Gettysburg and Charlottesville

20 Aug

Long a fan of all things Lincoln, I was excited to visit Gettysburg for the first time. Stopping there on our way to tour Fallingwater, the famous Frank Lloyd Wright house in western Pennsylvania, my best friend and I spent two days there.

It is, indeed, an awesome, awful place. Gettysburg is a little town with a massive cemetery in the middle. Thinking souls cannot escape the heavy reverence of the place, even in the midst of school groups with young kids running and jumping around.

If you stand at Seminary Ridge, looking out at what historians have called the High Mark of the Confederacy, the Union General Meade sits astride his horse a few yards behind you looking in the same direction. Two miles away you can make out another figure on a horse facing you across the divide. It is General Lee, of course.

I don’t know who was charged with the task of placing the monuments at Gettysburg. I think I understand why he did what he did. The positioning of the monuments is certainly quite effective in demonstrating what it was like on those fateful three days. Monuments for the Confederate states are placed in a line to the right and left of Lee’s statue, all the way across the field, I suppose in an approximation of where the companies were camped. Gettysburg is a place where the monuments serve the purpose they should—to freeze the reality of a moment in our history that no one should forget.

A Southerner by both birth and choice, I was oddly uncomfortable until we had driven to the other side and stood with Lee, looking from his vantage point. I did not feel welcome on the Union side. We climbed a tower not far from the Georgia monument and gazed back across at Meade in the distance. Surveying the field from either direction, you see nothing today but a sea of grass—but you cannot escape the heaviness of 6,000 souls who died in the space of half an hour. One of them was a great-uncle of mine, buried in Ellijay in a small country churchyard.

There’s a story told that when Lee surrendered to Grant at Appomattox Court House, Grant did not take his sword, nor the side-arms of any of his officers. Celebration over victory was quelled among the Union army. Col. Chamberlain, the college professor turned Civil War volunteer who had also fought at Gettysburg—commanded his troops to stand at “carry arms” as the Confederate soldiers, some 25,000 of them, laid down their rifles. Forty years later, Chamberlain would record that tears streamed down the faces on both sides.

After Lee had returned to his troops, Grant rode out to the front lines of his former enemy to see how the laying down of arms was proceeding. Having not anticipated this, Lee had not warned his front line of such a thing, and when he heard of Grant’s approach, he jumped on his horse and galloped to meet him. There is a story that when they came up side-by-side, astride their horses, Grant tipped his hat to Lee in salute, and in unspoken acceptance of this magnanimity, Lee allegedly responded in kind.

As I stood there on the tower, I couldn’t banish the feeling that something was wrong with the picture—it rattled in my brain long after we had gone. And then it came to me. There’s a monument missing in Gettysburg. There should be a statue of two soldiers, Confederate and Union, hats off, hands extended. We memorialize the fighting, the loss, the violence, the winning and losing. We do not honor the sacrifices, whether noble or frivolous in retrospect, of the thousands who died; we do not rise up to demonstrate respect for each other’s humanity.

 

Since last week’s tragedy in Charlottesville, I’ve read a couple of articles about people “outed” as neo-Nazis, white supremacists in their hometowns—people who’ve lost their jobs, found themselves the recipients of anger from people they once counted as friends, and now, in shock, cry that their lives have been destroyed.

I wonder if it will occur to each of them that they now live what for some is an everyday experience, except that they never did anything to draw such ire except to be black or Jewish or Muslim.

I wonder if it will occur to them that even now, this painful experience of theirs doesn’t approach the horror of those who have stood shaking with terror for their lives, watching as hooded men burned crosses on their lawns, people whose families—but for our mendacity—would never have been here, would never have been torn from their families and communities, chained and dragged onto boats, sold on docks in Charleston and elsewhere like bags of meal. I wonder if it will occur to them that the experience is but the tip of the iceberg compared to the six million who less than 100 years ago were stripped of their property, branded with numbers, crammed onto trains and transported to “camps” where they would be incinerated like garbage.

I wonder if it will occur to them that even now, unlike all of those, for them there is still a fair measure of hope. They will be uncomfortable for a time, but they are free to move to another state, another place, and be safe because of their ability to blend in.

I am angry. There is a large part of me that says, “Hey, karma is hell, isn’t it?” And then I wonder what Jesus would do if he were standing here with me. And then I’m ashamed of myself because I’m pretty sure I know the answer.

He would meet them on the road and the light shining about them would be as bright as the sun, rendering them temporarily incapacitated—just as looking at the eclipse without filters tomorrow will do. He will guide them to the end of the road—not the road to Damascus but the road to Montgomery, Richmond, Gettysburg, Dachau, Auschwitz. There they would find spirits like those who met Saul—the very spirits he had persecuted, lorded over, murdered. Groups like the families of the victims of Mother Emanuel, who would care for their wounds, show them their scars, and yet murmur with great compassion, “Now you know.”

Could I do it? I don’t know. The thought makes bile rise in my throat. I must admit that it wouldn’t come easy, but I’m pretty sure that Jesus calls me to that task. And I’m also pretty sure that only that will accomplish anything of substance, of value. Neither tearing down statues nor denying the reality of the atrocities we have committed will weave us together as a people our founding fathers, endowed with feet of clay just like the rest of us, dreamed of. There will always be those who, mistreated, mistaught as children, will find nothing about themselves on which to hang their own sense of value except things that they had nothing to do with—skin color, gender, the faith traditions of their families, the patch of land where they were born.

No, the first step to healing the divide—counterintuitive as what most of Jesus’s pronouncements and actions were—is obvious. If no one else, Grant and Lee and Chamberlain understood.

When you meet humans on the street, in your car as you pass at an intersection, in the line at the grocery store, in the halls of your church or synagogue or mosque, in the library at school…regardless of their outer appearances, in honor of their pain and yours…

Tip your hat.

A New Mind in Salem

21 May

7gables-smallWhen I was in college, I sang for three or four years with a group named “A New Mind.” The name, which preceded my involvement, was taken from a line from St. Paul’s letter to the Romans (12:2): “And be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that ye may prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect, will of God.”

I loved the name of the group — both it and St. Paul’s words echoed what I believed Jesus meant when he told the Pharisee Nicodemus that we must be “born again.” I believed then, and now, that the reason Jesus chose to use the idea of birth in the statement was that he knew that to renew our minds would require the abandonment or at least suspension of everything we’ve become so sure we know — returning to a place where we view the world and each other with the eyes of innocent curiosity and loving trust, drawing wholly new conclusions. I’m reminded of a story I read on Facebook where a young boy was so excited about getting his hair cut in a buzz because he looked forward to his kindergarten teacher’s being unable to tell him and his best friend apart. Cute enough because of his excitement, the story was quite convicting when we discovered that our young boy was white and his best friend black. I hope against hope that his teacher played along with the joke.

My best friend and I recently spent some vacation time in Salem, Massachusetts. Its notoriety, of course, whether current-day citizens are happy about it or not, is that it’s the site of the 1692 witch trials. We visited a couple of museums that presented the story of how the whole idea of witches came about and the particulars of the actual trials, one of the clearly most disturbing episodes of our history. In my mind, the story is second only to the much longer period during which those of us of Anglo-Saxon ancestry diminished an entire group of humans to the level of property — all for the purpose of propping up an economy that promised to make a few opportunistic individuals incredibly wealthy. (Sounds familiar for some reason.)

As it happens, I have a tie to both — a lineage that tracks all the way back to Salem and participation in that bloody war just 150 years ago. And I descend from folks who were on the wrong side of history in both scenarios — a couple whose testimony contributed to the eventual hanging of Sarah Good, and those who fought, often with no understanding at all until much later, for the “right” to treat other human beings as a commodity.

Oddly, however, it wasn’t all the witch stuff per se that would be central to what I took away from Salem. It was the difference between the response of those Salemites and that of my other ancestors 170 years later. The survivors of the Puritan massacre, started by the ungodly mix of spoiled children and an opportunistic out-of-his-league young minister, were much quicker to see the error of their ways and the iniquity of their actions.

I imagine the fact that my own Salem ancestors soon left and their progeny gradually found their way south in the next century may have had something to do with their need to distance themselves, to forget their connection to what had taken place there. The move would certainly be consistent with the response of those Southerners who, unable to physically remove themselves, retreated instead to denial about their own inhumanity and focused instead on the perception that they were the persecuted. Distance is as distance does, I guess.

Those families who stayed in Salem, although eventually exploiting the horror for economic reasons, were forced to reflect on what could be learned and how to recognize and stop such hysterical behavior in its tracks. They’re still doing it, by the way. After 300 years, historians have finally come to some measure of agreement about the exact location in town where the accused women and men were hanged and dumped into a ditch. A new park will be constructed on “Gallows Hill” in the next year or so, designed to promote reflection.

Not so in the South, I’m afraid. Now, I heartily agree that the Confederate flag and monuments to those who used their ill-gotten gains to build schools and institutions should be removed from places central to the everyday lives of today’s inhabitants. I agree that, for a time, they should be replaced with monuments to those who did the unpopular things even when their actions ran them out of town, both literally and figuratively. Charleston, S.C.’s recent honoring of Judge Waties Waring is such an example. A native of Charleston whose ruling would set the precedent for the U.S. Supreme Court ruling in Brown v. The Board of Education, he would live out his final days in New York. But as in Salem, I support the continued display of our misguided ancestors, elsewhere, in a much quieter place, an ongoing reminder of and place of reflection on what the mendacity of bearing false witness can do.

Hawthorne-smallBut back to Salem. Like many, I had frankly forgotten another of Salem’s claims to fame, someone whose statue inhabits a mall of sorts. I remembered Nathaniel Hawthorne as an author, of course, but not having re-read any of his works except The Scarlet Letter in close to 40 years, I did not recall that the actual “house of seven gables” on which his novel was based was there. I also didn’t remember until visiting Salem that one of the “hanging” judges during the witch trials was actually an ancestor of Hawthorne’s, a Judge Hathorne. (I didn’t misspell his name, by the way, nor was the change due to a misrecording. No, Nathaniel himself inserted the “w” into his name, in an overt attempt to distance himself.)

After visiting the house, which is thought to be the oldest still-standing wooden structure in New England, I decided it was high time I re-read the book, so I downloaded the e-book and started reading it on my phone that night. Within just a chapter or two, the general plot came back to me, but I so enjoy the structure of Hawthorne’s sentences, I endeavored to read it in its entirety. In a description of the daguerreotypist Hargrove, I came across one of those sentences: “As all is activity and vicissitude to the new mind of a child, so might it be, likewise, to a mind that had undergone a kind of new creation, after its long-suspended life.”

I have no idea if Nathaniel Hawthorne knew anything of Romans 12:2 or Jesus’s admonition that following in his steps required being “born again,” but I can tell you that young Mr. Hawthorne met a kindred soul in me. In the midst of our long-suspended lives, our minds need a kind of new creation, indeed.

May it be so.

Curious Connections

30 Apr

A man named Pavlov was studying the digestion of dogs when he noticed something—that one of his dogs salivated when he rang a bell. That something, when paired with philosophy, gave rise to what we now know as the field of psychology.

A man whose job had been oversight of responses to epidemics overseas noticed that neighborhood violence seemed to multiply according to the same patterns as diseases. When he suggested that similar strategies to those he’d used for a decade be applied in the neighborhood, crime dropped by 75% in six months.

A medical researcher learned about how the HIV virus took over healthy cells and wondered if a person’s T-cells could be altered in such a way that they’d attack cancer cells instead. His curiosity resulted in an experimental treatment that has now seen children with recurring leukemia go into and remain in remission.

I love stories like that. I guess I’m a reductionist of sorts because they suggest to me that everything in our universe is connected in a way we can’t even imagine, that there are only a few absolutes in our world and that if we discover them, we will have the key to solving almost anything.

Jesus was a reductionist, too, given what he said in answer to the question, “What are the greatest commandments?” St. Paul took it another step in a letter to the community of believers in Rome:

The commandments, “You shall not commit adultery,” “You shall not murder,” “You shall not steal,” “You shall not covet,” and whatever other command there may be, are summed up in this one command: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” If you love your neighbor as yourself, you will do him no harm, says Paul in the next verse. (Romans 13:9-10 NIV, my emphasis)

I remember thinking when I was a psychotherapist that my job wouldn’t exist if the church, as I understood it, did its job. What I had learned in psychology—from Maslow to Erikson, from depth psychology to object relations theory—only supported what Jesus said: 1) If we recognize that we are each loved and known by the Creator Abba, then our only response can be to treat each other as holy siblings, and 2) Love is to be offered and experienced in respectful, supportive relationships with each other.

Knowing both personally, and as a therapist, that what every one of us most longs for is to be known, to be genuinely cared about, to be completely ourselves without fear of rejection or abandonment, I saw no conflicts at all between what Jesus seems to have known about human nature and what psychological experiments and my days in the counseling chair seemed to suggest. And although it’s been years since I left the counseling profession, I still see no conflicts. In fact, the evidence has only grown, in my mind. Here’s what I mean.

About 10 years ago, I read a journal article about a meta-analysis of the effectiveness of different psychotherapy techniques. The study had looked at thousands of other studies and recorded measures of improvement based on patients’ responses to surveys. Was psychoanalysis or insight psychotherapy more effective? How about implosive therapy? Cognitive therapy? Behavior therapy? After all was said and done, none of the techniques had turned out to be better than others. In fact, there had been only one factor of significance in the improvement of clients across therapy techniques—the clients’ beliefs that their therapists had cared about them.

Then, a few years later, I happened onto an article about addiction by a young man named Johann Hari, who has since written a book called Chasing the Scream. Having grown up in a family of addicts, he’d decided to find out all he could about the subject, and what he found is that nothing we think we know about addiction is true. Stay with me, because the recent explosion in opioid addiction is related. Hari’s premise is anchored in studies in the 1970s by Dr. Bruce Alexander, professor of psychology at the University of Vancouver. Dr. Alexander had re-examined studies that still form the basis of our public policymaking with respect to addiction—studies that suggest that the key to “winning” the war on drugs is separating those who use the drugs from the drugs themselves, forcefully if necessary. Those original studies involved putting rats in cages with two bottles – one with water and one with heroin-infused water. The majority of rats quickly came to prefer the heroin-infused water to the extent that almost 100% of the rats overdosed on it and died.

What Alexander noticed was that in those studies, the rats had been placed in the cages alone, and he wondered if that had affected the results. So, he ran experiments of his own, experiments that included the same two bottles, but also a veritable amusement park for rats—with cheese and wheels and most importantly, other rats. In Alexander’s experiments, none of the rats overdosed and died. In fact, most of them lost interest in the water bottles altogether. At the time, Dr. Alexander noticed something else, too—that although 20% of U.S. Vietnam veterans had used heroin with regularity while in Southeast Asia, the majority had walked away from the stuff when they came home to people who loved them and the social connections they depended on.

Mr. Hari recorded a TED Talk about his research, and at the end of the talk, he says something rather curious: “The opposite of addiction is not sobriety. The opposite of addiction is connection.” Click here to watch it.

Then, just a few months ago, I listened to New York Times’ columnist Thomas L. Friedman’s book Thank You for Being Late, in which he presents his argument for why we find ourselves in the current social, cultural, and political upheaval we experience daily. Citing 1) “Moore’s law,” that technology since the mid-1960s has essentially “obsoleted” itself every two years, 2) the fact, whether man-induced or natural, that we’ve seen a trend in which every year has been warmer than the one before, and 3) rapidly-expanding globalization of the market for goods and services, Friedman argues that our biggest problem is that our ability to adapt has not kept up. He makes a good case, I think, but I wondered what he thought we could do about it. After all, thinking people know that the acceleration of change in technology, of rising temperatures and their fallout, of the globalization of markets isn’t going to stop.

I would not be disappointed. What Friedman suggested was awfully familiar. From Chapter 14:

“…I have been struck by how many of the best solutions for helping people build resilience and propulsion in this age of accelerations were things you could not download but had to upload the old-fashioned way—one human to another human at a time. … How interesting was it to learn that the highest paying jobs in the future will be “STEMpathy” jobs, jobs that combine strong science and technology skills with the ability to empathize with another human being? … Whoever would have thought it would become a national security and personal security imperative for all of us to scale the Golden Rule further and wider than ever? And who can deny that when individuals get so super-empowered and interdependent at the same time it becomes more vital than ever to be able to look into the face of your neighbor or the stranger or the refugee or the migrant and see in that person a brother or sister? … We are the most technologically connected generation in human history and yet more people feel more isolated than ever… the connections that matter most and are in most short supply today are the human to human ones. …”

See a pattern? So do I. Jesus said, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Maslow said that except for physiological needs of food and shelter and safety, our need to belong, to feel we’re important to someone, is most important to our motivation to learn and grow. The most important factor in whether psychotherapy clients improve is a belief that their therapists care about them. Addiction may very well be an attempt to fulfill an instinctual need for connection. The great pathology of our lives today is isolation—just when we need each other more than ever before to survive and thrive in a world that threatens to mow us down with change.

The church of which Jesus spoke, as never before, has an awesome opportunity. The news we all need in this time of fear and anger and change is the same news we were charged with telling the world but have failed miserably to do. Will we who hear the call of the Christ to genuine, loving connection to each other finally do our job?

I hope so.

Vally

Proud to Have Marched in D.C.

24 Jan

I was—for me, as many can attest to—relatively silent about my general feelings during the run-up to the recent presidential inauguration. I started several times to blog but changed my mind, struggling to put into words the roiling of my emotions, which have ranged from peaceful observation to mourning to anger to an almost daily consideration of what I would accept in silence and what I would speak out against.

For most of my adult life, I have had no problem discerning what I saw as my responsibilities as a Christian and those as an American citizen. Fortunately, they have not often come into conflict with each other, but the course of recent events have presented many opportunities to do battle in my head over what I consider to be “right” actions and what I consider not to be. Because I am Christian first, and will always be no matter where in the world I pitch my temporary tent, the first question I ask is how, if at all, I see the thoughts and actions of Jesus applying to whatever is happening around me, and then I try to think about things the way he would and act in that way. So, when the march came up, I asked Jesus what he would do. How would it look through his eyes? What would he be looking at? And what, if anything, would he do, based on that vision?

Let me hasten to say that, in asking the question, I am not inviting you to chime in with your version of what Jesus would do because what you think Jesus wants me to do is not even remotely relevant. Nor is what Franklin Graham or Pat Roberson or Mike Huckabee or the Bishop of Western North Carolina, the Archbishop of Canterbury or the Pope says. I can read and think and talk for myself—I’ve never studied from other people’s notes and it has turned out well for me. If Jesus had any message to the fellow 1st-century members of his tribe, it was that they didn’t have to go to the temple and follow what the priests said about buying doves and lambs to find out from the priests what God said or wanted them to do. (As an aside, that’s why Caiaphas and his lieutenants conspired to have Jesus killed by the Romans and told lies about him, e.g., that he was engaged in a jihad against the Romans.)

For me, to “believe in Jesus” as yet another bottleneck to reach God flies in the face of that message. For me, “I am the way, the truth, the life,” Aramaic idiom that it is, means that emulating the life that he lived, assuming the mindset through which he viewed himself and those around him, and treating myself and others as he treated himself and those around him would bring me peace and set me free. Not from the experience of pain, but from ever thinking God wouldn’t love me if I didn’t follow a bunch of cockamamie rules made up by someone else.

Now, what does any of this have to do with the fact that I marched in the Women’s March on Washington this past Saturday? Well, when asked how to tell a false prophet from a true one, Jesus said to observe the fruit of his labor. And I have.

For starters, the Jesus I’ve read about and talked to and tried for most of my life to think and act like never once “grabbed a pussy” whose owner hadn’t consented for it to be grabbed. He was poor, apparently by choice, as we assume his earthly father Joseph had involved him in carpentry but he’d chosen not to stay in the family business and stiff the people who helped him build it. (He also said something about rich guys having a really hard time entering the kingdom of heaven, too, so I suspect he was avoiding the temptation of wealth.) He gave up being a homeowner in Nazareth, rode in other people’s boats, and developed a nasty habit of eating with people who might easily today wear rings in their noses and dye their hair blue or whatever styles you or I might think despicable. And, God forbid, he even ran around with people who took tax money and gave it to the government or other people and sometimes even kept it for themselves (think Matthew and Zaccheus).

He dared to intercede to keep a single pregnant woman (How exactly do you think they caught her in adultery? I doubt they blasted into another man’s compound and dragged her out of bed) from being stoned to death (the baby would have been killed too) and he dared to suggest that a Samaritan (translate Mexican or Muslim or libtard or alt-right, for our purposes) was the true neighbor in a story — not the priest or the “pure” assistant to the priest (Levite). He mocked none of the disabled he met constantly along the way. And when unjustly arrested because of the lies some of the Pharisees and Sadducees told, he didn’t “hit back harder,” and then justify his behavior with Orwellian “doublespeak.”

So, in the face of that, when I said to Jesus, “What should I do?” he said, “Stand up for love.” I asked him if he’d be there, and he said yes. For the record, he also said he had upcoming engagements in south Georgia because a big storm was coming where he would be needed, with some Syrian refugees in Turkey, in the hospital where a young couple was about to lose a pregnancy, and at a bar in Green Bay where someone was just about to bet all of his family’s rent money on a football game.

If you have a problem with that, you’ll have to take it up with Jesus.

John 21:18-22. 18 Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” 19 Jesus said this to indicate the kind of death by which Peter would glorify God. Then he said to him, “Follow me!” 20 Peter turned and saw that the disciple whom Jesus loved was following them. (This was the one who had leaned back against Jesus at the supper and had said, “Lord, who is going to betray you?”) 21 When Peter saw him, he asked, “Lord, what about him?” 22 Jesus answered, “If I want him to remain alive until I return, what is that to you? …”

Vally

P.S. I can’t tell you who spoke at the march or what they said. I can’t tell you how many groups supporting god knows what there were. But I can tell you that for a few hours, I stood with the kindest, most polite, most diverse group of people I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience and got a glimpse of the kingdom of heaven.

On Fireflies

11 Nov

Fifteen years ago, I wrote and published a book of stories about life, as seen through the eyes of a Siamese cat. It was called Simon Says: Views from a Higher Perspective. For what it’s worth, it is still available as an eBook, though the printed copies are long gone. It was received so well that I started writing a second volume, but life intervened and there you are. One of those extra stories came to mind for me this week. “M,” by the way, is Simon’s human.

I was lying on a patio chair late one afternoon. It was starting to get dark – M had turned on the lights inside – and I was contemplating dinner when I saw something light up over in a corner of the yard. It disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.
Jumping down from the chair, I crouched low, looking for it again. I stayed down for a moment, but it didn’t reappear. Just as I started for the back door (why waste a movement?) I saw it again.
Over the next few moments, the scene repeated itself, except that this apparition kept appearing in different parts of the yard. I would creep in one direction, only to find that the light source had moved.
And then it happened right in front of my face. In a lightning-fast move, I batted it out of the air and onto the ground. I touched it with my paw, and squinted at it in the dusk, waiting for it to light up again. It didn’t.
About that time, M opened the door to the yard and stepped out. I heard her say to someone inside, “Oh, look – there’s a firefly,” and I glanced where she was pointing. There was another one of these things near the fence.
I looked at her and back toward the fence. Then I looked down at the object at my feet. I sniffed it and jabbed at it a little. It wasn’t lighting up. It wasn’t flying, either.
Confused and disappointed with my catch, I turned and walked toward M and the door, leaving it where it lay.
Be careful what you chase. I caught a firefly once and it turned out to be a bug.

Vally

Two Days

31 Oct
Every once in a while, I have a day when the convergence of events leaves me contemplative for several days afterward.
Sometimes the days leave me laughing. Sometimes they leave me reflecting on how far we have yet to go to see either the kingdom of God on earth or the dream of America manifest for all its citizens.
An example of the former happened a few years ago when I, for the first time in some 30 years, attended a Holy Week service at my new Episcopal church. There were two congregations, one referred to as “Anglo” (which included a small contingent of people of color mostly of Jamaican ancestry), one Hispanic, who usually held separate services to overcome the language barrier. On this particular night, however, the rector had decided to combine the two. Our programs included the verses of Scripture and the words to the songs to be sung, alternating in reverse from the actual performance. In other words, if the Scripture was read in English, the words in the program were in Spanish. If a song was sung in Spanish, the words to the song in English were printed in the program.
The beginning of the service quickly illuminated the differences in our congregations. Not having an organ in the Youth Center where the Hispanic services were normally held, a band including guitarists and an electric bass player were positioned to the left, across from the Anglo congregation’s choirmaster, who doubled as the organist. Both played in accompaniment, whether the song was sung in Spanish or English.
Also on this night, there were a number of children presented for baptism from the Hispanic congregation, so there were quite a few large families in attendance with children of a variety of ages. More than once, I found myself reaching under the pew in front of me to rescue a wayward pacifier or other toy. At one point, a cell phone rang out from a couple of pews behind me and a Spanish conversation ensued, despite whatever else was going on up front.
A longstanding traditionalist in terms of church music, the choirmaster, incidentally a gay man, had chosen the English songs as he usually did, to match the Scripture readings. One of his choices was the Negro spiritual hymn, “Go Down, Moses,” which I was, frankly, surprised to find in the Episcopal hymnal.
As a lead-in to the song, the bass player began to play a simple, but familiar, rhythm often employed in country music. I realized suddenly that what he was playing was the underline of the fight song of my high school before our “white” and “black” schools were consolidated post court-ordered desegregation. We’d been the “Rebels,” and the song was “Rebel Rouser,” for those who might know it. For those who don’t, yes, I’m talking about those Rebels.
I glanced to the front at the rector and deacons, all of whom looked a bit like deer in headlights, surrounded by a host of beautiful young Hispanic couples with children in gleaming white dresses, and I lost it right then and there. I laughed until tears ran down my face. A gay white man and a Hispanic bass player were playing a Negro spiritual to the tune of a Confederate-tinged fight song in a church still loosely tied to the English monarchy. I don’t know if anyone else in the place made those connections, but I can say without reservation that I have seldom enjoyed a church service as much before or since.
Fast forward to this past weekend, and you find me in downtown Knoxville, Tennessee. My best friend and I, who both played on our high school girls’ basketball teams in the early 1970s, had gone on a whim to visit the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame. While there, we spent a half hour dribbling around on a couple of half-courts and trying to play H-O-R-S-E. (Today, I’m reminded of what the days after the first practice were like 45 years ago.)
I found myself thinking about how many of the inductees I had never heard of, how many women had gone before, reaching back to the early 20th century, to lay the groundwork for me to play—remembering too that I played when Title IX had first become the law of the land and it was still thought that we female sorts as a rule were incapable of playing 5-on-5, all running the full court. We had at least progressed to where it was admissable for two of us to run up and down the court, but the others of us had to stay in our respective half-courts.
My friend and I had noticed a food festival of some sort setting up in a large field across from the Sun Sphere, which remains from the World’s Fair held in Knoxville in 1982, and decided to eat lunch there. It turned out to be an international food festival, supporting the local Muslim community, with offerings from all around the Near East, except for those of Israeli extraction, of course. The partakers of the feast ran the gamut of ethnicities, from WASPs like us to people of color, from the obviously well-to-do to some I suspect were homeless.
We went to our room to watch college football and take post-lunch naps before heading out for an early dinner. We walked a few blocks to the Market Street Square and put our names on a waiting list for one of the many restaurants there. We were sitting out on a bench waiting to receive a text that our table was ready when a probably homeless fellow walked by, pointing up to the sky, and said, “The birds are back.”
There above us were literally thousands of black birds, flying in a massive circle. Every once in a while, a small group would break off, fly away from the swarm, and then return, joining in once again. While watching the spectacle, I happened to hear some of the words of three men who stood diagonally across the square from where we sat—a diatribe about how it was God’s will that women remain in the home, cooking for their families and bearing children. I will assume that playing basketball, much less running for office, was out of the question.
I won’t describe these men because it doesn’t matter what sub-groups they’re members of. Besides, you’ve already projected onto them your own imagination, anyway, and proclaimed it as truth, despite the likelihood that you were hundreds of miles away from that square. There are many different iterations of those who would demonstrate the arrogance of speaking for God, from virtually every religious tradition, including your own, whatever it is. The noise is loud today, in every public square.
Our text finally came. We ate quietly, watching with UT fans as their team, playing away in South Carolina, came up short, and walked back to the hotel. It had been quite a day. But this time, I wasn’t laughing. I was wondering, instead, of what those a hundred years from now, will think of us.
We’ve been here before, many times. We can choose to celebrate a diversity of experience that benefits us all and doesn’t require that one group of people dominate another on the basis of wealth or physical characteristic or country of origin or any other differences we had nothing to do with. (I’ve accomplished a lot of things, but the fact that I’m a Southern white female is not among them.)
We can choose to defend those who do not seek to harm us from the delusions of those scared to death, screaming that the system is rigged against them when the truth is, on a level playing field, they can’t measure up unless the system is rigged in their favor. We can choose to laugh at the ironies like white and Hispanic people playing Negro spirituals with an undercurrent of Confederate leanings, and then, sheepish, shake each other’s hands and go about our business, no matter how different our cultures are, only to return when it matters to join together for a spectacular finish, like the birds that flew above me on Saturday. Sounds a lot like the kingdom of God to me. Sounds a lot like the dream of America, too.
The question is will we?

One Night

9 Jul
It was 11:30 p.m. during the summer of 2008. I had just left a committee meeting at my church in suburban Atlanta and was driving home on Jimmy Carter Boulevard in my 1999 Jeep Grand Cherokee, which I was holding together with baling wire. The left rear tail light and turn signal was temperamental, as has been true of many, I would learn later. So much so that I had taken to checking the turn signal before I backed out of the driveway, and getting out and banging on the light until it worked. In the weeks prior, the Jeep had also begun to suddenly idle too low and shut off when I stopped at traffic lights, and on this particular night at the entrance to the bridge from Norcross toward Lilburn, it did it again. For those familiar with this intersection then (it has been completely redone since then), it would not be a good place for a woman alone to break down, so I prayed that it would start again.
A victim of the Recession (which frankly still isn’t over for me or for a substantial number of others I know, despite the stock market buoyancy), the stress of the financial challenges I faced was high and I was, frankly, exhausted in addition to being tightly wound.
Thankfully, the car started, and when the light turned green, I pulled away, only to look in my rearview mirror and see flashing lights. After crossing the bridge, I turned right onto McDonough and came to a stop. The police cruiser followed and pulled in behind me.
I assumed that it was the light, and started to get out of the car, only to hear the police officer scream at me to get back in the car. I complied. He walked to the passenger side of my car and I let down the window. He asked to see my license and insurance card, the former of which I had already removed from my purse. Glancing at the insurance card, I saw that it had expired a month before and I started looking in the console and glove compartment just in case I had just failed to put the new card in my wallet—but I had a sinking feeling that in my ongoing juggling of funds, I’d forgotten to pay it for the first time I could remember in 20 years.
The moment I reached for the console, the officer started screaming at me to keep my hands in view. I saw that his hand was on his holster and I stopped searching for a moment. Because I could see his face in the streetlight’s glow, I knew the Hispanic-American man was young enough to be my son, and I reacted like a mother with a kid who was out of control. With my hands in front of me, I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. “Officer,” I said. “Officer, stop!”
I guess it surprised him, because he did stop yelling, and I was able to explain that I was trying to find my insurance card. I handed him the one from my wallet, explaining that I knew it was not the new card, and picked up my cellphone to call GEICO, which fortunately had agents on call 24/7. While he was checking it via his dash computer, I confirmed that I had, in fact, failed to pay the last premium, and proceeded to pay the bill with a credit card right then and there. I asked the agent if she would speak to the officer, she agreed, and I got out of the car and started back to hand him the phone.
Once again, he jumped out of his car, screaming for me to get back in my Jeep. I stopped and held up the cellphone, telling him that my insurance agent was on the line and would confirm that I had just paid my bill and was now insured again.
It took some doing, but I convinced him to talk with her and he did. He initially told me that I would not be able to drive the car home, but relented and gave me a ticket. Shaking, I took the ticket and my cellphone, thanked the officer for his allowing me to go on home, and got back in the driver’s seat.
I have been reminded of that incident several times this week, but especially in relation to the police shooting in Minnesota.
When it happened, I was in my early 50s. I’ve wondered several times what might have happened had I been carrying a concealed weapon. I wonder what might have happened if I had had a gun and had disclosed it to the officer. I wonder what might have happened if I had had a gun and had NOT disclosed it to the officer.
And I know, with a certainty, that because I’m a white woman, the answer to what might have happened is…exactly what did.
Had I been black, I’m not as certain. Had I been both male and black, I’m not certain at all. The officer was scared—it was late, it was dark, there was no one else around. I was scared—it was late, it was dark, there was no one else around. And though I am white and female, the potential for a life-changing event for the both of us existed for a few excruciating seconds. But I know that because I am white and female, the idea that I might have been shot to death or otherwise brutally treated never crossed my mind.
As a person who once was a counselor, I know of the poor judgment we are all capable of when we are panicked. And I know what we are capable of when we deal with each other as human beings—responsible, compassionate, understanding human beings. It wasn’t the officer’s fault that I had financial problems and had forgotten to pay my insurance, nor was he responsible for responding to me without holding me accountable for my failure. I was guilty as charged. Nor was it my fault that because of the nature of our increasingly uncivil society, the officer felt he had to protect himself by expecting to be shot during a traffic stop rather than expecting to find a person with emotional maturity sitting behind the wheel of that broken-down Jeep.
But it was what it was, and on that night eight years ago, what should happen between two human beings in a confrontational situation did. And it does every day all over the United States between people of all persuasions. And it will continue to be so if we keep our heads and treat each other with the respect we all deserve.
But only if.
Vally

“Low and Outside” is still more likely

30 Mar
One of my favorite lines from one of my favorite movies goes something like this: “Look for low and outside…but watch out for in your ear.” I think of it often when something happens that I was “sure” wouldn’t happen, and I am reminded of the fragility of our perceptions of anything that’s going on around us. There’s always something, some detail we either missed or couldn’t have known about a circumstance—even in one-to-one relationships—that might have had us looking for “in your ear.” I can’t tell you how many times I’ve thought a couple madly in love, only to hear later that they’re engaged in a nasty divorce. Or the times when I’ve been totally blindsided by people I worked with because I was “sure” they understood what I was saying and why. Once or twice, it has resulted in my losing not just a job but a relationship I valued. I was looking for “low and outside,” and totally missed the signs that the ball was coming for my ear. The damage done me required that, for a while after, to protect myself from further injury, I switched what I was looking for. In other words, I began just to look for “in my ear.” It was easier to avoid getting hurt again.
You’ll notice, perhaps, that I didn’t say that I switched to looking for “in my ear,” but watching out for “low and outside.” That’s because we humans don’t usually work that way. At times, I wonder how many relationships and situations I’ve avoided that would have enriched my life beyond measure, all because I forgot to look for “low and outside.”
There’s a video parading around the internet about a Georgia teacher, who has now resigned over what has been called abuse of a special needs child. And another, of Donald Trump’s campaign manager, allegedly attacking a female reporter. There are multitudes of them, all posted as examples, posted by self-righteous people with unknown, though sometimes obvious, agendas of accusation of others of hideous crimes. What pops into my mind are the not only posted but edited videos, like those presented as “evidence” of Planned Parenthood’s evil. Thankfully, in that case, “evil” has been shown more in the subterfuge of pretense by the videographers than of Planned Parenthood itself. At least, that’s what the grand jury, who was there to observe the evidence, concluded.
Whether I happen to pop onto Facebook or a friend/acquaintance sends me an email with a link, I usually go and try to look at the videos with “fresh eyes,” as unencumbered as possible by the “pre-introductions” and headlines that are transparently intended to influence the way I or anyone who views them…well, views them. I’m human, so I don’t always succeed, but I do try. I sometimes avoid sharing memes and articles and videos because I look to see who the original posters are and decide that I don’t want to be automatically associated with a group by a particular name or I get a few paragraphs in and see that the author is neither promoting an independent journalistic perspective or fails to distinguish between factual news and editorial opinion.
I’ve always been so inclined. I don’t know if that’s because, as a student, I never studied from other people’s notes or if it’s because I am a psychological diagnostician by training or if it’s because I have found myself many times on the wrong side of other’s perceptions and beliefs. I would guess that the practice comes from all three, but especially the last. The perceptions that find their way into action that attempts to discriminate against, humiliate, or ignore the feelings or validity of the perceived have the longest-lasting effects—perpetuating the insult exponentially.
But back to the videos. When I watched the video of the teacher whose life has now been immutably changed, I understand how someone could, under the influence of headlines, “see” abuse. But I also understand that, when my hands are full, I use my knee or elbow to do things. I learned as a child in south Georgia how to handle gnats around my eyes by blowing up with my lips, for instance. In other words, I can also see a teacher with her hands full, coming around a door to go into a classroom, encountering a child in the doorway, and nudging him to move forward with her knee. I can also imagine, because it has happened to me, that a child whose balance is not perfectly set, could fall forward–especially if he wasn’t expecting the nudge. Maybe he was a child who often stood on the outside of things, afraid to go in, and needed a nudge. Maybe the “nudge” was harder than the teacher intended. We don’t see what happened afterward, but allegedly, there was another adult just inside the door who reached to help the child, who stood up and went into the room, followed by the teacher with her hands full.
I’m not saying that it wasn’t exactly as it was presented by the original poster. Maybe this is an outrageously abusive teacher who should’ve been gone long ago. But a five second video observed objectively can’t give us any of the information we need to determine what really happened. A glance on Facebook or YouTube can’t. We have juries of 12 people in most criminal court cases, and have for many years, simply because one person’s view, even of two people standing side-by-side observing the very same event, can be vastly different for reasons we can’t possibly know. We hope that a majority will see something about the event in the same way, and that majority will come closer to the truth of the matter. But in the court of Facebook and YouTube, a teacher is now forever guilty in the minds of some of something she may have done, but more importantly, also may not have. She’s lost her livelihood, her vocation, her ability to contribute, based on her own professional training, to the learning of someone’s child with developmental problems.
The same thing is true of Donald Trump’s campaign manager. I’ve watched that video several times too, and what I see is something that probably could’ve been solved by a simple apology—after the fact, because it doesn’t appear to me that Corey Lewandowski even knew he had done it until later. I suspect he was focused on getting Trump out of the room to safety. Remember the breach of the secure perimeter at an earlier rally? The assassination of Bobby Kennedy as he strolled through a crowd in a hotel?
Let me hasten to say that I find Donald Trump to be nothing but a classic narcissist who if elected president would bring unparalleled incompetence at governance (and that’s saying something, given today’s Congress) and bring down on us more potential for attack from the outside than any other candidate. And Corey Lewandowski, as Trump’s campaign manager, would be an accessory to the crime of helping to bring it about. But when I look at the video of the incident with the Breitbart reporter, the possibility that it was simply a function of a reporter’s being in the wrong place at the right time seems more likely. I got a bruise on my arm when I was standing near a sidewalk at the BellSouth Classic Golf Tournament a few years ago waiting to see Phil Mickelson go from a green to the next tee. People have died in stampedes at soccer games—should we search the videos to see just who stepped on them and file wrongful death suits on their behalves?
Stop. Think. Breathe. Don’t believe anything unless it resonates with you, and be careful to check why it resonates with you. Make sure that it isn’t bound in a cemented view already in place that somebody else you’ve never even met told you was true. Make sure that just because someone black in a hoodie stole a TV from your neighbor, your wife left you for another man (or woman), a police officer shot a kid with a toy gun in the next town over, a deranged person who happens to be a (Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Jew, you fill in the blank) blows himself up in Pakistan or Beirut or Boston—that you don’t indict, try and convict every black person, every woman, every reporter, every police officer and anyone born into a particular faith as guilty solely on the basis of a single characteristic. Look for more evidence. Because once you throw a pitch at somebody else’s head, you’ve created a whole new reality…for them, and for you.
As I said, I know it’s hard when you’ve been ignored, humiliated, called stupid or aloof or arrogant or condescending, or treated as if you are 3/5ths of a person. But before you react, before you share, before you retaliate, check first to see if maybe you’re looking for “in your ear,” and forgetting that “low and outside” is far more likely. And no matter what that Facebook post and the National Enquirer seem to suggest, it still is.
We have a choice over how we view everything, even our lives. Why we seem not to choose the view that causes us and others the least damage…I don’t know.
But here’s to low and outside. If it turns out to be in my ear…so be it.
V

 

 

 

 

 

“Good” Friday?

25 Mar
Like other children from my era, for a long time, Easter weekend meant going to church as we usually did, but dressed in a new dress, new socks, and usually new patent leather shoes, Mary Jane style. Everyone came in their Easter finery and many compliments, genuine or not, were shared among the members of the congregation.
When I was older, and able to think about the religious significance of the holiday, I “got” Easter. But I was confused about “Good” Friday. What, after all, could be “good” about the day the world went black? Shouldn’t it be called “Black Friday” instead? (Of course, I didn’t know much about the stock market then, either.)
Since the disciples were human, I’m fairly sure that the very first time around, they didn’t think it was a good day either. One of them, possibly the equivalent of a modern-day Zionist, had met secretly with the guys in charge of the Temple in Jerusalem, who were fearful that Jesus was going to up-end their cushy lives just as he had the tables in the courtyard, and arranged to identify him for them so they could be sure to arrest the right guy. He would, as we know, have second thoughts and would prove to be unable to live with what he’d done. Another ventured a little further in, at first grabbing a sword and trying to hurt one of the fellows who’d been sent to get Jesus. Skulking around after that to see what they were going to do with Jesus, he had chickened out at the last minute, trying to shake off any connection between Jesus and him in case things went south, and just as Jesus himself had predicted. When that rooster crowed the third time, we know he felt awful. What the rest of them were doing we don’t know for sure, but I imagine they had huddled up together somewhere out of plain view, hoping that nobody had mentioned those guys that had been traveling around with Jesus to the authorities.
I’m likely to be accused of blasphemy by some, but I don’t think Jesus thought it was a good day, either. I think he had a pretty good idea that it wasn’t going to turn out well even when, a few days before, all kinds of people were shouting “Hosanna” like they were at a Trump or Sanders political rally, laying palm branches down in front of the guy they thought was going to exchange his donkey for a white charger and lead them in an attempt to overthrow the oppressors who’d occupied their lands. (Never mind that these same people would, in a matter of few hours, figure out that he wasn’t “the right kind of Messiah” and turn on him when Pilate gave them a chance to free him.) If he’d thought it was a really great day, I don’t think he would’ve gone to that place where olives were pressed for oil (Gethsemane) and asked God, one last time, if there wasn’t another, less painful, way to achieve His purposes. Reminds of me of when at the beginning of his career he’d been similarly challenged by “Satan” in the desert. He’d been remarkably strong in rebuking the idea that if he fell from the top of the highest point, he’d escape without even a bruised heel. That falling down part was about to happen, and he knew it. If he’d thought it was going to be a good day, he wouldn’t have been so disappointed that his best friends, who’d accompanied him to Gethsemane, had no idea what was about to transpire. While he’d been praying so hard, they’d all fallen asleep, and he was, existentially lonely — acutely aware that this journey was his and his alone.
John apparently went with Jesus’s mother to the hill where he was crucified. As Jesus reportedly told him to take care of Mary and vice versa, I imagine neither John nor Mary herself thought anything good was happening. If I’d been Mary, I think I would have been heartbroken, and very confused. How could it be that this son of hers—who, when still in the womb, she’d been told was destined for greatness—was being executed, way up in the air where everyone gathered to watch the spectacle could jeer at him and humiliate him? How would they ever recover?
No, it wasn’t a good day.
Eventually, of course, I began to understood the term in context. It was “good” only because we knew how the story turned out in the end. As an adult who’s had many experiences, I have some stories of good days, and a lot of stories where, in hindsight, the very experience of something I considered not so good changed me dramatically. In fact, I would have to say that it has been the times I was sure I would not survive the pain, but managed to do it somehow, that transformed me, sticking to my bones and in my memory.
Don’t get me wrong—I loved the good days, but they lost their luster quickly. It was a good day when the Atlanta Braves unexpectedly won the 1992 National League pennant, but I don’t think about it much anymore. It was a good day when the business I shared with three partners was sold and the balance in my bank account shot up. It was a good day when I was able to buy my first house. I’m sure you can think of lots of examples of days when it seemed that nothing could go wrong. For one moment in time, all was right with the world.
But they’re not the days I remember the most. The ones I remember are the days when people I dearly loved died–from cancer, in accidents, of heart attacks. The ones I remember are the day like the one when I filed for bankruptcy, after I’d exhausted every idea I could think of to hold off its inevitability during the recent recession. The ones I remember are the days when I suffered frustration and despair at the hands of people who completely misperceived what I am about, what I might have said or done and why, and certainly what I was thinking at different times of my life. Those days have always involved a loss of something— financial stability, physical or intellectual ability, relationships, dreams.
I don’t remember the pain or grief I felt as much as I remember what happened after the shock of loss wore off. What I remember is our inherent vulnerability. In the days and weeks and months after something I projected value onto is ripped from me, I am always acutely aware of the fragility and preciousness of this experience we call life, and the tendency we humans have to embed our hope in “stuff”—as my friend Elizabeth Dulemba just did a TED Talk about. But mostly, I remember the quiet jubilation of the moment I came to the end of the grief and found myself, beaten and bruised, but still standing, and loved just the same (by the people who mattered) as I had been the day before.
Life is going to kill us. One way or the other, we’re not going to get out alive. We may guess, within some pocket of time, when it will happen, based on family averages or medical research, or it may come out of nowhere. Certainly the people who were getting ready to fly out of the Brussels airport or travel on a metro train this week didn’t know they were going to die. When Garry Shandling woke up yesterday, he had no idea that before the day was out he would exit this plane of existence.
The same guy who denied that he knew Jesus three times would finally get it and would, as it happens, die himself years later on an X-shaped cross, allegedly upside down. We’re not sure exactly how Paul died, but it’s fairly clear it was not from natural causes. And Stephen, the martyr whose death at the hands of “religious sorts” like Paul himself, the one that got him thinking maybe he was on the wrong side of things, no doubt understood. What they understood, I’m convinced, is that death isn’t the end of us. Whether we live on after, in spirit, as the disciples proclaim Jesus did, or forever in the hearts and DNA of those with whom we share our souls, or in the legacy of discoveries made that benefit humankind, the fact that we die changes nothing about who we were or whom we loved  or who loved us. Our focus should be on what that memory, that legacy will be.
But here’s the rub. Not one of those disciples—and none of us—would likely ever have understood but for the death of Jesus. He had to die, otherwise it would have been just another close call. Nothing would have changed— noone would have been transformed if he hadn’t. If he’d survived physical death in the “normal” way, the same old thought patterns would have kicked back in for those around. There would have been no impetus, no requirement that they process a new way forward as there is when there is no way to go back. There could be no platitudes, no possible continuation of the way things had been before. There would be no Jesus and his gang wandering around the Galilean countryside anymore. And they had to make sense of it all somehow. We have to make sense of it all somehow.
The way I see it, there is only one way to make sense of it all—and avenging the deaths of some by bringing about the deaths of others is not it, whether we’re talking about the murders of other people or attempted assassinations of character so prominent in our political and public discourse today. I commemorate Jesus’ death as a reminder that those who don’t know they are loved believe love itself is scarce and must be competed for, even to the point of death. It’s the ugliest form of sibling rivalry around and an insult to the honor of Love itself. But more importantly, I am reminded that life to its end is sacred and holy, and in every form, eternal—extending far beyond death itself.
To think of it in any other way is, for me, to turn it into Black Friday again, to mean Jesus may as well have not lived at all. And I refuse to let it be so.
It was a very good day. And I remember. Blessings to you all.

 

 

 

Be Careful What You Chase

15 Mar
Almost 15 years ago now, I published a book of “essays” written from the point of a view of my Siamese cat, Simon. An occasionally arrogant fellow, as those who know Siamese cats will understand, Simon fancied himself a philosopher, and I have to admit that he taught me quite a few things. I was looking through some old files when I ran across this essay. Made me think about the current presidential candidates and the people who seem to be mesmerized by the bright and shiny things about some of them.
I was lying on a patio chair late one afternoon.  It was starting to get dark – M had turned on the lights inside – and I was contemplating dinner when I saw something light up over in a corner of the yard.  It disappeared almost as quickly as it had come.
Jumping down from the chair, I crouched low, looking for it again.  I stayed down for a moment, pupils wide, but I didn’t see the light reappear. And then, just as I started for the back door, I saw it again.
Over the next few moments, the scene repeated itself, except that this apparition kept appearing in different parts of the yard.  I would creep in one direction, only to find that the light source had moved again. And then it happened right in front of my face.  In a lightning-fast move, I batted it out of the air and onto the ground.  I touched it with my paw, and squinted at it in the dusk, waiting for it to light up again. It didn’t.
About that time, M opened the door to the yard and stepped out.  I heard her say to someone inside, “Oh, look – there’s a firefly,” and I glanced in the direction she was pointing.  There was another one of these things near the fence. I looked at M and back toward the fence.  Then I looked down at the object at my feet.  I sniffed it and jabbed at it a little.  It still didn’t light up.
Confused and disappointed with my catch, I turned and walked toward M and the door, leaving it where it lay.
Be careful what you chase. Sometimes it turns out to be nothing but a bug.
P.S. from Vally: And remember, some bugs bite. And what happens next isn’t pretty. Take care to look very closely at the person you vote for.
If you’re interested, the original book is available as an ebook. Click here to buy.
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