Month: April 2019

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Raising the Lady

When Notre Dame de Paris burned, the world mourned.

Then the destruction was halted. And that’s when things got more complicated.

Not for the rescue itself. The French firefighters who battled the fire and stopped it in time to save the main edifice have received a flood of praise, and rightly so. They stood in the face of an inferno that could have completely wiped an irreplaceable monument from the face of the earth, and successfully told it “No. This far, and no further.” That act of stubborn defiance deserves all the praise the world can give, and then some.

The complications came when the donations started rolling in.

Millions had watched the grand cathedral burn. And millions began to be given for its restoration, some of it from some of the world’s wealthiest people. And that’s when the questions started.

“Where were these people when the hungry needed to be fed and the naked clothed?”

“What about the churches that aren’t so famous or lucky?”

“The Catholic Church has plenty of money; why don’t we give ours to (cause) instead?”

“How many problems could be solved if these people would stand up for them as quickly as they did for a famous monument?”

They’re challenging questions. They’re meant to be. The only one that truly has a “wait a minute” answer is the one about the Church: Notre Dame has been owned by the French government since 1905, and its funding for art and infrastructure projects is … well, about what you’d expect from many governments, actually. (There’s a reason that even before the fire, restoration of the cathedral had moved at a snail’s pace.)

But there’s some justice in the overall line of questioning. Yes, we should be helping the needy more than we do. Yes, there are many causes that are not in the spotlight that need the aid of all of us, rich and not-so-rich alike. Yes, giving is something that should be on our mind all the time and in our own backyard, not just when a famous site burns half a world away.

But.

At the same time as I acknowledge the truth of all that, I’m also not going to disparage giving that adds to the joy and beauty in the world, either.  That also fills a need.

Both sorts of causes are worthy. Both deserving of our attention. Both make the world more of a place worth living in.

Locally, there are plenty of ongoing causes that need support, from outreach efforts like HOPE and the OUR Center to newer initiatives like Sharing the NextLight. There are also people who gave to build a theatre marquee in the downtown, or an auditorium for the Longmont Museum, or a number of other, finite projects where a final goal could be reached. There are likely donors who have done both, and are doing both.

All of it adds  to the life we share.

Are there folks whose public giving is purely for the accolades? Certainly. Are there folks who give quietly in the shadows whom we never hear about? Absolutely. Are we right to be cynical about the former and smile on the latter? There’s at least 2,000 years of precedent for doing so.

But whatever the motives, whatever may lie on a person’s soul – if the giving is doing some good somewhere, then it’s worth the having.

And whatever judgement we may pass on another’s motives, we surely know our own. There are needs we see, that we can support.

Support them. However you can. To lift someone up. To create beauty. to make something more for all of us.

Great or small, those deeds shine as bright as any cathedral.

And they stand with a power that no fire can take away.

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The Hole Truth

Who knew that nothing could be so fascinating?

OK, technically a black hole is something. A rather large something, at that. But the image in my mind has always been a bit like the Nothing in The Neverending Story, an unstoppable void that consumes everything in its path. Inexorable. Powerful.

And apparently, beautiful.

Recently, humanity received its first-ever photo of a black hole – darkness surrounded by a burning ring of fire, as though it had been willed into being by a Johnny Cash fan. Millions stopped for just a minute to literally stare into space, and not just because they were still mourning the demise of their March Madness bracket.

Who knew that it would look like this?

I’m still trying to decide why it’s so fascinating. Granted, I’m a longtime space geek, so I find just about anything in the Great Beyond fascinating. But this has – pardon the phrase – a real pull.

Is it the unexpected beauty of it all, like the colors and designs once captured by the Hubble space telescope?

Is it the sense of perspective, the understanding that amazing and marvelous things are happening beyond our reach and influence, the same sense of momentary awe we get at a solar eclipse?

Is it the labor that went into it, the research and invention and collaboration involved? The final photo was a composite of several photos – parts making up the hole, if you will – and the path there required just as many pieces to fit together.

All of it’s true. All of it’s important. But in my own mind, the most stunning piece of all may be the novelty. We had literally never seen this before. We had theorized black holes, modeled them, knew that they existed and how they worked. But no human eye had ever looked on one.

Until now.

The mightiest pull in space does not belong to a black hole. It belongs to discovery. One of the most famous science fiction franchises of all time even has the concept embedded in its prologue: “To boldly go where no man has gone before.”

Human curiosity is a restless thing, and we have boldly gone in a lot of directions in exploring our world and its phenomena. So much so that we sometimes to live in the midst of an age of wonder – and yawn. As a species, we’re sometimes on the verge of becoming the teenager that’s seen it all, for whom there’s nothing left to do. “Crossed the continents, explored the genome, created the Dairy Queen Blizzard. Oh, well, guess I’ll watch TV.”

But wonder doesn’t die so easily.  It waits, patient and timeless. And a good thing, too. If wonder ever truly ceased to be, that would pretty much be our end as a species – we might still exist, but we wouldn’t truly live.

But it still stubbornly flares to life, light and fire illuminating the darkness. It might originate from something as simple as a tale well told, or as grand as the first glance of a cosmic marvel. But it becomes a reminder that there is still so much to discover, still so much to see. That with a universe to experience, we’ve barely stepped beyond our front stoop.

That’s an exciting potential. It inspires hope that we can be more than who we are, that today’s world may only be the beginning. That the stress of the moment may eventually be consumed by the potential of the moment ahead.

That’s a lot to pull out of a hole.

But sometimes, Nothing really matters.

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Facing Out in Joy

With every night and each new adventure, Missy giggled and smiled. Getting stuck in a rabbit hole. Marching to the North Pole by lunch time. And of course, laying a devious trap for the horrible Heffalumps.

There was no doubt about it. “Winnie the Pooh” was a hit.

When I added the stories to our bedtime reading, it had been a long time since I’d journeyed through the Hundred-Acre Wood. But it soon felt like yesterday. As we encountered the irascible Rabbit and pompous Owl, Piglet the Very Small Animal, and of course, Pooh Bear himself (of Very Little Brain), it was a reunion with old friends and long-missed neighbors with delightful stories to share.

It also seemed familiar. And it took me a moment to realize why.

Regular readers will remember that in my spare time, I’m an amateur actor. And this Friday, my latest show opens at the Rialto Theatre in Loveland – “You Can’t Take It With You,” an unforgettable comedy from the 1930s. If you haven’t seen it before,  or the movie with Jimmy Stewart, it spends its time with the pleasantly off-balance Sycamore family, a clan that can charitably be called unique. Dad tests fireworks in the cellar, Grandpa raises snakes in the living room, and Mom alternates between unfinished plays and incomplete art works, while welcoming anyone into the home – sometimes for a years-long stay.

The comedy, of course, comes from the collision between the Sycamores’ carefree lifestyle and the expectations of a more rigorous world. And that is where I began hearing the humming of That Sort of Bear … and a whisper or two of a joy that our own world sometimes forgets.

Namely, the simple act of being happy without apology.

Pooh is who he is. He seems foolish and silly at times. Heck, he is foolish and silly at times. (“Silly old Bear!”) But he hurts no one, he enjoys his songs and his honey and his friends, and in his relaxed happiness, he often sees things that others miss.

The Sycamores are who they are. The outside world thinks they’re mad, and it’s not always wrong. But they hurt no one, they enjoy their thousand and one odd pastimes and friends, and in their relaxed happiness, they remember some simple things that a more hurried humanity has forgotten.

And then there’s us.

We spend a lot of time  trimming ourselves to fit the world’s expectations. Some of that’s a necessary consequence of living with other human beings – neither the Sycamores nor Pooh Bear disdain common courtesy, after all. But all too often, it’s a little more toxic.

All too often, it turns into hiding.

Maybe it’s the child who got bullied in school. A lot. Even if the victim makes it out the other side, the lesson has been learned: Don’t be too different, or you will regret it.

Maybe it’s the person with a chronic illness who’s run into “compassion fatigue,” the friends and family who don’t know how to handle a condition that isn’t fatal but won’t go away. Over time, the lesson is learned: Better to exhaust yourself acting “normal” on the surface than to encounter a world that constantly says “This again?”

Often, it’s something less dramatic, but no less discouraging. We choose one of a thousand masks to make the world more comfortable with us, even if it means we aren’t that comfortable with ourselves.

Or – we can let go.

We can acknowledge who we are. Face the world without hunched shoulders and a wary look. And even love the silly things that hurt no one, and make us happy.

No, it’s not easy. It’s risky, in a lot of ways. The world can be harsh to the different and the honest.

But it’s also the only way to truly live, not just exist. And in that living, to see the world and yourself with fresh eyes.

That’s something even a Bear of Very Little Brain can appreciate.

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(Psst! If you want to catch the show, “You Can’t Take It With You” runs the weekends of April 12-14 and 19-20 at the Rialto. See you there!)