THE AUDACITY OF RECOLLECTION

 

A Sermon Delivered to 

High Street Unitarian Universalist Church

March 15, 2026

          I have few fond memories of the George W. Bush era, but I want to share another person’s memory. This is from then-Senator Barack Obama’s memoir The Audacity of Hope describing his 2004 swearing-in at the start of the second Bush administration.

A young Marine at the door politely indicated that the photograph session was over and that the President needed to get to his next appointment. But before I could turn around to go the President himself appeared in the doorway and waved me over.

’Obama!’ the President said, shaking my hand. “Come here and meet Laura. Laura, you remember Obama. We saw him on TV during election night. Beautiful family. And that wife of yours—that’s one impressive lady.’

’We both got better than we deserve, Mr. President,’ I said, shaking the First Lady’s hand and hoping I’d wiped the crumbs off my face. The President turned to an aide nearby, who squirted a bog dollop of hand sanitizer in the President’s hand.

’Want some?’ the President asked. ‘Good stuff. Keeps you from getting colds.’

Not wanting to seem unhygienic, I took a squirt.

’Come over here for a second,’ he said, leading me off to one side of the room. ‘You know,’ he said quietly, ‘I hope you don’t mind me giving you a piece of advice.’

’Not at all, Mr. President.’

He nodded. ‘You’ve got a bright future,’ he said. ‘Very bright. But I’ve been in this town a while and, let me tell you, it can be tough. When you get a lot of attention like you’ve been getting, people start gunnin’ for ya. And it won’t necessarily be coming from my side, you understand. From yours, too. Everybody’ll be waiting for you to slip, know what I mean? So watch yourself.’

…[As] we walked to the door I told him a few stories from the campaign. It wasn’t until he had left the room that I realized I had briefly put my arm over his shoulder as we talked—an unconscious habit of mine, but one that I suspected might have made many of …the Secret Service agents in the room, more than a little uneasy.

          Now that is audacity. I’ll leave it to you to decide whether it’s an example of disrespectful behavior, or the more common meaning of a bold move. You always chance, when you act audaciously, having your brashness be confused with rudeness. That sort of audacity, that willingness to boldly say or act because the stakes are too high not to, that we must present ourselves.

In this climate almost nothing is more audacious than remembering that it was June 16, 2015, 11 years ago, Donald Trump appeared at the top of an escalator with gold gilding in New York’s tower named for him. Who would have predicted at that time we would still be under his sway, let alone talking about him, all these years later?

          It should have been an indication what he was capable of when his first words on taking the stage were, “That is some group of people. Thousands!” According to contemporary news accounts there were, at best, a few dozen people in attendance, certainly no more than a hundred. Any others Trump imagined were on the other ends of cameras, of which there were also only a few, and except for Fox and CNN, those were all local. Any idea that the truth of the situation might temper his tendencies was smashed when, after his inauguration in January 2117, Trump’s factotum, Sean Spicer, reported Trump’s crowd size at “a million and a half” attendees while professional crowd counters came up between 3 and 600,000, well below the first inauguration of Barack Obama conservatively estimated at over 1,000,000 people. It is also instructive that this was the first time we heard the phrase “alternative facts.”

          It’s important to Trump that his White House continues, in the face of multiple facts, to trumpet his guesstimate. [It is also important because memory matters. John Gardner reminds us in Grendel, his novelization of the Beowulf legend, memory is supernal in the way that someone’s lies, deceitful, flattering untruths, as the monster puts it, “changed the world, had torn up the past by its thick, gnarled roots and had transmuted it…[They] who knew the truth remembered it his way—and so did I.”]

          Here’s one of my memories. January 2009 I was teaching a class at a suburban business that began at about the point Obama would be finishing up. I listened to his speech while I drove from another class. We thought it would never happen, and here it was, the first Black American president. And he was talking about things that were important to me. I recall his humble tone and willingness to reach out to others. Here’s an excerpt from his speech:

On this day, we gather because we have chosen hope over fear, unity of purpose over conflict and discord. On this day, we come to proclaim an end to the petty grievances and false promises, the recriminations and worn-out dogmas that for far too long have strangled our politics. We remain a young nation. But in the words of Scripture, the time has come to set aside childish things. The time has come to reaffirm our enduring spirit; to choose our better history; to carry forward that precious gift, that noble idea passed on from generation to generation: the God-given promise that all are equal, all are free, and all deserve a chance to pursue their full measure of happiness.

          Now, I will remind you that, among other things, this was still three years before Joe Biden would convince Obama his position on marriage equality was outdated and he publicly supported same sex couples marrying, eventually becoming law. So even with the positives in that speech, there was greater room for better to come.

          I was so enthralled listening to this I sat in my car in the parking lot an extra 15 minutes, soaking up as much of that feeling as possible. Class, of course, began later than usual, but most of the other students walked in when I did. One, a Muslim woman from Africa, had arrived early and sat in another student’s car, and they listened to the entire speech together.

          [It may be worth noting that where I got this excerpt, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, promises a full transcript via a link to the White House. The White House has removed that transcript.]

          Am I remembering the lush sense of potential correctly? To test myself, I read an essay by one of my favorite New York Review writers, Darryl Pinckney, describing an appearance by then-Senator Obama in Indianapolis. “What Obama most projects is intellectual honesty, a sense that he has thought things through or is going to try to.”

          And a year later, writing about Obama’s inauguration: “President Obama’s speech was eloquent enough, starting with the fact that he used the word ‘I’ only three times throughout the course of his recollections on ‘the work of remaking America.’…[What] surprised many of us about Obama’s inaugural address was not the absence of rhetorical finery, but how basic and insistent was his reiteration of the premises on which he said we as a nation had always told ourselves we stood.”

          Further,

President Obama’s chastisement of the nation for the drift and low spirits of recent years exempted no one, including himself—everywhere he cautioned of the labor ahead…No slogans, no self-congratulation, but a definite end to the atmosphere of corruption. [He is pledged to transparency in governmental practice in order to ‘restore the vital trust between a people and their government…’]

In Harlem, they say that he is president of the world, [and the photographs of people watching the swearing-in ceremony from Kabul to Nairobi suggest that President Obama was at times so plainspoken in his speech in an effort to reach people who speak English in other countries, talking in a language the world could understand.] It was only after things were over that I remembered how much of the world had been watching…The dignity of the nation was gathered up into his assertion that ‘our security emanates from the justness of our cause, the force of our example, the tempering qualities of humility and restraint.’

The pride with which people came away from the Mall was owing in great measure to their profound respect for President Obama. As much as he tried to merge into his message, or to lower expectations of what he’ll be able to accomplish, I was moved by the thought that we hadn’t seen his like before.

         [I don’t have to tell you who looks pretty bad in contrast.]

Am I guilty of looking at the recent past with rose-colored glasses? I may be. But like looking at Washington, Lincoln, FDR, JFK, even Reagan and, now he’s safely dead, Jimmy Carter, it’s hard to take off those glasses when contrasting them with whatever era we might be reading from. A previous administration almost always looks better than the current one.

          But remember the things we’ve lost to a Trump administration. Perhaps calling these policies “lost” is incorrect. We haven’t mislaid them and however we might feel they haven’t been taken from us. The current administration has decided these are somehow out of reach, either because of finances or a strained morality, but we worked long and hard to achieve them, to convince enough people of their rightness that they understood with us that a sane, good society needs them. They are things we believe in.

          We believe in a person's sovereignty over their own body.  While the Dobbs v Jackson decision was reached after Trump was defeated the first time it was after he had appointed 4 conservative justices to the Supreme Court, including at least one who by rights should have been Obama's nominee. The right of a woman to make her own pregnancy decisions is, or should be, inviolate.  Likewise, the right of an individual to determine what body they’re comfortable in is sacrosanct.

We believe in the separation of church and state. As Obama said, Americans have the right to choose in a god or a discipline we believe, or choose not to believe, and the right not to be subordinate to someone else’s belief or nonbelief.  We believe in programs like USAID, that helped develop foreign policy and lessen poverty, enhance healthcare worldwide and make economies stronger. Prior to its dismantling, USAID was credited with preventing 75 million deaths, many of them in underdeveloped nations [in Africa and Asia.]

          We believe in an independent Center for Disease Control. In 2024 there were a total of 284 cases of measles; in 2025, a full year of the Directorship of Robert F. Kennedy Jr brought that number to a staggering 2283 cases. In these first 3 months of 2026 there are already 1281 cases.

          We believe in meaningful work. Just since Donald Trump assumed office again manufacturing lost 88,000 jobs, more than 10,000,000 people have been out of work for at least 6 months, over 4.7 million people are underemployed, unemployment among the young has jumped from 9.3% of job-seekers in 2023 to 13.9%.

What kind of quality can we put on our sense of safety or security in the actions of our government? How do we even measure that? After the disastrous rollout of Covid 19 prevention under Trump during which it was suggested by him we inject ourselves or swallow noxious chemicals, some intended for other species, or shining ultraviolet light up our system, 1,124,000 people have died. Since Trump’s reelection and expanded powers for ICE and the CBP 48 people have been reported dying in detention centers around the country, and another 8 people, famously including two who were videotaped, were also killed by ICE agents in public. For many of us this is shockingly new, but for just as many others it’s dismayingly familiar. A veneer has been pulled back to display the rot beneath.

          We’ve seen the sacrifice of DEI, Diversity, Equality and Inclusion, on the altar of the lies of wasteful government initiatives, preferential treatment, and hurt feelings. These programs helped correct past wrongs and contemporary setbacks. When we say we believe in DEI we echo our Unitarian Universalist values of an individual’s inherent worth and dignity, of justice, equity and compassion.

These are the ideas and policies we believe in. We fought long and hard and some of us died to achieve them, and just because Trump and his followers don’t share our8 belief doesn’t mean they are gone. It’ll take time but we’ll get them back.

          Because when you believe in an ideal like equality or feeding the hungry, sheltering the homeless or treating one another with respect and dignity, it’s not something you can cross out of a budget. We bought those things with muscle and blood. It’s not a pet rock or platform shoes. We can’t live up to our best without them.

          It’s a truism among political wonks that a leader is someone who watches which direction the people are going and runs out ahead shouting, “Follow me!” We don’t elect a leader to tell us what to do, we elect one to inspire us to do better.

          Can we do better than Donald Trump? Yes, we can. Can we do better than Barack Obama? Yes, we can. I don’t know what that looks like but they’re out there. We’ll know them when we hear them, the belief, the certainty in their voice and actions that we can and must be better. To quote the title of a James Carville book from the 90s that popped down the memory hole, We’re Right, They’re Wrong. There’s nothing wrong with certainty in helping others. We must hold to that belief if we’re going to return those values to their proper place.

         

Uncomfortable Places I Have Slept

 

US 1 Somewhere Between Maryland and Virginia

            I was on my way south, or it might have been north, but as usual I was on my way somewhere. I settled down for the night along a little-visited rest stop. Normally, I’d have slept in my car, but I was getting tired of that. It didn’t seem likely to rain that night and it was warm—probably late spring, early summer—and I preferred to sleep outdoors when I could. I took my sleeping bag to the furthest part of the stop and, just in case, rolled atop the picnic table.

            Aside from my bag, which was top shelf or toppest shelf as I could afford, I was dressed in some lightweight clothes, I slept without a pillow back then, priding myself that I could do that. If I really needed something under my head, I’d crook my arm under some rolled up clothes.

            It was a noneventful night until around two or three in the morning. A few drops hit me, waking me and sending me under the picnic table. The rain wasn’t much and didn’t last long. I crooked my arm under my head for comfort against the gravel under the table. Can’t say I lost much sleep, despite my squirreling around the rest of the morning avoiding the few drops coming through. The next morning, after wiping down in the rest room and a breakfast from the vending machine, I took off.

But to quote the sainted Arlo Guthrie, “That’s not what I came to tell you about.”.

The following year I had a job at a health food store. It was a good job. After three months I earned insurance and used it to access a local doctor for my semiannual checkup. I rarely stayed in one place long enough to use the perks I received from my occasional gigs, so the few times I could I made certain I checked for health issues.

The doctor was thorough and gave me a clean bill of health. When we were done she asked, “Is there anything else?”

I said, “You know, I’ve always had a hearing problem but lately it’s been worse. I feel like I’m listening underwater.”

She said, “How long has this been?”

“Well, like I say, it’s been all my life but, yeah, it’s been getting worse the last few months, Five or six, maybe.”

“Let’s take a look.”

I sat on a stool and she checked my responses to a couple whispers and snaps and then said, “Well, you’re definitely on the spectrum for hearing loss. Let’s look inside to see if there’s anything physical.”

My left ear was first. There was nothing there except for some wax that she dug out, and then she started on my right ear. After a few minutes she said, “There’s a large accumulation of wax in this ear, a lot more than the other. Is this the ear where you have a harder time hearing?”

“Yeah, if I turn my left toward whatever I’m trying to hear I can usually hear better.”

“Let’s see if we can clear out this wax.” She used a tiny spoon-shaped probe and went at the obstruction. At first her digging was gentle, deft, probing at the edges. After a while, she said, “This is a really good-sized ball of wax.” She started using the probe like a pry bar, looking to pop the ball out. I began to feel the probe against the sides of my outer ear and then inside the auditory canal.

She asked, “Am I hurting you?”

I said, “A little.” In truth, I had started to feel like she was jabbing at the ball using the probe like an ice pick. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but I was very aware of its presence shape.

            “Okay, I’m going to inject some warm water into your ear canal, see if we can melt some of that wax.” She stepped over and came back with a ball syringe she filled with some warm tap water. “You know, sometimes an insect flies into people’s ears and get stuck in the hair in there and then wax forms over it. That might be what you have here.”

            “Huh.” She placed a small white towel on my shoulder and against my ear and began pumping the warm water into my ear. The warmth felt good. I felt the trickle around the obstruction and back up into my lobe and then into the towel.

            “There, that’s doing it. We just do this nice and slow, we can get this out.”

            She applied the water a while longer. I snuck a peek at the clock on the wall to my left. I hadn’t paid attention to when she’d started but my appointment had been for 1 and now it was nearly 10 past 2. I looked again and it was a quarter past.

            Seemed like the second hand was moving very slowly and she was filling up the syringe now for the 6^th time. Finally, she said, “This is a really stubborn bug. Let me get something else.” She stepped away again to a closet and came back with a small Water Pik-looking thing with a long tube attached to a tank. She switched on something and while we waited for the water in the tank to warm up she said, “I can direct the flow and the pressure with this. We’ll get whatever it is out.”

            She began at the edges and worked her way around and around. I could feel the trickle turn to a pulse. After a few moments, she said, “Oh yeah, here we go. It’s coming out like butter.”

            As she said it, I could feel the faster pulse moving over and around the obstruction. A few more moments and it would be free.

            And then she said, “Oh, my god.”

            That is absolutely not the phrase you want to hear your doctor say while examining you..

            She said, “It’s not an insect.” I’m sure her hesitation wasn’t more than a moment but it seemed like I waited an hour.

            I said, “What is it?”

            She said, “It’s a pebble.” She set down the probe-thing and took a pair of tweezers out of her pocket with which she gingerly plucked the obstruction out of my ear. It was covered in places with what looked like wax. But it was absolutely a bit of gravel.           

She placed the gravel in my hand and when I got back to where I was living, I put it in an empty film canister. This is how I have a visual aid to show I have rocks in my head.

Celebrating a Chinese poet

 

“TO LIVE IS TO SHOUT AT THE SKY”

(With apologies to Nianxi Chen, whose title I have appropriated)

 

I woke because I had heard my name

Muttered in the lyrics to “Diamonds and Rust.”

I’d fallen asleep over an article about

A Chinese miner, an explosives worker, who

Had also been a poet. Waking, I sat, a dog

Curled against my haunch, my customary

Middle aged position, the middle finger

Of my right hand holding closed my right eye.

The second knuckle curled against the lid, thought-

Lessly, holding down a broken window shade

That keeps flapping up.

The Holiness of Lift and Drop

 

Two months ago I was asked to be part of a service celebrating the holiness of work. Most people assumed I would talk about my pastoral or chaplain work, but I wrote this about a dull, plodding job that I discovered had its own holiness. This is the five minute version I went with. I wrote a longer version to get the story out and may turn that later into a longer essay. 

THE HOLINESS OF LIFT AND DROP

    I used to work short-term jobs, most of them through an agency. There was a plant in Mankato, LMH Quality Packaging, that put together candy bags for local businesses. I rode my bike there one day and was put on the assembly line, checking bag seals. But after a little bit I was called into the foreman’s office and told, because I looked like someone who didn’t mind harder work, I would be moved.

I was taken to a room that was pretty big although there was only one table and one man in it. The fellow was a little shorter than me and what he was doing was walking around the table, which had sides about a foot tall, with a shovel. There were different candies inside and he’d dig into them and then drop them again before taking another shovelful. I was handed a similar shovel, a short-handled grain shovel, and left in the room.

The guy, whose name was Gary, told me what the work was without stopping or slowing down. What we were doing was mixing candies for the assorted candy bags you get around Halloween or party treats. About every hour someone else come along, take the table which was on wheels, and bring in an empty one. Then a half dozen other people would bring in about 20 10-pound bags of different candies—Sweet Tarts, Skittles, Peanut Butter Cups, Tootsie Rolls, the kinds of candy were always different—and dump them into the table. Our job, he explained, was to walk the length of the table and then around, dipping the shovels into the candies, and then turning the shovelful over. Every 10 minutes we’d change directions.

That was it. Not a very hard job. But shortly after starting, I was bored and my arms ached, especially my shoulders. My legs were sore from the walking and pivoting. My forearms ] jolted each time I dug my shovel into the box and it connected with the bottom. Sometimes the hard candies broke or the softer ones mushed and then I’d have to reach in and dig them out. And I was bored. God, was I bored.

At our first break, Gary gave me pointers. “Angle the shovel gently so you don’t hit the table bottom. Let the momentum carry the shovel just above the pile and then let them slide off to one side. Keep your legs bent at the knees and your legs won’t hurt as much. Stay exactly opposite me and you won’t have to hurry or slow down, just keep the same pace.” I did that and it was easier but no less boring. I hollered over to him “How do you deal with being bored?”

He said, “Bored? I never think about it. I just focus on one thing: the shovel lifting and dropping. That’s it. Everything else just gets in the way.”

I was surprised, given my experiences with Zen and meditation, I hadn’t caught onto it sooner. It was kitchen work, simply the repetition of movements without haste or worry about it’s being done. The job would never be done I realized, more tables with more candy would come in, and it would always be done by the end of the day because another two guys would take the shovels for second shift.

The rest of the week passed by with aches of course, and some foot sores. I learned to wear sneakers instead of boots, to ease the shovel because it didn’t matter how much I loaded on the shovel, it would always be added to by Gary. And I drifted, letting my mind wander away from monkey-mind, and let thoughts come, go, stay, whatever they felt compelled to do.

The work was holy, by which I mean there were people who enjoyed those candies and enjoyed the variety available. Even if no one bought the bag and it ended up in the landfill, the insects and mice would eventually eat the candy. It might not be good for them nutritionally—it wasn’t good for you or me nutritionally—but it added a little sweetness and pleasure to their lives, and I could hope for no more than that.

We can't just mark a ballot

Before becoming a minister, my field was literature.  The most important lesson in criticism is not to criticize a work for what it's not. I published a recent sermon a few days ago which garnered many responses on one of the FaceBook pages I link to, most of them negative. My sermon was not intended to be a call to the barricades. I would love to storm the Bastille, but tell me where it is in 22nd century America. Is it in the school board? The town hall? The state capitol? Congress? The White House? It's a genius of democracy that power is diffuse, and to use it we need to know who to address. I know my congregation audience. One response I especially appreciated was a friend coming forward to say she, who had never been to a public protest in her life, would attend the next one with me. That's the best I could want.

I'm uninterested in responding to the criticism. Again, from literature, the work stands or falls on its own. But it did leave me wanting to make a stronger statement about the responsibility we have as people of faith to call it as we see it. This administration is actively involved in crafting and doing evil to the people least able to defend themselves among us: immigrants, children, the undocumented, non-Christians, women, people who work with their hands, gays and lesbians, members of the trans~ community, the poor who rely on government services and the poor who work for minimum wage and less, the homeless, the mentally ill, native Americans, the sick and the dying. In short, the members of the Beloved Community who most need community.

We're reaching a vote soon that can do some real good, that can put into place the actors we're counting on to move the country back in the direction of helping, not hurting. Of giving, not greed. But even if we win every single seat we hope for it means nothing without our involvement. When Obama was elected, our work had only started, and it was going to be a long, hard slog, even with an ally in the presidency, to accomplish what we need to. When he won reelection, we needed to continue working, maybe work harder.

We have been lazy, leaving it to others to do the things we need done, as if we can mark a ballot every couple years and that does it. That's why one of the greatest presidents of my time has been followed by one of the worst, why he has taken it as his mission, and his supporters' mission, to dismantle even the few good things we accomplished to help people who need it. 

We can't change that direction with cobblestones or bullets, even by overturning tables in the temples. We have to work together, understand one another and our friends, and make the changes necessary. And then we have to pay attention. 

I'll survive Trump

I'm concerned that, for most of us, Trump's reworking of what it means to be a citizen who needs help in these United States will be, at worst, a minor bump, while for many, many silenced others it will be a destruction of the little they have. I'm not concerned about myself: I survived Reagan, and Bush's I and II. I'll survive Trump. But I'm not a single paycheck away from poverty, I'm not dependent on EBT or SNAP or Social Security, I don't need to keep myself healthy through Medicare or Medicaid, I don't rely on the social safety net we've spent decades erecting so that as few people fall through it as possible. Yet, that is. But there are many who do have to live with his witless, uninformed, and ever-changeable decisions, and for whom even a single day of uncertainty can mean the loss of food, healthcare, housing, income, employment. Jesus said it best: "Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me."

258 candles-day 80

I've been wracking my brain trying to think of what I can say that will mean anything to anyone about the current dismal, distressing state of politics in this country. And I've come to realize this: There isn't anything I can say. But there is something I can do.

My solution, based on the Chinese proverb that it's better to light a candle than to curse the darkness, is to provide daily candles in the form of links to other people's solutions, simple or complex responses to problems that they see. But as a single candle will hardly provide enough illumination to blot out the darkness that is the pettiness and meanness that characterizes this election cycle, I will light 258 candles, one each day between now and election day. In this way, I will do my part to remind each of us we are better than the baseness of the bases.

Today: I'm not against panhandling, having done it myself, but for many of us it's a humiliation that only increases our need for drink or drugs to help get us through it. And this is a better way to both help people receive money, services, and self-respect, and to work on infrastructure. Potentially, this could lead to another WPA.

being governor of India

As might be noted from the paucity of posts since the first of the year, 2015 has been a busy one for me. While I'd like to lay the blame on not having much to say or write, the truth is more complicated and involves my work.

I really enjoy what I do, a sentiment I think nearly anyone involved in hospice work would echo. It's challenging and necessary and I often find I'm overwhelmed by what I do and how little I know. That is the background to my post today. Why do I have this job?

The question is more complicated than you might think. What I mean is, Why do I have a job doing work that sometimes requires extensive clinical experience when I could not get accepted into the training? Most people in my position and in my company have four units, or one year, of advanced Clinical Pastoral Experience, or are in the process of getting it. I couldn't find a program that would accept me, or even interview me, but was hired as a chaplain, first with teens in recovery, and then with people who are dying, on the strength (I guess) of the talent my references say I have.

I'm left to wonder where the talent lies. I know it's not in my abilities as a team player. Currently, my management is more a suggestion than a presence, and that suits me fine. I often compare my solo work to my years teaching in prison. It was like being governor of a small state in India where, so long as the locals didn't riot, no one cared what you did. Or I think of it like contact improvisation, a dance form I studied in the 80s, that even untrained dancers can make beautiful.

It may lie in my patience with people. I don't need to talk with them each time and sometimes never. I feel I'm doing good work by sitting quietly while they sleep or watching TV with them. It may lie in my patience with myself. I spend time relaxing and meditating before going anywhere so I'm at my least anxious.

Or it may lie in my simple acceptance that they and I and everyone we know and love will die and the best we can hope to do is to meet death with a steady, if unsure, gaze. I have long come to terms with my own imminent death, and while I don't look forward to it, I don't begrudge it either. Live while alive, I say, you'll get used to being dead.

what I do

Yesterday, during service, I remembered a service a couple decades ago, in the late 90s. A woman, local high school teacher as I remember, was giving a solo as part of the service. It was the Louis Armstrong classic, "Wonderful World." And there was a guy, I think his name was Dan, who had joined her onstage but who didn't sing or play anything. He just sat on a folding chair on the other side of the stage with his hands folded, watching the performance, and enjoying it with us. After a few minutes I forgot he was there, and then was reminded as I'd see him out of the corner of my eye. He did nothing to draw attention but at the end of the song he walked over to the mic the teacher had backed away from and sang into it Louis' immortal closing,"Oh, yeah."

That, I realized, is my analogy for what I do as a hospice chaplain.

an almost empty house

I'm beginning a new job in a new hub city in two weeks and toward that end, and because my employer gave me a month to prepare, I've been reading essays, articles, listicles and books about my new profession: chaplaincy to the dying.

One book I've struggled with the entire time but stuck with because I'm determined to get through it all, is The Grace of Dying: A Message of Hope, Comfort, and Spiritual Transformation by Kathleen Dowling Singh. I've noted many passages that I've thought to mark or write down, but they were portions of thoughts, ideas, parts of sentences, and sometimes a full sentence. Until today I haven't seen a full passage speaking enough to me to merit putting here. At this point, Singh is writing about Kubler-Ross' famous stages of death and explaining how even the most advanced among them are a part of Chaos, "what is experienced when an accustomed order is first suspended or destroyed." Lately, I've been thinking about what it is a hospice chaplain goes through when she herself is in the dying process. I suspect it will be something like this:

It was once my privilege to know a woman who had been uncommonly raised, in the Theosophical tradition. This tradition, sprinkled with names like Leadbeater and Blavatsky, attempts to outline the special conditions that engender consciousness evolution. This woman was disappointed in herself when she found herself caught in the powerful emotional undertows of the period of Chaos. She "would have hoped to have been a bit father along than that," she said. She thought perhaps she had already evolved to the point where she could have "given up the body more easily." She entered a profound depression. My visual memory of Geneva is of a woman of dignity sitting alone in a recliner in her living room surrounded by meaningful mementos of her travels: woven tapestries from Tibet, Japanese screens depicting Zen teaching stories, shamanic masks from New Guinea. As the weeks went by and her depression wore on, she began giving all these things away, piece by piece, to relatives and old friends from the Theosophical community. Eventually she sat in an almost empty house. Her depression lifted and she proclaimed, "I've come out the other side." She surrendered to the process of dying and died with great openness and courage. Indeed, she was an inspiration.

teach naked!

Most writers have accepted, not without questions, but with few alternatives, the basic format of the fiction workshop, and the collective standards that are apt to prevail there, emphasizing, in the case of fiction, the short story...The writing seminar itself has developed a specific, venerated, and almost inviolable format...A work will be read by the class, and perhaps a few passages read aloud by its writer, who is then forced to be quiet while others talk about it. Experienced participants will begin by saying something nice about the writing, something they liked, something that works. This is positive and also has the virtue of softening the next phase, the criticism. Fellow seminarians will try to confine their remarks to technique and not judgment of the writer's character or ability--nothing to suggest "you must be a horrible person to have written such a disgusting piece..." If you have to criticize, instead say, "the clumsiness of that passage may distract from you interesting theme of universal brotherly love," or something else genial.

--From "They'll Make You a Writer!: [A Review of] The Program Era: Postwar Fiction and the Rise of Creative Writing by Mark McGurl" by Diane Johnson in the November 7, 2013, issue of New York Review of Books

As a recipient of what, elsewhere in her essay, Johnson calls "the ubiquitous and valued MFA," and a member of many workshops, I can vouch for the veracity of the description above. And as someone who's taught a couple undergraduate creative writing courses myself--which were, above all else, a lot of fun--I can also admit to the supposition of the first sentence: I tried to break the format in my first class but found it nearly impossible to do so. So like the proverbial American lit professor who includes the execrable Sister Carrie in his syllabus because it was part of his studies, I taught exactly the way I was taught, and in some instances in much the same way.

But this isn't to dis the teaching of creative writing in contemporary American schools or the subject of studying creative techniques because, the truth is, I had a lot of fun taking workshops. I loved the arguing, the overlapping elements of narrative and plot and authorial intent (my own favorite, and true, explanation for why it doesn't matter what the author intended: "I won't have you to explain this to me when I'm reading it alone."), the all-night drives to other towns to take part in joint readings, the drinking and bullshit sessions with visiting writers. The acting as if writing really mattered. And it was also true what I told my students: if focusing on writing interested them, then by all means go study it because they would have a focus and concentration and comment on their art that they will never have otherwise in their lives.

And while it's true that, as McGurl points out, the holy triumvirate of finding your voice, writing what you know, and showing rather than telling, tends to produce cookie-cutter small-magazine voices talking about their own special hyphenate problems (in my experience, we often slapped down genre writing in class because "no one," meaning "no one in this class," "reads it," denying the prime real estate devoted in any sized bookstore to the sales of exactly that kind of writing about what no one, whether classified as science fiction, mystery, fantasy, action or romance, has ever experienced), Johnson touches on a truth here when she quotes Elif Batuman in The London Review of Books: "We have to stop being ashamed that 'literary writing is inherently elitist and impractical. It doesn't directly cure disease, combat injustice, or make enough money, usually, to support philanthropic aims,' except in the case of Dave Eggars. But we can still proudly practice it."

This, by the way, remains my favorite workshop-related piece in any media:

everything is everything

This is the mashup I did for yesterday's chapel service. The kids on my "bad boys" locked unit, all of whom have at least misdemeanors and gang connections, asked me last week to begin regular chapels again, saying they missed the opportunity to be in god's presence. Well, how can I deny them that?

 

4 keys and an office

I've never seen myself as a person on whose shoulders anyone should put a lot of responsibility. My view of my responsibility when someone asks me for advice is to say, "sure, I've screwed up my life, let me help you do the same for yours."

The photo to the left is of the keys I have as part of my work (the flat gray tab is electronic). Now, I've had keys to where I work before, usually to the store when I worked retail or to my office and classrooms when I taught, but those were never more than a single key (two in the case of office and classrooms). With this new work I have doubled, if not quadrupled, my burden of responsibillity.

It's funny, as I feel no pressure about having responsibility for something as nebulous as the souls of seventy or eighty residents and staff; but give me something physical of keys and a place with the solidity of an office and my anxiety rises exponentially.

I use the keys each week as they are to the units I visit. I visit my office perhaps twice a month, usually to use the computer when on-campus. All my materials are in the trunk of my car, ready to hand, and I spend all of my workdays at the units, generally having a leisurely walk between buildings (it helps me to keep my life and thoughts slow). My wife's advice is to get over myself, to recognize that I've grown up and can be trusted with such things, and accept it. It's ego, I know, my self-image of myself as someone ready to split when the going got hard. But as my mentor once pointed out to me, "when was the last time you ran from a situation?", and the answer was sometime in the late 80s. Despite my cutoffs and armless tees and sandals, I am a deeply responsible square now. One of the girls I minister to even convinced me I would be a really good dad.

As if to add insult to injury.

I have come to know my place

I've experienced depression for many years. Like a lot of people, I did a lot of self-medicating with alcohol and drugs, and I kind of liked that. But I discovered that I was a poster boy for the wonders of Prozac and have been on some form of antidepressent for nearly 20 years. I've never felt suicidal (although a good argument could be made that I have been self-destructive) or whatever term there is for the desire just to remain in bed. I have no trouble moving around and getting my day going, although sometimes it's hard to understand to what purpose. My depression leaves me angry more often than not, sometimes with myself but usually with society.

All this is to say that, when it comes to depression, I'm not un-self-cognizant. It took me a long time to recognize a need for help, and even longer to accept it. I'm not proud of my tendency toward do-it-myselfism, but realize it's a battle I fight continuously.

On Wednesday I had a counseling appointment with a new counselor I started with late last year. Before and after I left for the appointment I took out my aggression that had been building for months on the three dogs I love most, hitting one with a book, pushing another down the stairs, and kicking the third. I was devastated by this behavior and am so ashamed of myself that if I was suicidal I might consider it. None of them was hurt, although all three looked surprised, which is of course being hurt, and like an abuser I tried to make up for my behavior immediately. But it didn't do any good for how I felt about what I'd done.

This is not to make too big a thing of it. I know every animal lover has done something in her thoughtless moments that he regrets and I know that this is really no different. But one thing I've prided myself about is the immeasurable love I have for my animals. But my depression makes them fair game, I know, and my wife just a few weeks ago said she was sometimes anxious about leaving me alone with the animals in winter, knowing that I could take my anger out on them. I told myself if that happened I needed to make a serious change.

So here is the change I'm making.

It's really not a big thing, more a recognition of something in front of me all along. For decades I have tried to be something better than I am, socially and economically. I have gotten several degrees and trainings--I hold two masters and a master of fine arts, and I've trained as a chaplain and a minister. I was a college teacher for a decade and a part-time minister for another decade.

But those are middle class ambitions and I didn't come from that. I am a lower-class prole straight out of Orwell who lucked into those positions and now, in the current employment market, cannot find a way to make lightning strike twice. The market may not be right but it is what we live with and I have come to hear it loud and clear: it does not want me to make my way as a professional. I must make it as a minimum-wage employee.

I have gotten above myself and have been suitably punished for it.

As a result, I renounce my desires to be a minister or chaplain, as I more or less gave up my desire to be a teacher any longer, and starting Monday I will look for any full-time job within ten miles I can find. Keep in mind where I live, deep out on the rim: the best I could hope for around here is work as a machinist and I don't have that kind of training.

Is this a reaction to both my depression and my acting in a way I'm ashamed of? Perhaps. Probably. But I feel lighter as a result of making this decision. For the first time in a long while I feel less like a victim of economic forces and more like someone who's accepted his fate.

This doesn't mean I intend to give up ministering, as I haven't really given up teaching. I've just given up the hope anyone will pay me a living wage doing it. I've come to recognize my place, and it's behind a broom or a cash register, not a lectern or an altar.

enlightenment is dog piss

"Being a community" is thinking small. Our ultimate goals and purpose cannot simply be about ourselves. Unitarian Universalists, like members of every other religion, are trying to change the world by encouraging people to live a different way. By word and by deed, Unitarian Universalists are trying to change people. It is time for us to acknowledge and proclaim this, and to see that building a religious community is but a means to that larger end...

What I am talking about is related to the "missional" trend in Unitarian Universalism, in which people are committing themselves to living out our values in real, embodied, particular ways in specific communities, "to love the hell out of the world"...Our purpose is to cultivate people who can feel such passion...

The contemporary understanding of Unitarian Universalism is in truth a utopian and demanding vision of community: we are trying to gather not the community that is, but the community that ought to be...The religious community to be built...[is] one that deliberately includes the formerly excluded. Our goal became to build on the experience of...people who...realized that they could be themselves in this church. It followed that everyone should have that experience: the historically marginalized and oppressed, the disabled, the mentally ill, the chemically sensitive. Even those on the margins of traditional religious community--the children--are to be brought to the center...

Inclusion has been our goal. But inclusion is about "bringing in." We should now be thinking about "going out." Now we should turn ourselves inside out to turn the world upside down.

--From "Religious Community is Not Enough" by Tom Schade in the Winter 2013 issue of UUWorld

We must turn ourselves inside out to turn the world upside down. That is, and should be, a frightening proposition. I know I'm scared. I'm scared shitless of it. I've been turning inside out the past two years (at least) and all it's brought me thus far is depression and frustration. Sometimes I see Something, Something That Is I miss and most people miss, and it's a great moment. And then the crushing reality of How Things Are--the need to make money just to live, the fact that I'm in my 50s and my time left on the earth is finite and growing smaller by the minute, and the overwhelming  effort of work like that (and the fact that it pays no money)--overtakes it and leaves me eating ice cream in the middle of the night because I need to get numb and I don't want to get drunk.

But I keep returning to it, I keep turning myself inside out because I know that it's work worth doing, maybe the only work worth doing. The Real Work Gary Snyder called it. It's tough to admit to myself I want to turn the world upside down. I don't want to rock the boat. I want people to like me. I ought to just keep my head down and get along, I got my own shit to worry about. Paying the mortgage, keeping the house warm in the winter, getting the smell of dog piss out of the carpet. There's nothing more crushing when I'm trying to meditate and get myself together than the ripe, fishy reek of dog piss.

But when I'm honest with myself that's what I want to do. Turn the world upside down. At least one small part of it, the part I'm in contact with. It's a tiny, tiny part but the recognition I came to yesterday was that working at the microcosmic level is where the real action's at. It's where real change can occur. I haven't a clue how or what the change looks like. But change is needed and it's already begun with me. And that's horrible because what it does is open my eyes to injustice and wrong all around me and know there's a better way to be. When I was in Montreal in sesshin I spoke with the abbot one day and said, "I think I've made it, I've become enlightened." And he appraised me and looked really sad and said, "I'm so sorry."

That's where the depression and frustration and anger come from, this open-eyed, frank regard of the world as it is and how it ought to be and how wide the margins between those posts are. And how much work that is and how little time I have left and how can I find meaningful work that pays me enough to help us live on and GODDAMMIT! I can still smell dog piss.

In my best moments I know that smell of dog piss keeps me grounded but it also distracts me. My frank admission is that I know I have gifts and the urge to share them and I know how--or at least imagine some of the ways--but I'm either too timid or cowardly or caught up in my own shit to take whatever the next step may be. Some days I imagine the next step is to bake bread and take it to places where the homeless gather and share it. Some days it's to just sit down in the sun and meditate.
Some days it's to visit friends. The issue becomes recognizing all those things and not acting on any of them because it's a lot easier to surf websites while waiting for the vinegar I've soaked into the carpet to work. Turning myself inside out has led me to falling into a First World Problem: I've got the shits and I'm faced with two dozen different remedies. I know better than to think someone will come along and say, "This one," or to think that's what I want. But the varying claims and prices and dosages keep me occupied until suddenly I have to go again. I waddle off to the public toilet thinking, "Next time I'll pick one."

why I am returning to a dying industry (and why I feel cautiously optimistic about it)

            It’s probably absurdly apt that I received this epiphany on Labor Day, in the period between receiving my first paycheck and leaving work for the day. The day is meant for reflection and my work—at a large chain bookstore—is, if not meant to be a model of reflection, at least doesn’t detract from it.

            I haven’t worked full-time in over two years, so the response to my title is very simple: I need the money, and of thirty-six resumes and vitas I recently sent out online or hand-delivered, this was the only one that responded. Previous to this, I was a full-time seminary student working toward national ordination in my faith. Prior to this, I was a part-time seminary student and full-time college teacher. In 2011, at the point at which my contract with the state stipulated I must, after working so long at a particular institution, be granted tenure and permanent employment, I was informed, owing to precipitous drops in enrollment, my contract would not be renewed for that crucial final semester. In effect, after eleven years teaching at multiple sites for the state, prisons, public institutions, workplaces, and private colleges, I was being let go.

            Friend asked if I thought it was personal. As my teaching style is a little unorthodox, but effective, there is some cause for the question. But I don’t think so. At least twenty of us at the same institution were let go that semester, and enrollment is down, so I don’t think it was any more personal than any other cost-effective business decision to downsize before costs become burdensome.

            This argument gains traction by the observation that this recession works differently than all others. Whereas in earlier recessions community colleges were a great place to work because everyone went back to school to improve their education, teaching English as I did was a hedge against unemployment—everyone has to take English. But this recession is not like others—industries are imploding, businesses are closing shop, and what used to be the standard is no longer that.

            To return to academia and my job in it would now require my return to post-graduate school and getting a PhD—my MFA, while it is a legitimate terminal degree, is snubbed by Human Resource Managers up to their eyeballs in doctorate applicants—only to have no more promise of work than before and for the same amount of money I previously made, was not an option. But as I was already in a mid-career change to ministry at the point I was let go, my wife convinced me to take classes full-time and work odd jobs in order to finish. I graduated with a Master of Divinity this past May.

            But my faith, which is post-Christian, has been experiencing a downsizing of congregations for years, and while I’ve been locally ordained by congregations I’ve served in the past, and can legitimately call myself “Reverend,” that all-important national recognition requires a year’s internship at a church under an older (and presumably wiser) minister. Most of these, owing to the shrinking of congregations, are unpaid. I can’t convince my wife (or myself) into subsidizing my yearlong unpaid internship, so I need to return to full-time employment. But part-time is all that has presented itself.

            Fortunately, what I am doing is something I enjoy and have done before. I worked for this same chain a decade and a half ago while I was in the midst of one of my previous identities as a professional bookseller.  I worked for six previous bookstores in my history and I have quite a background in knowing my way around a stack of books. Nevertheless, despite my history both with the profession and with this chain, when it came time to determine my pay the corporation determined I was worth the same as someone walking into the job off the street. I receive minimum wage, which admittedly as I work in a marginally more progressive state is slightly higher than the national average, but it is minimum wage.

            So, in my mid-50s, the holder of a terminal degree, two advanced degrees, ordination, over a decade of experience teaching, and nearly a decade of experience working in this industry, I am being paid minimum wage. I make less now, both in real wages and in current pay, than I did when joining this company 16 years ago with less experience.

            But bookstores are dying and no matter how big they are they are dying at the same, and maybe a greater rate than their smaller competitors.  Of the six bookstores I previously worked at, I helped to close three of them. This bookstore, larger than the others I worked for, will probably ride out the future expected decision to close many of the chain’s underperforming stores, but doubtless at a reduced staff and at reduced services and reduced stock.

            Because bookstores are not the only part of this industry that is dying. So is book production (although not writing: between online content, online-only ebooks, self-published books, and traditional book publishing, we are in a glut of writing. We may not be the most literate nation but we are certainly the one that uses reading most often in our day-to-day operations).

            As I reminded a customer who opted against joining the chain’s membership plan by explaining she was “not a reader,” the person who reads but chooses not to is worse off than the person who can’t read at all.  We are a highly literate society that often chooses to be functionally illiterate or perhaps the better term is “un-literate.” We can read we just choose not to (except online gossip items and the occasional tweets by our friends). Readers are becoming more and more an exclusive club that is experiencing a balkanization of its decaying corpse into The Feminine Nation of Novels and further dividing into Post-Apocalypticatopia, Chicklitavania, and Religioficastan. These are separated from The Country for Old Men comprised of Memoira, Currentrightwingidolland, and Kindasciencey, and the same reader rarely visits both destinations. There is nothing wrong with the balkanization of readers but there is something wrong with readers being unwilling to experiment and potentially being surprised by fulfillment from an unexpected source at the risk of being disappointed.

            Publishing, of course, is in decline. Bestsellers aren’t what they once were, and while it’s never clear the multiple copies that people bought of Sinclair Lewis’ Cass Timberlane were actually read, most media behaved as if they were. It may be a good thing that we’ve scaled back our expectations that all those copies of Happy, Happy, Happy have been read cover to cover but we lose something by not having a shared glossary even if it’s Phil Robertson’s mutterings on faith and family.

            One way my chain seeks to offset the fewer-reader future is through the use of a membership. There are good reasons for becoming a book store member, number one of which is an intent to see to it that the bookstore you frequent continues. Perhaps more small bookstores would still be in business had they shifted to a members-only or subscription model. And there are other genuine advantages to membership. But if lose my new-found minimum wage job at this chain it will be because of the requirement that each bookseller sell at least one membership every 50 ringouts. I can’t in good conscience push the hardsell for this.  Most people in the current climate aren’t interested in memberships in anything. They don’t want to be tied into something for which they’ll feel responsible, if they remember they belong, or feel guilty for if they forget. When they work, as with gyms or supper clubs, they rely on a self-selected group that, with the best of intentions, signs up and pays up, and then it’s in the best interests of that facility that the person show up rarely if at all, to reduce costs. When stores have used memberships in the past—in my own experience with a store called GEX or Government Employees Exchange—they have been an abject failure.

            We live in an incredible time when nearly everything ever published and almost everything ever written is available in some form at some price. The difficulty for professional bookselling is, of course, the same as with social services, ministry, education, and other forms of personal service: everybody wants to make use of it and almost no one wants to pay for it. This state of affairs doesn’t portend the Fall of Civilization but it does seem to present a serious case of a Lessening of a Quality of Life.

            I mentioned being cautiously optimistic in my subtitle and so far I haven’t given any reasons for feeling so. In fact, I’ve given nothing but reasons for being unabashedly pessimistic about both bookselling and my role in it.

            It may be that publishers and bookstores will need to completely reinvent themselves and become less purveyors of new books and more producers of smaller, shorter runs and, for stores, sellers primarily of older copies—there are millions of copies of books printed over the past century that no one has ever read as well as copies someone has read once or read a portion of and will never pick up again, and, like clothing, we may need to switch to a consignment economy. This gives me hope in addition to appealing to my punk aesthetic, a reverence for Do It Yourself in terms of, say, repackaging unattractive-looking books with more artistic, hand-made covers made by the bookstore staff.

            But here is what really makes me optimistic. In the short time I’ve been at this new job I’ve had a conversation with a retired truck driver with whom I commiserated over the practice by some cities to drag you along a detour only to drop you on a side street with no indication how to get back to the main highway you started on. I’ve talked with older people who are visiting Las Vegas after a long time away and are concerned about their ability, now that it’s physically harder for them to get around, to circumnavigate The Strip and made them aware of websites devoted to their questions. I’ve made an older woman, asking in a sad voice for books about grief and getting on with life after a death, laugh a real, full, belly laugh.

            The afternoon I was most depressed about my age and low wage, Labor Day, I was approached at the register by a woman and her two children. The girl had gotten a fortune cookie with her Chinese lunch that said “Treat yourself to something you’ll enjoy,” and that was a book. They were younger kids, perhaps around four and six, judging from the books they were buying. They were learning, their mom said, to pay on their own and they had crumpled bills and pockets full of pennies.

            A short line of people formed while I helped them by smoothing out each bill and counting pennies with them but no one seemed in a hurry. I took an extra three minutes, perhaps, to check out the two kids separately so each could experience the accomplishment of buying his and her own book. I cannot explain or emphasize enough how good, how like ministering to them, this act felt to me. If there are holy acts in retail, this was a holy act.

            As they left, the boy stepped back to tell me that he really, really liked the book series he bought and that he intended to read all of them. I thanked each person who’d waited in line individually and several of them took an extra moment to smile and say they appreciated the time and care I took with the kids.

            Yes, I was indoctrinating them into bourgeois, consumerist society, teaching if only indirectly that the shiny new thing will soon turn into just so much something-in-the-way they don’t need. While it doesn’t guarantee the two of them will become avid readers, the opposite likely would have dissuaded them from that. In addition, I helped them have a positive experience with books and that itself cost them and me and no one in line nothing. That is worth celebrating.