Barack and Gay Marriage

Barack's got my support, my money, and my vote. Now that he's clinched the Democratic nomination, here's an item for his agenda...

How about some civil--and I mean civil--conversation about gay marriage? With the California Supreme Court's ruling, the tone of the conversation is already shattering the champagne glasses.

So far, the conversation has been a major yawn: one side with its irrational (as opposed to rational) appeals to the Scriptures, the other side with its knee-jerk charges of bigotry and homophobia.

Spare me! Something's gotta give here.

Barack has already catapulted our discussions about race light years ahead of where they were. Maybe he can help us find a little common ground on this important and polarized issue as well.

He doesn't have to change his opinion on the matter, much as I might wish he were more supportive of gay marriage. I'm simply suggesting that he be a catalyst for a more enlightened discussion than we've come up with so far.

Especially since people just like his own mom and dad were once, like gay people today, denied the right to marry.

Barack can make a crucial difference in getting the present conversation unstuck. If he wants to.

Walking Downhill

First, it's the dentist telling me about bone loss and my receding gums that won't grow back, but how he can slow the march toward toothlessness.

A few days later it's the dermatologist: You know all that skin damage from sunburns at the beach when I was a kid? Well, it's irreversible, but with these special treatments, he can slow the progression to skin cancer.

Still later it's the chiropractor: a few "issues" with my back and neck. Can't restore it to the way it was in my thirties, but he can try to keep me upright for a few more years.

And once again, I get it: At 58, bodywise I'm on the downward side of the mountain. True, base camp is still far off, but things are definitely different here. Now it's not about scaling new heights but slowing the decline.

I'm going to take the path down with the same deliberateness, muscle, and sense of adventure I had on the way up. Sure, I'll watch my step, and think and pray about things a bit. But mostly I'll savor where I've been, consolidate what I've learned, maybe pass some of it along, and enjoy all the things only this side of the mountain can teach me.

So if I go along with the doctors' idea of slowing down the descent, it's only because it's all much too good to miss.

Going Too Fast

It's Spring in San Francisco, so last Saturday David and I took our bikes to Golden Gate Park. We went along the path we've navigated many times before, the one that suddenly becomes a steep, treacherous downhill slide.

Last year, he rode his scooter, and when we came to this valley of death he cautiously dismounted and walked to the other side. The year before, he was still in preschool and we were on foot. That time he gleefully zigged and zagged down one side and up the other, dazzled first by a towering tree, then by the echoes in the tunnel that runs under the adjoining street, then by a dandelion going to seed. That was also the time he climbed some big rocks along the path, tumbled down, scraped his knee, and burst into tears.

This year, when we got to the slide, he matter-of-factly got off his bike and walked to the other side as we headed to Stowe Lake for a row-boat ride. But later, on our way back, he stayed on the bike, whooping and hollering all the way down that hill and back up the other side only to do it again and again and again. We could have spent the rest of the day there.

And I realized how fast he's growing. He's an all-out boy now. And, for me, it's all going so fast. Much too fast.

Mark Rothko's No. 14 at San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

It all happens within a benign universe: A fiery orange rests above a deep, alluring blue.

Two movements: one in, the other out. A deep and ponderous blue, and the fiery orange of action, speech, life. The latter rests securely on the former, the former draws energy and life from the latter.

It's how a world gets created.

Barack's Speech on Race

It was unlike any speech I've heard from a political candidate. Balanced, sensitive, honest. Not politics as usual.

Just what you'd expect from one who has decried the incivility of American political discourse and hopes to set a new tone.

In this moment, Barack has lived up to my hopes.

It's Holy Week and I happen to be a christian, so maybe I can be forgiven for seeing in Barack's speech a glimmer or two of resurrection.

A Hope for Barack

As the race for the Democratic presidential nominee tightens and becomes more polarized, here's hoping that Barack will continue to hold the high ground, not giving in to the temptation to go for the jugular. Part of what has drawn me to him is his seemingly earnest desire to move beyond the present culture wars, build bridges between blacks and whites, republicans and democrats, the U.S. and its enemies.

If, under the pressure of the moment, he descends into politics as usual, then, what the hell, why not just vote for Hillary?

Holy Homosexuals

And here is an irreverent but very cute jab at conservative, bible-thumping Australian Archbishop Peter Jensen. It's called Holy Homosexuals.

Good Newsweek Article on International Adoption

Given the media frenzy around international adoption these days, this Newsweek article looks remarkably balanced.

A Good Week

Rob and I celebrated our 18th anniversary.
David learned to whistle.
We added a happy dog named Crusoe to our family.
A good week.

Ann Patchett's Bel Canto

In the end, says Patchett, it is neither politics nor religion that transform and inspire us, but art. More specifically, in her technicolor and lyrical novel, it is the music of opera. Here's the plot from the publisher's notes:

Somewhere in South America, at the home of the country's vice president, a lavish birthday party is being held in honor of Mr. Hosokawa, a powerful Japanese businessman. Roxanne Coss, opera's most revered soprano, has mesmerized the international guests with her singing. It is a perfect evening -- until a band of gun-wielding terrorists breaks in through the air-conditioning vents and takes the entire party hostage. But what begins as a panicked, life-threatening scenario slowly evolves into something quite different, as terrorists and hostages forge unexpected bonds and people from different countries and continents become compatriots. Friendship, compassion, and the chance for great love lead the characters to forget the real danger that has been set in motion and cannot be stopped.

Here, the diva rules. When one of the generals in charge of the siege tries to deny Roxanne a box of sheet music, she says to the translator: "Tell him that's it. Either he gives me that box right now or you will not hear another note out of me or that piano for the duration of this failed social experiment." "Really?" the translator asks. "I don't bluff," Roxanne answers.

The story is, in the words of a New York Times reviewer, "a paean to art and beauty." The exquisite music the diva sings so elegantly brings both revolutionaries and captives to their most profound senses. Social stratifications melt away, ideologies evaporate, ethnic differences are replaced by the common language of music. The story gives hope that, despite our differences, we can capture our deepest selves and find a unity there. In this case, through music.

I love this story of human transformation, yet, progressive churchy type that I am, I wonder if it underestimates both politics and religion. Patchett contrasts great music--that of Respighi, Rossini, and the like--with inept, ill-fated revolutionary generals and a benign but innocuous priest. Not a fair comparison. What about the likes of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu, whose religious and political visions have, like the music in Patchett's story, inspired and transformed? So here's my (perhaps naive) hope: that despite their corrupted forms in today's world, the saner and more compassionate elements of both politics and religion can take their places alongside great art in ennobling and transforming the human heart.

The Magi

Smack dab in the middle of the Christmas season, the media were aghast: The Archbishop of Canterbury had said the story of the Magi is a myth that should not be taken literally. I wasn’t surprised by the Archbishop, but I was amazed and appalled by the secular media who just don’t get the approach we Christians take to our sacred texts: We're not all fundamentalists who take such stories literally.

For many of us the power of the Magi story lies not in historical reason, but in its rich symbolism that has managed to thrill so many artists. Think of paintings by Giotto and Rubens, poetry by Auden, Chesterton, Yeats, and Eliot, and stories by writers like O. Henry.

The Magi may be dubious as historical facts, but they bear rich insights into the strange ways of faith. They make good on the promise of Isaiah: “The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light; upon those who dwelt in the land of gloom a light has shone.”

Because the Magi journey in darkness. They are looking for the Christ child, but they do not have exact directions. They cannot travel by day, and have only a tiny speck in the night sky to lead them. Darkness and danger are more a part of their lives than joy and worship. And yet they keep walking.

They’re not at all like the shepherds. The shepherds don’t have to rely on a mute star. They have a chatty angel who gives them exact directions to the child. Everything works out precisely as they are told. At the end, they run off to tell the story to astonished and admiring throngs. The shepherds’ story is one of angelic revelation, joy, and proclamation.

Frankly, if it were up to me, I’d be a shepherd. But the fact is, I’m more of a Magi. Maybe you are, too. If so, we’re both in good company.

This past year, some of Mother Teresa’s personal journal became public. She wrote: “When I try to raise my thoughts to Heaven, there is such convicting emptiness that those very thoughts return like sharp knives and hurt my very soul. I am told God loves me, and yet the reality of darkness and coldness and emptiness is so great that nothing touches my soul.”

I don’t know if Mother Teresa was a saint or not, but one thing seems clear: She was a Magi. She journeyed in darkness, but journeyed nonetheless.

T.S. Eliot’s poem “The Journey of the Magi” captures the harshness of the struggle here. In that poem, an old Magi looks back:

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey;
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.

This story of the Magi, perfect for a blustery January morning, illumines those moments when hope intersects with pain.

…set down
This set down
This

says the old Magi.

...were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.

For Magi, in the larger fabric of life, birth is interwoven with death. This dynamic of change and growth sounds so romantic, looks so great on Christmas cards…until you go through it.

This past year, we’ve welcomed new children to our parish: Sophie and Ben and Kumari. All those giggles and sparkling eyes and squirminess—Can think of a better reason for joy? And yet, as their sleep-deprived moms will testify, their entrance into our lives brings a kind of death: Things will never be the same again. There are new demands, new sacrifices to be made for these children, things that might once have been possible are now on hold. In the larger fabric of our lives, birth and death weave themselves together. We are Magi.

And this past year, some of us journeyed into lives so much fuller and richer than we had previously imagined, yet that journey has meant letting go of the deadly illusions of addiction, and slowly, sometimes painfully learning how to live in a new way. Birth interweaves with death. We are Magi.

And for still others of us, the journey has meant the end of a relationship, the unexpected death of Manny, the loss of other loved ones either through death or separation. What these terrible losses will mean for us may not yet be clear. What is being born is not clearly seen. We are Magi who journey without a clear roadmap, with just barely enough light to guide us. Sometimes we journey with our knees wobbling and tears running down our face. But we keep going.

Maybe Dostoevsky overshot the mark when he said that “love in action is a harsh and dreadful thing compared to love in dreams,” but still he was on to something. Something Magi know. The journey can be hard. Love costs. Finding the child costs.

And yet we would not trade the journey for anything. Not for a moment. Not for anything. Because we are Magi.