Adam Pertman's Adoption Nation: How the Adoption Revolution Is Transforming America

Great book if you're involved in an adoption or just interested in the ever-changing shape of the American family. Pertman summarizes the major shifts in adoption and their implications for American culture.

These shifts emerged largely in the 60s when sex and childbirth outside marriage were destigmatized. No more need to hide or lie; no more sealed records or altered birth certificates. In their place emerged the open adoption process now endorsed by most reputable agencies. Those years also introduced "getting in touch with yourself," a quest that might lead some adoptees to seek out their birth parents to learn about their first days on the planet and their own biological and medical makeup. Finally, the shifts also include the entrance into parenthood of many different folks--disabled people, middle-aged infertile couples, and gay lads like my husband and me--a move that will continue to trigger ethical and legal controversies.

Although Pertman is himself an adoptive parent, he manages to bring the various viewpoints of the adoption triad--adoptees, birth mothers, adoptive parents--into a rich and honest dialogue. Not an easy task because these viewpoints often conflict. (Case in point: assertions by adoptee rights advocates that adoptive parents are unwitting pawns in child trafficking who end up depriving adoptees of vital connections to biological parents and ethnic heritage.) He's a strong promoter of open adoption, and an equally strong critic of the greed and corruption in many parts of the current adoption system both here and internationally. Right on! But I wonder about a few things he says...

On the plane from Seattle the other day, I told the woman next to me Pertman's claim that birth parents and their children must reconnect with each other if only for the sake of their own mental and spiritual health. Birth parents, he asserts, "overwhelmingly want to be found." She then told me she had relinquished her son 37 years ago with no regrets or conflicted emotions, and today feels no need to reconnect. Her son could easily find her through Google, and although she would not refuse the contact, she's afraid he'd be disappointed that she's felt no compulsion to seek him out, no incompleteness, no lack of resolution. Is she repressing something? Though Pertman and others imply that she is, I doubt it.

In the same way that many, though not all, women who choose abortion can feel a genuine peace with their difficult decision, so a birth mother can feel a rightness about relinquishing her child. People are different. Same is true of adoptees: Some, but not all, may simply feel no need to reconnect with birth parents.

Another issue: Pertman suggests that many parents adopt internationally to dodge the birth parents who threaten their own role as "real" parents. He may be right about the dodge, but he misses the real reason behind it.

In fact, it's not insecurity about parenthood but the risk of financial ruin that international adoption alleviates.

Financially, open adoption often favors the birth mom. Over the course of her pregnancy, she can receive several thousands of dollars worth of medical and personal care from the adoptive parents, then decide at the last minute to keep her child. The adoptive parents then simply forfeit the money with nothing to show for it. (In our case, the total cost of adopting from Guatemala including two mandatory trips and lodging came to a whopping 30K. It was a lot, but not nearly what some adoptive parents have paid when a birth mom changes her mind and they have to start the entire expensive process over.)

Simply put: Not all adoptive parents can assume the financial risk that can be part of open adoption, and this is why some of us look abroad--not to shore up an insecure sense of ourselves as parents, but to stave off financial ruin. This financial risk is a problem for adoptive parents in open adoption.

Mom in the Hospital

Paul McCartney says life is what happens after you’ve made all your plans. He's right, and here's a case in point: Mom' been in the hospital for several days with pneumonia and won’t return home for several more. Not what any of us had planned for Christmas. Life happens.

Beside the physical pain, exhaustion, and worry, are there any redeeming lessons here? Some wisdom about the shoals we mortals must navigate, or perhaps an insight into aging and mortality?

Well, don't ask me. I’m too busy delivering burgers and pizzas to offset the hospital's dry chicken, listless veggies, and soggy toast; chasing down an array of doctors, nurses, and social workers; burning the midnight oil to meet a deadline for my job; shuttling home to San Francisco to get ready for Santa, then back to Seattle for more conversations with the medical staff; and then equipping mom’s condo for her return home.

Years from now, long after mom has regained her stride, I know this moment will display its wonderful gems. But for now, all I can tell you is this: We ramble along our paths, struggle through our ailments with sheer grit (our own and that of those who love us), make new plans, then continue the journey.

So I'll save the profound questions for later, and simply do my best to help her back on her feet--and, of course, to savor this gracious season with my husband, our son, and my mom.

Dancing with David

It's a kind of dance: At times we hold each other close, then swing out with hands still joined; now separate, now back together.

It's been like that with David lately. Lots of cuddles and tickle time, lap time to listen to his tales of the day and his latest imaginary racing car adventure. Then he takes off into his own space, exploring the other end of the block on his scooter or playing quietly in his room with his cars.

Then there are the other moments, usually at the end of a long day, when we're off to Jurassic Park. Like the other night when it was bedtime and he refused to budge from the bathtub. Or last night when he insisted on putting up the Christmas tree and his dads were just too plain tired. Suddenly the shy kid who just a year ago wouldn't let go of my hand at the park, the sensitive kid I sometimes feared was "too good for his own good," now insists loudly on having his own way.

The next morning we talk it all through, tickle and cuddle and tell stories and play with cars again, knowing that the hysterics may reappear later that day.

Yin and yang, move in close, separate, then repeat. In ways big and small, over the course of a few hours or a week. This week at least, it's the dance we do.

Getting Home

My new job is just downtown, which means I can easily bike down Market Street to the office. It's good: I spare the air and get a little exercise while I'm at it.

After work, I head to David's school where he and I catch the bus. We work as a team, hoisting the bike onto the rack at the front of the bus, then finding our way to a window seat. The rear seats in the new hybrid buses are the best because they are higher and you can see more.

David sits on my lap. As we watch the world go by, we talk of cabbages and kings: whom he sat next to at lunch, the new Spanish words he's learned, the stories behind each of the drawings he´s brought with him, what he ate for afternoon snack. We point out our favorite shops, cafes, and bookstores as the bus lumbers along. Twice we've seen Uncle Steve walking home.

When the bus gets to our stop, we climb down and run around front to reclaim the bike. David pushes the bike rack back into place, we wave goodbye to the driver, and and sometimes she beeps back. Then David hops onto the saddle and I walk alongside, steering and pushing the bike past Pauline's Pizza, up the the short hill to our front door.

That's how I come home most days, and although it seems like nothing special, it's still hard for me to take it for granted. Maybe it's because I'm an adoptive parent who knows David came to us by a kind of grace. Or maybe because raising a kid has not always been an option for gay men like me. Or maybe it's that my own life's twists and turns brought me into parenting a little later than most folks and, well, you treasure those things you have to wait for.

Can't say why for sure, but coming home like this with David each day feels miraculous.

Update on Casa Quivira--November 17

The children have been returned to Casa Quivira, and their adoptions will now move forward. It looks like normalcy is returning to this beleaguered orphanage after the government put the 42 kids through a horrific and unnecessary ordeal. See the Guatemalan Adoption blog which reports "that while everything is not cleared up for all the cases, it does look like at last innocent children are not going to be caught in the middle of the politics and tensions that exist in Guatemalan adoptions and that they will achieve permanency in a loving, family environment."

Francisco Goldman's The Art of Political Murder: Who Killed the Bishop

It didn't just happen. It's not just a forgivable matter of dim bulbs bumbling around like the Three Stooges.

The fatal bludgeoning of Guatemalan Bishop Juan Girardi Conedera, a Roman Catholic human rights advocate, came two days after he released a four-volume report on his country's civil war that formally ended in 1996. That war had claimed some 200,000 lives over four decades. The primary suspect in Girardi's murder, Goldman believes, was one of the two runoff candidates in Guatemala's recent presidential election. The account spotlights not only Girardi's assassination, but an entire generation of brutalities, mostly against the poor Mayan population.

The book is chilling. These atrocities were not unintended consequences of otherwise innocent actions. The murderers knew what they were doing. They carefully plotted each brutal step.

We religious types call it "sin", a word that's been so misused we understandably shy away from it. But I don't know of another word that captures the flat-lined hearts, shriveled minds, clenched teeth, and white knuckles that Goldman describes.

This is a book about naked cruelty and sheer hatred, and it leaves you wondering: How does it happen? How do we humans get this way?

Internationally Adopting Parents: Angels or Devils?

Some see us internationally-adopting parents as noble creatures, Mother Theresas who nobly reach beyond their bloodlines to third-world children otherwise deprived of loving homes and families. Others see us as so blinded by the need to parent that we become unwitting child-traffickers, pawns of black markets that steal children from their rightful parents and then rob them of their own ethnic and cultural identities. Fly to Antigua, drop 30k, then fly home with a stolen child. Cool.

Both images are bullshit.

We're no more angelic than parents who choose to have children the old-fashioned way. True, in an over-populated planet where many Guatemalan kids don't reach age five, international adoption can be a globally responsible choice. But at the end of the day, parenting is parenting: We all lose sleep; spend our Saturdays ferrying our kids to birthday parties, play dates, and karate classes; worry whether they're writing their letters properly and getting enough exercise; and hurry them to get their shoes on when it's time to leave for school. We're just parents.

And we're not as demonic as many well-intentioned adoptee-rights activists believe. When it comes to the adoption process, we rely on the structures available. True, we have to scrutinize those structures to make sure they are fair and just, but we can't always guarantee that they are. So we proceed in good faith, slavishly meeting all the requirements of governments and private agencies in both the US and the country we're adopting from--knowing full well that we can have only moral certainty that those agencies are acting with a similar integrity. We do what we can.

And many of us would love to connect with our kid's biological families. If we could find them.

Given the moral extremes with which we're portrayed, you can't blame us for having a confused self-image. In a recent issue of Mother Jones, one mom confesses to wanting her own child so much that she simply ignored the heartrending injustices in the Guatemalan adoption system. When she and her husband later awakened to the moral complexities, they considered returning their daughter to her biological mother. At the time, one aggressive adoptee rights activist told her their adoption agency "should have...dissuaded us from transnational adoption, or led us to a program through which we could sponsor a child to remain with her family. But the truth is I don't think I would have listened--so absorbed was I in the force of my own wanting."

Huh? She should feel guilty for wanting to parent a child? The moral complexity of the adoption process should make her consider giving up her child?

Psychologists might say this poor woman has so internalized the negative perceptions of well-intended but misguided friends that her own natural instincts for caring have been short-circuited. While her confused self-image is understandable, the truth is this woman has nothing to apologize for.

Given the corruption of the international adoption processes these days, especially in countries like Guatemala, the question is: How do we connect our deepest and best desires with the deepest needs of our crazy, fragile world? We can remain aloof, allowing children either to die at an early age from malnutrition or scavenge the Guatamala City garbage dump. Or we can enter the flawed processes society makes available, navigating them as best we can, trying to correct them as we go along. And, perhaps, living with some moral ambiguity as a result.

We internationally-adopting parents are neither angels nor devils. But at the end of the day, we do what we can. We're just parents. Nothing more, or less.

Julia Glass's Three Junes

This novel is a tryptich of three stories in which the center panel is given to Fenno, a Scottish gay lad with whom I fell in love. Manhattan with its artistic riches and out-there gay scene is fascinating through his eyes as he stumbles through its nooks and crannies, tries to make sense of it all, and find his place in it. He never does, not quite; and, in that sense, his life is not a success. And yet it is--in fact, wildly so.

True, fate does not provide Fenno with the standard packages: a straightforward career path, a life-mate, children; so on the surface he's the stereotypical gay misfit. Or perhaps "emotionally constrained" as the New York Times claimed, lacking defined outlets for his passions.

He's neither. His life is an assortment of colorful patches in a brilliant quilt. His many friends fill him with feeling: Mal, the hilarious and acerbic gay man with HIV for whom he cares to the bitter end; Mal's quirky but delightful Catholic mother who virtually adopts him; his young nieces in Scotland who have etched their way into his heart as he has into theirs; a strapping but vapid Midwestern artist who becomes his sex buddy; a young pregnant mother he accompanies in her tumultuous journey into parenting; Fern, with whom he profoundly connects at the novel's end; and, of course, a lovable collie and a very smart and affectionate parrot.

True, Fenno agonizes over every thought and feeling as he moves through the story, and that trait could paralyze. But, in fact, this agonizing makes him endearing, vulnerable, and, to my strange way of thinking, sexy.

Fenno is like many people I have known, both gay and straight--folks who can't quite follow any standard recipe for what is thought to be a full life. But those recipes are far too bland anyway. And so out of the many disparate ingredients fate gives them, these people manage to create lives that are as magnificent and rich as they are unconventional.

Bravo for them, and for Julia Glass for capturing their excellence in this beautifully written tale!

Second Chances

Luke 17:11-19

A man is met at the airport by a friend. They’re on their way to the baggage claim when his friend notices an older woman with a cane struggling up a ramp. The friend stops to help her.

They get the man’s bags, and then head for a cab. On the way, his friend notices two little kids trying to see Santa Claus from behind a crowd of adults. His friend stops to lift them above the crowd so they can see.

While they’re in line for a cab, they hear the guy behind them say that he is late for his daughter’s birthday party. The friend immediately flags down a cab for the guy, helps him load his bags in the trunk, and sends him off with a smile.

Finally, the two men are in the cab on the way home.
“How did you get to be like this?” the man says to his friend.
“Like what?”
“Oh, I don’t know. So thoughtful.”

With Every Step
That’s when his friend tells him that he had once been a soldier leading a platoon in combat. For several days, his platoon had to fight their way across a large open meadow strewn with landmines. From time to time, he’d hear an explosion, look back, and see another comrade blown to pieces.

He knew that with every step, his own life was in danger.

Well, he got out alive. He was one of the lucky ones. But when he got home from the war, he decided that he would no longer take his life for granted. He would try to live differently.

He had gotten a second chance. And he seized it. From that day on, there could be no business as usual. He would never be the same again. With every step he took, his life was different.

This can happen when you get a second chance: It gets you thinking. Maybe you narrowly escape a car crash, or survive the onset of cancer, or some creative medical intervention pulls you back from death’s door. You go through some serious self-evaluation, ask yourself some tough questions.

When you’re given a second chance, you have to decide whether you will seize it.

You can, after all, simply take a deep breath and go back to business as usual with perhaps little more than something like a shallow New Year’s resolution to show for it all.

Or, something new can begin to emerge. Maybe you decide not to go back to the life you lived. In that case, your second chance has had an effect.

Seizing the Second Chance
In today’s gospel, only one out of ten seizes the second chance. It’s not a good return, and you can feel the sadness of Jesus. It’s a story of lost opportunities.

But mostly it has to do with that one person who does seize the second chance, who “gets” what that moment is about.

Look back at the story for a moment… When Jesus sees the lepers, he sees more than the sores on their skin. He recognizes their isolation. They are outcasts who must live outside the city, away from family and friends. There were laws on the books meant to protect not the lepers, but society from the lepers. They are kept out, isolated, alone.

Jesus tells the lepers to go and show themselves to the priests.

The priests are the gatekeepers of the community. His command to go see the priests means they are on their way back into the community. If the priests declare them clean, their isolation is over.

At this point in the story, the question becomes: What happens to these people as they re-enter community? Will they simply go back to their old familiar ways as if nothing had happened? Or have they learned something along their solitary journey? Will they be any different once they have returned home?

In this moment of healing, they are being given a second chance. But will they seize it?

The Samaritan, the most unlikely one of the bunch, does seize it. First, he does the most natural, spontaneous thing in such a moment: he bursts out with praise and thanksgiving. And then, when he falls at the feet of Jesus, it’s more than a gesture of reverence. It symbolizes his decision to follow the new way that Jesus teaches. For this man, a normal, respectable life is not enough. Something more beckons.

And Jesus instructs him: “Get up and go.” It is time to live—not to go back home as if nothing had happened, but to find a new way that his faith has begun to forge for him.

Second chances can do that; can send you on new paths, down roads you had never imagined. Often, they send you out of the familiar and comfortable into the unexpected.

It drives Rosa Parks to the front of the bus. Harvey Milk to San Francisco City Hall. Cesar Chavez to the vineyards of Fresno. Dorothy Day to New York’s Bowery.

Second chances do that: They lead you down roads you never imagined. A normal, respectable life is no longer enough. Something more beckons.

This Crazy Parish
Sometimes I think coming here to this crazy, struggling parish has been a second chance for many of us. Here where “LGBT” and “Christian” are not contradictions in terms. Where you’re surrounded by so many who try, each in our own way, to live with a little more compassion, a little more joy, a little more love.

In this parish, some of us have actually found ourselves falling in love with God again, and rediscovering a big part of our own souls.

True, this motley group of people creates much consternation among the religious right. But it also gives much hope to many others. Many of those folks may never cross our threshold: maybe they simply hear about us, stumble across our website, or pick up from a local coffee shop one of those little cards about our concerts, Taize services, and many celebrations. No matter. Our presence has made a difference.

And think of all the flurry these days in the Anglican Communion and the Episcopal Church. Can you think of a time when a parish like this, in a diocese like this, has been more important? Like it or not, we’re up to our necks in this great historic moment.

Just Make It All Go Away
A personal confession… I have moments when I would be so happy of this whole controversy about gay bishops and gay unions would just go away. Just let me quietly live a normal life: do my job, snuggle in with the man I love, raise our kid, pay the bills. If I didn't have to send money to human rights organizations and letters to congress, solicit signatures on street corners. Please, just make it all go away so I can live a quiet, unperturbed life.

But then I wake up, or something wakes me up and reminds me that business as usual is not the vocation God has given me as a gay man in 2007. Nor is it the vocation of this parish. For whatever reasons, God has placed us in the center of this perfect storm, and called us to keep showing up, speaking our word, giving hope and a second chance not just for our sake but for the sake of many others as well.

And I have to trust that it’s in living out this vocation, not in pining for quieter times and business as usual, that we will find our deepest peace.

Do you remember the story Martin Luther King once told about the old woman he met in one of the picket lines during the height of the civil rights struggle? She'd been out there for hours in the hot sun, ankles swollen, shuffling up and down the picket line carrying her sign. He asked her why she didn't stop and take break. "Aren't you tired," he asked? She said, "My feets is tired, but my soul is rested."

I think you and I in this parish know what she meant.

These thoughts cross my mind on this particular morning as we commission our canvassers and begin our parish pledge drive for the year.

Because seizing a second chance is not just a cerebral exercise. It involves putting one foot in front of another until you find yourself walking a different path. And it can involve adjusting our finances as well, putting our money where our hearts are.

A U-Haul Attached to a Hearse
There’s story about the crusty old tycoon celebrating his 90th birthday. At his birthday party, a local reporter asked him for the secret of his longevity. He said, “It’s simple. I just decided that if I can’t take it with me, I’m not going.”

Well, obviously, he did go. And, no, he did not take it with him.

In fact, Billy Graham gave one of his best lines when he said he’d never seen a U-Haul trailer attached to a hearse.

We can’t take it with us, but we can seize our second chances and put our money where our hearts are.

The healed leper laughed with a joyful, exuberant burst of praise and thanksgiving—but then went further, to become a follower, walking a new path. He recognized his second chance and seized it.

Just as we must do with our second chances. Such moments are not limited to escapes from death or miraculous cures. There’s nothing that stops us right here and now from recognizing that our time on this planet is short, and that the time for more love is right now. We can begin, right now, to direct our steps on the path to that new, fuller life that God so very much wants us to have.

Within Every Step You Take
Because ultimately, the second chance lies within every minute, within every step you take. And the question you and I must ask ourselves today and every day is whether we will seize it.

The Shrewd Manager

Luke 16: 1-13

He's a man in crisis. He's about to be fired and the job prospects don't look good. Not butch enough to dig for a living, and too proud to beg, he's endearingly vulnerable. I imagine Woody Allen playing the lead in the movie version.

The guy is also smart. Very smart. True, he panics when he first gets the call from the boss, but then he makes a plan. The plan works: He gets both his job back and his boss’s praise for being shrewd.

The story is a metaphor for your life and mine. It’s about how not to lose your soul. If you want to hold on to your soul, be like this endearing and shrewd manager.

What’s it like to lose your soul? One of Rachel Remen’s patients, a gifted cancer surgeon, told her, “I can barely make myself get out of bed most mornings. I hear the same complaints day after day; I see the same diseases over and over again. I just don’t care anymore. I need a new life.” He’s in an advanced stage of ennui, plodding along to be sure, sitting upright and taking nourishment, but zest for his work has disappeared. He’s lost touch with his soul.

Years ago, a friend described his own feelings when he was in this state: “I feel like I’m lying face down in a half inch of life and drowning.”

It sneaks up on you. Somewhere along the way—in your routines of getting up, making the coffee, going to work, paying the bills, checking in with friends and families, renting the latest video—you fall asleep, lose your passion and purpose, lose sight of the pleasures of moving about this vast and glorious planet. Your spirit slips away. Everything becomes gray, empty, and tedious. Suddenly you find yourself living, but not really living.

And there you are: up to your ears in what we religious types call a spiritual crisis. You’re like the man in today’s gospel when he is brought to account. But in this case, it’s not your boss’s property you’ve squandered, but the life that God has so graciously given you.

Perhaps a day of accounting arrives— maybe in old age or maybe sooner—when you look back at your life with regret:
• So many things you wanted to say or do, but were just too afraid, or just couldn’t overcome the inertia.
• So many wonderful moments you wanted to savor, but were too busy with the details of making a living and paying the bills.
• So many people you wanted to let into your life, and who would have let you into theirs, had you taken the time and made the effort.

And what will you do then, oh man, oh woman in crisis? What will you do?

It’s tempting to simply change your life’s outer circumstances: move to a new place, start a new career, find a new lover. And it’s true that sometimes changing the outer world can help. But often the old maxim holds true: Wherever you go, there you are. We carry our own mental conditioning with us, and if we’ve managed to screen out spirit from our lives where we are, chances are we won’t find it in any new circumstances either.

Today’s gospel hints at how we can respond to such a crisis. In the story, Jesus suggests that, to reconnect with our souls, we need to be like shrewd business people, like the manager in the story.

Faced with financial calamity, most people hustle to make ends meet: cut back on the lattes and videos, and maybe figure how to bring in a few extra bucks. We may be shrewd at money matters, but we are not so shrewd at keeping spirit alive. When chained to a life that no longer gives pleasure or passion or purpose, that ability to spring into action doesn’t seem to kick in. As Jesus puts it, “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

So what does this Woody Allen-like manager do? First he makes a decision—“I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed…, people may welcome me…”—then he gets into high gear, takes the concrete steps to do what he has to do.

When we lose our souls, the simple decision to really live, and not just go through the motions, is the first step to finding our way back. This decision can itself arise from simply recognizing where our present path is heading, picturing what a life without spirit is like. Recognizing the monotony and boredom of such a life can put us in high gear to find another way. The simple decision to live spiritually is the first step.

And concrete actions must follow that decision. These can vary depending on your unique situation: Start reading books that challenge and inspire, or listen to music that opens your heart, or hang out with spiritually serious people who can support your own effort to live with more spirit.

One action step is suggested by the early fathers and mothers of Christianity. It involves simply moving through all the small and big moments of your day and giving thanks for each one.

Here’s how this works for me: I opened my eyes this morning and I could see. There’s no law that Richard Smith has to be able to see, but I could. This is not something I can take for granted. It’s a gift. Acknowledge it for what it is, and give thanks for it. And I could get out of bed on my own and make my way down the hall to the bathroom and the kitchen, fix coffee, read the paper. Again, no law says I have to be able to do these simple things. There are many people in the world who can’t do them. The fact that I can do them is a gift, one to acknowledge and give thanks for.

The early fathers and mothers suggest we offer this simple kind of thanksgiving consciously and frequently all throughout the day: the light turns green just as you approach the intersection, or a stranger in the checkout line lets you move in front of them, or that ice cream cone is especially tasty, or your partner gives you a quick peck on the cheek on the way out the door. Each of these moments is a gift, God’s special gift to you.

Maybe when they occur, you’re too busy to notice them. Fair enough. But later, when you have a moment, look back on them, savor them, and give thanks.

Try this for a few days, and see if you feel any different: a little more alive, a little lighter, more joyful, more aware of God’s constant presence and care for you. Think of it as a suggestion, perhaps a part of your own action plan, from our early forebears in the faith. Try it and see what happens.

Speaking of giving thanks, in a few moments, we will gather at this table. It’s not by accident that the central mystery we celebrate here is called “eucharist,” the Greek word for “giving thanks”.

This morning, as you come to this table, for these few moments let your whole life be caught up in the mystery of Christ’s life, death and resurrection. Are there any corners of your life where you feel depleted, worn out, bored? Bring them, too. Let those parts of your life be caught up—and transformed—in this great prayer of thanksgiving and praise. Let this sacrament feed your spirit, filling you with more joy, more laughter, more passion, more life.

The Spittin' Image of Mom

"Actually, I was expecting someone with a full head of reddish-brown hair," I say to the gray-haired balding specimen squinting back at me from the bathroom mirror. It's not the first time I've been surprised and confused like this. In fact, it happens more these days, and sometimes it's annoying.
Like when I'm walking down the sidewalk innocently minding my own business and all is well, but then I'm suddenly ambushed from a storefront window by my own slouching reflection, which in turn awakens my inner scoutmaster: "Suck in that gut, shoulders back, atta boy, stand up straight; there now, that's more like it."
It's kind of obnoxious, actually. But not always.
For example, the other day one particularly sneaky mirror in a coffee shop gave me a candid glimpse of myself. I was the spittin' image of my mom when she's deciding whether to buy something at a hardware store, or figuring out her reply to some amazing thing I've just said. The gears in her head then turn as she wavers between desire and prudence, or maybe between admiration and utter stupefaction.
Whatever I was thinking at the time, there she was, looking back at me from behind my face in the mirror.
For some of my friends, discovering in themselves such traces of their moms would be the kiss of death. Me? I savor such fleeting moments.
Because the woman I call mom has class: a single parent with two kids, always there when we needed her, reliable as the dawn; a pioneering businesswoman from the days when banks refused to lend to women; a lover of quality--whether in a thread of yarn, an elegant old house, or an exquisite solo in the Seattle Opera.
And how many older women could receive the news that her son was gay as graciously as she did? She was front and center for Rob's and my wedding, loves him like a son, and adores her grandson, David. She's a blessing beyond words to my family.
Today, at 89, she takes long morning walks around her neighborhood, runs errands for the folks in her condominium complex, reads voraciously, hangs out with her good friend Joe and his lively dog, Abby, and even joins them for weekend camping trips.
And, oh yes. She, too, thinks George Bush is a cretan.
And just think: I sometimes look like her; I'm made from the same stuff! It makes me glad.

Was Our Son Stolen from His Birth Mother?

Was David's adoption process a fraud? The Guatemalan Procuraduria and the US Embassy are implying that it was. In the charged climate of a Guatemalan election year, they are painting American families like mine as unwitting contributors to child trafficking in Guatemala and, perhaps worse, as inflicting unspeakable pain on women like David's birth mother.

Are they correct? I doubt it. Most adopting families, including mine, have followed the existing legal procedures of those very same government agencies slavishly. And when my family went through the process, there were many precautions in place, including a DNA test establishing his birth mom's biological connection to David, her statement of relinquishment carrying her photo and signature, and a voluminous report of the social worker.

Still, even after all this, who can say for sure? The uncertainty now leaves me wondering what to think and how to feel.

Maybe I should just blow the whole thing off. Aren't we First Worlders already used to sipping rich creamy lattes knowing that the Guatemalans who picked the beans received barely enough to support their kids? We've gotten used to these moral ambiguities. Why not just add this adoption issue to the list?

But, hold on. Despite what Guatemalan politicians may say, this is not another story of exploitation by greedy Americans. It is, instead, a result of the sad legacy of Efrain Rios Mont, Guatemala's former brutal dictator, and his many sidekicks.

Thanks to that legacy, a high percentage of Guatemalan children--perhaps as many as one in four--die of intestinal infections because their families cannot afford filtered water. Education for these kids is almost non-existent, rarely going past the second grade. And there are many, many Guatemalan children in the streets and (as pictured above) around the dump in Guatemala City who survive by selling candy, shoe shines, and their bodies. It's for good reason that agencies like Camino Seguro (Safe Passage) ask for our help. And that many of us choose to adopt from Guatemala.

Rob and I once considered the surrogate route to creating our family. But with so many homeless kids in the world, we decided it would be better for us to adopt a child from a poor country. As it turned out, our discernment took us to Guatemala and Casa Quivira, an agency known for its integrity and the quality of its care.

Along with the rest of the world, I keep hoping that the authorities will clean up the abuses in the Guatemalan adoption system. But I don't regret my family's adoption path for a moment--despite the eyebrows now being raised by government bureaucrats and well-intentioned friends. Because David, the light of our lives and an aspiring race car driver, is safe, healthy, and, as I write this, tugging my pant leg and badgering me for a trip to the park. It could have been otherwise.

Update on Casa Quivira--Friday, August 24

All of the kids were moved out of Casa Quivira late last night in the pouring rain. No one knows where the government took them.

Here's today's article from the Boston Globe.

And here's the latest press release from the director of Casa Quivira:

PRESS STATEMENT
24 August 2007

All 35 Children in Casa Quivira under the Intervention of the The Guatemalan President's Office for Social Welfare (Secretaria de Bienestar Social de la Presidencia, SBSP), have been removed from the Casa Quivira Home.

Whereabouts and Wellbeing of Nine (9) Children earlier Removed from Casa Quivira by the SBSP continues to be unknown.

Late in the night last night under pouring rain the remaining 35 children in the care of Casa Quivira in Antigua, Guatemala were removed by The Guatemalan President's Office for Social Welfare (Secretaria de Bienestar Social de la Presidencia, SBSP). Casa Quivira attorneys will file motions today requesting that the judge recently assigned the case, Roxana Mena confirm that her office issued the order and indicate why the children were transferred and to where. After the final vehicle transferring the children left Casa Quivira late last night SBSP personnel with the assistance of the National Police forced the CQ staff nannies and nurses out of the home and into the late, raining night. Byron Alvarado, identifying himself as an advisor to the SBSP, threatened CQ staff that if they remained in the home he would see to it that they be linked to the crimes committed by Casa Quivira. To date, no formal charges have been leveled against CQ.

Attorneys for Casa Quivira were present and immediately appealed to the Juzgado de Paz in Antigua only to be told that the judge of the Juzgado de Paz was not available. Luis Quiroa, one of Casa Quivira's attorneys who accompanied the nannies and nurses to the Juzgado de Paz to give their declarations states that he was told by the officer on duty "the Judge is in Guatemala City and is tired of hearing your complaints." After closing the door in their face they were left standing in the rain.

Casa Quivira attorneys will immediately file petitions this morning in the appropriate courts insisting that they be informed of the current whereabouts and wellbeing of each child removed last night and the nine previously removed to an unnamed hospital, and that an explanation be offered as to why the children were transferred last night.

Clifford Phillips
Director
Casa Quivira

Update on Casa Quivira--Wednesday, August 22

As of this morning, a total of nine kids have been sent to the hospital with a respiratory infection. Apparently, the occupying government agents have limited the home's access to healthcare workers, and the hygiene level has deteriorated.

Update on Casa Quivira--Sunday, August 19

Here's the another follow up to my post of a few days ago:

• A good article from the Boston Globe about the standoff


• The latest press release from the director of Casa Quivira:
  PRESS STATEMENT
  17 August 2007
  
  Two children from Casa Quivira handed over to their legally adoptive parents. Late last night after much pressure from the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala and lawyers from Casa Quivira a judge’s order was enforced which resulted in two children being united with their legal parents. For more than 36 hours the Guatemalan President’s Office for Social Welfare (Secretaria de Bienestar Social de la Presidencia, SBSP) refused to recognize the judicial order and illegally detained the children.
  
  Earlier yesterday Casa Quivira attorneys had filed a writ of habeas corpus (exhibicion personal ) to seek relief for the unlawful detention of the children by the SBSP only to have it immediately rejected by the judge in Antigua, Guatemala. Today these same attorneys will seek to file a separate request to have the legal custody of the remaining 43 children recognized and to have the Guatemalan President’s Office for Social Welfare immediately cease their unlawful occupation of the private property of Casa Quivira.
  
  Reports from the Casa Quivira lawyers are that the health of the children is deteriorating along with the hygienic conditions of the home and that Casa Quivira nannies and nurses are being obstructed from performing their duties by SBSP personnel.
  
  Further appeals to the Office of Human Rights in Antigua, Guatemala by attorneys from Casa Quivira have been rejected. Another appeal will be made today to the Human Rights Office in Guatemala City, Guatemala. If these appeals fail Casa Quivira attorneys will seek to file a complaint in the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in San Jose, Costa Rica. All avenues of justice will continue to be pursued until the legal custody of the children entrusted to the care of Casa Quivira is restored.
  
  Clifford Phillips
  Director
  Casa Quivira

Update on Casa Quivira--Thursday, August 16

Follow-up to my earlier post: The Guatemalan government decided not to move the kids from CQ to a shelter, per the International Herald Tribune:

"It's not a good idea to move them," said the Secretary of Welfare's deputy director, Sully de Ucles. "These are babies that have special care needs and here (in Casa Quivira) they have all they need."

The government allegations against CQ also appear to be softening.

Nevertheless, the situation is not good, per this press release from the director of Casa Quivira:

PRESS STATEMENT
16 August 2007
Casa Quivira Children's Home located in Antigua, Guatemala has been illegally occupied by personnel from the Guatemalan President's Office for Social Welfare (Secretaria de Bienestar Social de la Presidencia, SBSP). The SBSP personnel have refused to allow supplies, specialized milk formulas or medicines from being delivered to the Children's Home by Casa Quivira workers. These supplies and medicines are desperately needed in order to maintain the level of healthcare necessary to prevent the 45 babies legally in the care of Casa Quivira from becoming ill. The Pediatrician for Casa Quivira has not been allowed access to evaluate the children since Saturday, 11 August 2007.
Lawyers for Casa Quivira have repeatedly demanded that the SBSP workers immediately leave the premises or demonstrate a judge's order allowing them to occupy the property. They have refused to do either. Reports from the Casa Quivira lawyers are that the health of the children is deteriorating along with the hygienic conditions of the home and that Casa Quivira nannies and nurses are being obstructed from performing their duties by SBSP personnel.
Appeals to the Office of Human Rights in Antigua, Guatemala by attorneys from Casa Quivira have been rejected. Another appeal is being made at this time to the Human Rights Office in Guatemala City, Guatemala. Casa Quivira attorneys have also filed a writ of habeas corpus to seek relief of the unlawful detention of the children by the SBSP. So far, these appeals have fallen on deaf ears as judge after judge recuse themselves. All avenues of justice will continue to be pursued until the children legally entrusted to the care of Casa Quivira receive the proper nutrition and medical services and the safety and security of their lives are restored.
Clifford Phillips
Director
Casa Quivira

Dick Cheney Was Right about the War

Oh, this one is too good not to pass on. It's a 1994 clip of Dick Cheney stating why we should not seek to topple Saddam because of the chaos and bloodshed it would bring. (It's also a pitch for a donation, but to a worthy cause.)

He even used the word "quagmire". Cool.

Did the September 11 atrocities override Cheney's arguments back in '94? Nope, especially since no WMDs were found and no Iraq-Al Qaeda connections prior to September 11 have been established.

Casa Quivira Raided by Guatemalan Police

Amid the often bloody turmoil in Guatemala in this election year, a seemingly minor incident has loomed large for our family. This Monday, Guatemalan police raided Casa Quivira, the orphanage we adopted David from. Police allege the orphanage was stealing children from their biological parents to sell them to foreigners. The children, including those with medical conditions, have been ordered moved by gun-toting police officers to shelters, and all their legal and medical records have been confiscated pending an investigation. The raid was prompted by a neighbor's tip that foreigners have been leaving the orphanage with children on a daily basis.

Here's my take: There's nothing shady about Casa Quivira. It is far above the standards of child care facilities in Guatemala, both legally and in the quality of care they provide. This was our impression six years ago when we visited there to pick up David, and it's the impression of more recent visitors as well. In a country where the black marketing of children has been a problem for decades, Casa Quivira has been a model of integrity. Even after the raid, the Guatemalan attorney general's office said there was so far no evidence that the children had been stolen or their parents coerced into giving them up.

So what's going on? There's a paranoia in parts of Guatemala, fears that Guatemalan children are being stolen by foreigners. This is especially true in rural areas where foreign couples traveling with Guatemalan children have been harassed, even murdered. This paranoia is being exploited in this election year by vote-seeking politicians. These guys know that taking a seemingly firm stand against the trafficking of children carries political capital. Casa Quivira, which connects needy Guatemalan kids with foreign families, is a convenient target. Unfortunately, it's the wrong one.

So the kids are traumatized, and their already lengthy adoption processes will take even longer. Some may be lost in the system forever and never find a home, ending up, as too many poor Guatemalan kids do, scavenging the city dump near Guatemala City. Casa Quivira and the families with whom they place children are not the biggest losers here.

Goodbye to Lucy

I didn't know it would be so hard to say goodbye. After the x-rays had shown an aggressive tumor in her right shoulder bone and the doctor had given his sad prognosis, after her right front leg had become so painful she could barely walk, I matter-of-factly decided to put her down.

But when, finally, she lie there on the floor of the vet's office after the injection had caused her first to become quiet, then to nod, then finally to lay her head down to sleep, the implications of my matter-of-fact decision started to become clear: A piece of my soul was gone forever.

I once read about the discovery of a prehistoric grave of a young woman who had been buried with much care and adornment. Lying next to her, and equally adorned, was her dog. The scholars said it showed the profound spiritual connection between prehistoric humans and dogs.

I get it now: this deep, deep connection we can have with these amazing creatures.

Later that day, after many sobs and tears, our family went to our back porch to let go of a helium balloon. It was our way of saying goodbye to Lucy. The balloon quickly floated up over our roof and was no longer visible, and I assumed that was the end of it. But then Rob ran out to the sidewalk for another glimpse of it, and David spotted it far off in the eastern sky.

And I suddenly saw Lucy, with her beautiful red hair rippling in the evening breeze and her eyes so bright and happy, running so freely and painlessly into the clear blue sky.

Schumann Arabesque, Op 18, Rob Tan, piano

Here's my husband wowing the world in his latest student recital. Prepare for a treat!

Your Deepest Gladness and the World's Deepest Needs

For Theresa, the defining moment came one night with an unexpected knock on the door. At the time, she was a teacher in a private girls school. But when she opened the door that night, she found a dying woman crumpled on the landing. She took the woman from one hospital to another looking for help, but none of the hospitals would take the woman in. Finally, it was too late. The woman died in her arms.

It was a defining moment. It touched something very deep inside her—a well of deep love and deep anger. From that point on, the woman we now call Mother Theresa would not be the same. Her life would be about trying to make sure that the poor in her city died with dignity, knowing that they are loved.

It’s good to pay attention to such unexpected moments in our lives—moments that I think we each have now and then, moments that reach deep into our souls. They can sometimes be the foundation of what we religious types call “ministry”—that place, as one theologian writes, where our own deepest gladness meets the world’s deepest needs; that moment when we find ourselves working shoulder to shoulder with God in that fragile adventure of creating the world.

I had such a moment several years ago. I was having lunch by myself in a small Japanese place up on California Avenue. I was reading a magazine, but couldn’t help but notice a man across the room having lunch, or rather, trying to have lunch, with his two-year-old son. It was just a typical slice of life, nothing unusual. I’d return to reading my magazine, but my eyes kept wandering back to this father-son duo and their antics.

I knew something was going on inside me when I felt the tears running down my face. It was a defining moment. It touched something in my soul. Things would never be the same. It led to Rob’s and my decision to become parents.

Have you noticed similar moments in your life? Don’t let them go by unattended to. They could very well be angels with important messages for you, messages about your ministry.

And don’t get confused by the churchy word “ministry”: It’s not about getting ordained. In fact, 99% of it doesn’t even have anything to do with church. It’s simply part of our birthright as human beings, this deep desire to love and the deep joy it brings. It’s wired into every cell of our bodies.

Years ago, there was an exchange in the press between Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk and mystic and a young mother. Merton had written an article about how, after several years in the monastery, things had become tedious. The glow of the early days had worn off, and this was causing him a dark night of the soul, a spiritual challenge unlike any he had known before. The young mother shot off a letter to the editor saying that it was not just monks who experienced such dark nights. Parents shuttling their kids to and from school activities, cradling them in the night when they’re sick, waiting in line at the grocery store—these moments are no less significant than the challenges Merton was experiencing. The only difference was that if you’re a mom, no one is calling you holy because you don’t wear long robes and sing Gregorian chant.

Don’t equate ministry and its challenges with its churchy manifestations. It’s central to every human life. And it’s what the story of Jesus is about—Jesus, the one who shows us what it means to be fully human.

Which brings us to today’s gospel. When you stumble upon that deep place from which your ministry emerges, it can take you on journeys you never would have imagined.

If Jesus once referred to himself by saying "I am the light of the world," he would later say to his disciples "You are the light of the world." Another Theresa, this one of Avila, got what he meant. She put it this way: “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which He looks with compassion on the world. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.” And maybe this is our greatest spiritual challenge: to assume as our very own the identity of Christ.

Do you want to know what Christ looks like? What Christ's voice sounds like? Look around the room. Look in the mirror. We are the body of Christ.

Jesus believes this about his disciples when he sends them on their journey in today’s gospel. They have already tapped into that well deep inside them, and now they are beginning to play out the concrete dimensions of what their ministry is to mean. In this moment, I see Jesus as full of all the nervousness of parents sending their kids out of the nest. He hopes they are ready and at the same time he knows they’re not. He gives them an almost endless list of do's and don'ts. They are lambs in the midst of wolves. There are risks and dangers.

Yet he tells them, and us, “Nothing will hurt you.” Quite a statement, especially from someone who himself will be nailed to a cross.

There are many levels to us human beings, and many of these are subject to pain and passing—our bodies, our minds, our everyday mood swings. But the level from which ministry springs, that place of our deepest love and deepest joy, that level is where we are connected to the source of our being. That level is secured by God, it is beyond harm, it does not end.

For us the journey may look a little different than for the first disciples: a ride to city hall to request something as simple as a marriage license, or to church to ask for a blessing for you and your spouse and your life together; or a march down Market street with a sign demanding an end to the brutality of this insane war; or a trip to Martin dePorres House to chop vegetables and ladle out soup.

Or perhaps the journey is quieter, subtler, more interior: coming free from an addiction; or letting go of a toxic relationship; or consciously overriding old fears, old voices that have kept you from loving and being loved.

When the disciples return, they’re ecstatic. They’ve succeeded: “Lord, in your name, even the demons have submitted to us.” And Jesus laughs and celebrates with them, but tells them not to rejoice because they have new powers that swell them with a bursting sense of significance. Rather, rejoice because in this fragile adventure of creation, this adventure we call life, your love is building nothing less than the kingdom of God.

He knew this joy himself. And this is why Jesus, the lover of this earth, would smile and whisper into the ears of people who would carry on that love—people like you and me—“Rejoice! Your names are written in heaven.”

What to Make of George?

Now that W is almost toast, I find myself wondering what to make of him, how to capture what he has meant for me and this country as I see it. Consider this a work in progress as the dark days of his reign wind down.

He has so many faces, from the playful frat house smart ass to the devout, born again crusader against a woman's right to choose, the teaching of evolution, and gay marriage; from the resolute commander in chief in military drag (ironic since, as a young man, he avoided serving in the military) to the buffoon deliberately garbling words and sentences. Which of these will loom largest in my memory of him?

And although he's gotta be one of the worst presidents in history, still, in the past couple of weeks he has actually made some good efforts as George Packer notes:

He strengthened sanctions on Sudanese companies and officials in response to the ongoing massacres in Darfur. He called on Congress to double the funding for global AIDS programs, to thirty billion dollars. He directed his envoy in Baghdad, Ambassador Ryan Crocker, to sit down with his Iranian counterpart and discuss ways of stabilizing Iraq—the most high-profile meeting between top officials of the two countries in years. And he attacked the demagoguery of right-wing critics of the bipartisan immigration bill.

Still, as Packer continues: "Bush's legacy will be the war in Iraq and, secondarily, the array of decisions on prisoners, alliances, treaties, and preventive war which revolutionized American foreign policy after September 11th."

I know that, like myself, George is complex, a mixture of the savage and the noble, of ignorance and brilliance, good and evil. And it is wrong to overlook that complexity, seeing him in black and white terms, reducing him to either good or evil. And it's possible that in the months ahead I will see him for the human congeries that he is.

But as of this moment, I see him as a man culpably ignorant and blinded by arrogance, an insecure man who brooks no dissent, whose shock and awe tactics have unleashed great suffering on hundreds of thousands, and whose legacy we Americans will be trying for generations to overcome.

Note: Just a day or so after I wrote the above words, W, true to form, subverted the legal process and commuted Scooter Libby's sentence. Looks like my last paragraph stands. Is there no end to this guy's arrogance?

Armistead Maupin's Michael Tolliver Lives

He's a gay man in his mid-fifties, slightly arthritic, and 20 pounds overweight. He takes Viagra and testosterone shots, is HIV-positive, and for many years assumed he would be dead by now. But Michael Tolliver is very much alive and in a solid relationship with a man 21 years his junior.

He's got more going for him than simply rearranging the vases on the mantle. He's not following the script that consigns fifty-something gay men to the shelf.

Good for him--and for Maupin for telling this partly autobiographical story that replaces the deadening cultural script presently available to middle-aged gay men with one full of life and love. And thank Maupin for illumining other corners of gay life, including the lives of transgendered people and the occasional surprises within the lives of seemingly homophobic parents and relatives.

Maupin has crafted his story with insight, humor, and compassion. He's just the kind of guy you'd enjoy having over for dinner. Chances are he would feel very comfortable with you, too, perhaps especially if you don't fit the enervating scripts of our cultures, whether gay or straight, whether because of circumstance or choice.

Changing Jobs

This past Friday I ended ten years in Silicon Valley to make way for a new job in San Francisco. Before I move on, I want to savor just a few of the kind words with which my co-workers and bosses sent me off.

From a writer who has reported to me:

I've been a technical writer for almost 20 years (pass the Geritol, please), and you are by far one of the best managers I've ever had. Better than that, you are genuinely a kind and good person, something the world needs more and more.

From a boss:

You were always there to solve any issue and took every challenge. You always remained calm even under the most stressful circumstances. You were always there to help everyone. We are really going to miss you. Richard, please keep in touch.

From another writer who has reported to me:

It was nice to have a manager who trusts you, cares for you, supports you, and backs you in difficult times. Your approach to work and management was inspirational. You would keep a tab on most things and make it easy for me. Also, I loved the fact that you trusted me with responsibilities.

From another boss:

When I'm on my deathbed, you will be one of the people I will be so grateful to have known.

I'm not sure what to do with such lovely words. Maybe the effect we have on each other becomes apparent only when we look back. Maybe in all the ups and downs--the stressful moments before a product release, the unreasonable demands of dysfunctional VPs, the doubling of workloads with no added resources to help carry them--we strengthen, inspire, affirm each other in ways we are unaware of at the time.

Whatever. I will save these words for a rainy day, and, in the meantime give thanks for colleagues who say such kind things. I hope their words are at least a little bit right.

And to each of them I say with all my heart:

Thank you.
Farewell.
Namaste.

The Landmines of Kamrieng Commune

It's a guy thing, this love David has for things that crash and blow up: tipping over towers of building blocks and cheering mightily as they tumble to the floor, or watching stock cars collide in flames in NASCAR race films, or hurling toy trains from toy bridges. He shares this crashing fascination with other boys his age. He loves this stuff.

But when the crashing and blowing up are over, David gets up and asks for cheese puffs and chocolate soy milk. Snacks, not catastrophes, have the final say. All this crashing stuff is a small part of a larger story in which life goes on.

On the other side of the world, in Kamrieng Commune in Cambodia, six-year-olds like him share his fascination with exploding things--with one important difference: Kamrieng is strewn with landmines once planted by the Khmer Rouge and by the government.

There, boys throw stones at what seem like toys, the winner being the one who detonates the mine. What would otherwise be a typical boyhood fascination, far from ending in a snack, can sever limbs and sear flesh. The larger life-over-death story does not emerge--at least not there, not yet. In Kamrieng, life does not necessarily go on.

Add to this the physical hunger and poor nutrition resulting from the mine-pocked fields. Kamrieng borders a jungle and the soil is perfect for growing yellow corn. But farmers can be suddenly maimed or killed by the exploding mines. So the black, rich soil remains untilled while families do without proper food.

Someday the landmines will be cleared from Kamrieng, and the larger story will re-emerge. Severed limbs, seared flesh, and diminished lives will no longer have the final say. People will regain their trust in the typical thrills of boyhood and the soil that gives life to an incredibly beautiful land. Life will go on as it did before.

But not yet. Right now, there's too much work to do.

Khaled Hosseini's The Kite Runner

A few weeks after finishing The Kite Runner, I still get chills remebering one line: "For you, a thousand times over." It is spoken by the narrator, Amir, to his newly adopted son at the end of the novel. The two of them have just won an Afghan style kite tournament by cutting the string of the rival kite and setting it adrift. "Do you want me to run that kite for you?" Amir asks his son. "Running" a kite means retrieving it as a trophy. The son nods. That's when Amir says these words to his son--"For you, a thousand times over"

When he was a boy, Amir had often heard these words from Hassan, his childhood friend and the son of his father's Hazara servant. Hassan would say them to Amir when performing one or another menial task for him--or when Amir would ask him to run a kite: "For you, a thousand times over." Even despite the two boys' seemingly vast differences of class and race, Hassan's words carried enormous love and loyalty.

But this story is about more than Hassan's devotion to Amir. It is also about Amir's cruel betrayal of Hassan. The guilt from that betrayal haunts Amir--comes to govern his life, really--and is finally purged only at great cost in one explosive scene.

Eventually, Hassan is murdered by Taliban thugs, Amir adopts his son, bringing him home to California where he shows him the same love he himself had received from Hassan. "For you, a thousand times over," Amir says to the boy just before running the kite, then adds:

I ran, a grown man running with swarms of screaming children. But I didn't care. I ran with the wind blowing in my face, and a smile as wide as the Valley of Panjsher on my lips.
I ran.

Amir's memories of his childhood friend have taught him how to love. Amir is now the kite runner. This story of redemption makes me want to love more fully as well--the highest praise I can give any book.

Our Parish

Over 20 years ago, when AIDS was mowing down friends left and right, I came to St. John's for the first time. I was meeting a friend who had asked me to join him for the funeral of an Episcopal priest whose name I can't remember. At the time, I was a Catholic priest, a Jesuit, and, after several years of parish work in the Northwest, was plugging away at a doctorate in Berkeley. Shortly before my coming to Berkeley, the Vatican had issued another of its searing letters about gays, one that had left me fragmented and weary and wondering where my own life was heading. Finding my way through the red doors of St. John's with my friend, I slumped into the last pew.

To my surprise, that liturgy, with its many stories about this gay priest, gave me a glimmer of hope that my own disparate life could become whole again.

Fast forward several years: I have left the Jesuits and become an Episcopalian, and my partner, Rob, and I have been together five years. A friend, learning we are moving to San Francisco, suggests we check out St. John's.

We did, and we stayed. In time, we were married here. Later, I was received as an Episcopal priest and began assisting here. Later still, perhaps best of all, our son, David, was baptized here.

I remain at St. John's for three reasons.

• The location. During the week, I'm a technical writer in the Financial District working with some of the brightest minds in the country. But Sunday mornings, on my walk to St. John's, I see life from a different angle: giggly children bantering in Spanish with their playmates; homeless people in doorways; carefree twenty-somethings wandering home from a night at the clubs; shopkeepers sweeping up the windblown newspapers, hypodermic needles, and broken wine bottles; bright, colorful murals telling the joys and struggles of this diverse and lively neighborhood. I gather up all this terrible beauty and press it to my heart on my way to the Eucharist.
  

• The people. Despite our ups and downs, the people of this parish keep inspiring me to learn more about Jesus and what it means to follow him. We try, each in our own small ways, to do this--looking out for each other when we get sick, lending a hand to struggling parishes in El Salvador, helping neighborhood kids get a jump on their math and reading, handing out food and vouchers to people off the street, or just being a little kinder, more joyful, throughout the week. We do what we can.
  

• Our seven-year-old son. He's crazy about the place. He loves his friends and the special treatment they get in Godly Play, the ladybugs and spiders in the garden, and the oatmeal raisin cookies that occasionally appear at coffee hour after mass.

Sermon: Do not Let Your Hearts Be Troubled

The other morning, I was riding my bike to Caltrain on my way to work. Before leaving the house, I had read the words Jesus speaks to his anxious disciples in this morning's gospel: Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

I was pedaling along, mulling these words, when I saw the bright yellow police tape in the distance. Then I saw all the police cars, swarms of whirring minicams, and dazed onlookers milling around. There had been another shooting . As the police motioned us by, I could see the car with the shattered windshield, and the victim's bloody clothes in a heap in the middle of the street.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid." Really?

Later, on the train, I opened the British magazine, The Economist:

Survivors said the gunman killed without saying a word. He shot teachers and students at close range, in the face, in the mouth, anywhere. He put about three bullets into each victim, to make sure. Every time he emptied a magazine, he reloaded with skill and speed. He had plenty of ammunition. He kept on killing until police burst into Norris Hall. Then he shot himself. His face was so badly disfigured that police found it hard, at first, to identify him.

This, of course, is a report of the shootings at Virginia Tech.

"Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid."

Say what?

Don't be troubled? Don't be afraid? That's good advice if we're dealing with neurotic fears, monsters-under-the bed kind of fears about things that don't really exist or aren't really threatening. But fear in the face of violent and senseless death? These are hardly neurotic. In such moments, fear is more than legitimate and healthy, it's even necessary. It motivates people to change things, work for gun control perhaps, march against this senseless war before more sons and daughters are brought home in flag-draped coffins. Fear, good and legitimate fear, can be a powerful ally for life.

So what do these words of Jesus about not being afraid mean? They become all the more curious when you remember that Jesus, made of all the human stuff that we are, was himself so familiar with fear. The gospels paint his fear graphically: sweating blood in Gethsemane, crying out in terror from the cross at what seemed like God's having abandoned him.

So...what to make of these words of Jesus? What do you make of them?

And they're not just the words of Jesus by the way...

Today is Mother's Day. Do you remember as a little kid when you fell off your bike, or a dog barked at you in the park, or you heard loud claps of thunder when you were going to bed--how your mom would hold you in her lap and rock you back and forth and say things like "It's OK. It's OK. Everything is OK. Don't be afraid." Remember? Where does this maternal conviction come from, this sense that, despite all evidence to the contrary, everything is OK.

This powerful and curious conviction echoes throughout our lives and our tradition. I understand that St. Julian of Norwich, the 15th Century woman mystic, is one of the patrons of our parish, that Julian Street was named after her. She had a mantra: "All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well."

What is this great mystic, and our moms, and Jesus talking about here? Are they in denial about the pain and tragedy of real life? Maybe they are lying. Perhaps they mean well, to calm us, cheer us up. But maybe they're lying nevertheless...

What do you make of their words?

Let me read you a story from Ireland (how I wish I had a lovely Irish brogue to tell it with!)...

It was a long time ago, but I still remember it, said the old man as he closed his eyes to help sharpen his memory.

It was late in the afternoon. A terrible storm was brewing. The sky was low and dark. I was out in the field. It was no place for a nine-year-old boy to be, so I made for an old shed on the farm where we kept tools and such. But I didn't make it before the storm hit.

Fierce winds, pelting rains, lightening, thunder--I could barely see. I finally found the shed. Once inside, I crouched in a corner, sitting on some rolled up rope.

The shed was old, and the wooden slats had separated. When lightening hit, it sent shafts of light streaking through the cracks. The darkness in the shed would light up and then go dark again. It was like someone standing in the room and turning a light switch on and off.

Suddenly the door of the shed swung open. A massive, bearded man in drenched clothes burst inside and shook himself like a dog. Then he saw me, crouched in the corner. He looked back out the open door at the storm and then back at me. He yelled in a loud deep voice, "Ah, boy. He's trying to scare us today."

Well, that did it. I was already wet, cold, frightened. The last thing I needed was this giant of a strange man bellowing at me. I started to cry.

The man came and sat down next to me. Then he took his fist--it was the size of a sledge--and slammed it into my shoulder. I could feel his breath on my face. "Scaring ain't so bad, boy," he said. Then he laughed.

In this story, the boy is so frightened by the largeness and unpredictability of the world that he cowers in a corner. Suddenly, he is confronted by a still more frightening human figure. The older man knows the terror and the source of the terror. "He's trying to scare us today, boy." Yet the man also knows a power beyond terror that allows him power over it: "Scaring ain't so bad, boy." In these words, the man mediates a saving mystery to the boy. There is a reality that, while it does not do away with terror, allows us to confront it and move through it and overcome it.

And it's out of the knowledge of this larger, saving mystery that Jesus utters his words of peace: "Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives."

The peace that the world gives comes and goes. You know how it works: It depends on outer circumstances. When everything is going well, we can manage a certain amount of inner calm. But when bad times come, calm gives way to fear.

But the peace that Jesus gives is perhaps best summed up in St. Paul's eloquence:

Who will separate us from the love of Christ? Will hardship, or distress, or persecution, of famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?...No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angles, nor rulers, not things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

The conviction of Jesus and so many moms and so many saints is that nothing--not topples from bikes or claps of thunder, not even street shootings and campus massacres and a senseless war--can separate us from the love of God. This faithful, non-abandoning presence of God was revealed on the cross of Jesus. In that place of violence and loss, divine love sustained Jesus and revealed God as a protecting nearness that will never leave us.

The peace that Jesus gives comes from remembering how God once entered fully into that one thing we most fear--the complete loss of everything in death. And in that moment on the cross, God transformed separation and irretrievable loss into a new form of closeness to God and others.

Peace begins to rise in us and we gain power over our fears when we "get" what happened on the cross. We are in an unbreakable relationship with the Source of our being.

If this is true, then "Where, O death, where is your sting?"

So, moms, Happy Mother's Day! Congratulations! OK, we'll admit it, you and Jesus got this right after all!

Please, keep reminding us in your own inimitable ways, of his--and your--words to us: Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.

David's Challenges

Karate is one of David's many challenges these days, and getting it right is hard work, whether it's the horse stance or ken-po, keeping his balance in the obstacle course or kicking a cushion through the target. Then there's swimming: executing that breast stroke and breathing correctly. And fencing: keeping perfectly erect when en garde. And chess: carefully thinking through your strategy. And church: learning the stories and rituals, the seasons and feasts of our tradition. And a normal school day: learning to read and write, to draw, add, subtract.

Until a year ago, his challenges were minimal, with no worries about getting everything right. Then, suddenly, all these demands arrived at his doorstep like a huge special delivery from the big wide world. Now, words like "focus", "discipline", and "hard work" take their place alongside "fun", "awesome", and "cool".

And yet, when he's with Papa and me, I want it to be different. Forget about getting everything right. We'll ride our bikes, play board games, build train sets or race stock cars, laugh, explore the world, talk of cabbages and kings. And, OK, so we'll watch a little TV now and then, too. The point is that home is for fun, letting down our hair, chilling.

I know, I know: family life has its own demands--saying "please" and "thank you", attending to each other's feelings and needs, forgiving each other again and again, doing the chores around the house, welcoming guests. Papa and I will guard these demands because we ignore them at our peril.

But in the big wide world, let David's other mentors be the heavies. Here at home, papa and I will be his champions.

Ian McEwen's Enduring Love

A gay Jesus freak stalks a secularist, straight, middle-aged man. You can tell right away it ain't gonna work. But as you watch this crash in slow motion, you experience all the textures, shadows, colors, and sounds of a dysfunctionality that is both sexual and religious.

It starts with a tragic accident in the Chilterns where science writer Joe Rose sees a hot-air balloon tossed by the wind; there's a boy trapped in its basket. Joe joins the effort to bring the balloon to safety, as does a young loner, Jed Parry. Quickly obsessed with Joe, Jed mistakes his uncontrolled feelings as a divine calling to bring Joe to God. That destructive, pseudo-religious mission tests the limits of Joe's beloved rationalism, threatens the love of his wife, Clarissa, and drives him to the brink of murder and madness. It's goodbye real love, hello Fatal Attraction--but with a religious twist.

In an appendix, McEwen reflects: "It is not always easy to accept that one of our most valued experiences may merge into psychopathology." He got that right. And these days the pathological forms of both sex and religion are hard to miss. Think of the heart-breaking stories of domestic violence and child abuse. Or the many pseudo- religious "missions" that end up crushing both bodies and spirits--Bush's war in Iraq, for example, or the crusades against gay equality.

But here's the amazing thing: Given the many possible distortions of both sex and religion, most of the time we still manage to get them right. Despite its pathological forms, as San Francisco writer Mark Morford states, sex still "shoots huge gobs of endorphins and raw divine energy" into our ids, raises our kundalini, inspires awareness of the cosmos. It reveals "the interconnectedness of all things from all time in all places everywhere." And despite the many religious nuts running around these days, the genuinely religious missions of Martin Luther King, Gandhi, Dorothy Day, and the slain Jesuits in El Salvador still inspire our own smaller efforts to make the world a little kinder and lovelier.

We don't always get sex and religion right as McEwen so vividly observes. But sometimes we do. And in those moments, we humans are nothing short of magnificent!

Your Soul for a Doughnut

A mind-frying work week has left me in a heap, wondering if I'm yet another of Catbert's conquests, like this pathetic, lovable, coffee swizzling, doughnut muncher from Dilbert.

I tell myself: My job is as ennobling or soul-devouring as I make it. I'm the one in charge here. It's really up to me.

That's partly true. But the state of my soul is not my doing alone. We're social critters--partly shaped, for better and for worse, by other people. Catbert and the Evil Corporation really can mess us up, steal our souls. And, to the extent that they're the culprits, then standing up to them, demanding changes in our work, is clearly the noble path.

But here's where it gets both complex and fun: The problem can also lie within me, in my way of seeing my job, the way I choose to invest myself, make something meaningful out of those 8, 10, 12 workday hours.

A story... A man sees a worker hauling huge boulders and asks him what he's doing. "I'm a miserable man," he answers, "doomed to a life of menial drudgery, breaking and hauling these huge rocks all day in the hot sun. Woe is me." He sees another man doing exactly the same thing, asks him the same question, and hears him reply: "I'm earning a living to take care of my family." And then he sees yet a third man doing exactly the same task who replies "Me? What am I doing? Why, I'm building a cathedral."

I need to take charge of my job. Dunno yet whether it's the system I need to challenge or just myself and the way I look at my job. Whatever. Just don't wanna be an anesthetized victim like our buddy from Dilbert.