Cyanide, Socialism and Freedom

           Photo by Danilo Alvesd on Unsplash

Mom kept a vial of cyanide in her jewelry box. Perhaps it was a powerful reminder of her family’s escape from Latvia. Or she just wasn’t sure what to do with it. Its original purpose was clear; if bartering border crossings with soap and cigarettes went terribly awry---swallow the pill.

As a kid I didn’t understand the backstory. Pieces I never learned. My grandfather, Augusts Mitrevics, his wife Lidija and two children fled the Latvia they knew seeing the Latvia it would become. He was a famous theatre actor. Even has a page on IMDB. 

They erased him. A visitor to Latvia up to 1991 would find no record of my Grandfather. Though he appeared on postcards. Though he was a leading actor. He turned down their offer of summers in Siberia (and springs, and winters…) for the freedom of another country. For that he was shunned.

It’s hard to live with a boot in your neck and a gun in your back. They said that in Latvia, in 1978, as the freedom movement bubbled. When you don’t have freedom, you appreciate it. When its the air you breathe, you take it for granted.

I am next in line in a chain that escaped cyanide and socialism. Seeing life and liberty taken and given away jars me. Governors barring people from working to meet their needs is morally wrong. To tell people where they can go (shop, drive, celebrate) puts people in chains un-American. Yes, one says, ‘but these are only little links for your own good.’ No matter the size of the chain it’s still bondage.

The poison was a reminder. Pilgrimage to a new land. An imperfect place not fully home. A free country. Mom would have fought to keep it that way; grandparents too. The path forward is clear. Don’t swallow the pill. 

Hard Seasons and A Hidden Hand

                                                    Photo by James Wainscoat on Unsplash

“So I will restore to you the years that the swarming locust has eaten,
the crawling locust, the consuming locust, and the chewing locust…”

 Driven from my home I drive round it in circles. Threatened with a TRO (temporary restraining order) I am forced to leave. Numb and confused I call a friend for advice. Checking into a cheap hotel that boasts a pool---a plot of dirt, avoiding the hotel boasting rooms by the hour. “How long will you be with us?” Hotel to hotel, one night grows to three weeks. 

Our life calendars are marked by cataclysmic crisis; pre-Covid, after the divorce, before the baby, during the cancer.  Life is lived segment by segment, season into season; childhood, college, that first job, first love, that fast (impractical for a family) car.

Memory is achromatic. Seeing experience as only black. Perceiving periods as pitch-dark. Not seeing ‘the strong hand of love hidden in the shadows.” That period was less a punch to the gut than it was a hollowness of the gut; feeling numb—which is no feeling at all.

 It was the zenith of the locust plague. Devastation cleared the ground for restoration. The locusts destroy what you’ve built with heart and hand. They overwhelm so you see no way out; only dark, only wing and leg. 

From the detritus of crystalline wings springs new life. A new season. Grasshoppers gnawed the first marriage to the root. A season of singleness and necessary soul work. Separation from the daughter burst into rich relationship that continues into her adulthood. New friendships and enriched older ones. Then the greatest surprise; the friend that is my wife ten years into these healing years.

God’s heart for us is that we are not depressed and distressed by the swarm. Life isn’t always driving circles in the dark. The grasshoppers will move on. The air will clear. Soul and seeds survive. In the light we will see what the strong hand of love was working in the shadows.

Too Quiet For The Cowboys

No clopping horses or ladies to the nines,

No corner saloon, or chop houses to dine,

Not dressed up to go to meeting,

No bear hugs or back-slap greeting.

The boardwalk is oddly without noise,

Sundays are too quiet for the boys.

Moon rises, dudes thirst for what’s not water,

Heading for places you wouldn’t send your daughter.

Lace and taffeta revealing leg and thigh,

Many are the barmaids, few customers are nigh.

Oh coquettish sway, each move, she cloys,

The bars’ too quiet for the boys. 

The dust and smells, Old Garth lists well, make your blood run hot,

No cowboy competition, the Fairgrounds an empty lot.

No lassos sailing over calves, no sequined girls waving flags,

Hand loosed from the saddle, saved by wags.

Not just weekend showmen, they’re the real McCoys,

Rodeo’s hushed and gone too quiet for the boys.

Aspens white and dark-green pine down the trail a-ways,

Water’s flowing hear it roaring like the waves.

There’s a quiet and a speaking heard in Gods wide open space,

So you can keep a going; take a step, run the race.

The wildness of life brings these many joys,

But its gone too quiet for the boys. 

Catgut Strings and the Music of Life

                                                          Photo by Jie Wang on Unsplash

The feel of the smooth, cold, black wood in the crook of my neck. The smell of pine; amber clear rosin encased in a block of wood. Fingers comfortably resting in the ‘frog’. White horse hair, the stick growing taut as screw increases tension. I lift the violin again, cheek in place, fingers on board, my back straight against the back of the wooden chair that every public school student is familiar with.

I played violin for seven years beginning in junior high. I was third string. This due largely to grace and that there weren’t enough violin players in orchestra. The principal violinist was a musician. He could arrange music in his head. Saying things like, “What if we played it half an octave down in the lower staff?” I was out of place. I played by rote. I learned where my fingers fit on the violin according to the stave. Half an hour every day after school I practiced. I learned to listen. I learned to play. Always by rote; mechanical.

Rimsky-Korsakovs’ Scheherazade, Mussorgsky’s Pictures at an Exhibition; Miss Craig had us play current and classical music. Each section playing its own part. For it to work everyone had to play well together. Erik the first violin, Nancy the second violin and I had to sound perfect together. So too the percussion section, the woodwinds, all of us together. I felt out of place. Til bow landed on string.

The instrument becomes part of you. Calloused fingers fit catgut strings. A position that once felt awkward now flows. The novice can make beautiful noise. The true maestro makes melody come alive. The instrument is part of you. You are part of the whole.

The violin case remains closed somewhere in storage. Tempted to pick it up again. Do I miss sculpted beauty held perfectly close? So much I don’t remember. Is it the oneness I miss? 

Daily life is all kind of hit and miss. I feel out of place. Most days I miss the mark. Anxiety climbs out of bed with me. Feeling like I cannot do it. Until that horsehair bow hits the string.

Spinning Together

                                                     Photo by Anna Anikina on Unsplash

For those in the inner circle---this one's for you!

Pick a side, it’s easy---not listening,

Yet we have a pact; unspoken,

It comes easy to us,

But really, it takes, consistence,

Two connecting.

Zeal, misplaced convictions; Oh youth!

Lust, loin and heart, puffed up

Self, arrogant, so many excuses,

It comes easy to us,

To keep talking.

Through lovers, long days; the weight of living,

Writing, calling, crying; we stay in-touch,

Sharing hearts, sharing hurts, comes easy,

What kind of Providence

Keeps us at it.

She wounds; a legion of cuts,

The ache made bearable,

With dark rich laughter,

Forged long, slow burn,

Tears mingle.

Not what you say---it’s listening,

Guffaws guaranteed,

Mystery; electricity and stars in orbit,

Deeper than Hubble can see,

We keep spinning together.

Coming to Fullness In The Love Of A Father

                                                      Photo by Jude Beck on Unsplash 

I have father wounds. Welcome to the human race, right? Of God calling Himself father Donald Miller says, “This, in light of the earthly representation of the role, seems a marketing mistake.” So went my childhood. Words spoken in haste. Doors kicked in rage. Hugs never given. Most of all the being away. My father’s issues were birthed in the present but conceived in the past. God is a loving father. To learn this has taken so long because unlearning is a huge part of the process.

Dads’ parents modeled dysfunction. Dad bought it but never owned it. So it was passed down again. The cycle continues or is broken. Faltering, falling flat; I’m a prodigal healed in the hug of the Everlasting father. 

Some of us wrestle to resist the hard wiring we come by. Can we flee pedigree? We want to be like our dad, or we don’t. In a sudden moment we realize it; we’ve responded like dad. This is both blessing and curse. For there are good dads and bad dads and a bunch of in-between. 

Did we get dad’s approval? Our father and the image of our father dictate who we become and who we fight against becoming. A father tells a son he is lazy; he grows up a workaholic. We can spend an entire life trying to please our father; even after he’s buried. The story of the prodigal resonates for a reason. Not because of the return of the son but because of the embrace of the father.

I go whoring and sew seed, running farther and farther from the father. Finding only hunger I come home. Expecting condemnation. Father has prepared a feast; killing the fatted calf. He absorbs the loss I squander. He delights in me; wrapping me up in His hug.  My Father is a safe place; I am sheltered, shielded, secure.

I can come to fullness in the acceptance of a loving (and perfect) father. I am not cowering. He is positively provoking me to be my best. This kind of fatherly love encourages a radical freedom. Even in light of personal failure. This is what I am learning. I hesitate to buy into my image of an earthly father. Conversely the heavenly image of father has me hungering for more of his image in me.

The Taste Of Water

The child drinking from sippy cup to the Guatemalan woman walking miles, we all have experienced it. The taste of water. A stop on the John Muir trail, the first place I remember. Snowmelt. Good water. I liked water from that green garden hose. This was better. Brighter than bottled. How to explain the taste of water? Start with the negative? What water isn’t? Quantify it? Add in cold. We always say, ‘cold and clear.’ Is clear a flavor note?

My uncle built a house in California gold country. Water from a well. Chill water flowing up from rock and river, igneous, slate and marble. Satisfying and creating thirst. You can’t imagine. Unless you’ve gone without, climbed a mountain, chopped a cord of wood, sweat salt-white dripping into your eyes. Now you can taste it. Almost.

The smell of water after it splashes the pavement. Music spills out of courts and corners, tangible and ubiquitous. Thousands coming for the festival; Sukkot, ‘the season of our joy.’ Children scamper, adults meander, wall to wall they fill walkways. On a high point in the courtyard a man stands and cries out, “If anyone is thirsty I will give you drink!”

A crowd forms around the man. Where is his hat for tips? What magic will he do? A mother walks by, father and children in tow; they’re hungry and must be fed. A man from the beach city slows, “Finally repayment for my taxes!” Some come thirsty. That man’s voice cries out again, distinct. The music has hushed. His cry elicits their response, “Oh give us this water!”

Water gives life and water kills. Well water is great but not if it’s high in Chromium-6. River water taste great but may hide Giardia. Water’s flavor depends on where the water comes from. If you get water from a well, it might have a slightly mineral or chalky taste because it’s passed through layers of limestone deep underground. Water will temporarily slake thirst. There’s water that’ll put you together when you’re broken, that gives sight to the blind then splashes out in an everlasting stream. That’s some good water. We are the crowd. We are the entitled. Oh Rabbi, give us this water!

Corona and Civil Disobedience

Fear of death, fear of virus and just like that, we give the government power over us. Power bordering on martial law; to lock us in our houses; close our schools, keep us from working. We whisper, “It could never happen here,” as the Mayor of New York says he will permanently close houses of worship if they don’t comply with social distancing. Or consider this headline from the New York Times, "Pandemic Tempts Leaders to Seize Sweeping Powers." Where’s the line? Do I make a stand? Corona’s got me thinking conscience.

Time to hammer out a rubric for acts of conscience. What actions require a response? Do I engage in civil disobedience? If so, when? The overarching biblical principal is that ‘every person is to be in subjection to the governing authorities.’ In most issues I obey the law. I protest but I don’t break it. Yet there are distinct situations where I defy.

These are the summits I stand on, the hills I’ll die on. This past December Wang YI, head of one of China’s largest unregistered churches was sentenced to nine years in prison. The crime, in his words, “The goal of disobedience is not to change the world but to testify about another world…The Bible teaches us that, in all matters relating to the gospel and human conscience, we must obey God and not men. For this reason, spiritual disobedience and bodily suffering are both ways we testify to another eternal world and to another glorious King.” Men may make God illegal but there are higher laws. 

Every person is created in the image of God. This makes all humans valuable and gives value to those considered “less than valuable (including the unborn).” If a law encroaches on their life, liberty or pursuit of happiness it is a bad law. In such cases breaking the law to save another; or to make a point is a good thing. “An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust.” 

These are the parameters which guide my steps. Your guidelines may end up different. To often we make determinations based on fear and feeling. This is a good season for thinking through what you believe. What’s my grid? We’re inside now. Is there a time to step out, step in, step up? 

The Social Implications of Covid 19

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

You reached out to touch me, You reached out to touch me -

I said it's too true; You and me we know too much!---Mark Heard

Satan spoke to God about Job, “Touch all that he has; he will surely curse you to your face.” Did Satan have a similar conversation with God concerning Corona and the human race? We are faced with the same choice as Job; Curse God and die; or worship and bless Him. Corona is a curse in its social implications as well as its physiological ones.

I’m old school. I shake hands to greet; shake hands as thanks. No more. It’s a world where manners hardly matter and phones destroy interaction. Now we “socially distance.” Isn’t that what we’ve been doing all along? Now it’s sanctioned as safe. Avoidance good, community bad. 

For our "good" we are seeing the government ‘recommend’ business closures and small group assemblies. They even encourage the shutting down of brew-pubs and wineries noting that they are non-essential (at a time when they seem most essential!). The hand of government is strengthened to coerce. What next? What becomes illegal for our own ‘safety?’ Mandatory vaccines? Gun laws? Religious gatherings? How much power is to much power?

And always, the fear. Corona robs us of control. What can we control? We can stockpile stuff! Ahh, now we’re in control. Which brings us back to Job. If your kids die, your riches go and your health perishes; what’s left? God is left. “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away, Blessed be the name of the Lord.” 

Let us not be those who cower at the whisper of Corona. As the world moves toward isolation we will move into community---cautiously optimistic. As we submit to authority let us move forward with consciences wise and wary. Finally give God your fear, “casting all your anxieties on Him because He cares for you.” I was sitting on catastrophe's knee, I was expecting Armageddon to come…You reach out to soothe me, you reach out to soothe me; you and me we know too much.