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We are alive during a time of large graft, small grift, and sometimes extravagant personal attention to gain. What’s in it for me? Why should you be the one to prosper? Life and our circumstances may feel unfair. We are easily tired. The corners of our principles have become susceptible to the wear and tear of media noise, political theatre, and unbridled vitriol, permitting our aspirations and better values to leak through the fragile folds of the container we sometimes call our character.

Friends, this is no time for fatigue. We cannot afford ourselves the luxury of assuming that our behaviors are isolated, that our actions have no consequences, that our inactions are without impact. How we live our lives, every day, makes a difference. What we stand for, in our thoughts, words, and deeds, has significance.

I recently had a conversation with a special soul who I’ll call Sol. “Are you a giving person?” Sol asked me.

Not wanting to respond with too much certainty, I hesitated, then answered yes.

“How do you know that?” Sol pressed gently.

“Well,” I shrugged, “I try to not to always focus on myself. I try to think of others … you know.”

Sol’s expression was not one of knowing. “When you give, is it with truthful intent?”

There are some conversations in life that quickly find depth, interactions where there is no repartee, the pace feels momentous, and memories somehow are formed before the dialogue has unfolded. Truthful intent? Well, I’d like to think that I did but I felt vulnerable to misrepresenting either myself or my actual experience. Nonplussed, I let the question sink. Sol simply waited.

“It’s hard to know truth, Sol,” I eventually responded. “Can anyone really know if their intent is pure?”

Answering a question with a question is a time-honored avoidance technique. Sol was having none of my misdirection. “So you don’t offer gifts with a pure sense of giving?”

Again, difficult words. Gifts. Pure. Offer. I was fairly convinced that I failed to meet such a standard. No, I knew that did not. My eyes pawed the ground like a dog not knowing where to dig.

Sol embraced my embarrassment. “Have you ever witnessed a real act of selflessness?”

Indeed! I was certain of it. Whether directly or through reports from others, people are able to offer miraculously to each other. Images raced to my mind: caregivers, fire fighters, health care workers, soldiers, saints, neighbors, parents, strangers spontaneously offering assistance – –

“Would you give your life for another?”

Perhaps another time I will describe my unusual questioner. Suffice it to save for now that Sol has the sort of soothing voice that insinuates itself effortlessly into one’s psyche. I responded quickly, affirmatively. Yes, I would do that. More scenarios flooded my senses, remembrances of times when I have proactively offered, through internal prayer, my own life as protection for another. Would I still willingly offer my breath, my place here, in this body, at this time, so that someone I love might continue in their own journey? Without a moment’s —

Sol’s voice: “Is such intention not pure?”

Perhaps. It feels simply right. Complete. Decision-free. And yet, despite the prior offers, I am still here. An intention is not an action. The willingness to release from attachment in order to benefit someone I love could be a greater type of attachment.

Sol dismissed such circularity with an eyebrow. “Love, freely offered, is neither attachment nor excuse.”

You might imagine my confusion. A person buoyed by moments of beauty, someone also saddened by his own inconsistency in embodying simplicity and kindness, I struggle to settle myself in our modern universe. Externally, I am skeptical of many human motives, including my own. Internally, I am inspired by a myriad of human actions.

My conversation with Sol had found itself far afield from where it had actually begun. It was not Sol, in fact, who had asked the first question. “Why won’t people wear masks during the current surge in the pandemic?” I had originally wondered. “Why aren’t people able to see that a simple face mask is an expression of caring? If everyone were to wear face masks in the weeks ahead, if we all were to make decisions over the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday from the vantage of caring for others, we would save many lives. Why can’t we help everyone understand that — “

“The art of giving takes practice,” Sol interrupted. “True giving is not linked with assurance of outcome.”

Filtered through a multi-colored mask, these words seemed almost spoken by Sol’s eyes. It was where our initial conversation ended. Since then, I have wondered at the implications of giving without attachment to outcome. I tried the following theory with a family member: suppose you knew that the mask you wore today could interrupt a unique infectious transmission chain that results – two or three people in the future – in a death of a stranger. Suppose you could see, into the future, the identity of that person. Would you wear the mask today to prevent that person’s death? I would. I bet you would too. Suppose the mask that someone next to you in a grocery store wears could interrupt its own unique transmission chain that results – a different two or three people in the future – in the death of someone you know. Would you plead with that person in the grocery store to keep that mask covering their mouth and nose until they reach their car? Those are real outcomes. The gift from the mask is measurable.

“Are you a giving person?” Sol’s question rings in my ears. It challenges me to release my upset with those who do not wear face masks. It is not my role to judge. Nor is it my role to critique. My place is only to give, and to do so with the right intent. Is it truthful? I cannot say. Will it make a difference? Usually. Occasionally. Always. Never. The answer should not matter. My life neither begins nor ends with me. We are inextricably intertwined.

May exploration into the true art of giving help us restore the tattered corners of our collective character.

Muscles build strength through a process of injury, repair, and renewal. At a physiologic level, exercises aimed at enhanced muscle size, definition, and power produce results because properly performed exercise causes individual cellular damage, stimulating muscle cells and fibers to fuse, forming in turn new myofibrils that are larger and more capable than what preceded them. Growth happens as a result of individual cell damage and the overall body’s innate recovery and improvement processes. A bicep that is prudently challenged becomes a bicep that is more capable.

The contemporary era does not appear to be challenging us with anything that resembles prudence. Chaotic stressors assault our personal and collective sensoria with reckless and feckless abandon. Some days it feels exhausting to live. The modern world has certainly seen its share of horrors in the past century. Never before, however, have we seemed thrust to face such a series of regular crises without consistent voices of reason, compassion, and character in the public sphere. Social media, with its advertisement-influenced algorithms for how people are exposed to “news”, is manipulated to spread lies. Politicians seem unable to hold our highest offices with integrity and moral balance. As a nation, we seem to have broken loose from our mooring. Ideals are relegated to the realm of relativism. A sense of, and commitment to, the basic “common good” quickly slides towards the antiquated. In short, we are overusing our muscle cells of individuality and so-called personal freedoms such that they have no opportunity to repair, to remodel into something functional and more useful. And so those selfish and self-centered cells just fire, haphazardly, indiscriminately, their noisy flares managed and misshaped by forces and people with often ruinous, even nefarious purpose. Regretfully, the flames of acrimony left burning across our value landscape are fanned, and deliberately fused, by those who would not see us collectively become better but would rather let us injure and damage our individual perceptions and abilities beyond easy recovery, leaving us weak, morally rudderless, socially confused, and more easily subject to unbalanced, devastating influence and misdirection.

There are real forces of destruction at loose in our world. They are embodied by those who would divide versus unite us, those who would sour our beliefs in common goals and purpose, those who would convince you, me, and our neighbors that we are taxpayers instead of citizens, residents rather than community members, takers and not givers.

Our moral fiber has been overstretched and battered. We must not let it be remodeled in ways we no longer recognize.

A few days ago, I received an email from a high school classmate urging me, respectfully, to look past our incumbent President and administration’s “style” and focus on “results”: unemployment rates, gross domestic product (GDP), and average family income. My former classmate expressed concern for what world might be left his children and future generations if we allow “socialists” to replace the “world (he) knew” with the “radical alternative”.

To my classmate I respond as follows: please review the definition of respect. I have witnessed enough radical denial of basic rights, values, and dignities in recent years to recognize villainy masquerading as style. Ends do not justify means. Even if they did, I would rather live in a world where values refer to higher purpose, balance and the social fabric, decency and collective goals as opposed to GDP and some abstraction known as the average family income. My children do not need to strive towards an increase in our family’s income from our generation to the next; blessed by the birth lottery, they have, and likely will continue to have, plenty. Instead of measuring their lives’ worth through economic factors and personal income, I hope that they will devote themselves to some notion of collective wellbeing and growth, re-reading our country’s Declaration of Independence and Constitution not as documents meant to be entombed in history but as large breaths of hope and idealism for their generation and future generations to come. Social good and a commitment to a social contract is not some dystopian “socialist” nightmare. It is the basis for social living. And humans, as we all learned in high school, are social animals.

It is time we rebuilt the muscles of decency, respect, and diversity in America. The brawn and bluster of bigotry and individualistic “me first” idolatry weakens us, tearing at the fabric and fiber of us as people, preventing us, like abused muscles, from rebound, recovery, and renewal. Let us learn to exercise ourselves and our values differently. Let us not succumb to the value-free relativism of despotic and calculated views of the past. We can embrace our shortcomings (we have them, yes), we can learn from our mistakes (we have made and continue to make them, yes), and we can become stronger: as a people.

For as it says in the very first words of the preamble to the U.S. Constitution: “We, the people of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.”

Muscle cells that do not request and receive the help of other cells around them die. Cells that recruit and receive help, that merge and grow together, become fibers with strength, vital contributors to something better, something redesigned by common purpose, something so much more capable. Together, with the right purpose and effort, we can build with dignity and respect for all. As one, as a people committed to a more perfect Union, we can yet become stronger.

God, it is said, is love. It is written in the scriptures and sacred texts of many traditions. It has become engrained in cultural expressions and teachings around the world.

Of course not all faiths and peoples use the word “God”. But the core concept of a higher power, a prime mover, a creator and spiritual force infused within and among all that breathes is pervasive. And love is integral to the experience and expression of this collective and connecting spiritual presence.

But what is love?

The Greeks defined multiple types of love, among them Philia (love among friends), Eros (romantic love), Storge (love of parents for children), and Agape (selfless love). A quick online search in the English language locates a range of loves that humans may experience, with descriptors such as familiar, playful, affectionate, enduring, physical, and unconditional. There is love of self versus love of others, love of ideas, love of learning, love of life. This diversity of perspective can no doubt be found in all languages and traditions. We humans are fond of distinctions, large and small. We find comfort in categorizing. We love to differentiate.

The older I get the less helpful I find such differentiation. How we enjoy our lists and classifications! I don’t begrudge the contribution that taxonomies have made; for example, our understanding of life’s evolutionary roots and developments has been advanced by Carl Linnaeus’s system of biological stratification. And the hierarchical scheme of physics, with its branches and subdivisions, has significantly advanced both our knowledge of matter and energy and our ability to translate that knowledge into practical and often (but not always) productive applications in daily life. Something gets lost for me, however, the farther we tease apart the subatomic particle universe, “flavoring” quarks and subtyping leptons into muons, neutrinos, and taos. My eyes and mind fog over when I read about subspecies of plants with variety and subvariety, form and subform. The nomenclature is useful for some scientists, I freely admit it. Yet the drive to dig deeper, to split the metaphorical hairs of matter more finely, to distinguish and name based on subtle difference leads me no closer to a capacity to embrace, accept, and identify with all life that surrounds me. It brings me no nearer a fundamental experience of love.

Scientists and science, we need you! As the world descends into a frequently manipulated chaos of so-called “facts” and truth, we must, more than ever, recognize that, yes, there is indeed objective reality. No usurper of the media bullhorn should be free to espouse lies, mistruths, and misrepresentations on climate change, pandemics, or other existential threats to our planet and its survival. There should be accountability for those who deliberately misguide and manipulate. So please keep studying, and analyzing. Keep observing and investigating. Keep exploring the edge of understanding and defending your right to present evidence on the nature of physical reality as you help us learn it. I want to keep reading and learning with you. I want to rely on you for honest and non-biased observations and conclusions. I want to be challenged by that discovery, and be free to join a communal dialogue related to the context and collaborative application of such scientific advance.

But I don’t think you will find a “God particle”. And I personally don’t hold out much hope that the stratification of a concept such as love into six, seven, or eight types will bring much benefit to our ability to know love. Because my experience of the world offers me the following simple observation: all life is connected. We are not “inter”connected. We are just connected. Whether you are holding a newborn child, the hand of a dying friend, a spouse, the outstretched bloom of a rose, a pet, or the written word of God – you are holding life. Whether you are feeling the flush of attraction, the ineffable bond of parenthood, the rapture of relax in the embrace of being – you are in, of, and the essence itself of whole. One.

Love is not simply a physical bond. It is the nature of being, of who we are and how we are. And God, at least for me, is the whole – the One – the welcome, the acceptance, the guidance within that nature.

Last night, my wife and I were talking about death. We had just watched a documentary about global beliefs related to the afterlife and, unexpectedly, I was reminded of an experience I had years ago following a blood donation. The donation part was easy. I felt fine and was having an obligatory cookie being leaving the mobile van. Suddenly, I felt very much unfine. Awful. Barely had I raised a finger to get someone’s attention when I was floating, weightless, a consciousness detached from its form. I had not died; although quite low, I learned later that I still had a pulse. But I was, most certainly, not present in my form. I recall a sense of freedom, of elevation, of release within a lightness of being. There was, also, actual light. It enveloped me as I floated toward it. I have no memory of my body. I only remember a sensation of acceptance. Of embrace. Of pure being.

When I regained consciousness within my physical form, my body was inverted on cushions in the mobile van, feet held high, ice packs and clothes stretched over my neck, arms, and forehead. With the nausea, dizziness, and cold, it frankly felt awful to be inside myself. What had just happened? How long had a been out?

“A few minutes,” someone said.

“Did I … was I … was there …?”

“That was quite the reaction you had,” another voice said.

An ambulance, an ED visit, IV fluids, and anti-emetic medication ensued. In a few hours, I was revived, and home. I was glad to be better. I was delighted to be with my family. I wasn’t sure what to make of my time between the cookie and my re-awakening. It had sure seemed like a lot longer than “a few minutes”.

There is more to being than we can define through sometimes separating delineation and differentiation. There is a totality. That totality I have come to call God. And love is the acceptance, entrance, and welcome of the whole, the One.

A young woman is about to cross a busy city street. It is evening. Rush hour. People are bustling, cabs and cars are trying to break free of gridlock, steam rises from an underground vent as a subway rumbles beneath the crowded sidewalk and corner. The young woman has had a stressful day. She has not had a chance to stop to eat since breakfast and now she is headed for an engineering class at the university and she is running late. She does not see the young man on a bicycle. He is about her age, is dressed in less fashionable clothing, and is pedaling furiously. A courier, he is not late as much as he is motivated to deliver the package in the satchel slung over his left shoulder. If he delivers it before the top of the hour, he will have a perfect delivery record for the day. That perfect record will earn him a bonus. The light is changing. If he makes the light, he can make an opening in traffic that he spies ahead, a gap that will help him arrive earlier than expected. So the courier runs the red light. He does this just as the engineering student steps toward the street when the crossing sign indicates that she and the small crowd around her can safely do so.

A hand darts from the mix of people and grabs the young woman’s elbow. The hand has fat fingers and swollen knuckles. It belongs to an elderly woman.

The engineering student whirls, one hand on her purse. The courier on the bike swerves into the intersection. A taxi honks. The crowd inhales. The eyes of the young woman meet those of the elderly woman.

“That was close,” someone mutters.

The young woman’s eyes are wide. The elderly woman’s eyes are wide also. She smiles. This was one of her life’s purposes.

And then everyone continues. And everything continues. On time.

Whose life is most affected by the stranger’s outstretched hand? We don’t know. But the bonus that the young courier received allowed him to pay the back rent on his apartment. And that extra month in the apartment was enough time for him to finish the demo tape for the jazz fusion concerto that he was composing.

Small events. Big consequences.

Most events in life do not feel dramatic. That may be because we simply don’t know where those actions take place in the causal continuum of actions and reactions in which we are enveloped.

It is nice, isn’t it, to think that we are born for important things, that we have purpose. As embodied identities, we tend to imagine such purpose as something grand, memorable. A timeless book. A scientific discovery. Ascendency in a career. Recognition from peers.

Yet suppose each of our lives was meant for a series of small, discrete purposes rather than a single large achievement. Suppose our roles in the flow of humanity rely on sets of specific tasks, a group of activities or interventions that might or might not be done at unique moments in time. It may not seem existentially dramatic to hear that an elderly woman delayed an engineering student just long enough to avoid being hit by a musician moonlighting as a courier. Would you be more impressed if you learned that the courier’s jazz tape landed him a recording contract? Or that the engineering student was a budding genius in the field of 3D printing of human organs? Or that two other people in the crowd who observed the old woman’s action decided that very night, independent to each other (as they did not know each other), to devote the remainder of their careers to community-focused pursuits and that their companies, by complete happenstance, years later co-launched an early warning system that was used to save an entire coastal area in India from a devastating flood?

It feeds my ego to think that I am destined for great things, such as a leadership role that is transformative or accomplishments that will make a so-called difference. If there is destiny, give me the kind with a capital ‘D’. Offer me a life that will be favorably remembered.

For most of us, including me, it probably doesn’t work that way. Rather than big “D” destiny, there is a myriad of small “f” fate, unique actions that happen at specific points in time without which the arc of history would be different, the path of someone’s life – a single individual – would be permanently altered, and the world would be less of the place it might otherwise be.

How lucky we are to live in an elaborate nexus of being in which our kindness to each other today leads to unimaginable consequences in a series of better tomorrows. Take the case of old woman who grabbed the younger woman’s elbow at the busy street corner. She now sews reusable masks and gowns for the staff at the local hospital. She herself was once a nurse. She went into that career decades earlier after a stranger unexpectedly handed her a pamphlet that had fallen from her knapsack. The then student hadn’t meant to take the pamphlet at the career fair she had intended. Still, after the pamphlet-extending stranger mentioned that a nurse had once saved his father’s life, the now old-once-was-young woman decided to take another look at the program. Five years later, as a young nurse herself, she decided outside of protocol to check the blood pressure for a pregnant woman. The screening saved both woman and unborn child. That child was born healthy and grew to marry a woman who had emigrated to this country from another land in a different hemisphere. The couple’s daughter herself had a son who took a job as an inner-city bike courier to pay his living expenses while he worked on a jazz fusion demo tape.

One song on that recording became an international hit.

Mrs. Benny Benini was proud of her new trashcans. They were the old kind, the sturdy metal kind, the kind that couldn’t easily be picked up by one of the newfangled sanitation services but instead had handles, for someone like Mr. Dayfuss, of Dayfuss’s Dumping Service, to grab and lift. It had taken Mrs. Benny Benini months to find the “vintage” cans, as they were called, after a prolonged search through many types of catalogues. It had only taken two days for the vintage cans to be delivered. Now they were poised on Mrs. Benny Benini’s curb. Even though they were empty, she had paid Rachel Wiley and her friend Thinky one dollar each to carry the cans down to the spot on the curb. Mrs. Benny Benini planned to watch Mr. Dayfuss’s reaction later in the morning when he arrived to get her trash. She wondered whether he would understand her message. She was proud that she had acted on the memory of something that she hoped Mr. Dayfuss would also remember.

But she was even prouder of the robin chick that had just flown into her screenless bathroom window.

“What a clever one you are!” Mrs. Benny Benini cooed.

Benny was not Mrs. Benny Benini’s first name. It had been her husband’s name. People just called her Mrs. Benny Benini because they wanted to show her respect. An eighty-three year-old woman deserved respect. An eighty-three year-old woman who was married to the founding editor of the Bobbing Apple News, a woman who herself was the long-time seventh grade teacher of the Bobbing Apple Elementary School, a woman who because of her husband’s inside stories and her in-class experience knew more history about people in Bobbing Apple than anyone else – such a woman deserved extra respect.

“Hogwash,” Mrs. Benny Benini would mutter to herself when she would open mail addressed to Mrs. Benny Benini. The neighbors all thought she was talking to herself when she gathered her mail each day from her crimson mailbox. No. Mrs. Benny Benini was talking to the people who kept addressing her as Mrs. Benny Benini. “My name is Beatrice, you fools.”

Sadly, no one called her Beatrice. The mailman, the postmaster, the people at the supermarket, even the nice young woman who helped clean her house called her Mrs. Benny Benini. And if they didn’t call her Mrs. Benny Benini, they called her Mrs. Benini. Didn’t anyone alive know that she preferred Beatrice? Wasn’t there a soul left on the planet who could see that she was and had always been Beatrice? Benny had called her Beatrice. Why wouldn’t anyone else do so now that he was no longer here? She wanted to hear her name. She wanted to hear her name from somebody either than herself.

The robin chick chirped as if it understood. In fact, it chirped in such a way that Mrs. Benini thought she heard ‘Beatrice”. What? Had the chick actually chirped “Beatrice”? She listened carefully, tilting her head to one side just like the chick. There was another chirp. There was another peep of something that could have been Beatrice. The sound made her smile at the chick. It made her forget – temporarily – that a dog named Bumpers had just launched the tiny creature from its nest. Mrs. Benini squatted down on her knees and brought her face close to the little flutter of fortune. She reached out to the chick and watched it skip right into her palm. Mesmorised, she felt the pulse of the chick’s heartbeat and forgot all about everything, all about Bumpers, all about her new trashcans, all about how much she missed Mr. Benny Benini. She became so lost in the wonder of the robin chick chirping in her hand that she did not even hear the assault on her trashcans from Mrs. James’s bumper. What she heard was not “bam, screech, smash, and barrump” but patter, patter, patter, and patter. The touch of the chick’s heartbeat was so amazing that Mrs. Benini thought that she could hear it, with her ears, rather than feel it, with the curled palm of her hand.

That was a good thing. Because Mrs. Benini’s trashcans had just been dented and smashed. They were lying on their sides. The trashcan lids, sturdy metal ones, had popped off their snug fittings and landed who knows where. Because the cans had been empty, no trash had spilled onto the ground. Had Mrs. Benini not been charmed by the brilliance of unfettered life, she would have fretted that Mrs. James had muffed the chance for Mr. Dayfuss to see the shiny cans from yesteryear in their freshly unspoiled splendor. Later in the morning, when he made his rounds, Mr. Dayfuss would miss the message intended by Mrs. Benini, a message delivered to him across decades of time, because all he would see when he drove his dilapidated trash truck down Camelot Court were dented and smashed up cans lying on Mrs. Benini’s lawn rather than shiny new ones that contained not even one scrap of refuse.

Fortune favored Mrs. Benini once more. Because this morning, the morning of Rachel and Jeremy’s thirteenth birthday, the first Saturday morning of summer, Mr. Dayfuss altered his rock solid schedule of eleven-sixteen service to Camelot Court and rambled his rumbling heap on wheels around the corner of Arthur Avenue and Camelot Court precisely seven seconds after Mrs. James did. Mr. Dayfuss saw Mrs. James turn into Camelot Court instead of Lancelot Lane. He saw Jeremy and the balloon pass overhead. He saw Bumpers take flight, Rachel and Thinky give chase, and Mrs. James receive the full impact of Mrs. Benini’s new trashcans on the front bumper of her Chevrolet Caprice.  Most importantly, Mr. Dayfuss saw Mrs. Benini’s new trashcans before Mrs. James’s did.

The impact on Mr. Dayfuss was profound. A fifty-three year-old man, a man unaccustomed to the finer things that life brought on the west side of Bobbing Apple, a man not unhappy with the more used and tattered things that life brought on the east side of Bobbing Apple, Mr. Dayfuss had seen many things. He had seen hardship. He had seen heartbreak. He had, however, never seen a message from the past delivered so clearly to the present.

The hot air balloon, the flying dog, the acrobatic aerobatics between Mr. McGillivibe and the boy whose father worked with Mr. Dayfuss’s nephew – those were not to be ignored. The sight of Mrs. Benini’s shiny new trashcans, gleaming in the early morning light, those were not to be forgotten, no matter how many times Mrs. James ran into and over them.

Mr. Dayfuss stopped his truck at the entrance to the Camelot Court cul-de-sac. He ignored the mess that Mrs. James was making of the cans in her desperate attempt to turn her Chevrolet Caprice around. He watched without looking while two girls and an older man tried to calm Mrs. James down. He took off his conductor’s cap and scratched the top of his head for what seemed like the longest of times. Then he smiled. And then he laughed. And then he stepped out of the truck, slapped his knees, threw his cap into the air, and let go a whoop and a “heeyaaaa!” that got everyone’s attention on Camelot Court who wasn’t either asleep, engrossed in yoga, or just plain deaf.

The toss of the cap got Rachel and Thinky’s attention; they stopped and stared at a man who had never done anything more in Bobbing Apple then nod his head and wave with the end of his fingers.

The whoop got Mrs. James’s and Mr. Matterson’s attention; Mrs. James stopped reversing over one trashcan long enough for Mr. Matterson to reach into the Chevrolet through the open window, turn off its ignition, and then pivot to make sure that the crazy truck driver did not still want what remained of Mrs. B’s trash.

The “heeyaaaa!” got Mrs. Benini’s attention; she stood up, saw Mrs. James’s car positioned atop her new trash cans, watched Mr. Dayfuss’s cap bounce like a ball into the air, and hurried down the steps of her house, across the entrance foyer, and out onto her front lawn.

Mr. Dayfuss did not repeat his whoop or his heeyaaa. He did, however, repeat the toss of his cap. Up the cap went, down it came. Mr. Dayfuss missed it the first three times. On the fourth toss, he caught the cap, then noticed Mrs. Benini standing on the driveway of her home, a robin chick perched in her palm. He held the cap in his fingers and nodded at Mrs. Benini.

“Thank you, Ms. Beatrice,” Mr. Dayfuss said.

The name Beatrice acted like a communal alarm clock. It set off another chain of action and reaction.

Ms. Beatrice beamed. When she did, the robin chick gave her a whistle and took off. “You are welcome, Derek,” Ms. Beatrice said.

Mr. Matterson watched the robin chick take off from the palm of Ms. Beatrice’s hand and walked away from the stalled Chevrolet Caprice, his eyes darting back and forth between Ms. Beatrice and the little robin that had disappeared into the oak tree.

Mrs. James scrambled from the car after Mr. Matterson, anxious to retrieve either her keys or to locate some assistance in keeping pace with the hot air balloon and her family.

Rachel ran toward Ms. Beatrice and asked her if she had seen which way Bumpers went.

Thinky ran toward Mr. Dayfuss and asked him if he knew how to follow a hot air balloon.

Of all the actions or reactions, Thinky’s might seem like the least logical. A robin has flown out of a woman’s hand, a car has flattened a new set of trashcans, a dump truck driver is tossing his cap like a child, and a girl who has already turned thirteen, a girl who is older than Rachel and Jeremy by a whole two months, approaches the dump truck driver and asks if he knows how to follow a hot air balloon. Fortunately, logic is not what Bobbing Apple discovered on the morning of Rachel and Jeremy’s thirteenth birthday.

“Yes,” Mr. Dayfuss said. “I know how to follow a hot air balloon.”

“You do?” Mrs. James shrieked. “Can you do it now?”

“I’d like to come,” Ms. Beatrice announced, moving like a jogger in slow motion.

“Me too,” Mr. Matterson declared, helping Ms. Beatrice cross the circle.

“He’s my dog,” Rachel signaled, with evident bias.

“It was my idea,” Thinky retorted, with equal prejudice.

And that was how Mrs. James, Mr. Matterson, and Ms. Beatrice ended up in the front seat of Mr. Dayfuss’s dump truck. It was how Rachel Wiley and Thinky Flannery ended up standing on the dump truck running boards. It was how Mr. Dayfuss ended up driving after a run-away hot air balloon with what the Bobbing Apple Buzz later dubbed the knights of Sir Bumpers’ Court.

Weeks pass like years. Day to day, the news cycle accelerates, as if an unseen force is turning a giant time wheel and cranking it faster, and faster. If we aren’t careful, our waking hours can be saturated with a seemingly unending drama of pandemic, social unrest, climate calamity, and poisonous politics. Respite must be actively sought. And sometimes life intervenes in surprising, even shocking ways.

I begin most mornings with a cup of tea, a view of the sky’s bloom, and some meditative prayer. Often, my routine includes review of a verse from the Bible or another religious text, usually accompanied by a brief recorded reflection from one or more cell phone apps. Last Tuesday I listened to the story of how Christ called to Nathanael, knowing the man’s name without previously having met him or been told about him. “Where did you get to know me?” Nathaniel asked. “I saw you under the fig tree,” he was told. What would you do, the narrator of the daily prayer asked, if today your name was called? How would you respond if today you were directly and publicly spoken to by God?

The question gave me pause. Part of me wondered if the Creator or prime mover of our world might not already be doing that, regularly, and I was just deaf to hearing my name called. But a public call-out and acknowledgment, with my name mentioned before a crowd of strangers? I wasn’t sure if that has happened. I didn’t quite know how I would respond.

Evening. The same day. I had just finished work and quietly slipped into the room where my wife was participating in an interactive webinar on spiritual clairvoyance and communication, an event that she, my sister, and one of my daughters had all joined as part of their unique yet shared journeys to explore, listen, learn, and connect. Together, they were convinced that my mom, a beautiful soul who died over a decade ago, might speak to my sister through one of the webinar mediums. I’m not closed to dialogues with the dead; I talk to Mom in my head regularly. But the concept of hearing from her through a public webinar seemed far-fetched. Even if Mom maintained a consciousness in some way similar to the one she had when she was alive, surely she must have better things to do than compete with other spirits for the chance to say hello through a medium.

What happened next happened quickly and without fanfare. As I entered the room, the idea of a necklace came to my mind; I quickly texted my sister (in jest, I must admit) that mom had a piece of jewelry for her. No sooner had I tapped ‘send’ than the woman doing the reading asked if anyone participating in the webinar had a mother whose name began with a hard “c”. She specifically mentioned Mom’s actual first name. When my sister raised her electronic hand indicating that the name meant something to her, the medium proceeded to describe Mom in ways that only someone who knew her should have been able to do.

“She’s talking about some type of jewelry,” the medium said. “She’s saying something about a necklace, I think. Does that make sense to you?”

It did not, to my sister. I, on the other hand, perked up. In the text, I had made up the bit about the jewelry; there wasn’t any special necklace that I knew of. I had simply thought about the word necklace. Nothing had been communicated to me about a necklace in the weeks, no, the years, that preceded. I was just being a smart-alecky big brother.

So I sat off-camera, attentive to what was to come next. Two thousand miles away, my sister did the same. There was no prompting from the medium. She relayed things my mom was supposedly saying. It sounded like it could be Mom. Still, lots of people have moms (dead or alive) who might talk about subjects such as spirituality and childhood. “Do you have a sibling?” the medium asked. My sister told her she had two. A few additional characteristics of Mom were shared, almost as if there was some effort being made between medium and the great beyond to demonstrate that this interaction was legitimate. “Your mother is a lovely spirit,” the medium noted. “She is talking very quickly too.” I shrugged. That seemed reasonable, as ten years without direct contact is quite a while. But it was honestly like watching someone on TV describe a separate TV show that only they could see and hear. Although interesting, it wasn’t exactly riveting.

Until I had my own fig tree moment. “She’s saying the name Mark. Do you know someone with that name?”

Ah. Yes. Well – that would be me.

I suppose there could be people who profess to be mediums but have highly developed abilities to manipulate others and guide them into subtle yet vital revelations. There must also be certain themes that are common to communications between mothers and daughters. And there may be information rapidly available online about participants in a webinar that, with the right staff and equipment, could be used to deceive. Many years ago, however, I knew someone whom I believed could communicate with spirits. I don’t pretend to know if the medium during the webinar last week was, like the person I knew, the “real deal”. I only know this: in the context of my life that day, what happened during the brief span of three to four minutes was remarkable. In the morning, I had been asked what I might do if God directly called my name. In the evening, it seemed that some cosmic force had done just that. Publicly. Had it been Mom? God? Another spiritual being? It requires too much effort to discount the experience as hoax, strange coincidence, or some combination of both. It is much easier to accept the events for what they probably were.

When Christ told Nathanael that He had seen him under the fig tree, Nathanael was shaken. “You are the Son of God!” he proclaimed.

“Do you believe because I saw you under the fig tree?” Christ asked. “You will see greater things than these.”

Another Biblical passage teaches that three things of importance abide in our lives: faith, hope, and love. My years thus far have been blessed with an abundant share of love and hope. Perhaps my future will fill with opportunities to embrace the third component of that sacred triad. To make that possible, I’ll need to create more space for that wonder amidst the tidal flow of distractions in my daily routine.

Because there are news cycles, yes. But sometimes there is actual news.

“Try not to laugh.”

When I was six, I had surgery for a double hernia. Two weak areas of muscle in the lower abdominal wall, present from birth, needed repair. I don’t remember much about the experience, aside from counting backwards while receiving anesthesia, waking up on a cold gurney in a hospital hallway, and a bedside visit that evening by my father and uncle. From the perspective of a six year-old, there was nothing funny about the ordeal. It was scary (especially when I got short of breath counting backwards) and it was serious, real serious (the boy in the hospital bed next to me the night before my surgery was recovering from a head injury after crashing his bike at high speed).

And it was painful. The hernias themselves had never hurt. But the surgical fix, a procedure involving stretching and resewing layers of muscle together, sure did. I have no recollection of the surgeon or the nurses or anyone who worked in the hospital. I do, however, remember the advice that someone told my mother when I was lying foggy-brained in the hospital corridor. Moving was good but it would make the pain worse. Ice cream helped. I was to feel lucky that I wasn’t the boy in the other hospital bed. And I should try not to laugh.

There is nothing in my memory between the hallway and the evening meal. I am simply there, curled up under crisp white sheets, my head on one but two pillows. My father and uncle have just arrived. It is after dinner. Dad has parked his wheelchair at the foot of my bed. My uncle is pacing the room, looking at me, then uneaten food on the dinner tray, then the empty hospital bed next to mine.

“Where’s your roommate?”

“Home,” I burped. How someone could crash his bicycle so badly he needed surgery one week and then go home the next was a wonder to me. I didn’t tell that though to my uncle or father. Because it hurt to talk. Also, mysteriously, a bowl of Dairy Queen soft-serve ice cream had appeared on my hospital tray. So I braved the two feet of empty space between ice cream and my mouth with a slow, intentional reach. Two spoonfuls of cold vanilla later, I realized that my visitors were enjoying the view from their side of the room. That wasn’t surprising: my uncle had a way of looking like he always saw something on the horizon, even if the visibility was poor or the space was small. And my father used to watch him and wait for an inevitably unexpected observation.

“Better than the alternative,” my uncle smiled.

What alternative? That didn’t seem like a nice thing to say. Had he heard about the kid? The boy’s head had been all wrapped up in gauze. He had crashed his bike going almost sixty miles-per-hour down a hill (he had told me that himself). He had talked almost as fast as he rode a bike.

The pair of male mentors in my life must have sensed a bit too much ernestness from the hospital room’s remaining occupant. No doubt I had the early version of that jutting jaw I get when think something is serious. So, alas, they started into their unique version of a hospital comedy routine. Alone, neither was very funny. Together, they were unusually comical. An odd couple. Just like my favorite TV and film duo, Laurel and Hardy.

There’s probably no need for me to finish the story. Of course they made me laugh. Of course it hurt. Of course the ice cream and the laughter made me feel better.

We live in such serious times. A pandemic, political and social discord, dramatic climate-caused calamity – the year has not had much cause for joy. Unfortunately, there aren’t many indicators that the next few months will be a whole lot better. Previously, I have written about the importance of respectful action in response to appropriate feelings of outrage. Some people have asked me how I can reconcile recognition of an emotion as powerful as outrage with an encouragement to publicly engage with purpose, with accountability, with deliberation. There is a palpable dissonance in the space between such intensity of emotion (“outrage”) and the recommended response (“thoughtful action”). The gap can feel like an unbridgeable void.

That’s where we need to remember laughter. No, there is nothing funny about bigotry, inequity, and injustice. There is no humor in hatred. But we named ourselves sapiens for a reason. We have the ability to recognize emotion, to name it, to respond in ways that demonstrate reflection, planning. Being wise means so much more than being cognitively conscious. It means being responsible. Considerate. Goal-oriented. Collaborative.

It also means being funny. Wit and comedy are not for many circumstances. There are proper times for anger, for fear, for tears, and for solemnity. There must be ample time for outrage. But there must regularly be time to laugh – at ourselves, at each other, at our propensity for foolishness. We are an odd species. We have the ability to inhabit multiple planets in our solar system – or destroy everything we so often say we cherish. The birth lottery is ruthless for many. Any yet happiness does not seem restricted for those with material wealth and means. In fact, people with measurably less frequently find greater satisfaction and fulfillment. There is no foolproof formula for life. There is only the time we have to breathe and the learning that we have opportunity to share during that breathing.

Let us then keep finding ways to hold ourselves accountable while lifting, always lifting, eternally lifting and holding each other up. There should be joy that comes with being. There must be gratitude holding hands with disappointment. There should be miracle found within a good belly laugh.

Something painful doesn’t always need to hurt.

The Franklin Institute in Philadelphia was my favorite museum as a child. Please, don’t be impressed: I did not necessarily like or frequent museums. They seemed tiring, so much standing and shuffling without a destination. How can exercise that is so easy tire a person so quickly? My mind couldn’t understand what my body knew all too well. A museum was usually less interesting than the bus ride to it. By the time a boy my age reached the top of the building’s first staircase, he had been told not to run, shout, jump, or talk at least a dozen times. Rules sapped enthusiasm as fast as kryptonite immobilized Superman.

But not at the Franklin Institute. There were things to do at the Franklin, exhibits to touch, limits to test. You could walk through a beating heart. You could shove a steel ball and watch what happened to the other objects lined up behind it. You could stand in front of a painting about illusions and watch the light in your eyes buzz.

“I don’t see it.” She’s right there. “I only see the old lady.” Look, look. Don’t you see her? She’s right there.

We were exploring the optical illusion section. Hanging in the air were canvases with pen and ink lines that seemed to sizzle. Waves of black and white forms disoriented the sense of balance. A drawing of a hook-nosed old lady was supposed to look like a beautiful woman if you turned your head and eyes in the right way. To a young boy who could only see the hag, it was an embarrassing challenge. Some of my classmates said they saw the profile of a beautiful woman. My eyes could only decipher the big nose and jutting chin of a crone who seemed straight out of a bad fairy tale.

Look! someone told me. Just look! She’s right there.

Right there. Beauty hung before me and all I could see was its opposite. The story of my life. Perfect

So I stood there. And I willed that princess to come into view. I focused and I focused. I narrowed my eyes, turned my face, clenched my fists, and burned a laser beam of intent at the elderly bulbous nose that dominated my consciousness. You will become beautiful. You WILL become beautiful. I worked hard to see the metamorphosis. When it still failed to occur, I almost faked my ability to see it. An eight year-old boy does not easily admit to friends that he cannot see the exposed long neck of a beautiful woman and risk a bus ride home filled with jibes about how he prefers ugly old ladies to mysterious young women.

Gently, someone helped. I don’t recall who it was. There is simply an echo in my memory of someone my age, a girl I think, quietly standing beside me. I can almost hear that voice suggest how, if I imagined that the old nose was a chin and then let my view go soft, I might, yes, maybe I could see that the right eyelashes of the old woman were the left eyelashes of –

A princess. I saw her! She had not been there. No. She had not existed, there had only been her opposite, and then, in an instant, she had always been there, youth shadowed by its future, the hag perhaps the princess years later following decades of regal wonder and majesty. Before me eyes, the crone transformed herself into an elderly queen. I could see both young and old. I sensed beauty stretched across the spectrum of a single life time.

I did not use those words when I re-identified the crooked nose of the old lady as the exposed jawline and neck of the graceful, young woman. First I had to prove to friends that I really saw her. Once convinced, they were off to the next challenge. Then I stayed behind, for a moment without boundaries, practicing my newfound vision. Over an over, I made my internal viewfinder flip the perspectives, back and forth, like a new form of exercise, a training for my brain so that it would not lose its ability to see the averted gaze of youth hidden behind the sagging profile of age. To this day, I still enjoy the drill. It feels good to appreciate the benefits of a nimble consciousness. It is reassuring to experience the freedom of an open mind.

It takes work. Labor. There is a myth in the modern human story that what we become is based on what we will to happen, that our successes in life are a direct result of our individual effort. You or I work. And so you or I succeed. While personal fortitude is often prerequisite to certain types of outcome, it is inadequate – necessary yet insufficient – for achievement of a higher order, for fulfillment of purpose beyond your or my aggrandizement of wealth and material goods. You and I are more than what you or I do alone. When we co-labor, when we co-labor-ate, so much more is possible.

Some things are so obvious – when we notice them. It can take work, however, to notice. There is labor involved in observation. I may think that my job is to do things alone, to reach insights independently, to make things happen for myself. Subsequently, if and when I taste accomplishment, I may misinterpret the experience as uniquely my own, perhaps even aspire to share my insights about perseverance and performance with you, offering you help in your own path. It is easy to mistake arrivals as evidence of individual effort. We miss opportunities for real progress when we overlook the destinies only possible through co-creation.

My boyhood ability to fully read the optical illusion at the Franklin Institute represents a simple yet sublime example of collaboration. Like the duality of the young and old woman, the beauty nestled within the mystery of this world is that we travel best when we journey together. Our collective actions manifest an emerging common purpose. Our co-labor offers new perspective on what is possible when we work as one.

Look, listen, and feel. For decades, training in cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) began with that guideline, as a way to determine if someone needed chest compressions or rescue breathing. Look for the movement of the chest. Listen and feel for airflow against your ear and cheek. The approach was logical, evidence-based. It was easy to remember. And it helped keep people who were unconscious or simply asleep on the streets from having their ribs squeezed by an overly enthusiastic responder.

The guideline worked too – at least in part. Unfortunately, there was a big drawback in its use: it often delayed action. Most lay people, having little or no experience in medical care, took too long fussing over an unresponsive person trying to figure out whether or not the person was breathing. As a result, fewer people received quick and effective resuscitation And some people died who may otherwise have been saved.

For far too long, I’ve followed an objective ‘look, listen, and feel’ framework when it comes to social justice. Yes, I’ve supported equity in our collaborative social and health system responses. I’ve looked at the published data, I’ve listened to the disparity trends, and I’ve felt the concern of colleagues and community regarding the tragic continuation and effect of racism at individual and structural levels. There is no doubt: systemic racism has led to inequitable treatment, outcomes, and access to services in American society. It has resulted in a well-founded fear among millions of citizens and families that basic community structures, such as law enforcement, exist not for their safety but for the safety of others. Black parents teach their children to expect targeting because of their skin color. They train their children as many themselves were trained – don’t show disrespect, don’t run, don’t resist. I’ve heard all this, over the years. I’ve been saddened by what I’ve heard. I’ve believed it, and borne witness to the inequitable outcomes regarding health, mortality, and social impact in many personal and professional interactions. Recently, I’ve even looked – usually with eyes partially averted – at the devastating recordings of brutality, of bigotry, and of bias. Like many physicians, I have seen my share of trauma and tragedy within the walls of hospitals. Like many of my colleagues, I do not want to visually see more evidence of the ugly awfulness of what hate is capable of doing to human beings. The memories of horrific sadness lurk beneath the surface of my experience, ready to reach up from their murky submersion and grab hold of me deep from within. So I have tried not to look at recent events – not really. And I have tried to hear without listening the renewed cries for help from Black America – not fully. And I have tried to feel the anguish, the despair, and the anger felt by black people in American – with detached emotional engagement. Yes, we need change. Yes, we have clear evidence of active racism. Yes, we have leadership who deliberately fan the flames of hatred and division openly burning in our country.

Yet I have not acted. I have diagnosed and kept a dispassionate distance. I have not joined the movement decrying racism and demanding justice. I have felt no outrage.

Until now.

BLACK LIVES MATTER. Yes, all human lives matter. Yes, not all police are thugs and yes we must not succumb to a social philosophy of bitterness and acrimony. But know this, my white friends, colleagues, and community members. This is about action. This is about NOW. It is not about losing ourselves in the wasteland of distracting noise and conversation. For too long, black lives have not mattered. We must affirm, together and in one voice, that Black Lives Matter.

Look! You can see with your own eyes how black people are treated differently. Listen! You can hear with your own ears how terrified, disheartened, and angry so many black people are. Feel! You can sense with our own hearts, with your whole being, how injustice is occurring and you can know, beyond any doubt, that this injustice must be opposed.

So be outraged. Act. Black people don’t need white people to sympathize. They need us to speak out. They need us to vote. They need us to stand firm against racism in all its forms. All people of color need American society to respond in this way. And right now, in this time and in this America, every person of every skin color needs to feel outrage. This is not a time for caution, not a moment for timid statements of support. Feel outrage. Do something productive with that outrage. Talk with others. Demand accountability and change. Stand up to and against bigotry when you see, hear, and experience it.

Because racism is openly on display. I shouldn’t need a black leader to tell me that there is and has been a clear double standard in this country since the first days of slavery; I can see it. I shouldn’t need a community leader to interpret for me the code of bigotry that slips or unashamedly spills from elected leaders, appointed officials, and media pundits; I can hear it. I should not need anyone to describe the pain and suffering that racism, hate, and polarizing language brings to so many American people; I can feel it in my conscience and I am stirred by it in my soul.

Look, listen, and feel? The American Heart Association dropped the phrase from its guidelines because a delay in recognition of unresponsiveness costs lives. It is time white America dropped it from our own response to racism because our delay in engagement is costing lives. Too many lives. Too many wonderful, beautiful, and abbreviated lives.

If you are white, don’t get caught up in the fragile hesitancy of uncertainty, indecision, or guilt. Skins are the color that skins are. That should not matter in America. Be outraged when it does matter. Say yes to Black Lives Matter.

Act. Responsibly. Respectfully. Compassionately. But please act.

Our words have rich histories. Inside those histories lie oft overlooked secrets to our beliefs and values, and to ourselves.

To be with know – that is what the adverb “conscientiously” means. We have adapted the definition over the years, adding layers to it reflecting the importance of responsibility and morality in our lives. But to be with know, in fact to be “with thorough know”, that is where the meaning of acting with conscience is grounded.

This awareness brings me comfort. If you’re anything like me, you may have had times when you requested or even prayed for guidance. Help me understand. Tell me what it is I should do. The fictional character Pinocchio had Jiminy Cricket by his side. I have, at many times, longed for my own cricket, guardian angel, or spirit guide. Even if I didn’t heed the advice, it would be nice to have it, to hear it, to receive the counsel of a greater good pulsing through the world.

The external world offers many insights and supports. We exist in this world, breathing its air, exchanging its energy, finding our place in its motions and flow. Oddly, and somewhat miraculously, the arc of human years begins with separation and cycles through a series of swirls to reunion. Young people struggle for or are thrust into independence. Older folks long for reconciliation and interdependence. Along the way, each of us bounces into and over the sometimes self-constructed bumps and potholes of our unique paths. I tell myself that my destiny is of my own making. And yet I sense – deep within – that this is not necessarily so. We seek and receive signs. Then we question whether those communications are real, whether we are overindulging our mind’s creativity within a universe that is more random than it is purposeful. We languish within confusion. We doubt.

Ah but listen. Feel. Hear the know that is within.

Somewhere along my life line, I realized that I had, instantly and always accessible, a thorough know, a conscience. This does not mean that I believe that I understand the universe, its creator, and the meaning and miracles coursing through my days. Not at all. With age comes uncertainty. And my uncertainty grows with the years, a tree with outstretched branches filled with missteps and mistaken memories. Rather, there is a reassurance within that supersedes my ignorance, a stabilizing influence that is ready to aide if and when beckoned. I have my own Jiminy Cricket. He is an older version of myself, this ethereal presence, a conscience at the end of its human breath, a perspective on now that offers acceptance and peace during moments of sadness, strife, and instability. This other me has the type of know that thoroughly finds solace in the release of doubt to vulnerability and, dare I say, faith. My guide is certain of nothing except its own limitations. My thorough know is the balm found within these limitations. It is this breath, and this one. This heart beat. And this one. This joy from shared love. And the next one that awaits.

This morning a butterfly as large as my face floated across the bushes in my front yard. I watched it, mesmerized, then trusted an instinct to photograph it and send the image to my sister who was, at that precise moment and without my conscious awareness, sitting, two thousand miles away, next to the grave of our parents. While magic fluttered past me, a beautiful monarch moved past her as well. And there, within that moment, my sister had been speaking to our mother.

My intellect would try to explain what happened and what it meant. My “thorough know” wordlessly observes and bears witness.

Our world is awash with know. May your days find restoration in its soothing showers.