clergy roster after taking on a bishop to feeling I was back at square one. Once again I would find dreams dashed only to turn to new ones. Two couples at dinner one night as I was waiting tables would turn into an interview and a return to the academy once again. And yet that road would not be an easy one . . . eventually through more health issues and a departure and a return, I would complete a doctoral degree and find myself in Wisconsin. Something that seemed more than an impossible vision, a pipe-dream at best, occurred, and yet in that first semester the chair told me that people would not like me because I was in the Technical Communication major within the department. I was stunned. That was nothing I was told when I interviewed that is for sure. And after 6 years I would be transient again. It’s interesting how when we look back we see connections and reasons for things we were blind to in the midst of them. My position at UW-Stout that important lessons, and I believe certainly prepared me to become a much more effective professor. Now I see the position at Stout as the vehicle that would ready me for what happened later in my academic career, but perhaps the real reason I was there was to take care of a little tornado that I would be introduced to about two years after I found my way to Menomonie. Likewise, I would meet a family (also colleagues) who would facilitate my final teaching position. And yet what happened during the time I have spent in Bloomsburg has been unlike anything I have ever experienced.

As I look back at a life that seems as fragile as it ever has, and there have been more than my share of moments wondering how my 17 ounce beginning would continue in the face of numerous medical experience, I find myself reconsidering dreams and what they are and how they affect us. Currently I wonder if my sort of merely meandering was the dream of a child who had no real carefully planned thoughts of where he would go or how that would be achieved. Some of the most significant moments of change in my life were happenstance – from the Marines to joining the LYE team, from meeting someone at dinner to interviewing for one position as I finished a doctoral degree and getting hired. And yet, here I am . . . when I was moving from Menomonie to Bloomsburg, I wanted to rethink my teaching and what it meant to be educated. A brilliant woman named Joan Navarre shared an article about what it meant for someone to claim their education. That article changed my perspective on what we were doing as professors. To claim something is to take charge of it, to make it your own, but also to take responsibility for it. And it involves dreaming about the possibilities. It means if you are in college, generally you are smart enough to be there, but asks what are you going to do with the opportunity? Life is funny in how it presents opportunity or possibility. Too often we overlook them. Too often we try to convince ourselves we are not capable or perhas we are afraid to venture out and take that chance. What I realize now, perhaps later than I should have is that our most important duty (and yes opportunity( in life is to teach another how to dream . . . and to convince them they are capable and lovable. As I look back I realize the connection between being able to dream is to believe we are loved as well as worthy of love.

That is the basis for human goodness. Sharing compassion and making another feel valued. If they are loved and valued, they can dream. While I am not completely sure, I think much of my inability to dream was because seldom in my life have I felt completely loved by someone or all that lovable to begin with. And yet, in many ways, I have been able to flourish for the most part. Maybe that is why I have worked hard to love other people, to genuinely care, and yet even some of my most intentional attempts have not been as successful as I wish. That is a possible reflection for another time. As I work on some things intentionally, I know that there are things I wish would have turned out differently, even in the immediate set of circumstances, be it with people who are more distant to things I would still like to accomplish. but we do not have much control beyond ourselves. Certainly my perception is altered at the moment, and my thoughts about priorities are more attuned than at other moments in my life. Just maybe I had more of a dream-life than I realized. What I do know is I have expereienced so many wonderful things. And for now . . . I just keep doing it, and to all of the rest of you, please dream!

Thank you as always for reading.

Michael

Using Power for Others

Hello from my small corner,

It’s turned colder again. After a beginning of a week that allowed for walking in merely a t-shirt or a long sleeve, yesterday I had my winter coat on, and this morning the little abode is chilly (or beyond) as the wind works its way through the windows typical of an old building whose windows are probably a century old. And March is always an unpredictable month, teasing Spring to the point the little flowers will poke up only to be lured into a late winter’s freeze or early Spring snow. In spite of our knowing this probable course of events, we are regularly pulled into our desire for warmth so easily, daring to believe Spring has sprung.

The power of suggestion, our desire for warmer weather at the end of the winter season, and also in the midst of Lent, regularly convinces us that the magic of Christmas and hot chocolate, the kindness that characterizes the holidays that seems too often to freeze into banks of grey frozen snow will soon become hospitable once again. I know what even a hint of buds on a tree or bush provides a sense of renewal that turning my post-holiday sadness toward happier thoughts, renewing my energy and restoring my hope. Yes, the pattern is well-known to me, and yet my desire for “spring to just get here now,” which will ultimately be dashed when sub-30s return or the hint of snow reappears, happens every year. Part of that is choosing to remain in a geographic location with four seasons.

What is also apparent is that profound reminder that when it comes to some things, we have little or no power. That is not to say we cannot influence some things more easily than perhaps realized, but when it comes to most things, actually power is minimal at best. Having more time to ponder, I find myself returning to some of the things I found interesting, intriguing, and maybe even confounding from my classes as a seminary student. I remember one of my professors describing our journey through seminary in the following manner. We entered seminary (titled junior year) believing we knew what it meant to be faithful or how we understood God. By our second year (titled middler year) we were now unsure of anything we held true when we began. The third year (internship) we were attempting to put theological knowledge into practice. And by our fourth year (titled senior year) we understood faith and practice of that faith to be the grace of God that provided any possibility of a faithful life. There is both a wonderful promise as well as a simultaneous reminder of our fragility. The Biblical concept currently ruminating for me is the concept of “stranger.” It is integrally connected to the idea of power and faith for me. The only real power I have is how I treat others or how I let their treatment affect me. And faith is a tenuous thing. Where is God in those moments I feel that God is the stranger? What happens when God seems distant or unreachable?

Isaiah notes in the 55th chapter, my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways. This is a verse I find most comforting and again most complexing. Can we truly understand God’s intimate plan if we cannot fathom his thoughts or actions? Does that make God the stranger? Would that make us the child who must perceive God as the ultimate stranger/danger? That might be the easy response – the simple reason to walk away, but as noted there is, for me, comfort in that verse. The concept of stranger is immersed throughout the verses of the Bible. The Hebrew word Ger (גֵר) or Zar (זָר) includes the idea of foreigners, outsiders, even aliens. Particularly in the Old Testament, the chosen of God are referred to as sojourners and refugees at one point living in a land, not their own, and subjected to heavy toil and bondage. And as one moves into the New Testament both the Hebrews and eventual Christians are commanded to show compassion, justice, and love. It seems all too apparent even now that the commandments of God are difficult for us. Thoughts and ways are not the same. From the Old Testament command in Leviticus to treat the stranger as native-born to the New Testament and Jesus example of radical welcome, the scriptures are full of examples of welcoming the stranger regardless the customs or laws in place.

Deuteronomy (whose very meaning is second giving of the law) 10:18-19 reads, “ [The Lord] defends the cause of the fatherless and the widow, and loves the foreigner residing among you, giving them food and clothing. And you are to love those who are foreigners, for you yourselves were foreigners in Egypt.” It is a difficult thing to believe that even for someone illegally here, we are to welcome them. Can I say such a thing? I believe I theologically can, but more profoundly, I must. Escaping injustice, sojourning from a place of danger to somewhere else must be beyond merely a question of borders, particularly for us who struggle with the sense of legality. In the earlier verses, the author of Deuteronomy writes, “Yet the Lord set his affection on your ancestors and loved them, and he chose you, their descendants, above all the nations—as it is today. Circumcise your hearts, therefore, and do not be stiff-necked any longer.” The importance of loving the other is expressly noted. And anyone who has felt the power of being loved, particularly when we are feeling unlovable, understands that power, the transformation that occurs for the one being loved.

However, the one doing the loving, the one who believes that loving is the greatest of all (1Cor 13:13), follows the greatest of the Commandments. As a person with a doctoral degree in argumentation, my study of disagreement is pretty extensive. We often use power unethically particularly when it comes to wanting to prove our correctness in something. Believing we so completely understand God or have some insider knowledge because of our faith is to place ourselves outside of the grace of God, which is God’s love. when we argue believing we must win completely, we have lost a fight to love people profoundly. The most powerful thing we have in our humanness is our relationships with the other. It is the very thing that defines us, has the potential to transform us, and it is in our loving the other that power is used most ethically.

And yet I know, as I look at my own life, the times I failed to do this are readily apparent. It’s difficult to love first and ponder later. No matter how empathetic I wish to be my selfishness gets in the way. The battle to love first to treat all strangers as fellow sojourners, that is the way of God as I understand it – perhaps it is there that to duality of my thoughts are not your thoughts and my ways are not your ways is most apparent. And yet even the gospel of that Old Testament text from Isaiah is indeed good news because it reminds us there is a better way. The year I traveled on a Lutheran Youth Encounter team, there was another much more accomplished group named Spiritbourne. The following is from them.

Thanks as always for reading.

Michael

Teleological Transactionalism and Christian Conservatism

Hello from my little corner of the world.

While a part of me loves the political of the world, another part is continually surprised (to some extent) and dismayed at how the human lust for power and the seemingly insatiable need for resources (e.g. greed) seems to determine what we do, be it individually or collectively. As I write this, I am trying to come to terms with some of my own health issues, with some of my thoughts about where I am going as well as who I am. Those are individual things, and they are of immediate significance. Then there is the collective of who we are be it nationally, globally, as a species, if I can push it out to that level. In the past 36 hours, the actions of both Israel and the United States (and probably others in terms of covert intelligence) has resulted in the removal of another leader of a country, and certainly one who is the enemy of both countries as well as those who question the theocratic rule of the Iranian Revolution. Again, before you think I support what the late Ayatollah did to his people, I do not, and I can say that unequivocally. And certainly the extended removal of what appears to be a significant number of his apparatus (supposedly more than 40 people), creates even more uncertainty about what will happen in the coming days and beyond. Hearing of the death of American service members will undoubtedly have consequence in the coming week as the Administration hopefully speaks with all the appropriate individuals in Congress (I do still believe there needs to be a separation of powers, and that each branch has to step up and be true to its constitutional responsibility).

One of the most important things I have learned about myself and life in general is while we generally work hard to be ethical, to practice our morals, our values in some consistent manner, few of us really understand what ethical methodology we employ, and even more are unaware of what an ethical methodology is. That is not to be arrogant or pompous in any manner, but it is the reality of our humanity. I would continue that even when I do know them, figuring out where I fit is more difficult that I sometimes realize. The two basic methodologies: teleological or deontological are pretty straightforward, and while I find myself more a deontological ethicist, there are times I find I might waver toward the teleological side of that dichotomy. I am not sure I would ever believe myself to be a situationist, and I generally believe situational ethics a lack thereof, has our transactional world, our secularism, made situational ethics the only possibility? Has the relativism that seems to be the order of the day created an atmosphere where the only thing that matters is money and power? I would note that I am differentiating between relativism and moral relativism, where as moral relativism might argue for some degree of tolerance, it seems the relativism I see exhibited has little appetite for any tolerance; in fact, it is often just the opposite (e.g. diversity or now anti-DEI, any religious acceptance that falls outside an increasingly narrow understanding of Christianity, openness to any sense of the other, the invoking or passing of policies and laws that marginalize groups of people who are not sufficiently sympathetic to the administration, rolling back of long-held precedents that supported undervalued or denigrated individuals – including an attempt to disenfranchise those citizens protected by the 14th Amendment).

Again, inherent in much of this a push of executive power that is not something new, believing such a push can be traced back to President Reagan. The belief that American influence and power are for the benefit of the country is also not unique to the homeland, but history is littered with the consequences of such actions as well as the demise of such users of those actions. What makes this idea of using power so indiscriminately, or with such commonality, is its connection to an incredibly arrogant idea that God is always on the side of the America. It is a parallelism of politics and faith that has been often used underpinned by the belief that we have some inside track to a moralism or the most fundamental inside track to a Creator. The foundational hubris, the unparalleled pomposity of that position resulted in the Executive Order titled Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History. The consequence has been an unprecedented attack on the signing at our National Parks, a profound attempt to whitewash (used intentionally) any part of our history that makes us uncomfortable. Cicero, the Roman orator, once said, “Not to know what has been transacted in former times is to continue always a child.” As a student of history and a lover of history, I am always amazed how complex our history is; but only in that complexity are we able to see how we have changed or transformed to “create a more perfect union.” The teleologic system that is all too common among us, from individually to societally, from community to state, from nationally to globally has a consequence to be sure, but when you add a transactional element, those consequences are compounded.

There is little (and I would assert no) chance that anything is done for the greater good as a starting point. So the larger idea of utilitarianism is eliminated (The photo above is of John Stuart Mill, the philosopher and economist who is credited with utilitarianism). Certainly, rhetorically, the appropriate language will be employed asserting that the actions taken are for the good of the collective, but seldom does that seem to occur. Trickle down economics is a great example. The percentage of those in the county who fall in the middle class is down 10% from 1971 (multiple sources). And while the number of individuals who are in an income bracket above has grown, and all brackets have seen a rise in income, the increase of the wealthy median income is 78% compared with 60% for middle income and 55% for lower income. Additionally, in 1970 the middle class held about 62% of the total aggregate income, and in 2022 that fell to 43%, while upper income, over the same period rose from 29% to 48%. So much for trickle down (multiple sources). And as the ability to invest in the stock market, cryptocurrency, or other investments demonstrates the possibility of incredible return, the gap will continue to grow.

In the spirit of disclosure, as a single person in a professional position for the last 25 years, I did well, and while I fell squarely into the middle class – perhaps upper middle class, never did I believe I would ever be a person who did not have to worry about what one unexpected event might do to my security. Additionally, I worked quite diligently to give to others. And I believe I probably should have done more. This is where a horizontal theology is more appropriate than a vertical First-Article dominant practice that believes we have some corner on God’s favor. Practicing something that is essentially greedy or self-centered and arguing a gracious loving Creator of all somehow ordained it seems to be more than an abomination. I would argue it is evil.

Is there a way we can use our incredible abilities in a manner that it is truly utilitarian? Is it possible that people can make money and yet share their profits in a manner that it makes a real difference for the other? Is it possible, returning to the concept of altruism, is it possible we could move toward an altruistic nature in our dealings with the other? How might that occur? I believe that question is a difficult one, particularly for us as Americans. We are used to, attached to, defined by, our individual freedoms. We have been convinced that in that individualism we have God on our side. This might be a topic for another time. I do not have answers, or so it seems, only questions and concerns. How do we begin by taking time for the other? The following video is a compilation of incredible musicians playing a cover of The Guess Who, one of my favorite bands in high school. We need to take the time.

Thank you as always for reading.

Michael

No Promise of Reciprocation

Hello on a sunny and hopeful day,

While it is a sunny and warmer day, any thought that Spring has sprung is not really something I believe to be true. And yet, we are easily spoiled. As I have aged, I find myself wondering what it was that offered such joy or excitement when snow stopped us in our tracks or when the cold was actually dangerous? Certainly my years in the Keweenaw when I was in my 30s and 40s acclimated me to snow in ways never imagined (my first year of graduate school, I believe we had 340+ inches of snow). Even now, unless the snow is over a foot per storm, I think of it as pretty insignificant. Now I believe it is more the cold and wind that makes the winter much less enjoyable or tolerable. What I did realize last night was it is light later and that is something that give me hope.

In my last blog, I focused on one particular book of the multitude of books either written by or about Dietrich Bonhoeffer. This morning I spoke with my mentor and comprehensive exams professor, Dr. Dale Sullivan about this profoundly influential, incredibly principled pastor, the focus of my dissertation. We both pondered what his moving, but unrealized, concept of religionless Christianity might have looked like, how it might have been practiced in the typical church or denomination. What I still find myself examining is how he focuses on the suffering of the other was so foundational to what provided a sense of justification for his decision to work for the Abwehr. Bonhoeffer’s faith was based on two important concepts, both distinctive and yet interwoven: community and discipleship.

In his small book titled Life Together, Bonhoeffer pushes the human understanding of community out the door, arguing the only lasting community we can hope for as a Christian community is a spiritual community, an alien community because it comes from God and not from our own ability. The importance of that is not merely that it creates a new understanding of what it means to live together in this world, but it connect intimately to his understanding of discipleship, and what it means to truly follow Christ, and Christ crucified (which is a suffering Christ). Michial Farmer, a professor teaching in Minnesota who has been influenced by Karl Barth and Søren Kiekegaard, notes that if one takes Bonhoeffer’s Cost of Discipleship seriously, few of us can claim to be Christian (“Christian Suffering . . .” 5JAN2011). He continues, “The earth-shattering revelation in The Cost of Discipleship is the extent to which suffering is necessary for the Christian life. (Obviously, Bonhoeffer was not the first to point this out, but he points it out more stridently and effectively than anyone else I’ve ever read.) Suffering is for Bonhoeffer the immediate requirement of the Gospel, ‘not the terrible end to an otherwise godfearing and happy life, but it meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ. When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.’ The Christian life always already demands suffering” (Christian Suffering . . . para.2). The significance of this is that it is not simply some personal piety that exists in an ideal Christian following, but that it is grittier; it is dirtier if you will. Bonhoeffer argued that God allows Himself to be edged out of the world and onto the cross, showing that God is not a “working hypothesis” for escaping pain, but a weak, suffering presence alongside humanity. The death of Jesus on the cross is an incredible example of the suffering necessary in discipleship.

This is not something something we want to hear, and it is not something we openly hope in which we want to participate. The salvific power of Jesus is in his suffering. “Christ is Christ only in virtue of his suffering and rejection, so the disciple is a disciple only in so far as [they] shares his Lord’s suffering and rejection and crucifixion Discipleship means adherence to the person of Jesus, and therefore submission to the law of Christ which is the law of the cross” (Cost of Discipleship). There is no reciprocation, if you will, this is done not out of the expectation of receiving something back, and it is not some tragic existence, but rather it is what it means to be exclusively a disciple. This is not something we want to hear, and perhaps, even more so, not something in which we hope to actively participate. Jesus prayed in Gethsemane that the cup of suffering might be taken from him, but it was only through the suffering the cup would pass on. Without suffering Farmer argues we find ourselves in a “divine alienation” from God. Instead what God requires is a divine alienation from the world. That is not something most practicing Christians want to hear, let alone become an active participant. There is no reciprocity in this. It is a requirement, and the necessity of it leaves our thought of God on our side, which is something rampant in American Christendom, as an impossibility. What happens is something that the Danish philosopher and theologian, Kierkegaard referred to as a leap of faith. By its very nature, a leap of faith is solitary; it is an individual action, and in solitude there is no reciprocation, unless it would come from God, and that presupposes that we can influence God to such a degree. That is a question for another time.

Matthew Erickson, in his piece titled “The Must of Suffering in a Christian Life . . .” asserts, “The cross is laid on every Christian. The first Christ-suffering which every man must experience is the call to abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old man which is the result of his encounter with Christ. As we embark upon discipleship we surrender ourselves to Christ in union with his death-we give over our lives to death.” For those from the Upper Midwest, and perhaps in their late 40s or beyond, you might remember Garrison Keillor and his monologues on the show A Prairie Home Companion, about his hometown Lake Woebegone. In one particular sketch, where the infamous sad, but pious, Lutheran Pastor Ingqvist is in a discussion with his wife, after being guilted into giving up a family vacation to Disneyworld. He knows he has been less than thoughtful, and he has disappointed the family immensely. After their discussion, his wife (who ironically and sadly did not ever have a name . . . .hmmmmm) says to him thoughtfully, “Martyrdom is a gift of the spirit, but you only use it once, and you do not take your wife and family with you.” So it is with faith, and Kierkegaard’s leap. It is something you do, and as noted, we are called to do if we are truly disciples.

The struggle with community and our attempts to connect it to issues of faith, of life in the church is a difficult one. I think back to my visits with people, parents, grandparents, sponsors, when someone came to me about baptism. Too often most did not understand what happened in baptism; they did not understand who was acting; and they did not understand the implications of what they promised to do. What does it mean to be baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus? What does it mean when the primary acting power is the power they do not see? What happens when they, as well as the congregation makes promises about the life of the one being baptized? This was something I did not really understand myself until I was implementing the sacrament. In the liturgy, the congregation accepts the baptized as a fellow believer in the Church of Christ, a member of a group committed to being disciples, but when most are Sunday Christians, working to understand how the one hour affects the other hundred-sixty-seven. That is not mean to slight the community of believers, but it does push the idea that with most having little more than an eighth-grade religious education, it is not surprising that discipleship is such a foreign concept, particularly when it comes to Bonhoeffer’s argument for what discipleship is. In a sermon on Psalm 63:3 (and Bonhoeffer had memorized the Psalter during his incarceration), the verse is powerful: “Your steadfast love is better than life.” It was only through the suffering lament the writer could come to such words about the love of God. It was only when all was stripped away, the Psalmist could or would encounter the God who was always there. It was not in some dogmatic ritual or even in the Torah itself, it was in the suffering that the Psalmist finds God. It is not in the goodness of our lives; it is not in the stuff of our lives, in our comfortability, but it is when we are at our most vulnerable, our most painful, our most unworthiness that we can come face-to-face with the true depth of the love of God.

So where does that leave one in terms of community? How do we create an honest community based on discipleship? I think of monastic communities, and perhaps they have some real sense of this sort of commitment, but what about mainstream living and a sense of community. Much like I have noted lately that AI would profoundly change how I would teach only two years later, what I would hope for a congregation, and how I would understand my role as a pastor would be. How would I lead differently? How would I become more of a servant that I was, and I am not sure I did that well to be honest. So much I see differently now. Recently a childhood friend (we are from the same church and I was a classmate of her brother’s) sent me a picture of the bulletin from my ordination. While I remember it clearly (it was created for just my service and the scripture used, and was designed by a friend and printed by my incredibly kind and talented father-in-law at that time), it was nice to see it. Perhaps understanding community and the seemingly contradictory nature of needing solitude is the next part of this discussion. More reading and more consideration. While I have used the following before, it seems apropos here as it too was sung at my ordination by my childhood best friend, Peter Goede. I remember him saying it was not an easy piece to do, but he did it fabulously.

Thank you as always for reading. I am grateful to each of you, and I wish you a blessed continuing Lenten journey.

Michael

Confession or Accusation . . .

Hello from Main Street in Pennsylvania’s only town,

When we are being honest with ourselves, I ponder what that means, or perhaps more significantly, is that even possible? Much like the concept of altruism, as humans can we ever be completely altruistic? Morton Hunt, in his book, The Compassionate Beast, asserts that we are innately wired to help others, challenging selfish, egoistic views of human behavior. I remember using the book in my Major Religions class when I first taught at Suomi College. If we are truly wired to be more kind and compassionate than not, if Hunt is correct, what might we say to our current world situation? As I remember there was an optimism in Hunt’s book that might serve us well at this point in time. When I was working on my dissertation, which would have been chronologically after the use of Hunt, one of the specific documents I examined was Bonhoeffer’s letter to his co-conspirators written when he could not offer the absolution they desired from their co-conspirator, who was also a pastor. Steven P. Miller, the author of the book The Age of Evangelism: America’s Born-Again Years, noted in his sub-stack the following about Bonhoeffer’s letter. “Ten years had gone by, and by the end of those ten years Bonhoeffer had become someone who could contemplate participation in a killing. Bonhoeffer never retreated from his Christian principles and what they said about violence. But he did come to understand that difficult times demand extraordinary choices, and in terrible times only in the mercy and wisdom of God can there be found any way to unravel what is right and what is wrong” (7JUL2025). What Bonhoeffer offered was a confession of sorts, and the only absolution possible was from God, and perhaps history. Bonhoeffer’s reflection on their situation was honest; it was insightful; and it was poignant. He wrote, “Are we still of any use? . . . We have been silent witnesses of evil deeds; we have been drenched by many storms; we have learnt the arts of equivocation and pretence; experience has made us suspicious of others and kept us from being truthful and open; intolerable conflicts have worn us down and even made us cynical” (Bonhoeffer 1942). Written as a sort of Christmas epistle, Bonhoeffer was acutely aware of the profound difficulty their actions caused. He argued that the role of a faithful person (in their relationship to the other), [was to] learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do, and more in the light of what they suffer.” Furthermore he wrote, “I believe that God is no timeless fate, but that [God] waits for and answers sincere prayers and responsible actions” (After Ten Years). What was our duty as a Christian, be it to the other or to God? “The Christian is called to sympathy and action, not in the first place by his own sufferings, but by the sufferings of [others], for whose sake Christ suffered” (After Ten Years).

If I return to the idea of altruism, were the actions of Bonhoeffer and his group something that could be regarded as altruistic? As something referred to as “costly grace” or “responsible action,” did they act altruistically? It is possible to do something that seems horrendous at its core, or certainly in a surface examination, and yet have it be something completely antithetical? Bonhoeffer spoke regularly about the concept of cheap grace (or as noted above costly). Bonhoeffer openly challenged the what he referred to as the “sanctuary of private virtuousness,” something he believed to be a cowardly retreat from the world’s suffering (Barnett, 2018). From his helping the Jews escape to Switzerland to his refusing to remain in America, Bonhoeffer’s actions were in defense of the other as well as a sacrificial act of rejecting personal safety, also for the other. When I was working on my dissertation, my reading of Bonhoeffer as well as the works of Sisela Bok, I struggled mightily with coming to terms with the idea of lying and maintaining a level of secrecy that was necessary to conceal the murder of another human, regardless of how evil that person was. And yet what I am realizing even now, was the moral dilemma of Bonhoeffer was profound.

In the abstract of an article in the Scottish Journal of Theology, subtitled “Sanctification as the increasing awareness of moral chaos,” Brian Powers writes, “. . . Initially embracing pacifism as a fundamental pillar of Christian life, Bonhoeffer eventually became convinced that there are no pure or ‘right’ moral choices, only competing ‘wrong’ ones. He later wrote from prison that to be like Christ, and to come closer to holiness, was not to seek to avoid guilt, but to take on guilt for the sake of others” (5MAY2020). I think the significance of this citation is not even what it says as much as when it was written. The relevance of Bonhoeffer and his decisions in the face of the Nazi pogrom remain for us today. Assuredly, some will still assert, accuse, if you will, that Bonhoeffer’s decision to become an active participant in the plot is unforgivable. What we have is our own moral dilemma; does Bonhoeffer’s own confession make his actions more altruistic than we are able or willing to consider? What we are forced to ponder is that Bonhoeffer was willing to bear the guilt of taking part in a murder (the plot to kill Hitler) to save others, a concept he approached as “sinning” out of necessity and casting himself upon God’s mercy.

So as I ponder this incredible theologian and his actions some 60+ years later, what I find is his actions while certainly a moral dilemma, were never done for his own personal gain or power, in spite of his inside knowledge of Hitler (Hitler had attended Bonhoeffer’s father’s 80th birthday party and Bonhoeffer’s family by marriage was integrally involved in the Abwehr, the German Intelligence Agency). Bonhoeffer, whose twin sister was married to a Jewish person – Bonhoeffer who was banned from speaking in public or writing publicly, much of his most poignant writing would occur after he was imprisoned, after the plot was discovered. He wrote, “It is not a religious act which makes a Christian but participation in the suffering of God in the life of the world.” Or “To be a Christian does not mean to be religious in a particular way but to be a human being” (Letters and Papers from Prison). As Bonhoeffer faced his own suffering and eventual death, he wrote, “What do we mean by God? . . . Certainly not abstract belief but an encounter with Jesus, the man for others, an encounter with Jesus who had a freedom from self which he maintained to the point of death” (Letters and Papers from Prison). The Reverend Ali Newell, a chaplain at the University of Edinburgh, wrote the following during a Holy Week Homily within this decade. She says, ‘Whoever I am, Thou knowest, O God, I am thine’ are words of Bonhoeffer that echo Jesus on the cross saying ‘into thy hands I commit my spirit’. These words are an utterance of deep surrender and faith in Love – words to hold during this Holy Week and words for all those who are suffering and facing death at this time in our world (24JUN2024). Again, there can be little doubt that Bonhoeffer is as relevant to us in our world today as he was when he was led to the gallows, naked, on a Sunday morning in April 1945. As he was led to the gallows at Flossenbürg Bonhoeffer allegedly said to fellow prisoner Payne Best, ‘This is the end – for me, the beginning of life.’ He reportedly added, “With me, I believe, the last witness is silent” (The Bonhoeffer Project).

Even as he was led to the gallows before that occurred, Bonhoeffer, in the words of camp doctor, H. Fischer-Hullstrung, wrote, “Through the half-open door in one room of the huts I saw Pastor Bonhoeffer before taking off his prison garb, kneeling on the floor praying fervently to his God. I was most deeply moved by the way this loveable man prayed, so devout and so certain that God heard his prayer. At the place of execution, he again said a short prayer and then climbed the steps to the gallows, brave and composed. His death ensured after a few seconds. In the almost fifty years that I worked as a doctor, I have hardly ever seen a man die so entirely submissive to the will of God” (Metaxas, 532). Bonhoeffer did struggle with the road his life had taken, but he was wholly submissive to God’s will as he understood it. He wrote to his fiancée, Maria Wedemeyer, in their last correspondence, “My past life is brim-full of God’s goodness, and my sins are covered by the forgiving love of Christ crucified. I’m most thankful for the people I have met, and I only hope they will never have to grieve for me, but that they too, will always be certain of, and thankful for, God’s mercy and forgiveness” (Summer 1944). Perhaps altruism is possible, even in the most dire of times. Perhaps it is in the confession of our worst moments that altruism exists, and that is the incredible grace of God.

I used the following trailer for the beginning of my dissertation defense on Bonhoeffer. The title of that dissertation was Dietrich Bonhoeffer: Creating Ethos in Uncertain Circumstances. While I believe it was a good faith effort at the time, and there are portions of the diss that I am proud of, I think I could have done so much better.

Blessed Lent to each of you, and thank you as always for reading.

Michael

It Needs Harmony

Hello from a Sunday of uncertain weather,

It’s been an interesting winter of weather here in North Central Pennsylvania. Earlier in January, we received the most snow in a storm that I’ve experienced in 16 years. Additionally, we also experienced an 18 day period where the temperature did not get above freezing. That is atypical for here. Certainly, the temperature in my childhood area is much colder. I remember a period in seminary in the Twin Cities (and I was working for an Amoco Gas Station with both AAA and Amoco Motor Club) when the temperature did not get out of the negative numbers for almost two weeks. The last winter I was in Wisconsin I was snow blowing for Lydia after a snowstorm, and the temperature was -35 and the windchill was a -58. While it was cold, it is a much drier colder than what is typical here in Pennsylvania, but in my opinion is more manageable than single digits here in Bloomsburg. It is because the humidity that is more prevalent here creating a penetrating cold. Currently a Nor’easter is hammering the mid-Atlantic, with NYC getting their first blizzard warning in a decade and the 95 corridor will be in the middle of the storm. I am not sure what will happen here in Bloomsburg.

The past week has been busy, but productive on a number of fronts. All of my belongings are out of Tennessee, and I have a bit more sense of having some of my things versus where I have been since late September. It seems like so much longer than 6 months ago, but I am still beyond fortunate for the people I met there. The importance of getting more things in the same location is I am feeling a growing sense of balance. Second, I have worked on some significant aspects of my job, learning some really important insights into what my colleague wants as well as how they manage process. I am a process person, but feel like a novice compared to them. My continued learning about using AI to assist my work is actually beyond eye-opening. I regularly think about how differently I would teach things than I did only two years ago. The third area I find myself working on managing a sense of balance is thinking about the things I need to expend energy on and the things I should not. Understanding and practicing balance is something that is important to life in general, and it is something I have struggled with since retirement. Learning what helps one establish or feel balanced is significant to all aspects of humanity. Within balance there is a sense of harmony.

Balance is often demonstrated in places we do not realize. As many know, I have a real appreciation for the creation of wine, from planting new vines to tending them, from harvest to barreling, and from bottling to enjoying the fruit (pun intended) of what’s created. There are a couple of wine-themed movies, which I have watched multiple times since their release. The first one, titled Sideways, a movie that put Pinot Noir on the map and tanked sales of Merlot for a decade (this is true), starred Paul Giamatti and Virginia Madsen (as well as some others) and really does speak about balance or the lack thereof. The second movie, and one I have watched more often, is titled A Good Year, is a RomCom starring Russell Crowe and Marie Cotillard, and is set in Provence, France. At one point, when the main character is young and staying at his Uncle Henri’s vineyard, they watch Msr. Duflot singing to the vines he meticulously cares for. Young Max asked why, and Albert Finney, who plays Uncle Henri magnificently, notes, “He sings to the vines because the terrior needs more than sun and rain. It needs harmony; it needs balance.”The truth of that statement is not only appropriate for viticulture, it is something needed in life in general. Balance is conceptually simple, but either obtaining it or managing it is something beyond difficult. Much like the dependency on weather in a vineyard, maintaining consistency in the taste, flavor, or texture of wine from one vintage to the next depends on the winemaker to some extent, but it begins long before that. The individuals managing the blocks of vines, the careful understanding and practice of managing water (for instance in a water deficit area) or knowing when to harvest when the brix are just at peak, “allowing the fruit to be the fruit” as my enologist, Marco Cappellii noted from when I first met him is an art. Balance in life is also affected by outside influences, and managing those influences are not always an easy thing. From issues of age or location, from the reality of things like power or circumstance, finding balance in life, either daily or longer term requires some careful and thoughtful internal agency. Managing that in a way that fosters balance is something I have always struggled to do. It is something I have pondered as of late. From the time I was about 23 until I retired, most of what I did was all or nothing. There was little time or appreciation for moderation. Certainly, understanding why that was is important as well as why it affected me is actually an easy thing to ascertain. A simple sentence I heard regularly as a child: “You do not deserve to be in our house; You will never grow up to be anything.” instilled a belief that without working to prove them wrong I would become exactly that.

The reality of working hard did not kick in as a regular way of existence until I started at Dana College. By that time, in spite of doing exceptionally well in Communications and Electronics School, receiving a meritorious promotion in the Marine Corps, of qualifying for OSC and a Platoon Leaders Course, I would also be fired from a first job after returning and flunk out of college after my first foray into higher education. From losing both a brother and a grandmother within months of each other, I was lost and there was anything but balance in my life. It was a shooting on a New Years Eve, one that I was involved in, that would change my life. It was the falling for someone that taught me a great deal about making better decisions who would push me to look at some different paths. It was four other people who would put up with my trying to figure myself out during nine months and 40,000 miles that would lead me to Dana College. While it was at Dana I believe I first understood where I might go, what I might be “qualified” to do, it was perhaps the place my insecurity pushed me into a pattern of work and achievement that went beyond moderation. As I write, I am listening to the movie The Way We Were. It’s my first time seeing it. It is stunning, but it too speaks about balance. I thought it was something to finally see after the recent passing of Robert Redford. The passion of both Katie (Barbara Streisand) and Hubbell (Robert Redford) for their causes is anything but moderation. At the end of the movie, she asks, “Wouldn’t it be lovely if we were old, and we survived all of this? Everything would be easy and uncomplicated.” It is possible to make things uncomplicated? I am not convinced there is an answer that is surefire accurate. At this point in life, I am quite sure that creating a life less complicated will result in balance. I think it is possible, and perhaps for me necessary, to excel at anything I do, but also to find the ability to step aware when reasonable, to eliminate things that cause dismay or stress in my life. When there is stress, there is dissonance. There is something that create a lack of harmony.

What I find different at this juncture of my life is my willingness to step away from things, from people, or anything that causes me to feel disappointed. I see that as a step necessary to create the balance I so desire, that I so need. Toward the end of the movie A Good Year, Max, the ruthless trader, the money-making machine for his company, must decide which path to take after the inheriting of the winery of his Uncle Henri (probably spelled with a wine, but I decided to use an “i” because of the location in France). Standing in the board room with the principle partner of the firm, he sees the Rodin statue (which is the beginning picture), and there is a 200,000.00 replica of a Van Gogh. And he ponders what he wants for his life. He is required to make his own decision about balance. We are all required to make that choice, and too often figuring out what offers our best opportunity for that equilibrium is unclear. Too often we listen to others versus our own heart. Be it wine, the world, or life, happiness depends on balance. Within the balance and harmony, we find peace.

Thanks as always for reading. I wish you balance. I wish you harmony and peace.

Michael

Grief is the Proof Love Exists

Hello on the Month that we celebrate love,

Valentines Day is certainly a mixed bag, albeit something we spend billions of dollars on each year (this year the prediction is 29.1 billion or just shy of 200.00 per person – I did multiple searches including AI). And recently titles like SAD (Singles Awareness Day, which is the 15th), Galentine’s Day from Parks and Recreation, which is the 13th, and even a Palentines Day, also on the 14th to celebrate friendship provide some sense of the significance of how important relationships of any kind are to us as humans, and also a reality that our need to be loved and cared for is central to our humanity. The variety of ways we find ourselves using the term “love” and the breadth of how often it is injected into our language reveals two things, or so it seems. First, love is an essential human quality and something we need for our own well-being; and second, in spite of its profound importance to our humanity, we seldom know what to do with it or how to express it adequately.

Why might I argue such a thing you might ask? Well if we can say we love pizza as quickly as we love our grandmother, might there be an issue? If we can state our love for such a plethora of inanimate items as easily (or perhaps more quickly) as we express our love for someone we have committed our life to, what are we saying? I would argue that we really do not understand either the emotion or the word. Our cavalier usage of something that has such a wide scope of possibilities can cause us to question what love is at its very foundation. For me, I often tell those people for whom I have a deep sense of appreciation, those who have made a significant impact on my life, those who have been kind enough to reveal who they are and with I have reciprocated that vulnerability, that I love them. Is that a fair assessment of this incredible emotion? I do believe it is, but what does it really mean in terms of the idea of loving someone? The complexity of love has more than boggled me for a wide array of reasons. As a person twice divorced, I have found myself more than once asking what it meant to love that person to the degree that I was willing to commit my life to them. And when I (or we) failed both times, was my life that imperfect or was there something more? Certainly there were issues with my actions and my ability to maintain my love for them regardless of what happened.

Earlier today, I saw a post from a former student, whose child is celebrating a first birthday, and her (their) love for their child is unmistakable. The joy, the emotional tie, the reverence they show for their son shines through everything they post. There is what seems to be an unfailing care before self that illustrates the depth of love they have. It is something that gives me hope beyond most things I see in our current world. As someone who never had his own children (and I know I am told and even feel I have had a lot of surrogate children, who have richly blessed me), there is a wistfulness in what I see from those former students who have now become parents. There is a pureness and holiness in the love of a parent for their child I admire. It might be one of the two or three places I believe what I hope love is, demonstrates itself as possible.

The occasion of another Valentines Day as a single person, and there have been decades of them both as a young person and now as an older one, compelled me to ponder when and if I have really understood what it is to genuinely love someone in my life. If is such a significant element of our humanity, what makes it so difficult to find, to maintain, or experience? For me, too often, I believe my hope that I loved someone was an initial infatuation that continued beyond that head-turning, heart-pitterpat moment. For that to occur, there was something beyond the mere attractiveness of the other. For that to make some alteration in my life, I believe there was a sense of morals and values that were similar, compatible, and seeking the same thing. At yet, what I realize is there was too often, and perhaps still is, in spite of my realizing the absurdity of such a hope, that we could continue in life always in love first, regardless the difficulties.

As I consider those in my life, family, friends, and yes, students who were in my classes and have remained in my life, classmates, those I have dated, and yes, two people with whom I have taken wedding vows, when I am honest with myself to the point of finger pointing, if I can call it that, who and how many of them would I say I loved in the way I noted above, in a manner that is indisputable, immeasurable, as unconditional as humanly possible? Or in other words beyond what I perhaps realized myself capable of doing? And I do want to say that there are a number of people if something happened to them I would be devastated. But with whom there was a love that they changed my life, a connection that in spite of time or even physical existence, their influence in my life still exists? I think there are three or four people. And how is it I can say that or narrow it to so few. In terms of categories, one is a relative, one is a former spouse, and two are life-long friends.What is it that allows me to confess, if you will (and perhaps appropriate to confess on this Ash Wednesday)? I think it is because I still grieve some aspect of that change that occurred (and some of the changes are easily determined and for one perhaps not as much).

The family member that still influences me to this day (and this is not to lessen other family members in any way) is my Grandmother. I have written about her so many times, and she is a constant thread in this blog. She is even more so a constant in my determining how I act, what I value, how I treat others, and what I believe is appropriate in our world. She, more than anyone, taught me what it is to love, what it is to be loved, which is as important, and how I wanted to try to model love to others. Too often, I believe I have fallen short of imagining that. I remember standing in Graceland Cemetery the day of her funeral, and I sobbed uncontrollably because the person who had imparted such immeasurable love to me was gone. I was not ready for that day (she was only 64), and in someways I have never recovered. I still grieve her. The second person I noted above was a spouse, and it was my second spouse. I often describe it in this manner. If she walked through the door where I was, even today and we have been divorces for 25 years, I would be a basket-case. I was not capable of being the husband she needed (and while I am not sure I could ever be), I made mistakes and some significant ones. And yet, if I ever loved someone in my adult life, she would be that person. And yet, through many years of counseling, I know that our marriage was not healthy from the beginning. And that is a mutual fault. And yet, I grieve that failure. It is important that I realize the depth of the love I had for her, but that also made me incredible fragile, and I was more broken than I knew. I know that the failure of that marriage has had life-long consequence for me. That too is part of the grieving.

The other two people are friends to this day, and for both of them, I am grateful, and will be so to the end of the days. The first friend taught be so much about how I could love, but also how I was unprepared and incapable of loving in a healthy manner. The reasons for that are legion, and yet, decades later, we have a friendship that is precious and genuine. That too is a profound gift. So the grieving is a different kind of grief if you will. It is a realization that love is profound and intense and it is life changing. Today, their insight into me in often beyond what I realize myself, but it is always provided in a sense of deep care and thoughtful love that humbles me. In spite of every different paths, in spite of profound statements, we have learned to respect both the wishes of those we loved and create something that gives me balance and hope. The second person has known me since I first came to the Martin house. We grew up together, and I think it is fair to say, there is a certain element of the infamous “what if?” for both of us. And yet, we went about our lives never matching our emotions to a parallel time that would work. Now we have an incredible friendship that continues to grow in appreciation for the other. While I have traveled and left our neighborhood, she has remained pretty local, that has changed our trajectory in life, and yet we find we have so much more in common than we ever realized as we continue to chat and interact. I know if anything were to happen to her I would grieve her loss almost as much as my grandmother’s. That says a lot. What I have always appreciated was her kindness and beauty; what I have learned as we have aged is how incredibly intelligent and insightful she is. Her questioning of things, much like my own, is unceasing. Her commitment to family is something unparalleled. The other thing I grieve is perhaps that we never found our time frames matching up. One might say that was for the best, and there can be no argument about what never happened.

What I realize is simply that is in the grieving of something I have come to realize that love is possible. I am not sure we understand the profundity of love when we are in it. It’s immensity becomes apparent when it is no longer there or perhaps when it did not happen.

Thanks as always for reading. If you love someone, let them know.

Michael

Tradition and Transformation: Fasnacht and Carnival

Hello on a Friday the 13th,

There is so much happening in our world presently it is difficult to find a moment to breathe, or at least that is how it seems. Is my looking at all of this my version of doomscrolling or is it something more? I would like to believe that I am doing more than simply scrolling through things. I am wondering if it is because I am retired, and while I have things I am working on, there is little doubt that I have spent more time reading content and watching things like Congressional hearings, which is not something I have done in the past. My focus on what is happening nationally and internationally has always been something I find fascinating, but I do not remember a time where I read it with such perturbation and dread as I currently am. Perhaps that is why I am wondering if it is nothing more than doomscrolling. And yet, I find myself wondering if that is exactly what those in power hope . . . if it creates such angst perhaps they will walk away believing it is no use. While, once again, I will admit to being somewhat of a political junkie, I have always been intrigued by the American experiment of democracy; I have been attracted to it much like two magnets of opposite polarity, wondering how individuals from the founding of our country up until present day choose to work toward being elected to state or national office.

I think for much of my lifetime we were lead to believe in the benevolence of those elected officials to do what is best for the American people who have elected them. There was generally a foundational sense that we had a goodness, a duty, to do what was best for each other, and for the other. There was a trust, or perhaps even a faith in the principle that hard work created opportunity and that was the essence of the American dream. Of course, that was something I readily accepted as a white middle class (even if it was lower middle class) kid from Iowa. I have often stated, “I did not always get what I wanted, but I always had what I needed.” As I aged, I realized the importance of that lesson. Seldom do things happen exactly as we hope, but if we can learn to be appreciative and content we would do a lot to help ourselves, both in the moment as well as in long term expectations.

When I first met with Bishop Harold Weiss, the bishops of the synod to which I had been assigned, he asked me what I thought about receiving a call to a parish that referred to themselves as “a church of the red book.” What this referred to was a parish that had refused to adopt the LBW, a hymnal that was now a decade old. Additionally he asked how I would work with worship and my attitudes about prelation and liturgics. In all honesty, I was unsure what he asked, but a quick Rolodex of terms connected me to a prelate. So I suspected he was asking about how I understood worship. Perhaps both my work at seminary and my previous stint on a Lutheran Youth Encounter team prompted his question. Hoping I understood his question, I started with the idea that churches, specific congregations, had traditions they held to, often not even knowing why, but they held on to them tightly. I noted that if I came into a parish and turned things upside down, demonstrating no appreciation for their practices, they would have little appreciation for me. My answer was acceptable. I have revisited that exchange many times, examining the significance of tradition, of one’s history and how it establishes identity for them.

I believe in the significance of tradition and precedent for exactly those reasons; it provides a sense of identity, of predictability, and ultimately of safety. All of attributes are beneficial, but when does tradition become less than? That is something I struggle to answer, because of the dynamic nature of our society, be it in our own families, our litle corner of the world, or to the more expansive national identity or our place in the global community.

As I write today, it is now the day before Lent begins. Tradition and transformation are steeped in this day. While I did not grow up Roman Catholic, the significance of a Lenten discipline is something I have done since college. For many years, I would abstain from something during that 40 day discipline; however, at one point I transformed from giving something up to doing something for someone each day. The discipline is there, but the consequences are much more positive. The tradition remained, but my transition to doing something positive versus some sad withdrawal from something created a transformation that did not throw out the intent, or at least I hope not. As I consider my traditions, their transitions, and how I have been transformed, there is still a connecting thread. The prefix of trans, from the Latin refers to something that has moved across, exists beyond, and has passed through. There is a movement, and there is a direction, but I believe there is an underlying connection to the place before. Change is inevitable, and often occurs in such small increments, it is unrealized until something profound occurs. Much like the weathering of a building, we notice the changes, but we accept them as ordinary, as a given (like the proverbial death and taxes). What allows for transformation to be sometime positive? What allows the holding on or the connecting to tradition be something positive versus something impeding progress? These are complex questions and often fraught with emotion, furthering their complication. The require careful reflection, both self-examination as well as a willingness to be honest about our fears and fragilities. And being honest with ourselves is never easy. It requires a complete willingness to face of limitations, admit our mistakes, and a willingness to confess to the other. As I face the forty days of Lent, the penitential act of confession requires humility, but allows for reconciliation and forgiveness.

Lately, I have struggled with a number of things I believe break tradition, ignore precedent, and as evidenced by myself, created division, all of which are disconcerting. I have responded to the profound disunity less charitably than I do, and that has caused both others and myself pain. Even now I find a need to slow down and step back, taking the time to examine my understanding of tradition, of how our world changes, and where I fit in it all. Thank goodness for the season of Lent and its focus on spiritual renewal – something one can never do too often.

Thank you as always for reading,

Michael

Only Remembering or Telling What We Want

Hello from yet another February morning,

Whether or not it only seems I am looking back at life more frequently or it’s an actuality, I’m unsure, but turning 70 must have something to do with that particular action. And yet as I ponder my life and the events or experiences, the people and places that have left their imprint on me, what I find myself asking with a much greater sense of urgency is if I can consider myself a successful person, a good person, and person of whom my grandmother would be proud. The last of this list might seem a bit non sequitur, but it is still related, though from an opposite perspective. I have often referred to my Grandmother Louise as my hero, and, if anything, that is more true now than at any point in my life.

Both psychologists and sociologists assert that we remember things in a particular manner because we often could not emotionally manage the difficulty that some of our personal history would rain down upon us. There are moments or circumstances that our brain blocks for our inherent survival. While I am grateful that we have been wired as such, I still suspect how that works is unique to each of us.

Let me often one instance in from childhood I know was traumatic, and while I remember the event, and a sort of still-frame element of it. The most horrific instances are erased from memory. When I lived at my grandparent’s house, we had a fenced-in backyard. I was in the backyard, and a dog jumped the fence to come into the yard (it was not my little black cocker spaniel). Even now over 65 years later I can picture in my mind the dog walking up to me. It was a large dog, and at least part German Shepherd, and we were about the same height. I can vaguely remember staring at the dog face-to-face. What I have no recollection of is the dog biting the left side of my face. The dog actually bite me and there was significant damage from the front of the level of my ear to my jaw line. The reason I know that is there are still minimal scars. What I remember next is being in my grandfather’s arms being carried into the hospital. I remember being in the backseat of the car and going home after the care in the emergency room. I can recollect a conversation between my grandfather driving back home, speaking to whomever was also in the car. I am unsure if they had already had put the dog down, or it was in process to determine if it was rabid. That is all I remember. I do not remember being bit; I do not remember receiving stitches; and amazingly, I have never been afraid of dogs. In fact, I do not know if Penny, the black cocker spaniel was already a member of our little family or if she was brought afterwards to assist me in managing a possible fear of dogs.

Certainly, parts of that day were effectively blocked to minimize the trauma of my being bitten. I can think of a couple other such events, where especially difficult moments have been blurred at the very least to completely erased to protect us. On the other hand, I believe, as humans, we have a propensity to revise, redact (an important term currently), or more amazingly, reconstruct events we would rather not remember or accept any responsibility for. Again, the rationale for such refashioning can be hard to pin down, but I believe it is often a way to manage guilt or shame for that event. When we look back at events or incidences, those which created some major shift in our understanding, or even when we ponder some behavior, either of our own or the other, something that influenced or affected us fundamentally over time, we remember and recount it in a way that most suits us either emotionally or otherwise. That is normal, and it is an act of preservation. And yet, such things always have consequence, both individually and collectively.

When I consider relationships, even within my family, and perhaps especially in my family, how I perceive those events that shaped me, I know my recollection as well as my understanding of them have become my truth about them. Moreover, the farther away they become, the further that truth becomes a sort of dogma, the gospel about it. That is simple except when someone, that others who perhaps lived through that time with you, offers their perspective on the same situation. Over the holidays I learned this first hand, and it caught me a bit off guard. It was disconcerting, and it has left me a bit discombobulated. It was not the overall conversation, although there is some struggle there, it was a simple, straightforward statement. It continues to ring in my ears, and has almost dragooned me into examining both who I am and how I interact with others. While that might sound a bit hyperbolic, I am not sure it is.

It has turned me a bit on a proverbial ear, and compelled me to look at my connection to and with the person I have most struggled my entire life. How did they become the person they were, and while I can still say being there was better than the alternative, and what does it mean to truly let go? In spite of the progress made on so many fronts, why is it one sentence can yank me back into those feelings so easily, so completely? Is it because I still feel in some manner more accountable, even if I was the child? Is it because my attempt to forgive is more frail or incomplete than I wished it to be? Certainly, we all wish some things could have been different; surely, all of us imagine the what if of things. As I struggle to make sense of my past, as I struggle to make sense of the present, there are moments I find myself wondering just how it all fits, and what part matters? This moment, as well as those in the past, together create a continuum. Much like a jigsaw puzzle, it is sometimes easy to focus on a particular piece, trying to determine where it fits, obsessing on figuring out its importance to the larger puzzle. We attempt to put it into multiple places, and yet it does not fall into place, so we set it aside. Later, returning to the puzzle, and looking at the larger picture, we return to that singular piece. All of the sudden, we see where it goes and we put it into place easily. Perhaps all of our past and our hard work to figure it out just needs time, a new perspective. Maybe what I heard was not as terrible as I heard it.

Thanks for reading,

Michael

A Scar that Never Fades

Good early morning,

Into the post-Super Bowl, pre-Valentine’s Day, middle of the week-Winter Olympics mashup of February. It’s the 10th of February, and a day for me that remains as clearly etched into my memory as November 22, 1963, the 28th of January 1986, 911, or even March 4, 2020 (I actually noted in conversation earlier today once a generation there something that is culturally altering occurs.). I was a struggling student at Iowa State University, in part because I was in a major that certainly did not fit my academic strengths, and I had little to no idea how to be a dedicated student. But that evening I returned to Sioux City for the first time since Christmas break. It was a Thursday evening, and I would visit the hospital ICU, where my older brother had been a patient since falling off a ladder approximately a month before, where he was working as an electrician helping build a Burger King.

While he was still conscious albeit groggy when they got to him on the floor at the construction site that day, by the time he got to the hospital after being transported by ambulance, he suffered a massive brain hemorrhage and lapsed into a coma. He was only a couple months past his 26th birthday, and the father to three pre-school aged children and the husband to a wife who was only a quarter-century years old. Everyone in the family, except me, had been home to stand vigil in support of each other, as they watched his epic battle to live. As we were at the end of the academic quarter, and I could catch a ride back from Ames to Sioux City, I had decided to come back. When I arrived at the hospital that evening, what I saw stunned me. My brother, who was about 6 feet tall and slender, was in a somewhat fetal position in his bed, his head indented where they had removed a significant piece of his skull, and his body mass to a reduced, emaciated 89 pounds. His breathing was labored and he was unresponsive. I had never seen someone in such a dire condition, and the fact that it was my own brother was heartbreaking.

I was there at the hospital with my mother and my sister-in-law; my father was not there that evening as he decided to stay home because of a cold. As I walked into his room, I reached out and held his warm hand. His body wracked with fever, and I spoke to him softly. I stood on one side of the bed as my sister-in-law stood on the other. I remember trying to hold it together as I told him I was there. I was there to see him and I wanted him to know I loved him. We had not been there very long when he began to have a seizure. It was a significant grand mal seizure, and as his alarms went off, his nurses ushered us out of the room. We returned to the family waiting room, and I used the phone to call my father, informing him he should come to the hospital. The three of us waited silently, attempting to make small talk, but as I remember failing miserably. I do not remember how long it was before his doctor came into the room to speak with us. He talked about the gallant battle my brother was fighting to stay alive and that the complications, from the spinal meningitis to seizures, from the brain trauma and his now emaciated state, made things exponentially difficult. He had been in the room for about 10 minutes, when his nurse opened the door and came in. She looked at the doctor and simply shook her head and departed. The doctor turned and looked at the three of us and said softly, “ I’m sorry; we lost him.” I heard a whimper from my sister-in-law, and I turned and looked out the window, speaking the only word that came to mind. “Fuck!” I said to no one, as the tears began to streamed on my face. My father arrived within a half hour, but my brother was already gone. I remember my father, looking at all of us, and saying in his typically wise and stayed manner, “It is better this way.” And then his body shook as he began to cry. It was the first time I ever saw him cry. That it’s almost as overwhelming to me as the fact that my brother had just passed away.

Much of the next two days were quite a blur, and what I know now is that your body goes on autopilot merely trying to manage continued existence. Carolyn‘s father flew in from New Jersey, and on that next day, that Friday, I went to their house on South Martha Street. My grandmother, my hero, was also there, and I helped her manage the three kids while Carolyn, her father and my father made arrangements for my brother’s services and burial. It was hard to fathom the two people in their mid 20s were separated now by death rather than anything else. I remember standing on the back porch of their house that day and sobbing into my grandmother’s shoulder. I was so lost in my own life at that time that I’m not sure I processed just how tragic everything was. The same grandmother who I’ve been my hero and comforter on that day, would herself pass away, only seven months later. That year, 1977 might be the lowest point of my life – even now, almost 50 years later I am realizing how consequential those two deaths were; and I know even more clearly now how much was lost, both for me individually, and for our family collectively.

There are many things we say about death and its power over us as humans. I think the most incredible power it has and its finality in our current lives. All things we hope we might’ve said we might’ve done her now too late. For those who believe that there is something beyond, I remember the incredibly profound imagery and reality at the committal service when the body is committed back to the ground. The liturgy states (as you stand with the casket or urn before it is lowered or placed), “ This is the gate to eternal life.” What an immeasurable irony that it is in death we might find life. And yet for those left behind, life does continue, but the change is forever. The loss never disappears; certainly time can minimize the constant pain that initially seems insurmountable. And the scars from the emotional separation can reappear when least expected. For me now 50 years later, I still wonder a moments what would’ve happened had my brother lived? He was not a perfect person, as is no one, and he had many struggles. He was just profoundly human. My sister-in-law and I have talked more about him in the past year, then all the other years combined. Those conversations have been very important in helping me see and comprehend things that have been always there, but never answered. In some ways, it has healed the scar, or made it more understandable, more acceptable. Each year has February rolls around, I will revisit that night when I was the last to get home to see him. In my piety, I will always believe he waited to say goodbye. He continues to live in my memories and I know he would be amazed by his children. I hope he would be proud of how far I’ve come when I was always the younger brother who was more of a pain to him than most anything. I will always remember how talented he was and how wonderful a trombonist he was. This song will always remind me of him and the band.

Thanks for reading as always,

The Little Brother, Michael