Essential

We’ve had to think a lot, over the past couple months, about what is “essential” and what is real.

As it turns out, CEOs are not essential, but grocery clerks are. Wall street bankers are not essential, but truck drivers are. Politicians are not essential, but epidemiologists are. Wars are not essential, but social services are. Restaurants are not essential, but food is. Realtors aren’t essential, but housing is. Clothing stores aren’t essential, but seamstresses who can make a mask are. Haircuts aren’t essential, but hospice care is. Physically showing up at a church or a bar or a stadium is not essential, but fellowship is. Travel to other countries isn’t essential, but leaving the house to walk around and exercise is. Many of our jobs are not essential, but having the means to get food and shelter is.

We’ve seen that “the economy” is a fiction that we’ve shared for ages because it was a more convenient way than bartering to keep track of who owes favors to whom. “The economy” isn’t real. Food is real, and starvation is real if you don’t have food. Viruses are real, and they will really eat your living lungs given an opportunity. Friends and family and neighbors helping each other in an emergency is real. People providing necessary goods and services to each other is real. Pieces of paper being used to measure whether an individual has worked hard enough to deserve food and shelter – that’s not real. And the holes in the story of “the economy” are now threatening to unravel every structure that human society has built around it, now that it doesn’t work anymore.

And death is real. It’s the one reality that everyone must confront sooner or later, no matter who we are, what we believe, or what we do.

And because death is real, the single most essential reality while we strive to delay its coming is this:

Human beings need each other.

We need each other for survival, and we need each other for comfort, and we need each other’s touch, and we need each other for meaning and purpose, and we need each other for beauty and art and music and poetry and laughter and love and being fully human. We need each other’s strengths to compensate for our weaknesses. We need each other’s knowledge to compensate for the areas where we as individuals are ignorant. We need each other to make difficult, even sacrificial, choices to keep each other alive and healthy. 

Most of all, we need each other to be fully ourselves.

That is real. That is essential. Everything else is a distraction.

How full is the Church?

Now.

Not Easter Sunday, but now.

NOW is the time that we see how full the churches are.

For being the church does not mean showing up on Sunday to sing old songs together, and have coffee together afterwards.

Being the church right now means showing up on Saturday to drop off a bag of groceries on the doorstep of someone who can't safely go to the store for themselves.
AND disinfecting the outside of the packages, just in case.
AND leaving before the people inside can come out to thank us, so we do not risk transmission even for that brief moment.

Being the church means NOT showing up on Monday to work, to protect the elderly and immunocompromised family members of our co-workers and customers.

The measure of the Church is not how full of people the buildings are.

The measure of the Church is how full of self-sacrificial love its people are.

Do we love our neighbors as ourselves?

Then do we love our neighbors enough to refrain from embracing them, when we miss their touch?

Do we love our neighbors enough to stay at home being bored, when we miss going out?

Do we love our neighbors enough to lose money by not working, when we desperately need money?

"Greater love has no one than this"...

Is our love great enough to lay down our normal lives for our friends?

Great enough to go ON laying them down, day after day after day, for weeks and maybe months?

By tradition the door of a church was painted red, in memory of the Passover.

Do we love our neighbors enough to stay in our own homes and wait for Death to pass over, and tell our neighbors to do the same?

Do we love our neighbors enough to heed the advice of doctors, and ignore our own deep desire for normalcy in favor of keeping each other safe?

Even if it takes longer than we can afford to wait, financially or emotionally?


Truly, when the Tempter comes, he comes offering not evil things, but good things.

He comes not offering us power to harm, or sex that exploits or betrays others, or dark forbidden magics, or even the knowledge of good and evil (for we already know what is good, but find it hard to do; we already know what is evil, but find it all too easy).

Temptation offers us no illicit delights, but the quiet delights of normal, good, and necessary things.

We are tempted by the quiet delights of going to a restaurant and sharing laughter with friends.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of taking our children to play at each other's houses while we have coffee with other adults.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of wandering around a store to buy stuff we don't really need.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of cracking jokes around the water cooler with our co-workers.
We are tempted by the quiet delights of gathering together in groups and being human together.

But to accept the Tempter's offer is, as in the beginning, to open a gateway for Death to enter the world.


If on Easter Sunday the big buildings with the crosses on the roofs are full of people embracing, and shaking hands, and singing together, and sharing a meal together, and sharing in all those necessary human things that we long to do so much that it hurts...

and thus sharing our air, sharing whatever pathogens are on our hands, sharing with the whole flock what it takes just ONE sheep, infected unawares, to begin spreading...

If we do not love our neighbors enough to endure hardships both small and great to defend the most vulnerable among them...

If we do not love our neighbors enough to be still, and wait...

Then the buildings may indeed be full.

But the Church will be

Empty.





- John M. Munzer

Trump isn't the disease. He's the symptom.

He’s the most visible, ugly, and virulent of the tumors. But he isn’t the cancer.

The disease is fear, and both liberals and conservatives are riddled with the infection.

Fear that if those God-hating gun-grabbing tax-loving welfare-loving America-hating SJW libtards get into power, they will take away everything we hold dear – our values, our freedom, our livelihood, even our lives if they get the chance.

Fear that if those dumbass redneck ammosexual racist sexist homophobic climate-change-denying Trump cultists retain power, they will take away everything we hold dear – our values, our freedom, our livelihood, even our lives if they get the chance.

The biggest problem with Trump is not the stuff he’s bad at. It’s not that he has bad policy ideas. We’ve had lots of presidents with bad policy ideas and survived. It’s not that he’s bad at diplomacy, makes volatile situations even more volatile, and is pushing us into an unwinnable war – we’ve survived that before. It’s not that he’s incompetent – we’ve had incompetent presidents and survived. It’s not even that he’s corrupt – we’ve had corrupt presidents and survived.

The thing we may not survive is the one thing he’s good at: Deepening division and contempt between liberal and conservative Americans. The relationship between our two groups, like any relationship, can survive conflict, even heated and angry arguments; but it can’t survive contempt, and that’s what he sows all day, every day.

Evangelical Trump voters often explain their choice by saying they voted for a politician, not a pastor. But in fact, choosing a President is a lot like choosing a pastor. You need someone who can take a bunch of prickly, opinionated people and get them all on board with the same message, the same goals, the same plan, the same budget. You need someone who can convince the unconverted. You need someone who’s good at resolving conflicts between people who ordinarily wouldn’t talk to each other, by appealing to common ground between them. You need someone who won’t compromise on issues of personal integrity but will compromise on ways and means to achieve common goals.

What you DON’T need is someone who goes out of his way to attack and insult half the congregation (and half the church’s staff) every Sunday, who shouts about how evil and stupid and unhinged everyone who disagrees with him is and how they’re a threat to the church’s values. When you get a pastor like that, you very quickly stop having a church and start having a schism.

Likewise, our country needs a leader who can get people that disagree about means to at least acknowledge common goals such as strengthening the economy, preventing wars, ensuring that everyone gets a fair shot at making a decent living, ensuring that everyone can afford health care, ensuring that everyone’s rights are upheld, ensuring that we are safe… and come up with a plan that ensures that everyone’s needs and concerns are at least respected and taken into consideration, even if they can’t all be resolved to everyone’s satisfaction.

What we have instead… is Donald Trump, a guy so abrasive that even a number of his own voters and party members dislike him. A guy who can’t keep staff because no one wants to work with him. A guy who attacks anyone who disagrees with him, even if he hired them to give him advice. A guy who goes out of his way to make liberals and conservatives angry at each other, every day, because he can’t stand to not have his name in the paper for even a moment and has learned that negative attention is easy to get. A guy who would rather threaten civil war if he’s removed from office than simply try to defend his actions if he can, or admit that they were indefensible if he can’t.

That’s the real threat he represents. That’s why he’s the most virulent of the tumors in our increasingly angry and fearful society… because he doesn’t try to decrease the anger and fear, he feeds it and feeds on it.

But:

Getting rid of him, whether by impeachment or by voting, will not cure the disease. It’s a necessary first step, but by no means the last. Removing the biggest tumor doesn’t cure the cancer, not when the body is riddled with the damn things.

We’re going to have a LOT of work to do, treating the disease itself.

It will take a hell of a lot to get us to stop attacking each other and start trying to work together to make a better society, especially since on several hot-button issues (abortion, LGBTQ, guns, the environment, how much government regulation is helpful vs getting in the way, how we ought to spend tax money, etc) we now have very different ideas of what making a better society MEANS. It will take a hell of a lot to get us to stop being afraid that the people who disagree with us are going to destroy us, stop assuming malicious motives from each other, stop being contemptuous of each other.

It will take a hell of a lot to even start bringing the disease into remission. It may even be too late for a lasting cure at this point. It may be that it’s progressed too far to eliminate, and that we will always have this disease and will always have to pour a lot of time and resource into treating it.

But we must either get busy treating it, or get busy dying from it.

© John M. Munzer

If abortion is made illegal: Then what?

I have a confession.

I’m a liberal who isn’t comfortable with abortion.

I have to concede that, at some point in in-utero development, I think it crosses the line from “removing a blastocyst” to ending the life of a being capable of feeling pain and fear. It may not yet be a human life that’s being ended, but once there’s a functional nervous system and brain then at the very least it’s something akin to cruelty to animals.

And at some point – I don’t claim to be able to say what point – but at some point, it is a human life that is being ended. That may sometimes be a necessary thing to do, but it should make us uncomfortable. We should at least acknowledge that even if we don’t believe it’s murder, it’s still a very serious thing to do, an ethically questionable thing to do, and that a moral society should try to address the root causes to make sure it happens as seldom as possible.

That’s a position that will probably upset some of my liberal friends. But it is my position nonetheless.

So when I see conservatives posting outrage about liberals not wanting to change a law that allows a failed abortion to be completed after birth (if that is indeed an accurate description of what the law allows): I get it. I was at church the night they showed the movie “The Silent Scream”, just like many people who were raised in conservative Evangelical churches. I was 9 at the time, so my parents had me stay outside the sanctuary to do my math homework… but the P.A. system was really loud, so I heard everything. It’s pretty awful to contemplate chopping up or chemically burning a living being, even if it’s not yet a being we consider human. And if we DO consider it human, it’s even more awful to think about how often it happens.

I get it, I even agree that we should be trying to prevent it from happening (though I disagree with the idea that making it illegal would achieve that. That strategy has already been tried and failed.)

Nevertheless, pro-life friends: You haven’t thought through the ethical or practical ramifications of stopping people from having abortions, even if you could.

You believe that parents who have an abortion are murdering a baby. You feel that if the baby is born despite an attempt at abortion, the doctors should save her. Granting all that:

Then what?

Give her BACK to the parents who tried to kill her, given that you believe the parents are guilty of the attempted murder of their child? You think that kid’s safe with those parents?

If not, then what?

Send him on to our broken foster system instead? Is that an ethical thing to do, when the kids already in the system are often living in hotels for years waiting for a placement?

If not, then what?

Set up orphanages for them? I can tell you from long experience of working with institutionalized kids about the irreparable damage that can do to a developing child, especially a baby. They will never heal from what it does to their developing brains. There’s a high probability that they will never be functional adults. There’s a high probability that they will spend their childhood in locked-down group homes, and spend their adulthood in and out of jails and hospitals.

So:

What would you like to see happen AFTER the birth? I actually agree with you that abortion is a bad thing, but what exactly is the ethical alternative in cases like this? We don’t get to just demand that they be born and then pretend that all the problems are solved after that point. All the things that were so wrong in the parents’ lives that abortion seemed like the only possible solution, will still be wrong. The parents still won’t want to be parents, still will lack the finances or the skills or the stability or the desire or the support or SOMETHING that they would need in order to take care of a child.

So what do we do for those kids after they’ve been born? And are pro-life conservatives willing to pay the price of taking care of them?

A large percentage of the couples who would be willing to adopt the kid are gay – are conservative Evangelicals okay with letting them?

Every child who is adopted or fostered has trauma issues to deal with – are conservatives willing to pay for the therapy necessary to help kids heal from that?

What if the single teenage mother wanted an abortion because she knew she can’t afford to feed a child – will conservatives pay for food stamps and healthcare for that kid? Will they pay for college or vocational training for the mom so she can get a job that will support a kid? Will they pay for childcare so the mom can go to school and then go to work? Will they demand that employers pay entry-level employees enough for a single mom with minimal education to raise a kid on?

What if the mom wanted an abortion because she has disabilities and can’t take care of a kid – will conservatives pay for that kid to get adopted or placed in foster care? Will they pay to fix the foster care system so there will actually be a placement for the kid?

What if the kid has disabilities because of the botched abortion, or was being aborted because they have a genetic syndrome such as Down’s, or because the mom knew she’d been drinking and drugging during pregnancy and expected Fetal Alcohol Syndrome or Fetal Drug Effect?

Will conservatives pay for that kid’s special education needs, and in-home behavior support needs, and respite for the family?

If that isn’t enough, will conservatives pay for that kid’s group home (paid for by Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid and ACA and all the things conservatives hate paying for)?

If that isn’t enough, will conservatives pay for that kid’s psychiatric hospitalization?

If that isn’t enough and the kid is so violent and impulsive due to trauma and bad brain wiring that he ends up committing a terrible crime and going to jail: Will conservatives still believe his life has value and look for ways to support him?

As that kid becomes an adult – if she’s unable to function independently, and yet is impulsive and prone to risk-taking due to her brain wiring, and is sexually active and becomes pregnant with a child she can’t take care of… are conservatives willing to take care of THAT baby in turn? And the next five babies she has after that? And the babies that will be made by those babies when they become adults? For how many generations?

These are not theoretical questions. These are the real-world situations I see in my work with kids and adults who have cognitive disabilities, mental health challenges, and addiction (and the most violent and dangerous of them are usually the children of people who likewise had cognitive disabilities, mental health challenges, and addiction. The kind of people who shouldn’t have kids because of their impulsivity, but are continually having kids because of their impulsivity.)

I know that conservatives are good people with good intentions who want those kids to be okay after they’re born. But I have yet to hear any conservative talk about their plan for HOW to ensure those kids will be okay after they’re born. IS there a plan? In 20 years as a Behavior Specialist, I’ve learned over and over that the secret to behavior change is this: If you want to stop an undesired behavior, you have to be able to offer people a better option. How would we offer a better option than abortion to people who are desperate enough to seek one? *

And if you don’t have a better option: Why keep pretending that changing the law will magically make people who aren't prepared for parenthood stop having unprotected sex? Why keep pretending that changing the law will magically make all those millions of extra kids that nobody wanted suddenly have the loving and supportive homes they would need in order to have a shot at becoming functional adults someday? Why keep congratulating yourselves on working so hard to “save all those innocent babies” if you haven’t ALSO worked to save them from the unbearable lives that many of them would be born into?

BE pro-life, by all means. But if so, be prepared to pay the price. 

* Before you say "Adoption needs to be more affordable": You're not wrong. But foster parents are PAID to be foster parents, and STILL the system can't get enough of them to take care of the kids already needing it. So even if adoption was free, you can't tell me that there will suddenly be over a million extra homes available every year that are willing and able to take on an extra child, especially one with attachment issues and the behavior challenges that come with that. It's a nice idea, but in practice it won't resolve the issue.

Eulogy for a father-in-law

The very first time I met the man who would in time become my father-in-law, my then-girlfriend and I had just gotten off the train from Chicago to Portland, and she had pointed out her father to me. I was naturally a bit nervous about meeting the father of the girl I loved, the woman I was already thinking I would marry. He introduced himself thusly, after shaking hands and exchanging names:

“So, you just got off the train, huh? You know why the rails of the tracks are that particular width apart? It’s because the wagon wheel ruts from the Conestoga wagons on the old Oregon Trail were that far apart, and it was simplest to just put the rails on the established path. And the reason those wagon wheels were that far apart, was that the wheels on a two-horse carriage were that far apart, because that’s how wide it had to be to comfortably accommodate two horses side-by-side… and it just made sense to use the same factory specs for the axles they were putting on the covered wagons.

So: You just rode two thousand miles on the width of two horse’s asses.

Anyway, need help with your luggage?”

And that… was actually a very apt introduction to Tom Wolf.

I knew right away that I would fit in with this family, based on that introduction. I knew I could count on truly terrible jokes, preferably at the most inappropriate time possible. I knew I wouldn’t have to pretend to be anything I wasn’t, or pretend to feel anything I didn’t. I knew that I would LIKE this quirky, nerdy, snarky guy.

I didn’t yet know what I would learn later, as a member of the family: Tom was a great guy at all times, but he especially shone in a crisis.

You know, it’s true what they say – You never do tell people everything you should while they’re still alive to hear it. You always think they’ll be around longer, you’ll have some warning before they’re gone, you’ll have time to say it when the time is right for them to hear it… and then, they’re gone and you never said it, so you have to say it to their friends and family instead.

Tom died unexpectedly in his sleep Thursday morning. And as we dealt with the crisis, I couldn’t help thinking about how Tom always dealt with a crisis.

The FIRST thing he did was to listen carefully. No one knew how to shut up and listen like Tom. He was never one to interrupt someone else’s anger, fear, or grief with offering advice – he held his peace until you had poured out everything you needed to say.

The second thing he did… was to quietly, calmly, do anything that was in his power to help. He didn’t waste time on telling you how sorry he was for what you were going through – he would drive you to the hospital, or write a check to make the unexpected expense go away, or fix the leak, or tell you gently but firmly that you should do (the exact thing that you already knew damn well you needed to do, but needed someone to nudge you to do it) and offer to go with you while you did it.

The third thing he would do, was to crack some absolutely AWFUL joke. I have no doubt in my mind that, if Tom could somehow be alive to attend his own funeral, he would be the first to gesture towards his own coffin and deadpan “The shell is here, but the nut… is gone.” He would always look for the grim humor that would make the unbearable a little more bearable, to make the heavy burden feel a little less heavy and burdensome.

And finally, AFTER he had done all that, he would ask if it was okay to pray for you.

Now, I grew up in a church where, most of the time, “I’ll pray for you” was code for “I’ll pray for you INSTEAD OF DOING SOMETHING for you.” It was an excuse for inaction, a way for people to feel like they’d helped without having to bother with actually helping. It was telling people “Be warm and well fed” without actually warming or feeding them. Often, when I hear the phrase “I’ll pray for you”, I don’t feel cared about – I feel dismissed. And I often feel like telling the speaker to do something biologically impossible.

But I never felt that way with Tom. Because when he said it, he meant “I’ve done everything I can think to do to help, and I’m sorry I can’t do more. I believe I know a guy who CAN do more – is it okay with you if I ask him?”

It didn’t feel like a cop-out or a social nicety when Tom said it.

When Tom said it, it felt like love.

Ironically, Tom (an old-school man’s man in many ways, who wasn’t generally comfortable with talking about feelings, or with hugging, a man who would have been the LAST to describe himself as a nurturing person) was better at nurturing people in crisis than I am, despite the fact that nurturing people in crisis is literally what I do for a living. He knew that you have to start with the hard part – shutting up and hearing the other person. Then you have to meet the immediate need. Then you have to try and help the person laugh a bit, because laughter makes things look smaller and therefore more manageable. And THEN you offer thoughts and prayers and well-wishes. I had to work for decades to learn how to do what Tom did as naturally as breathing. And now that he’s not breathing anymore, I wish he was here to help us through crisis one last time.

In his quiet, awkward, unassuming, gentle way, Thomas J. Wolf was a giant among men, a pillar of strength where mere power would have been useless; and the world is poorer for losing him. May he rest in peace, and may the rest of us learn how to do, in some measure, what he did for those he loved.

Tom, I’ll miss you. And now I can say the words that would have made you feel awkward if I’d said them to you in person: I love you.

-        Your son-in-law,

John

Chain migration

“Chain migration” is exactly how my family ended up in this country. And I’ll lay odds it’s how your family got here too. Our great-grandparents came over to join their cousins, then they brought over their siblings, then THEY brought over their parents, till the whole family was here.

And yes, our families DID come legally. But that’s only because back then, the laws were much looser (or, before the Civil War, non-existent). Immigration law when my ancestors arrived was basically “Get off the boat, sign this paper. I can’t spell your name right so this is how your name is spelled now. Oh, you see your Uncle Pietro here? Good, go to him and get outta here, there’s a line behind you. NEXT!” There was no “merit-based”. Your ancestors and mine weren’t doctors and lawyers in the old country. If they’d had the skills and “merit” to be well-off in the old country, they wouldn’t have had to leave for a better life here.

And then, as now, the people who were already here - whose own families had immigrated here just a few generations back - resented the newcomers for “taking our jobs”, threw ethnic slurs at them, said they didn’t want people from these shithole countries, pushed for laws to try and keep them out. My family were welcomed to the States with signs saying “No Irish need apply”, with people calling them Wops and Polacks and Micks and Krauts, sometimes getting violent, and telling them to go back to their own country.

But they couldn’t. Because THIS was now their own country.

So they stayed, and they worked their asses off doing shitty menial jobs for shitty pay or starting small businesses, and they made a life for themselves and their families, and they brought their extended family over to join them.

Years later, their kids and grandkids fought for our country in two World Wars. Grandpa Risi even exchanged gunfire with Italian troops whose ranks included his first and second cousins. His loyalty was solidly with America, even before his own family.

And you know what? America didn’t stop being American because the new people weren’t “real Americans”.[i] The people whose ancestors came over on the Mayflower didn’t stop speaking English. But they did start eating pizza and bagels. They didn’t stop singing their favorite hymns. But they did start listening to jazz and rock (the offspring of blending African, Latin, and Jewish musical ideas). And I promise you, no one will have to stop watching the Super Bowl[ii], or baking apple pies[iii], or drinking Budweiser[iv], or setting off fireworks[v] on the Fourth of July, or going to the church of their choice[vi], because of today’s immigrants. But I bet we will start eating more pupusas, listening to more Ethiopian music, encountering lots of cool new cultural ideas and weaving them into our own lives and putting our own unique spin on them.

And a generation from now, those new things will be a treasured part of American culture. Which, no doubt, people will want to defend from the pernicious ways of whatever group is trying to enter the country next. And those people will be wrong too.

Because immigrants and their families aren’t what stand in the way of making America great. 

They – we – ARE what make America great.

© John M. Munzer

---

[i] Strangely, the people who use that phrase never seem to be referring to the Sioux.

[ii] The climactic game of a sport based on British rugby – which is a game based on the original football, which only Americans insist on calling “soccer” – which in turn is a game that was first played 2,000 years ago in China.

[iii] An idea we got from the Dutch.

[iv] A recipe for beer from the Czech town of Budweis.

[v] Invented in China.

[vi] To listen to the teachings of a brown-skinned Middle Eastern Jewish rabbi, who spent the first few years of his life as a refugee in Egypt, and is famous for being brutally killed by Italian soldiers.

Mindfulness

As I walked, angry and afraid, brooding on the past and the future, I looked.

I saw the cherry blossoms, and the magnolias, and the lilacs, and the grass, and the sun.

I listened.

I heard birdsong.

I sniffed.

I smelled the sweetness of the air.

I felt.

I felt the gentle breeze on my face, the roughness of bark on my hand.

I tasted.

I tasted the air's sharp, crisp hexanol tang from freshly-mown grass.

I thought.

I thought: Here I am, surrounded by beauty and light, and I am blind to it, stalking through a dark valley that I bring with me.

I thought: I am here, and it is now.

I thought: I can let go of the darkness. I can breathe in light, life, joy and peace.

I am here.

It is now.

I am me.

But the past! The future!...

There is no past.

There is no future.

There is only now.

I am here. It is now. Here and now I can find beauty.

Here and now, it is enough.

© John M. Munzer