Epitaph

A beautiful life

Full of hope, pain, joy, tears, love

Thank You for this gift

Thank You For Your Service

Burdens borne for us

By those who did not birth them

Uncountable debt

The Carousel of Violence

round and round

death for death for death

stand with Love

First Contact

Last month, it was revealed that a "former intelligence official turned whistleblower has given Congress and the Intelligence Community Inspector General extensive classified information about deeply covert programs that he says possess retrieved intact and partially intact craft of non-human origin." Exciting stuff!

Here's the deeper truth: We have never been alone. Life is abundant on this planet; full of beings whose value and wisdom we constantly fail to appreciate. Only the most arrogant of fools could believe that such a reality is limited to a single rock in this vast universe. We have never, ever been the apex of creation, just the latest in a long line of kings of the hill. And our reign will inevitably end, as did all the others.

Worst-case scenario, we encounter something that sees us as meat to be harvested, pests to be exterminated, or dust to be swept away; call it karmic justice on a cosmic scale. Hopefully, however, we find someone willing to recognize us as family, at least eventually. In any case, the day will dawn, be it tomorrow or in a millennium, when we can no longer deny the strangely glorious totality of our Parent's kingdom.

Perhaps this latest episode will hasten the arrival of that moment, or not. Either way, the choice is clear: Voluntarily renounce our anthropocentric pretensions now, or wait until our heads are forcibly yanked out of the sand later. Choose wisely, for something formidably wonderful longs to embrace you. Exciting stuff indeed!

Serenity

I have been laid low

Pummeled by the whims of life

Only in You, peace

Gender Affirming Care (And Other Medical Euphemisms)

Smart white coats

Living flesh sculpted

No refunds

History, Then

A little over thirty years ago, I wrote the following essay for my application to be the student speaker at my university's history department graduation:

What can history teach us? In this age of the future, what can the past possibly teach us about our present? Perhaps more than we think or care to know. Perhaps it can teach us about our very selves.

On the surface, this seems like a preposterous statement. After all, what could we possibly have in common with people who lived ten thousand, one thousand, or even one hundred years ago? Other than the fact that we are all just that, people. When you strip away all the social and cultural forces, we are all just human beings, struggling to go through life the best way that we can.

Last semester, I did my thesis on a 12th century theologian named Peter Abelard. If any of you have ever heard of him at all, it's probably in the context of the love affair of Abelard and Heloise. To be honest, I hadn't really heard of him before last semester. But as I studied him, I quickly realized that I had more in common with this 12th century theologian than I would ever have dreamed.

I saw so much of myself in his life. I understood his struggling over his relationship with Heloise and his anxiety about how that impacted his religious life and spirituality. I had been there in my own struggles between a calling to the priesthood and being in love with someone special. I knew how confusing and complex it must have been.

It was the same sort of feeling that I had when I had studied Augustine the previous semester and his similar quandary over sexuality and spirituality. I knew how these two men felt. They were much more than just figures from the past, they were friends. And I knew that while I didn't agree with the conclusions they drew from their struggling, or how they acted, I could never pass judgement on what they did or the consequences of it all, as much as I might want to. I could never condemn them, because I understood them, and I loved them.

And when I realized this, I realized that I could never look at anyone in the same way again. If I could see myself in these two men dead for centuries, why not in the people around me, why not in any of you? The answer that I came up with was that I could.

Maybe this is what history has to teach us, that despite all our differences, we really do have a lot in common and can understand one another. That in many ways, we are one another, because we all share in the struggle of life.

This can be a scary vision. It challenges all our notions of absolutes, of identity. It forces us to look at how we define our communities, how we define ourselves. It makes us abandon our view of people as others. It takes away the certainty of our beliefs. It challenges the very fabric of reality as we have constructed it.

On the other hand, it can open up a view of each person as wonderful and special. We can drink in all the joy and sadness, pleasure and pain, triumph and tragedy of life, and know that all of it is a precious gift. When we begin to realize how much alike we are, we begin to see how inter-connected life is, how magical it is. We become aware that all of life, all of history, is a celebration.

This is what history, what all of you, have taught me. I may walk out of here not knowing a whole lot about medieval Europe, or a whole lot about anything, but I have learned this: LIFE IS GOOD, and if I died at this very moment, I would be content to have been alive. Thank you for this gift.

Time and language might separate the words above from last week’s haiku, but both preach on the same truth. And though the powers that be did select someone else's speech for the actual ceremony, I am proud to be able to say that I continue to stand by the lessons I learned during those halcyon college days.

History, Now

The Grand Sweep

Faces and places

Love enfleshed

Cosmic Joy

Oh, breathless wonder

Of sunsets and star-rises

On a distant world

Collateral Damage

At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic, I encouraged us to embrace the "strange grace" of the moment. Little did I know what that would mean for me.

In March of 2021, I received two doses of the Pfizer vaccine, the second on my 50th birthday. Following both doses, I experienced pressure-induced pain radiating down my left (inoculated) arm; with the pain being more severe and longer lasting after the second dose. Over the next few months, I lost range of motion in both shoulders, and was eventually diagnosed with bilateral frozen shoulder. (Apparently, it's unusual for this condition to cross over to the non-inoculated side, but c'est la vie, at least for me.) Fortunately, several months of physical therapy seemed to resolve my affliction. But unfortunately, this was to be the "good news" portion of my story.

And that's because in July of 2021, I coughed up a blood clot. A trip to the ER led to a CT scan which revealed multiple nodules in both lungs. Since that original finding, I've had two bronchoscopies, a needle biopsy, thorascopic lung surgery, several more CT scans, and a plethora of blood tests. The first bronchoscopy found three strains of an ubiquitous fungus, Aspergillus. Subsequent biopsies failed to confirm those results, but did detect fungal hyphae. And then, this past November, a second bronchoscopy uncovered something that the lab struggled to identify, ultimately saying it resembled Inonotus quercustris, a mushroom which grows on trees in Texas. According to the infectious disease specialist, while they are confident that my illness is due to a fungal organism, they cannot be definitive about that organism's classification.

In the meantime, I take my pills, and we monitor my lungs with imaging. The first anti-fungal medication, which I was on for six months, had some nasty side effects. (I lost 25 pounds and was easily fatigued.) Fortunately, the new one is better. (I've regained the weight, and my stamina is getting closer to normal.) Treatment was successful in resolving the initial nodules, but unfortunately, fresh ones seem to pop up on each CT scan, including last month's. (If my latest friend is still hanging around in June, I might have another needle biopsy in my future.) And yet, I've never had symptoms normally associated with pulmonary fungal disease. In fact, other than imaging, my test results have been consistently and frustratingly normal since this ordeal began.

But here's the bigger problem, fungal disease is typically seen only in those who have a compromised immune system, such as someone undergoing chemotherapy. And as I just alluded to, in spite of their best efforts, my doctors have failed to find in me any such immunodeficiencies. (The current theory is that I must have a rare undetectable genetic disorder; one that inexplicably waited fifty years before unveiling itself at this precise hour.) They don't necessarily deny the suspicious timing between my Covid vaccination and the discovery of my fungal infection, but they do dismiss that reality as mere coincidence. Needless to say, I remain unconvinced.

Two months after my first pandemic-related blog post, I wrote about the unintended consequences of our response to this event: "Every human intervention comes with a cost. And too often, we leap into action without considering the nature of that price or whether it is worth paying. This is partly due to our overly exuberant faith in the power of smart people and smart ideas. It is also, however, the product of our tendency to value some siblings more than others." (Again, the irony.)

I do not doubt that the Covid vaccines helped many. But I am equally certain that they harmed others. Under normal circumstances, such outcomes would be unsurprising. Clearly, however, we have been living in abnormal times. Some have demonized the vaccines; and some have divinized them. Unfortunately, the smart people who wield the majority of power in our nation fell into the latter camp, and so the vaccine injured have been left out in the cold to fend for themselves, like lepers.

One of the few doctors courageous enough to challenge the prevailing wisdom noted that she was not alone in seeing the problem, but that some of her colleagues were "willing to accept these vaccine injuries as unavoidable collateral damage in a mass vaccination program." Yes, any new technology, particularly a medical intervention, will inevitably produce collateral damage. But common decency demands that such harm be acknowledged, mourned, and redressed. To our great shame, we stubbornly refuse to love our wounded siblings, adding insult to their ignored injury.

Don't get me wrong, I like my doctors. And maybe they're right; maybe my situation is just a tragically absurd coincidence. Then again, maybe the vaccine did mess with my immune system in some weird manner. The uncomfortable truth is that neither of us know which version is correct. But it will never cease to frustrate me that they, along with the system to which they belong, prefer to conjure up a magical fungus fairy than to even contemplate an investigation into the inconvenient possibility of the vaccine's involvement. That is faith, not science, and certainly not good medicine.

Will my treatments conquer the mushrooms in my lungs? Will I find some kind soul whose scientific curiosity outweighs our toxic politics? Will the system embody the humility appropriate to a work of human hands? Will those who know better speak up if the system fails to act justly? Will the vaccine injured be made whole? Will we love as our Parent calls us to love? I do not know. But I have hope.

P.S. Thank you, Pfizer, for the 50th birthday present. Strange grace, indeed!

Treasure Trove

To claim hope

When darkness swallows

Gold of fools

True Leadership

Practical people

Always fail to hold our feet

To the fire of Truth

Tribal Politics

Howling mobs

Drunk on righteous rage

Sowing seeds

Friends & Family

Faces and places

Tsunami of memory

Burnt into my soul

American Idolatry

Guns and abortion

Our two-headed Golden Calf

Washed in filth and tears