Tag: work

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This Looks Familiar

“Uh-oh!”

That’s one of the Missy phrases that triggers instant attention every time, especially when accompanied by laughter. Our disabled ward likes to pull pranks from time to time, and the more she knows she’s doing something “wrong” – usually putting something where it doesn’t belong – the more jovial she’ll be.

I looked up from the book I had gotten out, on the alert … and laughed as well. Once again, Missy had just swiped my glasses from where they were resting and tried them on. My oversize lenses framed her face surprisingly well,  especially when paired with her crooked grin.

“Go show Heather!”

Off she went. Soon Heather’s laughter echoed as well. And then later that night, after we’d put Missy to bed, she noted something.

“You know,” she said, “it’s amazing how much she looks like Andy with those on. I mean, I always knew there was a resemblance but with those glasses, you can really see it.”

She showed me the pictures – one she’d just taken, the other an old shot of Missy’s brother Andy, who had died in 2006 at the age of 40. Same smile and laughing eyes. Same coloring and facial structure. And now, even the big glasses were similar.

No doubt. None in the world.

Wow.

I’m sure you know the feeling. It’s a little startling, isn’t it? And that sort of déjà vu can lurk around any corner, whether it’s a familiar face, a well-known location, or an old time that seems to become new again.

Maybe especially that last one. Lately, at least.

That may sound a little strange to say. After all, these last 12 months or so have seen an unprecedented use of the word “unprecedented.” (Sorry.)  Maybe in reaction to that, we keep reaching out for comparisons that will make everything make sense. Are we once again seeing the stubbornness and desperation of the Great Pandemic of 1918? The unrest and division of 1968? Are we reprising the corruption of the Watergate years, the economic uncertainty of the Depression, the political uncertainty of Europe between the wars?

Ultimately, of course, every time is its own. But as the old saying goes, even though history doesn’t truly repeat, it often rhymes. It’s still made by us – and our hearts, our minds, still have a sibling’s resemblance to those who came before, however much the world around us may have changed.

And so we find ourselves dealing with the same sorts of core issues given new faces and forms. Fear. Injustice. Uncertainty. Prejudice. Anger. Round and round we turn, sometimes reaching for something better, sometimes grasping only for ourselves.

No, not so different at all.

And therefore, maybe not so hopeless as we might be tempted to think.

At this time of year, it’s common to quote the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. Maybe a little TOO common, as we grow tempted to set aside meaningful action for beautiful words, or adopt a spirit of complacency instead of struggle. But with that warning in mind, his words on accepting the Nobel Peace Prize seem to fit these “similar times”:

“When our days become dreary with low-hovering clouds and our nights become darker than a thousand midnights,” he said, “we will know that we are living in the creative turmoil of a genuine civilization struggling to be born.”

That’s not a pat on the head. It’s not an excuse to sit aside and say “Oh, well, things will work themselves out.” A struggle not joined is lost. But it is a call to hope, a reminder that working for hope is not futile. That the worst times carry the seeds of the best – if we’re willing to put forth the labor to plant them and help them grow.

Similar times. Similar fears. Similar promise, if we can face the moment with hope, courage and effort.

If we don’t?

Uh-oh.

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Un-Conventional

The flash commanded immediate attention, filling the bay window for a dazzling instant. And then came the signature.

KRA-KA-BOOOOM!

If you were in Longmont on Friday evening, you know exactly what I’m talking about – a window-rattling, house-shaking thunder burst fit for a Beethoven video. The sort of close strike that makes you wonder what just blew up, or when the invasion began.

I gave a nervous glance to my front yard maple tree – untouched, thank goodness – and to social media, which was lighting up even faster than the sky had. But the skies themselves had other business; with their Big Boom out of the way, the agenda had moved on to a gentle rain rather than an extended battle.

Which in turn meant peace in Chez Rochat. Our mighty dog Big Blake, known to cower under desks on the Fourth of July, was on to his usual food-swiping and eye-begging ways within moments. Our disabled ward Missy, who jumps and yells at the sound of a backfiring motorcycle, kept rocking out to the tunes on her stereo.

There had been plenty of buzz. Lots of chatter. But no lasting effect.

This time of year, that seems especially appropriate.

Right at the close of convention season.

I spent 16 years as a newspaper reporter, most of it covering governments of one kind or another. I used to joke that it was a lot like following a soap opera: when you first sit down, the actions seems utterly incomprehensible, but over time it becomes addictive as you start to understand the characters and the plots.

Even so, I never saw the point of a national convention. To torture the metaphor a little further, it always felt like a “sweeps week” – a chance to juice the ratings and draw in some casual fans with a gimmicky plot that had little relation to the rest of the season.

Granted, that’s a recent thing. Once upon a time, the national party conventions were the ultimate bargaining table. History could be made with a quick deal that swung enough delegates behind your candidate. A potential president might emerge to find half his cabinet already filled from backroom promises or standing on a party platform with a few curious planks to bring in the stragglers.

These days, thanks to the greater weight of primary elections, everyone knows who the major-party nominees will be long before Day 1 of either convention. The event is no longer a bargaining session – it’s a week-long ad meant to generate a “bump” in the polls. And with one convention following hard on the heels of the other, the bumps have been getting smaller and shorter-lived.

It’s a thunder burst. Flashy. Noisy. But not really good for anything except a moment’s brief attention.

The lasting work in any storm comes from the rain. The sustained effort that actually grows something.

That’s where we come in.

Elections don’t need conventions. But they do need informed voters. Individuals who pay attention for longer than a few speeches and sound bites. Citizens who care not just about who wins, but about where we’re going  and why.

Grass needs rain. Democracy needs us.

I know, it sounds idealistic. It always has. But if enough of us dedicate ourselves to repairing what’s broken and even building something better, a difference can be made. Not easily. Not without a struggle. But not without hope, either.

The rumbles have died down. The flash has left the sky. But the real work is still ahead. Our work.

It’s time for us to take our part in the storm.

Long may we rain.

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A Long Time Coming

This year, another of the long, painful legacies finally came down.

OK, my friends who are Cubs and Red Sox fans are probably laughing themselves silly. After all, when your wait for vindication approaches or even exceeds the century mark, that’s a special kind of pain right there. Never mind the poor, hurting teacher I knew who was both a Cubs AND a Red Sox fan – an exercise in masochism if there ever was one.

Still, 50 years between championships is long enough to wait. And so, despite my own passion for the division rival Denver Broncos, I couldn’t help cheering along with my friends and family from Kansas and Missouri (yes, I know my geography) as the Kansas City Chiefs finally brought home the big one.

Naturally, they didn’t do it easily. The Chiefs rarely do anything easily. Every single playoff game, right up to the Super Bowl itself, had the same script:

  • Come in full of promise, heralded as one of the best teams in the NFL.
  • Fall behind. Maybe way
  • Find a way back that John Elway himself would envy.

If the last five decades could be translated into a single football game, that’s about what it would look like. And it’s why Chiefs fans went absolutely nuts afterward and a lot of the rest of us with them. The wait is painful. But the end is all the more glorious for it.

But putting it that way overlooks something.

It assumes that all you have to do is wait. Have patience, and the good things will happen.

That’s never been true. In football or the larger world.

For the last five years, the musical “Hamilton” has been a phenomenon on Broadway. Part of the attraction is the contrast between the show’s version of Alexander Hamilton – energetic, impatient, fighting to burn his name in the history of the world – and Aaron Burr, a charming man who plays his cards close to the chest, waiting for the right opportunity to show itself. At a crucial moment, when Alexander has just cut a deal to put his long-sought national bank in place, he taunts his rival:

 

When you got skin in the game, you stay in the game,

But you don’t get a win unless you play in the game,                          

You get love for it, you get hate for it,

You get nothing if you wait for it, wait for it, wait for it.

 

There’s nothing wrong with playing the long game. In fact, it’s vital. Most rapid revolutions fail, and many of the ones that succeed turn on themselves – the English saw it with Cromwell, the French with Napoleon, the Russians with Lenin and Stalin. The movements for change that win have a foundation underneath that is built from a long span of patient and often-frustrating work.

But the work has to happen.

If the Chiefs had blown off the draft year after year – if their fans had never bought a single ticket or tuned in any of the sponsored games – there’d be no trophy, and probably no Chiefs.

If the American colonies had never made a single move toward self-sufficiency over the decades that preceded the Revolution, the fight would have failed, if it had come at all.

If the civil rights movement had waited for rights to just happen, instead of constantly working, constantly struggling, constantly refusing to be put down despite yet one more failure, all of America would be poorer for it.

It’s still true today. Transformation doesn’t come from a single election. Victory or defeat in a cause doesn’t stem from a single action on Capitol Hill. Those are just individual notes in a greater melody. What makes the difference is constancy – not quitting, not turning away, taking the time that needs to be taken without assuming that all that’s needed is time.

Victory is never guaranteed. But it’s that sort of stubborn persistence in pursuit of it that can shape lives. Or histories. Or even the occasional sports franchise.

It’s no fun to endure. But the reward is worth it.

Just ask the Chiefs.

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The Bindings That Tie

Some phone calls can transform an entire evening.

“I’m very pleased to tell you that the book is finally in.”

Ding-ding-ding! Never mind trying to find downtown parking near Barbed Wire Books on a Friday night. Never mind the chill of a January evening. This treasure had been a long time in coming, and it was perfect.

A used copy, for affordability.

Clearly in excellent condition.

And most importantly, the true object of my quest: a hardcover binding.

No wonder this one had taken months to search out. How often do you surrender a high-quality copy of The Lord of the Rings?

If you’re a regular here, you know that JRR Tolkien holds a high spot in my personal pantheon of heroes, both for the richness of his creation and the family history that it’s bound together. Dad introduced me to the lands of Middle-earth when I was in third grade, and from then until the early days of college, we read and re-read The Hobbit and his three-volume Lord of the Rings together. We pored over his old Ballantine paperbacks until they fell apart, got him a new set for Christmas, then started again.

Shortly after I got married to Heather (who is every bit as geeky as me), I found and quickly latched onto a single-volume paperback Lord of the Rings – a mass of paper that would probably stop a low-caliber bullet while leaving Elvish script embedded in it for good measure. That hefty tome followed us through the first 21 years of our marriage, coming along on camping trips, car trips, and numerous bedtime readings to an enraptured Missy.

It was during one of those Missy readings that the spine finally gave way, having provided service far beyond the ordinary literary call of duty. We finished its last reading in honor, laid it aside, and then began a new adventure. After all, if a thousand-page paperback book had lasted from the beginnings of Google to the ending of the first Marvel Cinematic Universe, how much longer would a hardcover hold up?

When you treasure something, you try to make it last.

And that’s true of more than just fantasy epics.

If you’ve owned a house or a car, you know the simple truth: maintenance is cheaper than repair. Take care of it and it will take care of you.

If you’ve exchanged rings and said “I do,” you learn a simple truth: that great wedding are far easier than great marriages. One is a singular event that is soon over; the other is an ongoing effort to build something anew every day.

And if you treasure a free nation, you know a simple truth: that it’s more than reciting the Pledge, learning the Declaration, and waking the neighbors on the Fourth of July. It takes work. It means facing up to what our country does and doesn’t do well, proud but clear-eyed at the same time. It means fighting to preserve what needs to be preserved, and to change what needs to be changed. It means speaking without fear, thinking beyond your own small piece of the picture, and building a nation that makes life better for all of us.

And most of all, it means holding our leaders accountable for the actions done in our name.

We’re not always good at that. Our brains like to simplify, and it’s easy to break things down into teams and colors and slogans – politics as sports, where the referee’s calls are just what “those guys” deserved but a gross injustice for “our guys.” Where right or wrong is less important than not giving in to the other side.

Breaking that is hard. And essential. We don’t have to be in lockstep – but without some common understanding and accountability, nothing worth keeping will endure.

When you treasure something, you try to make it last. Whether it’s the binding of a book, or the binding of a nation.

Hold it close. Bind it well.

And then, let it Ring.

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Shooting for the Moon

Fifty years ago today, the surface of the Moon was still quiet.

The Eagle had not yet landed. The world was not yet watching the arrival of three men in hope and wonder and anxiety. Mankind’s first words on an alien surface had not yet been spoken – and screwed up ever so slightly. (Sorry, Neil.)

So much had been planned. So much had been prepared. But nothing was certain. Astronauts had been lost before. It could happen again.

Anything could be in the future. Wonder. Disaster. Chaos.

Anything at all.

***

This column was born from a slight mental glitch.

I am a space geek going way back. And so, like all the other fans of the final frontier, I’ve been excited about the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11’s landing on the moon. By any standard, the date of July 20, 1969 deserves to stand out in human history.

Which is why I have no excuse for momentarily remembering it as June 20 when I started to plan my column.

All right, I’m laughing, too.  Brain cells do amazing things – such as the first President Bush declaring September 7 as the “day of infamy” or President Obama momentarily gifting the U.S. with 57 states – so at the very least, I’m in illustrious company.

But the more I thought about it, the more the idea intrigued me. And not just because I was up against a deadline again.

Consider, for a moment, the world of 1969.

A lot had been happening in this country. And unless you were a New York Mets fan, most of it didn’t feel like champagne and roses. John Lennon may have been singing “Give Peace a Chance,” but for the first half of the year, the headlines didn’t seem to hold much of it. War in Vietnam. Protests. Riots. Even a major oil spill and a spring training boycott.

Sure, preparation for the moon mission was there, too. But unless you were part of the not-so-small army laying the groundwork, it was probably one more item among many, and not an especially loud one. Not yet.

Not with about a month left to go.

Not with crisis so loud and the future not yet known.

***

We’re good at focusing on crisis. It’s one of the things that’s helped us survive as a species. But when we have the ability to be aware of crisis across the country – heck, around the world – it gets overwhelming. Too many alarms, all of them screaming “NOW!”

It’s easy to drown. Easier to surrender.

And easiest of all to forget that even at our worst, we’re still capable of our best.

It doesn’t just happen, any more than winning lottery tickets just happen to show up in our mail box. It takes work and hope and maybe even a little craziness. Just enough crazy to decide that what we do can matter, that a little light can be kindled in the smoke.

That we can do something that matters.

Apollo 11 was the culmination of seven years of effort (and built on what had come before). Right down to the end, nothing was certain. President Nixon had a speech in his pocket in case of fatal disaster. The Eagle overshot the intended landing site, forcing Armstrong to guide the craft to safety and touch down with 23 seconds of fuel left. So much could have happened.

But what did happen captured the eyes of the world.

“Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”

What are we a month away from now, maybe?

What future could we be building among the chaos of today if we refuse to quit? To stop hoping?

I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to it.

Especially if it includes one more column finished on deadline for this space case.

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Moonstruck

Every marriage fits in one of three stages, all defined by your friends. There’s “Awww.” Followed by “Hey, that’s great!” And finally, there’s “Wow.”

Heather and I are now firmly in the “Wow” category.

We reach 20 years on Wednesday. Yes, really. We still haven’t hit the guideline given to us by Grandma Elsie (“After you reach 30 years, the rest is easy”), but other than that, we’ve racked up our share of milestones. Four homes, three cities, two states. We’ve survived ice storms, heat waves, chronic illness, and the delight of moving a piano into a second-floor apartment. We’ve had the amazing joy of seeing our disabled ward Missy come into our lives – or us into hers – and the heart-rending pain of seeing our cousin Melanie leave us too soon.

I’ve shared a lot of that life in these columns. By now, I’ve probably poured out enough words to reach to the moon and back.

Fitting comparison, perhaps.

***

OK, I’m a space nerd. Heather, too. But I swear, we did not deliberately put our wedding day right after “Apollo Season.” Somehow, it still works.

For those who don’t have the dates permanently engraved on their brain, the moon mission known as Apollo 11 launched 49 years ago on July 16, reached the moon on July 20, and then splashed down back on Earth on July 24. It was and remains one of the most transcendently amazing things our species has ever done, an expedition that drew the awe and admiration of millions.

So much could have gone wrong. Some of it did. Total disaster was always a real possibility, as close at hand as the unforgiving vacuum of space. So close that President Nixon even had a speech ready in case the attempt proved fatal and those “who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace.”

But the triumph, the achievement, put everything else in its shadow. All the stress and the worry that had gone into making it happen are remembered mainly by the participants now, or perhaps by those who deliberately study them. For everyone else, it’s “The Eagle Has Landed.” A beautiful moment, never to be forgotten.

And not a bad model for a marriage.

OK, that sounds a little silly. But consider.

There was a huge amount of planning at the outset that still never felt like enough.

There were vows and promises that sounded grand, but would require massive amounts of work to achieve.

There were minor communications flubs that later became amusing (from Armstrong’s famous “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind” to Mission Control’s “Roger, Twank … Tranquility”) and major crises that almost upset everything (such as a difficult landing that took far more fuel to achieve than expected).

There was the eager anticipation of first steps, first words.

And while countless people stood behind them, supported them, made it all possible – the ultimate success or failure would be on the shoulders of the people who made the journey.

A big responsibility in front of the entire Earth. Maybe even a bigger one when just trying to patch your own journey together, day by day by day.

And most of all – for all the ceremony and spectacle, it’s that day-to-day work that’s the most vital. A marriage is not a wedding, anymore than a single television broadcast is a mission. An indelible record, yes. A moment to be celebrated, absolutely.

But it’s the stuff that happens next that makes all the difference.

***

We’ve long since left the moon. Maybe one day we’ll return and relight the fire that once burned so brightly. I hope so, with all my heart.

But in the meantime, our own mission of the heart continues. And despite everything life tries to do to bring us back to Earth, Heather and I are still over the moon.

One small step for a couple. One giant leap for a lifetime.

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Dropping the Ball

A couple of years ago, on a frozen New Year’s Eve, I watched as a brilliantly lit Hippity Hop ball descended to Earth.

It could have been a budget remake of The Day The Earth Stood Still, minus Keanu Reeves. (See, we’re ahead of the game already!) But this idea sprang from the minds of two good friends who, long ago, made this their own Dick Clark-style tradition. Simply gather the neighborhood for a party. Wrap a perfectly good hopper ball – the kind that are about two feet around with a handle on top – in Christmas lights. Then hoist it into a tree and lower it as the crowd counts down to midnight.

They’ll be the first to tell you it’s weird. Maybe even bizarre. And why not?

After all, when it comes to the New Year, we can use all the joy and laughter we can get.

It’s a strange holiday, to start with. It doesn’t commemorate any notable people or great events – just the passing of an arbitrary line. And it’s an oddly placed line to boot, celebrating the birth of a fresh new year in the cold and darkness.

Maybe Baby New Year is a cat burglar?

Not that it really matters. Even though the holiday’s officially about welcoming the new year in, most of the enthusiasm is usually about throwing the old year out. That seems to have reached a pitch this year, when Old Man 2016 might do well to trade in his scythe for a good pair of running shoes to keep ahead of the angry mob – well, everyone except the Cubs fans, maybe.

Zika. Russia. Creepy clowns. Beloved stars dropping left and right. Ugly election seasons with uglier aftermaths. Someone even let the Oakland Raiders start winning again.

Brrrr.

Even if your personal life was stellar, this was a grinder of a year. Add in a few crises (and many of us had more than a few) and it can seem downright intolerable.

Next year has to be better – right?

Well ….

Remember that arbitrary line in the snow? It’s not a magic barrier. All the raw materials of 2017 are contained in 2016; whether we liked it or loathed it, it’s what we have to build on as a foundation.

The good news, of course, is that we can build. We can’t erase what came before. But as a world, we can produce some unexpected changes in the plot.

Step back a moment to 1986. That was the year of the Challenger explosion, the Chernobyl meltdown, the first confirmations of the Iran-Contra scandal. Someone could be excused for calling it a grim year, maybe even a hopeless one for everyone but John Elway.

Three short years later, the Iron Curtain was tearing and the Berlin Wall was falling.

OK, that’s stark and simplistic. Yes, there were good things in 1986 and bad things in 1989 as well. But that’s part of the point – where will we put our attention? Where will we put our mind? Where will we put our hands and our backs?

No, this year won’t miraculously erase 2016 with all its good and bad. But it’s not condemned to be a clone of it, either. The year will need our vigilance, our diligence, our willingness to examine and challenge and call out evil. But it will also need all the joy, beauty, and hope we can bring to it—not as a futile gesture, but as the genuine start to something better.

Maybe it does make sense to put New Year’s in the cold and dark after all. It makes the light all the easier to see.

So if we truly want to see a Happy New Year, let’s get hopping.

Heck – let’s get hippity-hopping.

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Reading and Revolutions

Heather and I have a lot of reading ahead of us.

OK, that’s not unusual. After all, between us, we have enough books to be the northern annex of the Longmont Library. (“Yeah, that’s history and classic literature in the living room, sci-fi and fantasy in the basement … I’m sorry, crafting and gardening? Upstairs and hang a left.”) But these next few months are going to be different.

For the first time in a while, I’ll be reading out loud to my wife.

We used to do this quite a bit. And, granted, sometimes she still listens in when I’m doing our bedtime reading with our disabled ward Missy. But this time, we’re doing this for exercise as much as recreation. Maybe a few laps with Heather’s beloved Jane Austen, or the calisthenics of Charles Dickens putting us through our paces. Heck, Dave Barry may be warming us up.

At this point, we’re reaching for anything and everything that will cut through the fog.

Regular devotees of this column may remember that Heather was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis a little more than 14 months ago. As we stumble towards (please!) a new, more effective medicine, there have been a lot of small battles to fight. The moments of weakness. The occasional vertigo and loss of balance. But the most persistent and insidious has been what Heather and others with MS often call the “brain fog.”

MS lives in your brain. And it’s not especially careful with the furniture. It can make someone forgetful, make it hard to focus or concentrate. Heather noticed it creeping in when some of her puzzle games became more difficult and when anything longer than a news article became too much to handle. The woman who had read and loved “War and Peace” couldn’t pick up a novel.

It can be fought – by using patience, by establishing patterns and workarounds, and maybe most of all by keeping the brain active and stimulated. Hence the out-loud reading, which lets us work through at our pace, stop and explain or repeat if necessary, and use multiple senses at once (including my own sense of the theatrical) to hold and keep her attention.

It won’t be easy. We know it’ll take a lot of time and work. The progress may seem minuscule or even invisible more often than not.

But that’s how revolutions work. Whether you’re revolting against Great Britain or your own brain.

This July marks 240 years since we first held “these truths to be self-evident.” But the American Revolution didn’t spring fully formed from the brain of Thomas Jefferson or John Adams. Its success was from more than just an eight-year war or even a summer-long Constitutional Convention. Plenty of movements have declared revolutions, from 18th-century France to modern-day politicians. Most of them fail.

What made ours different – or at least one vital factor in it – is how well-prepared it was.

In a way, the Revolution merely confirmed what the American colonists had spent seven or eight generations learning: that they could govern themselves independently of any outside power. They had been practicing that art for nearly 160 years before Lexington and Concord, learning how to build a society and keep it together, in a land where the mother country was months distant and much indifferent.

They survived. They thrived. And by the time the King and Parliament decided it might be time to tighten the rein, the colonists discovered they didn’t need Britain any more – and hadn’t for some time.

“The Revolution was effected before the war commenced,” Adams once observed. “The Revolution was in the hearts and minds of the people.”

Now it’s time for revolution to come to a mind again.

We don’t have 160 years to spend. But Heather spent most of her life forging the necessary tools. We’re willing to work as patiently and persistently as we have to, to knock the rust off and make them fit for use again.

I’ll take any excuse to read a good book. And this may be the best of them all.

Nothing could be more self-evident than that.

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The Next Step

When we lived in Kansas, Heather once had a surgery that kept her in the hospital for a week. I know it was a week because of the parade of food that resulted.

If you’ve ever lived in the Midwest, you know what I mean. Small towns and church communities have a sixth sense for when one of their own needs help. That’s when the casseroles start lining up – because even if everything else in your life is chaos, by jingo, you won’t have to worry about dinner for a while. Just return the dishes when you’re done.

It was love made visible. Concrete caring.

Which brings me to Orlando.

As I’ve said before, I’m tired of writing about mass shootings. I’m sure most of you are tired of reading about them. We’re all tired of living with them, and the pain and confusion that follow in their wake.

As the drumbeat of violence goes on, seemingly without end, nerves are getting strained. Tempers are growing thin. For Exhibit A, just watch the reaction when any politician makes the now-traditional offering of “Our thoughts and prayers.”

“Never mind the thoughts and prayers, man! What are you going to do?”

Now, as one friend pointed out, thoughts and prayers by themselves are not a bad thing. When a horrific act occurs, we need a quiet space to sort things out. We need to think, to meditate, to pray and commune, so that we can get centered again and see a way forward.

But this should be a beginning. Not an ending.

What do we think about? What do we pray for? When we go into this quiet space, what do we come out ready to do?

When someone is sick, we don’t just offer thoughts, prayers, and cards. We make food. We run errands. We pay visits to ward off loneliness.

When a friend is in tight straits financially, we don’t just wish them luck and move on. We pass the hat. We offer help. Maybe we even slip an anonymous gift card into the mailbox.

When a society is wounded and bleeding, what do we do? The answer is, and always must be, whatever we can to answer the pain.

Our job is not just to pray. It’s to be the answer to someone’s prayer.

As a Christian, my own thoughts go to the challenge of James. “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes or daily food,” he wrote, long centuries ago. “If one of you says to them, ‘Go in peace; keep warm and well-fed,’ but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? … Show me your faith without deeds and I will show you my faith by my deeds.”

What do we do?

Do we address the issue of guns? Of mental health? Do we dare look at the problem while it is fresh in our minds and burning in our hearts and offer some sort of answer to it? If nothing else, can we offer any assistance to those still alive, to the families forever scarred by this abominable act?

Or do we simply argue, and groan, and maybe offer a word or two of blame before running for cover? Stand vigil for a bit, change a Facebook image for a week or so, and then move on until the next horror?

If that’s what we want, there’s nothing easier in the world. Just keep it up.

If we want better, we have to work for it. Hope demands nothing less.

Yes, give thought to what has happened. Yes, pray by all means. But in those thoughts, in those prayers, look for the next step on the road. How do we come out of this quiet space ready to make life better?

What do we have to offer? What can we give? What can we create?

The time is now. A world waits.

What will we bring to the door?

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Hands of Hope

There’s an exhaustion that threatens to border on despair. I think a lot of us are there now. I know I am.

I’m tired of this.

What else can you be when you see the same situations play themselves out over and over again? New shooters. New victims. New settings, from Colorado Springs to San Bernardino. And exactly the same results.

I’m tired of our communities becoming a roll call of blood.

I’m tied of the wait to learn a killer’s name, tired of the endless gabble and chatter and theorizing when it’s revealed.

I’m tired of the argument that’s become ritual, as we raise the points we know so well. Guns. Mental illness. Terrorism. Rights. Needs. Like a tae kwon do training pattern, we pose and shake the skies, only to end up right back where we started.

To have this happen in a sacred season seems a grim joke. And yet it’s the time we need the reminder more than ever.

Now, most of all, we have to have hope.

It sounds kind of insubstantial, doesn’t it? Of all the virtues that get celebrated coming into Christmas, hope may be the most misunderstood. It doesn’t get the full spotlight that basks over love. It’s not directly celebrated in carol after carol like peace or joy. When it comes up in the season at all, it’s a quick mention, almost glancing:

A thrill of hope, the weary world rejoicing …

Respite in the midst of exhaustion. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it?

But how?

Let me make one thing clear. This is not optimism. A simple conviction that “Hey, everything’s going to be OK” will burn out fast in the face of everything besieging it. Hope has more than good feelings behind it. Hope is putting your sweat where your dreams are.

Hope is the soldier of World War II who can’t see the end of the conflict, but throws himself into it, convinced that his one life can still make a difference.

Hope is the civil rights worker of the 1950s, for whom the vision of freedom seems impossibly far away, who nonetheless keeps marching and speaking and battling to make it happen a little sooner.

Hope is what keeps the teacher at a classroom. The policeman on a beat. It’s what fuels the best of marriages, the kind that didn’t stop all their energy on the altar but kept pouring it into every passing minute and hour and day.

Hope means work. To paraphrase a favorite writer, once you say that problems can be solved, that better is possible, you have to get off your duff and do something.

That’s what can transform a “weary world.”

Despair is easy. You just sit back, let the world happen, and say “told you so.” Hope can wear you out to the point where it almost breaks you. But it’s also the only thing that gives any of us a fighting chance.

This last year has been a quest for hope in our house. Ever since my wife Heather was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, we’ve had a lot to do. There have been medicines to try, work schedules to balance, a life to somehow keep going in the midst of everything. And it’s tempting to just sit down and shout at the heavens “I CAN’T DO IT!”

Sometimes we do. Everyone needs to retreat sometimes. But eventually we keep going. We have to. Or it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hope asks a lot. But it’s the only way to move forward. It’s the only way to move at all.

Are we ready to try it?

It means more than hand-wringing and pained pronouncements. It requires more than a hashtag and a Facebook post. If we’re going to break the cycle of death, we have to be ready to fix our eyes on a goal and shoulder our piece of the work. It may not be monumental. It may seem hopelessly insignificant. But drops become a flood. And a flood can change landscapes.

Will we? Are we ready at last to take up the burden of hope?

I’m tired of what we’ve got.

Let’s wake our world.