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90 minutes and forgotten glasses.

Jerichardson1 Comment

I forgot to get glasses.

I kept thinking, “I’ll do it tomorrow,” and then we went out of town and I remembered 24 hours before the eclipse that it was happening and of course everyone who’d had glasses was out. And yes, I know I could have borrowed some. Our neighbors were out and one of them lent my girl a pair right around peak time so she could see the wonder as she was on her way out of the drive for work. I had glasses back in 2017, when the effect of a solar eclipse was similar here, and it was cool, to be sure, but yesterday, right around 1:30, I made a fresh latte, took a book and my phone to the backyard, and settled into my favorite chair to just…I don’t know, experience it?

I stayed in that chair, for the most part, until just after peak. Answered a few texts, looked at some amazing eclipse pictures some gifted friends had taken and were posting to their socials, drank my coffee slowly…it was the most still and the most quiet I had been in many days. And that meant I noticed some things.

I noticed the way birds sang their late afternoon and evening tunes, and though I am not a birdsong expert by any stretch of the imagination, I know that how they sound at dawn is different than how they sound at evening. They were loud yesterday afternoon, beautiful in their various tones, like they just wanted everyone to know something special was happening and we should all stop and pay attention.

I noticed that even though cloud cover started rolling in around 2:30, it was still obvious that the lighting, the feel of the air, even, was changing – everything got softer, somehow, like the edges of this often harsh world had pulled back long enough to serve reminder that everything is not always hard.

I noticed the new leaves of trees and shrubs floating up in a light breeze now and again, and I swear I could almost see that breeze, translucent and silvery all at once, sort of the way the air is often so clear and light just after a vicious storm has gone through.

I noticed my pup Dolly was not so sure what was happening, but decided the best way to get through whatever was happening was to curl up right next to my chair and sit as still and quiet as I was. Presence matters, y’all, and I am convinced dogs know this far better than humans.

I noticed the street lights popped on, just like they are supposed to when twilight settles in, and why this struck me so I don’t really know, but it made me smile.

I noticed the shadows playing against my yard and my driveway and the back wall of my house, the branches of trees etched against concrete and grass and siding with the same sort of barely-yet-completely-there imprint as Harry Potter’s Patronus.

I noticed that it all just felt enormous, beyond real understanding, ethereal, and thought that maybe we need such reminders that we are part of something so much bigger than ourselves on a regular basis. I get that there is real science in it all, and I also get that there is much of this earth we inhabit that will never be entirely understood, and that, for me, is where some of our greatest pain and some of our greatest hope continues to be known – “thin places,” Celtic spirituality would call it – the spaces where the veil between that which is earthly and that which is not lifts just enough to help us see that which is divine.

And I noticed that at peak, when here in Louisville the coverage was just two percentage points shy of totality, that there was, indeed, still light enough to see by. And this is what stuck with me all last evening, and into this morning – that even when darkness seems to be so close to blotting out light, it only takes a smidge, relatively speaking, of light to show the way. If you’ve ever lit a candle in a completely dark room, you know this is true. And, if you’ve ever known the strength of someone next to you when you aren’t sure how else you’ll make it through a particularly terrible day, you know this, too. Hope and light are, after all, pretty mighty things, even when packaged up so as to seem not so much.

I learned yesterday morning that the mother of a dear childhood friend was killed in a car wreck. And some of the texting I did yesterday afternoon was with a close circle of friends, all expressing our love and our sorrow and our concern for our dear one back home in Georgia.

And maybe it was the eclipse, the sense of something different in the air, but our conversation reminded me, too, of how much presence matters, of what a gift even the tiniest bit of light can be in a moment of darkness, of how there are ties binding us to one another and to this earth that we often take for granted. As the lyrics of a favorite Broadway tune go, “Ain’t no man Manhattan, an island of his own, nor Roosevelt or Staten, ain’t none of us alone….”

It is impossible for me to think about that 90 minutes in my yard yesterday without being sure as I am of anything that we are held in the grip of a creative Love that knows no bounds, and that keeps us through light and dark, both. It is impossible, too, for me to think about that 90 minutes and not remember that we were created for one another – to be with and for each other.

No matter, and perhaps even because of, what’s happening around us.

I think, maybe, I’m glad I forgot to get glasses.

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We have to try.

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A horrific hate crime has gone down and Captain Olivia Benson desperately needs a reliable witness to help her team track down the perpetrators.

Instead she gets Anne. A young woman who is agoraphobic, and has not left her Greenwich Village apartment in five years, but who sits at her window at night, watching and listening to the streets below, and one particular night, witnesses two men beat a young immigrant, Javier, almost to death while screaming homophobic slurs.

Anne’s apartment is a work of art – a gorgeous mural, in colors that speak of joy and beauty, covers one wall, and the tiny space is tastefully decorated, with lovely wall hangings and candles set just so all around. It’s sanctuary, really, Anne’s refuge from a world that she says is daily more cruel – “I see all I need to see from that window.”

Olivia needs Anne. She tells her so, talks about how Javier is in critical condition and how she wants to bring his attackers to justice. Anne asks her what’s the point. There’s just more and more. It will happen again.

Olivia knows this. She’s known it for 25 years. Has seen the absolute worst of humanity do the absolute worst things. She knows how awful it is, how it seems to be getting worse. And still…. We have to try, she tells Anne. We cannot look away from the horror. We have to try.

We have to try. We cannot look away.

****

In the faith tradition that has raised me, it is Holy Week – the days Christians (of all kinds, from all places) mark the days between Palm Sunday and Easter. My pastor reminded me last week that thirty percent of what we know as “the Gospels” in the New Testament happen during this week. It’s a lot. Triumph, betrayal, death, despair, and, ultimately, on the other side of the darkness of grief and pain…somehow and beautifully, joy.

It’s super easy to want to skip to the joy. Because. man, we do not like the discomfort what comes before it. And I’m not just talking about skipping Maundy Thursday and Good Friday so we can revel in Easter.

Look, I get it. Sadness, loss, broken hearts, deep grief – these things all just suck. Mightily. But there’s a reason those comedy and tragedy masks always hang together in a theatre studio – you cannot have one without the other. Joy and grief exist on opposite sides of the same coin that is our hearts. To be fully human is to know them both, and to make every effort to look away from the things that hurt is to shortchange healing.

Y’all, we cannot look away from the pain of the world. We cannot ignore the civilians dying in Gaza, the missing men, women and children in Israel, the innocents at the border of the US and Mexico, the ways gun violence is destroying this country, the reality that democracy is, truly, at a crisis point, the truth that it is harder than it should be for someone working full time in the United States to stay afloat financially…I could go on. And on.

And we cannot look away, either, from the pain in our own lives – lost dreams and broken relationships and terrifying diagnoses. All of it is enough to make any one of us want to retreat into a shelter of our own making and find there whatever safety we can muster.

But we simply cannot.

I’m not suggesting we dwell entirely on the negative, the dark and sad, every day. Not at all. There’s hope and grace aplenty in this world, and more often than not we find it right next to the things tearing us apart. But that hope and grace don’t mean near as much if we have not also lived days where both seem impossible.

It’s hard, y’all, I know to acknowledge how awful things can be. It’s hard to take a real look – inside us and all around us and face whatever demons, whatever griefs, are to be found there. It’s depressing and anxiety producing and overwhelming to read the NYT headlines of a morning and recognize all the places in the world where evil seems to be winning the day.

And also…

The White Witch couldn’t stop Aslan after all.

And Voldemort was no match for the goodness of Hogwarts.

And Tony Stark’s heart was more powerful than anyone realized just when it mattered most.

And the Rebel Alliance won.

Good Friday does not last forever. It did not then and it does not now.

And if this is true – and my love of the stories mentioned above, and actual history, and, most of all, my faith, tell me that it is, in fact, true – then the right and proper response is to live as if it’s true, even when we cannot summon the courage to believe it. And that means, we cannot turn away.

We have to try to make a difference in the face of it all.

It’s the only way.

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Safe space.

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Larry is his name. For now anyway.

He’s a butter shade of yellow, with fur so soft you just want to bury your face in it on a hard day to feel some comfort. He’s had a hard life, for the few years (we guess) that he’s been around, one of multiple generations of many neglected dogs, left to their own devices in a large fenced in backyard, the strongest of them eventually packing up and turning bully on their own kind. Just for some kind of structure, I guess, some sense of belonging. It horrified me at first, hearing the story. And then I realized it’s no different than people sometimes – hurt and alone and without purpose or place, we do that too, tribe up, strike out, even, at our own kind, just for some sense that we have a spot in the world that is clearly ours and not yours.

Larry and humans both break my heart these days.

Larry was not one of the strongest, and so he became a target, a plaything, of sorts, to be abused and cowed by the pack. Thankfully, he is with the rescue I volunteer with now, and we’re doing our best to teach him two things: he is safe and he is loved.

He is not so convinced of either of these things.

A week or so ago, another volunteer – a brilliant, caring man who knows dogs as if they are part of him – and I tried to get Larry to go for a walk with us. Lots of chicken eaten from our hands, lots of soft words from us, lots of seeming like maybe he thought we were okay, and we finally got a lead around his neck. A win! And Larry even seemed if maybe he didn’t entirely hate it.

Only the lead was too loose, and before either of us two-feet types realized what was happening, Larry was out of the lead and off to anywhere but here.

Thankfully, he didn’t have much length to run, a tall fence surrounds the property we had him on, and eventually he came to a stop against a low retaining wall, terrified and unsure enough to let us replace the lead and get him back to a place we could help him relax.

We tried, anyway. We couldn’t coax him into any kind of a walk.

And also…there is hope. Sweet Larry conceded that maybe I wasn’t such an awful stranger after all towards the end, burying his sweet nose in my elbow long enough to make me catch my breath with small joy, quick enough to make sure I knew it wasn’t a done deal. And he allowed my fellow volunteer to brush a gentle hand along his jowls.

Larry did not once bare his teeth. He did not rear back or express anger. He didn’t even growl – the little sound emitting from him at his most frightened moment could hardly be called that. A cry, maybe, letting us know “I’m so scared, y’all. Please be gentle with me.”

This week, the volunteers working with Larry have had one goal, and one goal only. And that’s to help him know he is safe. Tears sprang to my eyes yesterday when pictures came over our volunteer GroupMe of Larry licking the face of another dog, of Larry reaching up for a treat from another volunteer, of Larry letting a kennel employee pull him in close for a cuddle.

Larry is safe now. And he’s learning that.

And that means it’s possible for him to also learn how loved he is.

We’re no different, y’all. We might have only two feet and no tail and opposable thumbs, but I’m telling you, when it comes to matters of the heart, when it comes to being able to be our full selves, we are no different.

We need safe space as much as Larry does. We need to know we’re held, secure, for exactly who and where we are. It’s really then, and only then, that we’re able to understand how loved we are, too.

Look, I’m not talking about physical safety when it comes to us humans. There’s never any guarantee of that – probably there never was, but certainly not anymore. And maybe that’s a whole ‘nother thing to write about, how this sense that a virus or a gun can change our lives as we know them, at any given moment, has worked on us, both as individuals and as communities. There’s a lot to explore there, to grapple with.

But what I’m talking about is the safety that comes when you know that your heart, your very being, with all its shattered parts and its bruised spots and its broken dreams and its ugly truths, even still, is held safe by someone else – by an authentic community or a true friend or a lover or your family, or whoever – the safety that comes from a deep sense of belonging, just as you are. It’s only then that we can really open ourselves up to loving and being loved as we were made to.

And man do we ever mess it up sometimes. Our own insecurities overriding our desire for real relationship; our own fears dominating the spaces in our hearts meant for bravery; our own pain winning, in some moments, over our longing to heal.

Last Saturday Larry’s fear, his pain, won out, and in his need to protect himself at all costs, he ran, from exactly what he needed most. How lucky he has been these last several days, men and women who I know are dedicated to his wellbeing surrounding him with their care. I can’t wait to see him this weekend, to witness the change that almost two weeks of that care has wrought.

And what I’m wishing, as I think about Larry, is that we humans (myself included) were as consistently intentional about caring for one another as the volunteers working with Larry this week are for him. Even in our worst moments.

I wish we were better at seeing that the tender places in our hearts are best healed when they are able to recognize each other.

I wish we were better at creating safe space, so that we could learn better what it is to be fully loved, just as we are.

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Remembering.

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When did it happen? “It was a long time ago.”

Where did it happen? “It was far away.”

No, tell. Where did it happen? “In my heart.”

What is your heart doing now? “Remembering. Remembering!”

– Mary Oliver

Last fall I visited Austin, TX. I lived in Austin when I was very young, but I had not been back there since I was maybe in middle school. Which is to say – a lot of years ago.

While I was there, I went to a place called Mayfield Park. It’s a nature preserve, a beautiful one, that has on its grounds buildings that date back to the late 1800’s. Also there are peacocks. And I don’t exactly know when in Mayfield’s history the peacocks showed up, but if you visit Mayfield, it doesn’t take long to realize they are everywhere – nestled on the curves of tree branches, strutting across the lawn, peering down from atop an ancient cottage. It’s a little odd at first. I mean – it’s a lot of peacocks. But then it’s just lovely. And like you’ve stepped into another sort of space in time altogether.

Anyway. I went there. And as I was marveling at the architecture and the grounds and the peacocks, I suddenly knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I had been there before. I cannot tell you when, even still. I cannot recall why or how or who with. But I know that at some point in my childhood, I walked those grounds and saw those peacocks. Something in my heart recognized where I was with great certainty. Like muscle memory, almost.

But more like heart memory.

****

This week marks four years since I was diagnosed with Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia, an incurable, chronic form of lymphoma, which is a broad term for cancers that begin in the cells of the lymph system.

This week also marks four years since Covid-19 became very real, very fast, sending so many of us home – away from school, away from our workplaces, away from our families and friends, away from our favorite bars and coffee shops, away from life, it sometimes seemed, and into the isolation of sheltering in place.

For me, the two things are inseparable. Because nothing in my life has been the same since either thing happened.

There’s a picture that pops up in my Facebook memories from late February of 2020. It’s me and my mom and my daughter, grabbing dinner at our favorite Mexican place. And when the picture pops up, let me tell you, the anxiety that roils through my body is real. Because I know now how sick I was in that picture, how I knew, deep in my bones, that something was wrong with me, and that, at the time, I had multiple medical appointments pending. And this coming week ahead? It rolls out before me in this sort of unknown haze, which is just how it felt four years ago – a Monday in one doctor’s office for tests; a Tuesday phone call that the scans showed some scary things; a Friday appointment that both confirmed cancer and was the last day my daughter would go to school in person for 18 months.

You have your own “that week,” stories. I know you do. And if you maybe hadn’t really thought about them yet, but maybe have been feeling some kind of way the last couple of days – a little anxious, a little on edge, a little (or a lot) sad … well, the thing is, our bodies often remember what our brains haven’t quite yet.

Because our hearts often hold our memories in ways our heads cannot.

Whatever you think about how the pandemic was handled in your neck of the woods, whatever you believe about how it spreads or how it was treated or vaccines or shut downs, whatever your life looks like now, four years past, we have all been changed, in ways we sometimes cannot even name, or maybe don’t even want to admit, as a result of Covid-19.

Maybe you are still living with the effects of long Covid.

Maybe you are missing a loved one who died as result of the virus.

Maybe you can still remember the fear of that first awful year when the absolute best and absolute worst of humanity was on display.

Maybe you are holding trauma from being a medical worker, or a first responder.

Maybe your whole life looks different than it did pre-Covid and maybe that’s partly because in the behind-closed-doors of isolation a whole lot about you and your relationships and your work changed. And maybe you’re still grieving that. Deeply.

Maybe shutdowns meant your family business did not make it, and the pain of that is still so fresh.

Maybe you’re just angry at all that it cost us. In so many ways.

Maybe you just remember, somewhere inside you in a place you cannot fully identify, and in a way you cannot fully name, that everything felt so fully and awfully different once the pandemic hit – and it works on you, still.

I sometimes wonder if the deepest changes Covid-19 wrought were really things in our hearts. Things we still don’t entirely understand. How could we, really, when existence as we knew it changed entirely, overnight, in some places – and nothing has been the same since?

There are, to be sure, things to be thankful for in the midst of it. We do not have to be thankful for the virus itself to practice gratitude for things like kind neighbors and skilled doctors and Zoom and the many other unexpected mercies that often arise when in the midst of crisis humanity finds ways to triumph.

Just as I am not grateful for cancer; and also I am daily thankful for the ways its arrival in my life has broadened my heart and softened some edges and helped me see the sacredness of the tiniest of things in this life.

****

Y’all, whatever your heart is holding, whatever memories might be making everything feel a bit tender, a little raw – please know that you are not alone in it. The truth is the world has gotten nothing but angrier and harder since four years ago. And it is so easy to simply disengage, to attempt to protect those aching places in our souls by closing ourselves off.

If we could find the strength to turn toward each other, instead, to make space for one another’s heartache alongside our own….

Maybe, in our remembering, we could somehow find ourselves healing.

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on having and losing keys (and access.)

Jerichardson2 Comments

If you’ve been reading along here for much of any time at all, you know I’m a church-y type. I mean, as the saying goes, I cuss a little (ok, maybe a lot), but (and?) I also love Jesus.

I also love my pastor – for several reasons. One, I learned recently that he loses his keys as much as I do, and I don’t know, but that felt very encouraging, because he’s a super intelligent, capable human being. Second, he and his wife once brought me Mexican food and margaritas as an act of pastoral care during a really awful and heartbreaking week, and I’d maybe never felt so seen.

Third, and most of all, I love that his theology – his way of understand God and God’s love for each of us – is one that extends boundless welcome, unconditional love, and real grace. Which, let me just say – there tends to be a lot of argument about what the bible does and does not say these days. And an equal amount of manipulating a verse here and there for our own agendas. But it is impossible – yes, I said what I said, impossible – to read scripture and not see the very welcome, the very love and the very grace my pastor often preaches about.

I mean, sure, you can turn blind eye and deaf ear to those things if they don’t suit your purposes, but there’s no way around their presence.

Look, I’m a picky parishioner. And I’m hard on preachers, because I believe what is said from a pulpit or chancel or whatever is so important – so when I say that my pastor outdid himself last Sunday, I mean it. So much so, that I knew when I left church I’d find time to write about what he said and how I think it matters across the whole of our lives – whether we are Christian or not, even more, whether we are people of faith or not.

I’m not going to write this as well as he said it (and also, I don’t know what resources he used in writing his sermon, so I can’t attribute anything officially), but essentially, in preaching on the 16th chapter in the gospel of Matthew, where those “keys to the kingdom” are mentioned and Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” he asked us to think about what a set of keys is really for, especially, let’s say house keys.

You don’t need keys to lock your house.

You need keys to unlock your house.

Read that again.

I don’t remember the last time I used a key to lock my house. I either do so from inside, via the doorknob itself at night, or, if I’m leaving through my garage door, I just turn the knob before I close the door behind me.

It’s getting back inside that requires me to know where my keys are.

The keys to the kingdom aren’t about locking people out – they’re about welcoming people in.

From my own faith perspective, this is testament to a God bigger, more full of grace, more welcoming, more loving, than we are capable of imagining with our very human brains. I mean, y’all, we’re pretty complicated creatures, and on our best days, it’s possible, I think, to catch glimpses of how fully and completely God welcomes us – all of us, no matter who we are, or where we’ve been – but mostly I think we really struggle to love ourselves and those around us even remotely enough to imagine how much God loves us.

Honestly, I think it scares us.

I think it terrifies us that God loves both Donald Trump and Joe Biden fully and completely.

I think it terrifies us that God loves the person we hate, or who has harmed us so deeply, the same that God loves us.

I think it terrifies us that our bank accounts, our homes, our work, our reputation – none of this has anything to do with how much God loves us.

I think it terrifies us that God loves those who don’t believe in God just as much as God loves those who do.

God loves Gaza’s children, Israel’s children, North America’s children, and the children at the southern border of North America, all the same. And I think this terrifies us because it has very real implications for how we live, move and have being.

This all has me thinking a good bit about access, specifically, all the ways we limit access in our current culture and climate. In my town, where you go to kindergarten in large part determines where you end up in high school, and that makes a difference for college, and so on ….

Access.

I am well-employed with good health insurance and I live in a medical research community, and that means my living with an incurable cancer is easier than it is for my fellow Waldenstrom’s macroglobulinemia warriors who, by not necessarily any fault or choice of their own, live in rural or poverty-controlled areas, are under-employed, or do not have health insurance.

Access.

And though it boggles my mind and breaks my heart that this is true, I know there are places in this town I love where I am welcome without question, but any of our black friends would be suspect, even if the suspicion was “discreet.”

Access.

I know and love more than a few folks who are neurodiverse -perhaps on the autism spectrum, perhaps living with ADHD, whatever – and it is so often hard, really hard, for these folks to find employment, relationships and communities where they can feel safe letting their very different, but generally very gifted, brains be as they are.

Access.

I could go on and on, you know I could. But look, my point is that we are really good at deciding who is welcome and who is not, who is in and who is out, who is worthy and who is not, and we have been for as long as we have any kind of recorded history. And far too often, my own faith tradition has been at the helm of such gatekeeping, as opposed to honoring the very Love that created us by swinging open the doors wide, and creating safe and welcome space for all people.

Pragmatically speaking, yea, we gotta keep locking our car and house doors at night. Though let me tell you how much I’d love to live in a world where even that was unnecessary.

But in terms of how we practice being human? What happens if we’d just think a little more about access – who has it, and who doesn’t, and why? There’s probably some really ugly truth in the answers to those questions, but my guess is that in that ugly truth is to be found at least a peek at a different way of being.

A more whole way. A more hopeful way. A way more paved with dignity, respect, and welcome. For all God’s people (which, to very clear, is all of us).

Because what we’re currently doing?

It’s not working.

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Sheltered.

Jerichardson2 Comments

The first rumblings woke me an hour before my alarm clock would have, and I remembered having seen a warning that storms might come before dawn the night before. Fumbling for my phone I checked to be sure there were no “get downstairs and away from a window,” sort of additions to the warning before curling back up, happy to let rain send me to sleep for another hour.

And then I heard what I should have anticipated – the sound of my aging hound Skye searching for shelter. Skye hates storms. And so, with a big sigh, I crawled out of my warm bed to check on her.

Skye doesn’t move so fast or so nimbly these days, but somehow, she’d managed to scramble up onto the couch, burrow behind two overstuffed pillows, wedging herself into a place that I suppose felt safe against the sounds of wind picking up and rain beating against the living room skylights.

Skye is not allowed on the couch. She knows this. But one look at her big eyes and shaking body, her toes curled over the edges of the pillows and I had not the heart to tell her “No.” Instead, I found the book I’d been reading the night before, brewed an early espresso, grabbed a throw off the living room chair and snuggled in next to her. And y’all, as I settled in, and caught her sweet canine gaze, our eyes locked, and I swear to you I heard, “Thank you.”

We stayed there for an hour, until the last bit of thunder had rolled by, until Skye felt safe enough to emerge from our makeshift cocoon and make her morning trip outside. And I can’t really explain it, but I feel like Skye and I shared a sacred moment or two there on the couch.

Sheltered. Held. Safe.

Y’all, there’s so little that feels truly safe these days. And I’m not sure how anything ever could when we know that babies are dying every day in war zones and our children walk through metal detectors to get in class, and viruses pop up with ridiculous abandon and, look, I’m just going to say it, there are straight up evil forces at work all around us. Constant political and socioeconomic and philsophical storms. Constant reason to feel anxiety tightening our breath. Constant concern for what might be ahead for ourselves and our children and grandchildren.

Constant heartache. Constant uncertainty. Constant clinging to whatever sliver of hope is available.

And thing is, when we feel unsafe, when we feel like how we feel or how we live or move or have being is under attack, we are far too often not our best selves. And when we are not our best selves, we tend to push back and away from what feels threatening, isolating ourselves from the fear and pain. Or, at least, attempting to, which is generally not a winning strategy.

I know I’ve written this before, but we are, fundamentally, created for relationship – for being held, for sheltering one another from the rough and terrifying edges of our existence whenever possible. There is no doing life alone, not really, not when all of us are begging to hear two of the most blessed words in the English language, “Me, too.”

I’m anxious. Me, too.

I’m scared. Me, too.

I feel alone. Me, too.

I’m so sad. Me, too.

I need to be sheltered. Held. Safe.

Me, too.

It can just be so hard, y’all, this space and time we’ve found ourselves in. But the truth is, such spaces and times have existed before. We are not special in our angst. And maybe that’s exactly where the hope is to be found – where we are, others have already been; and, in that sense, the history of humanity is one great resounding, “Me, too.”

Only…

We’ve got to stop turning away from one another in our darkest moments, and instead find the courage to turn towards one another with whatever brave scrap of humanity we can muster, seeking the shelter of each other when at all possible.

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Pack life.

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If you’ve been reading along here at SSMC for a bit, or if you know me personally at all, you know that I love dogs. Animals in general, really. But dogs for sure.

My dad tells a story of me when I was really little – apparently he couldn’t find me, and just as things were getting to where he might worry he looked up and there I was, walking down the sidewalk with my arm around the (much larger than me) neck of a neighborhood dog. I have no way of verifying this story, as I don’t remember it. But it definitely seems to me it could have happened. Easily.

Skye and Dolly, both AMBPR rescues

I especially love the dogs no one else does; or, that are challenging to love.

These last couple of months, some time on my hands, and some love to give, and, if I’m full honest, desperately needing to do something in the face of so much heartache (it’s all around us, y’all), I started volunteering with the rescue both of my fur babes came from – Adopt Me! Bluegrass Pet Rescue. AMBPR is a no-kill shelter, and while we generally have puppies galore; we also have a good number of adult dogs who need a forever home. AMBPR does not operate in that “just come look and if a dog steals your heart take it” way. There’s an application process, and the adoption folks take very seriously a good match. The dogs we work with are loved by all of us, but are goal is to say goodbye to them, wanting all of them to find a home of their own.

AMBPR parters with a program called Paws Behind Bars, which offers inmates at a nearby prison the opportunity to learn a skill (dog training) and the opportunity for a dumped or unloved or unruly dog to learn what it takes to be a family pet. My senior dog, Skye, was trained by an inmate who took such careful care with her, who delighted in her success, and who, on the day I took her home, said “I’ve never trained a dog more likely to be a family dog, ma’am.” And he was right. I think of him every now and then, and wonder if he’s okay. He sure did give us a gift. And I think he’d love to know that sure, Skye is old and cranky and probably has a little dementia; but she’s also the first to come to me if I’m sad or scared or sick, rubbing her sweet gray nose against my knee as if to say, “I don’t know what’s wrong, but it’ll be okay.”

Anyway, the dogs I work with now, usually for a couple hours on a Saturday, are almost all PBB trained. And some of them have been with us for a while. That might be because they are big now, and not adorable like a pudgy, squooshy little puppy, That might be because they’ve had a hard life up until now, and trusting that another human won’t leave hurt or leave them is hard. And it might be because they just look a little different – or, in the case of one darling, are so big that it is hard to think of how you might manage such a lovely beast.

We send them through PBB to give them a better chance at both adoption (we’re getting them trained for you!) and success. And so one of the things those of us who volunteer with them do is review basic commands. “Sit, Angus!” Good boy. “Now, down, Angus!” Oh! Good BOY!

And we walk them. And play with them in a big fenced play area. We love on them. We offer boundaries. We remind them humans can be trusted. And we try to keep them happy and engaged enough so that transitioning into a forever home isn’t so hard.

I mean…some days I feel like I need such care, you know? A walk; some play; a reminder about boundaries; some love, and maybe a treat.

Last Saturday was a gorgeous winter day here in the Bluegrass. And several of us were free to head out to the kennels where about a dozen rescued adult dogs are staying. One of us is there every day – he’s retired, and he loves these dogs in a way that is pretty dang close to sacred. Most every day he can, he makes sure each of them gets a little TLC and a walk, through a trail in the woods behind the kennels that he carved out and marked so the rest of us could follow it too.

I took four dogs out last Saturday, one by one, playing and walking and practicing “Ok, Pixie, sit!” A few others did the same, and by day’s end, every single of the dogs had been out for a walk twice, and had had plenty of play and cuddles and treats. And the one of us who is with them every day, said this, via our group text, “They may be alone and in a cage, but today, at least for a while, I believe they felt like, in some way, they were part of a family.”

Y’all. It levelled me.

Today, at least…family.

Today, at least…a place to belong.

Today, at least…a place you’re known; that you fit; that you feel cared for.

Isn’t that what we all are after?

That’s pack life, y’all. And I believe with my whole heart, that part of our deep illness in these United States of America is that we don’t know “pack life” anymore as a nation. And maybe we never did. Not really. Not in the positive, watching out for one another, making sure everyone has a place sense.

Pack life in the sense of family.

What we know is ME. What we know is agenda. What we know is tribalism. What we know is fear and anxiety and a lack of communal trust that is eating away at us in ways we can’t even name.

More than anything in the world, all any of us are after is belonging. And if we can’t find it in a healthy way, we’ll find it wherever we can, to the destruction of ourselves, our relationships, and our communities.

Sometimes we aren’t squooshy adorable puppies anymore either. Sometimes life has taken its toll and its evident on our faces and in our behavior. Sometimes we’ve had a hard life – been left, betrayed, abused, attacked – and the thought of trusting someone again is just more than can be imagined. And in such instances, it takes a lot of patience, a lot of work, a lot of fierce loving, to move the needle even slightly towards hope or joy or love.

Isolation has ever been a winning strategy. Not for dogs or humans or countries. We were created for relationship, and we do better when we are together. It’s just that simple.

And, in today’s world, just that complicated.

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Roaring beauty in the face of ugly’s scream.

Jerichardson1 Comment

Yesterday my daughter and several of her classmates witnessed the immediate aftermath of a shooting just outside the building where their last class of the day was taking place.

What sounded like a jackhammer sent a school official looking to make sure what he’d heard was construction.

It was not.

What my daughter tells me of the aftermath – a shooter who ran, an abandoned car, bullet casings scattered across the road like the acorns that used to fall from an oak tree in a house I once lived in, a single victim, lying on the ground, screaming in pain and clutching bleeding wounds – tells me that it was likely targeted. Intentional. A child of God seeking to destroy another child of God.

“All our students and staff are safe,” the official notice of the “incident” read. Which is factually correct. The shooting had nothing to do with the school, and my daughter was never in immediate danger. An all clear for the campus came within an hour of the shooting.

Safe. For which we are all grateful.

But not even a little bit okay. Not by a long shot. And as I listened to the descriptions of what those teenagers bore witness to yesterday, for the thousandth time in recent years, I thought, “What kind of world have we delivered them to?”

Today some of those same students will be performing sonnets and monologues from various works of William Shakespeare. My heart smiled when I heard this. First of all, I’m a little bit of a Shakespeare junkie. I had a high school English teacher who taught it so well, a college professor who did the same, and I love theatre enough that his words, and his way of writing, are not hard for me to take in. I know this is not true for many people. Shakespearean English is tough, no doubt.

It is also timeless. And when I read Shakespeare, I am reminded of something a dear friend often says, “There are no new stories, only new people living them.” In other words, there is not anything we experience in this life – be it love or loss or painful or joyful – that has not already been experienced by someone, somewhere, at some point. The complete words of Shakespeare pretty much tell every story there ever was or will be, beautiful or ugly or otherwise.

The great author Maya Angelou, who could not be more different from what I imagine William Shakespeare to be, was reputed to be quite a fan of WS. She once said in a public interview that she thought when she was young, Shakespeare must have been a black girl, so much of what he wrote resonated with her. His Sonnet 29 was among her favorites.

What my daughter and her friends witnessed yesterday was the kind of ugly that evil works.

What they will do this afternoon is the kind of beauty that has the power to push back the ugly long enough to see light in the darkness.

It is easy to let the ugly consume us, y’all. I know this in my own life, and the lives of so many around me. Human beings gunned down in the street is not new. Neither is war or political madness or disease or heartache. All of these things have been with us always. And in this particular bit of history we’re living, I imagine I am not the only one who feels that pushing back the ugly is a losing battle. There’s just so much, and it’s so easy to lose sight of that which is beautiful.

A loved one of mine sometimes talks about intentionally “bathing in beauty,” or, taking a “beauty walk,” when things seem particularly ugly and dark – whether inside our own selves or all around us. This morning I found myself unable to get my own imagined visual of what those kids saw yesterday out of my head.

I did these two things: I vocalized a prayer of thanksgiving for the school official who first heard the gunshots and who told the students who were nearest that part of campus to quickly get into their classrooms and close the door behind them, and who then was the first call to EMT’s. He’s the same school official who welcomes my daughter with a kind hello and a smile most every morning and usually nods his head to me at the same time, with a “Have a good day, ok?”

And then, I reached for my phone and my earbuds. And I scrolled through Apple music to The Cambridge Singers performing John Rutter’s choral “For the Beauty of the Earth,” and I turned it up as loud as I safely could, drowning all else out, and let the tears fall.

I think, sometimes, the only way to push back ugly’s scream is to roar right back with beauty – whether with intentional gratitude or a piece of music capable of breaking your heart and putting it back together again all at once, or a walk with a beloved friend, or even just the perfect cup of coffee on a perfect spring morning when the daisies are just beginning to rise up from their long winter’s nap.

It’s overwhelming, I know. And sometimes seems hopeless. Because the ugly is everywhere.

&

(I’m a big believer in a well-placed ampersand, y’all).

And…

So is the beauty.

It seems to me, in our current “now,” it has never been more important, wherever or however you are, to give the beauty, whatever tiny sliver of it you might find, more space to do its redemptive, healing work.

“For the beauty of the earth, for the glory of the skies, for the love which from our birth, over and around us lies...”

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Hearts too stretched.

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“My heart feels too stretched this morning, ” she said. I’d texted her to let her know I was thinking of her, praying for her in the midst of a hard thing, and that was her response.

My heart feels too stretched this morning.

Y’all. I’m telling you, I felt that in my bones.

Every single place we look, every single world report we hear, every person we know – we’re all walking around with stretched hearts. Too stretched, I’d argue, because we’ve no idea what to do with the way this world, as of late, seems to constantly present another reason for fear or anxiety or grief.

This last Wednesday, my daughter’s school, one of the nation’s top high schools, piloted Evolv, a metal detection system. Unless you’ve been quite literally living under a rock, or on an island unto yourself these last far-too-many years, I don’t need to tell you why, in these United States, our children need such a system installed in one of the very places they should feel the safest, the most secure, the most encouraged and nurtured.

Now, let me be clear, in the absence of what seems to be any other viable, cooperative, joint solution by the cacophony of voices screaming “No, it’s the guns!” “No, it’s the individual people!” “No, it’s mental health!” “No, it’s the lack of security in schools!” I am grateful for this system. Because I’m a parent of a school – age child in this day and age.

The first day of its use was, to say the very least, stressful. The student traffic pattern had to be rerouted at several key points. Teachers were enlisted as traffic controllers. Kids were late to class. Kids were confused. Kids were anxious.

The text I received simply said, “This is like TSA at the airport. But worse.”

And then, as I was digesting that one, a second one came, “Mom. Ms. _____ just said to some of us, ‘I’m so sorry. This is going to be our new normal. I’m so sorry.'”

“I’m so sorry,” she said.

And my heart stretched again, painfully, with bandwidth that, like many of you, it doesn’t really have to spare.

Everywhere we look…

Many tons of rubble where families once lived, worked and played in Gaza.

Loved ones still missing from their homes in Israel.

Ukrainian families ripped apart by invasion.

Gunshots equaling homicide in broad daylight in my own city.

Children battling cancer. Hell, anyone – and it is far too many of us – battling cancer.

Treasured relationships broken, and maybe dreams shattered.

Lost loved ones.

Aging, perhaps even dying, parents.

Adult children trying to find their way in the world.

And all of this against a background, in a context, that just seems angrier, more polarized, more anxiety-ridden, more hateful, and harder it seems to right with the passing of every day. Like the Titanic, headed for that iceberg, and they’ve realized it’s too late to turn around.

We worry for what sort of future we’ve delivered our children and grandchildren to, and with good reason. I laughed, derisively, at the name of that metal detection system - Evolv. Because it often, these days, feels as if things are simply devolving, faster than we can summon strength or heart or courage to do anything about it. It’s too much. Too fast. And all of it comes at us in real time, right in the palms of our hands.

“My heart is too stretched,” she said this morning.

You feel her words, too, I bet.

This morning I also spent over an hour in earnest and heartfelt and hopeful (!!) conversation with a coworker and friend. We’re working closely together on a major project that revolves around health and wellness for the people we serve and their families. We work with a population riddled with depression, anxiety, hypertension, high blood sugar, and all the other indicators of high stress levels and heavy grief loads.

A changed, healthier, more whole system would be amazing – and we’ll shoot for that. Because systemic change matters a great deal. But sometimes I think that in our efforts to effect massive, sweeping change, we fail to notice the things that move the needle ever-so-slightly towards what we’re after. And so, this morning we spoke these words – that if even a handful of our colleagues are able to head off clinical symptoms of depression or anxiety as a result of this project; if even two marriages are saved; if even a few children don’t have to deal with a chronically ill parent; if addiction becomes sober recovery for even one or two…. Then we will be thankful, ecstatic even, because we know that even in such seemingly individual things, there is communal hope to be found.

Y’all, it’s all so big. And so painful. And our hearts are indeed too stretched.

And also…

I’m wondering, if, during these very difficult days, we might find even a tiny hope in the every day, perhaps even small, triumphs of our daily lives. And, in doing so, if that tiny hope might fuel us to a greater hope, one that spurs us to greater action, stronger voices, and hearts that, though they may be stretched, have found that in stretching, they’ve simply made room for more – more love, more resilience, more mercy, more of what makes the human spirit so collectively impossible to destroy.

It isn’t a Pollyanna sort of hope I’m after. We’re not talking about rose-colored glasses here (although I have an aunt who is dear to me and does rose-colored glasses better than anyone I know and we love her for it!).

I mean the kind of hope that trusts that we have been created in a Love bigger than we could possibly imagine. And that such a Love has not once left us, is, in fact, with us now, at work, and will not ever let us go.

Tend to your stretched hearts, y’all. Pay attention to the places in them that are especially sore. Take care of you.

And maybe that will help us take better care of one another and this world we live in.

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Because cold and snow and soft hearts…

Jerichardson1 Comment

My first thought, when I saw it had snowed overnight, was “Well, at least if it’s going to be this $%*& cold, it has the decency to be beautiful.”

And it is. So much so that first thing after a few sips of coffee, I shoved my pajama-clad legs and feet into tall snow boots and threw on the nearest coat I could lay hands on and trudged outside for a second, just to really see it.

The stunningly cold air took my breath way, quickly, and with a certainty that reminded me Mother Nature does not play. I stood there on my driveway, boot treads making the first marks in virgin snow, and noticed right away what I cannot fully explain, but know to be true in these coldest and darkest and snowy days of winter – there is grace in it.

There’s grace in the way the sun rises softer, it’s first rays mingling with low, grey clouds and casting a sort of pale gold that ushers in a day with a different sort of vibe than your basic weekday morning. It’s quiet. Still. Possible to hear a bit of snow falling from tree to ground; possible to hear the beating of your own heart, if you listen just right and can, just for a moment, block out the erratic, shallow rhythms our anxious, scattered and overwhelmed-with-all-of-it lives have taught us are normal.

There’s something vulnerable about a snowy morning midwinter – the way the trees are so stark and the landscapes so clear and the ground so crystal clean in the not-tread-upon places. This morning, as I stood there, I thought that perhaps, if there were a visual of what Brene Brown means when she says, “soft heart,” that it might be early morning, just after a lovely snow, right here in Kentucky, all the things that get in the way of our best and truest selves cleared away, so that what’s left is the bit of us that’s true about all of us – that all we seek, at our core, is to love and be loved – fully, completely, our scars and all.

It’s complicated, I know. For two days prior to this arctic blast, police officers and community leaders were out all over our city, begging our unhoused residents to find shelter. “White flag,” nights, they’re called, “Please just come in and stay warm.” And I just saw a local heating company’s van drive down my street so I know someone had a dangerously cold night and is likely facing an unexpected repair bill.

I had my own moment of panic last night when my thermostat had a “system malfunction” message flashing and I had immediate visions of a broken furnace and frozen pipes. A little research about my particular unit, and it turns out the system just needed resetting after replacing (a long overdue for it) air filter yesterday, and all is well (plus I now know how to reset a thermostat, y’all!). Despite the actual non-crisis of my situation, it did mean a different kind of vulnerability – the scary kind, that so many families face when weather is extreme. Anything can happen. And “anything” can be stressful at least, terrifying at most.

My moment of grace this morning, balm for my heart for sure, is likely not someone else’s, and I wonder if maybe we’d all be better off if we just acknowledged that what is true for one of us likely isn’t for another. It seems to me so much of what destroys us could be rebuilt, healed, if we could just see our way to this reality.

Mostly this morning has reminded me that we take what glimpses of grace we can, and, if we’re lucky enough, we let those glimpses work on us just enough such that they have a ripple effect, just the way a turtle does when it slides off a fallen tree into a river, the “plunk” of its body dropping into the water making enough of a mark that it sends movement all around, especially in a still lake on a hot summer’s day.

Because nothing we do or feel is in isolation.

Each of us matter, soft hearts and scary cold and all.