Getting older: Walking through the valley of the shadows

 
 "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me."  (Psalm 23:4)

   In the past couple months Life has had me glancing at the shadows in that valley we all begin walking through the day we are born. The shadows have taken recognizable form of late, along with that feeling of having far more years behind me than ahead.

   It is a growing realization not of fear, nor unease, even as it is a bittersweet, decreasingly vague recognition.

   In May 2018, it was the too-soon demise of a lifelong career in journalism, scythed by economic imperatives of a newspaper industry on its knees. About half of the staff  eventually accompanied me out the door, a sort of death, professionally. I endured the cycle of grief in my own fashion -- sort of in reverse . . . internally forced acceptance, but inevitably spattered by the sense of loss, anger, depression. 

   "Closure" took months, and if I am honest years to process.

   But that was nothing. In 2019, I lost both my parents to dementia. It was not unexpected, and they were both in their 90s. Still, their "golden years" were anything but; along with the grief there was relief the ordeal -- theirs and, ignobly my own -- was over. 

   Last year, two beloved aunts passed, as well as an uncle I considered something of a second father. A couple weeks ago, my father-in-law, his long battle with cancer and pain over, died in hospice care.

   Live long enough, and the circle of mortality closes around you, slowly, like a lazy but persistent, patient fog.

   Finally, you are confronted with the perils of aging, and medical surprises. First, it was learning the artificial heart valve I received 11 years ago was wearing out; it will have to be replaced at some point in the near future. I'm a good candidate for the procedure, whether the same open-heart operation I had the first time, or an arterial insertion of an implant, a far-less invasive prospect.

   But it won't be the heart problem that puts me on a University of Utah Medical Center operating table this coming Thursday. That will be brain surgery to remove a meningioma pressuring my optic nerve. While believed to be benign, it has grown incrementally since being discovered by an MRI; not life-threatening, but eventually my eyesight could be at risk.

   Headaches, double vision, and brief but increasing bouts of vertigo have born witness to what that second MRI confirmed some weeks ago.

   As the neurosurgeon told me. removing my cranial interloper is a highly successful procedure. A few days in hospital, then home to recover for a few weeks.

   In a follow-up this week on the heart issue, my cardiologist assured me the valve replacement was not an immediate need, and we can revisit that after I recover from the brain surgery. So, that was good news.

    "What you need to understand is that both of these things are readily treatable. You have many years to look forward to," he said with a smile and pat on my shoulder.

   And, I do believe he is right. I am at peace, and my Eastern Orthodox Christian faith is a comfort that I am, have been and always will be, in God's hands. (As are we all).

   The point, and I know I have taken way too long to get to it, is that Life -- perhaps especially in one's sixth and seventh decades -- has a way of spotlighting those mile markers along the path through the valley of the shadows.

   We need to be aware of death, not with fear, but with sober acceptance that it comes to professions, loved ones, and us. And, as I've contemplated this of late, I am not ignorant of the all-too-human tendency to see the deaths of our loved ones, even ourselves, as somehow an especially grievous wound on the Cosmos.

   It is not entirely a sort of spiritual narcissism to feel thus. Still, when it comes to the grave, we often lack perspective. Tens of thousands of Turkish and Syrian innocents died in the recent earthquakes; tens of millions have been sacrificed on the altars of Nazism, Communism, and in endless wars large and small. 

   Suffering is humanity's common currency, not the dollar or Euro, Yuan or Yen.

    And in a matter of degrees of suffering, how many of us -- too often outraged at the vagaries of our mortal existence in a society where shelter, food, comfort, medical care, and mindless entertainment are considered our due -- dare to compare our sufferings to the myriads of those who perish horribly who so rarely enter our thoughts?

   It shouldn't, then, be a matter of "Why me?" Really, it is "Why not me?"

   For me, my faith has become not the expectation of divine rescue from trials and tribulations, but rather the expectation and belief that we are truly never alone -- and that life's detours and pain can, however unbidden or unwelcome, birth a sort of wisdom, deeper compassion, and banishment of mortal fear.

 

   St. John Chrysostom put it this way:

   "What is dying? Just what it is to put off a garment. For the body is about the soul as a garment; and after laying this aside for a short time by means of death, we shall resume it again with more splendor."

   In the meantime, we live. We love. We comfort. We judge ourselves harshly, even as we forgive liberally.

   Whether I have weeks, months, years or decades ahead, I want to live this way. That is my prayer -- borrowed from St. Philaret of Moscow and posted on the wall of my home office:

"O Lord, grant me to greet the coming day in peace. Help me in all things to rely upon Your holy will. In every hour of the day reveal Your will to me.

"Bless my dealings with all who surround me. Teach me to treat all that comes to me throughout the day with peace of soul and with firm conviction that Your will governs all. In all my deeds and words guide my thoughts and feelings.

"In unforeseen events let me not forget that all are sent by You. Teach me to act firmly and wisely, without embittering and embarrassing others.

"Give me strength to bear the fatigue of the coming day with all that it shall bring. Direct my will, teach me to pray. Pray You Yourself in me."

 

                                                    ______________

   UPDATE:  Going into my fourth week since the operation, my recovery is steady and on its own schedule. Swelling along a much-larger-than-expected incision (running from the crown of my skull across to my right ear area and down to my ear lobe) was significant until the last few days, and is now all but gone. So far, the headaches, vision and vertigo symptoms are gone, and the moments of memory gaps -- in verbal expression, but not written, oddly enough -- have diminished sharply. --BM

St. Sophrony: Of faith, and faithfulness

Been reading ”We Shall See Him as He is,” the spiritual autobiography of St. Sophrony. This quotation touched me like trumpet of truth:

“Oh, what a paradoxical mixture is man — on the one hand he inspires delight and wonder; on the other, sad bewilderment at his cruelty and savagery. The soul decides to pray for the world but such prayer never attains its ultimate purpose, since no one and nothing can deprive people of freedom to yield to evil, to prefer darkness to light.”

The struggle, he says, must begin within, the weapons being humility and repentance— in the sense not only of recognition of the evil within us, but reformation… hence the “miracle” of both accepting and giving grace to others.

And even at age 69, that’s still a daunting and almost incomprehensible task.

So, Faith and faithfulness.

Click here for More about the saint

Amid COVID fears and cashless consumers, how do Salvation Army bell ringers fare?

 My latest freelancing effort for The Salt Lake Tribune:

By Bob Mims | Special to The Tribune

Photo by Rick Egan, The Salt Lake Tribue

Every winter for almost a decade, Van Dodd has volunteered as a Salvation Army bell ringer, wishing a Merry Christmas to passersby — whether or not they pause to drop loose change or a dollar bill or two into his iconic red kettle.

Many pass on by, perhaps offering a furtive nod; others ignore his holiday cheer altogether.

Then, Dodd says, there are those brief, precious moments when he can engage a mother, a father and kids in an upbeat conversation. Parents drop money in the pot, leaving with a smile and their youngsters clutching candy canes.

“I’m a joyful kind of person. I kind of make people come off their shelf, try to brighten up their day,” Dodd says. “I’ve been ringing the [red kettle] bell for nine years now. When I relocated here from Indiana for my job in October last year [2020], I went right over to the Salvation Army office to volunteer again.”

Dodd, a 58-year-old father of three grown children, was assigned a spot in front of the Walmart at 2705 E. Parleys Way in Salt Lake City, the same bell-ringing station he returned to this December. He acknowledges with a sigh that in an increasingly cashless society, the clinking of coins and the rustle of greenbacks going into his kettle have been less frequent this year.

“The spirit of giving just isn’t the same,” he says. “People are in so much of a rush, so busy, with everything on their minds about COVID, whether [it is safe] to stop and give. ... Sometimes, if I just stand back from the kettle, then people might come and give something.”

Nationally, the Red Kettle campaign has seen its contributions first slip from a record $146.6 million in 2015 to $142.7 million in 2018 and then plunge to $126 million in 2019. It grew worse as the coronavirus took hold in 2020, with Red Kettle donations tumbling to $118.9 million.

Capt. Rob Lawler, officer in charge of Salt Lake City’s Salvation Army Corps, says Red Kettle donations here sank from $329,000 in 2018 to $211,000 in 2019 and barely $100,000 last year.

The pandemic also has made recruiting bell ringers — whether volunteer or paid as temporary seasonal workers — a painful task. From about 70 Red Kettle workers in 2018, Lawler could count on 20 or so on any given day this past week, the midpoint of the 2021 holiday campaign.

...  to read the story in its entirety and view some amazing photos, click here:  https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/12/18/amid-covid-fears-cashless/

LDS Church-owned FamilySearch now lists same-sex couples in its geneaological records

Here is my latest freelancing effort, running today in The Salt Lake Tribune: 

----

   FamilySearch, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ genealogical website, says its nearly 2-year-old move to list same-sex parents and couples in its massive databank has proved to be a popular one.

   How popular? Well, FamilySearch, by policy, does not publicly release such specific statistics. Still, Chief Genealogical Officer David Rencher says those unpublished numbers do show that including “same-sex couples and same-sex parents has been well-received by the community of enthusiasts engaged in family history.”

   “Every person’s life is important to reflect in the fabric of the human family,” explains Rencher, who also serves as director of the church’s Family History Library in downtown Salt Lake City, “and adding these features to the [the site’s] family tree [feature] enables everyone to experience and see where they fit into the big picture.”

   The Dec. 10, 2019, official announcement, however, has not changed the church’s opposition to same-sex marriage nor its recognition of only traditional, male-female unions for solemnization and “sealing for eternity” within the faith’s temples.

   Thus, the FamilySearch initiative remains just another step for those hoping for wider same-sex acceptance by the church, says Nathan Kitchen, president of Affirmation, an advocacy and support group for LGBTQ Latter-day Saints and their families and friends.

   “When the announcement was first made,” Kitchen says, there was a “sense of relief within Affirmation and LGBTQ communities that the church would finally open its family records listings and pedigree format for all family configurations, not just opposite-sex monogamous and polygamous family configurations.”

   But it wasn’t necessarily seen as “an inclusive gesture,” he adds, “rather a necessary evolution for FamilySearch to survive and thrive in the family history marketplace.”

   Though a nonprofit operation, FamilySearch — linked to the church’s 5,400 family history centers worldwide and boasting nearly 1.4 billion individual names in its family tree archives — is a big player in a digital arena that includes for-profit companies like Ancestry.com, MyHeritage.com and FindMyPast.com.

   Kitchen notes the latter three genealogical sites were ‘listing and including same-sex couples and their children long before FamilySearch.org made its announcement and subsequent changes.”

   Of course, those family history services are not owned and operated by a religious institution committed to what it sees as divinely defined marriage on one hand and changing mores and cultural norms on the other.

   Rencher puts it this way: “Issues surrounding gender cross all segments of the population; so these new features accommodated [church members] whose families need to be reflected accurately in the FamilySearch family tree, as well as any of the other millions of [our] users throughout the world.”

   Kitchen says his own mother was among the many who welcomed FamilySearch’s same-sex pedigree expansion.

   “Yes, [she] was very excited to add me and my husband to the family tree in FamilySearch after my marriage,” he says. “[And] over the past couple years, I have heard of many parents who are happily adding their same-sex married children [and] grandchildren into their proud family heritage.”

   Even so, Kitchen asserts that “as fast as parents can add their same-sex married children to their family records in FamilySearch, the church removes them” from the faith by withdrawing their memberships.

   “It is a huge disconnect . . . to have the church remove them from their ‘forever family,’” he says. “For Latter-day Saint parents, this eternal family tree, not the FamilySearch family tree, is the only one that really matters in the end.”

   Kitchen and others in the LGBTQ community hold out hope the church’s proclaimed prophetic leadership will have a “revelation” that includes same-sex spouses and their families in the next world.

....

To read the entire story, with photos, click on this link:  LDS Church embraces inclusion of same-sex couples and parents in its FamilySearch genealogy database (sltrib.com)

Adidas-wearing pastor has a goal for Salt Lake City Unitarians: Get a kick out of life

  So, had a Tribune assignment to profile a new pastor at Salt Lake 1st Unitarian Church. 

  When he politely, and eloquently, declined to offer the usual background  -- age, marital status, family background -- I thought how will this possibly work? But it did, going to show even a 60+(+) semiretired journalist can learn a new trick now and then. 

  I thought it turned out rather well, and as always, Francisco Kjolseth found the less-traveled photos path to make the page pop. Kudos, again, to Editor Dave Noyce, another one-of-a-kind character blessing my universe, and a talented wordsmith to boot. 

________

     After 34 years with outspoken social and political activist Tom Goldsmith at its helm, Salt Lake City’s First Unitarian Church is turning to a contemplative Harvard Divinity School-educated minister and educator to help chart its future.

    But as interim pastor, the Rev. Ian White Maher will not be replacing the Rev. Goldsmith, who retired from the pulpit in May. Instead, the Portsmouth, N.H., native has a two-year contract to help the nearly century-old, 300-member church at 569 S. 1300 East contemplate both its congregational and civic missions before selecting a permanent senior pastor.

    “I’m not just here as some sort of consultant to make sure the church is healthy, though that is part of my job,” Maher explains. “But truly why I am here is to help people believe that they can fall in love with this life. . . to truly fall in love again despite all the grief and heartache we see.”

    Indeed, Maher — whose own activist credentials are hardly lacking, including advocacy for immigrant, LGBTQ and racial rights as well as what he characterizes as “multiple civil disobedience arrests” — sees the inward, contemplative journey as going hand in hand with First Unitarian’s long history of pushing for social justice, income equality and environmental protections.

    “There are so many people today who feel completely disconnected from their spiritual lives, and from organized religion,” Maher says, citing a 2014 Pew Research study showing 23% of Americans identify as “nones” when asked their religion — up from 16% in 2007. (During the same time period, self-identified Christians dipped to 71% from 78%).

    That’s [more than] a fifth of the American population. You have all these people that are ‘unchurched.’ And that doesn’t mean they are [all] atheists; it just means that what had been working is no longer working,” Maher contends. “I honestly, truly believe that the problems that we are facing — war, refugee problems, income inequality problems — are not actually our [real] problems. Our problems are greed, alienation and loneliness, and these are actually spiritual problems.”

. . . .

     To read the rest of this story, and view photos that illustrate it, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/09/22/new-adidas-wearing-pastor/

Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur: Times for deep reflection, repentance and resolve

(Excerpts from my story in Sunday's Salt Lake Tribune on the beginning of Judaism's High Holy Days)

   Listen carefully during the daylight hours of Tuesday and Wednesday, and you may hear the blasts of the shofar rising from synagogues along the Wasatch Front.

  From a twisted ram’s horn come tones both alarming and plaintive, at the same time triumphant and hauntingly like the sobs of a lost child for its mother: This is Rosh Hashana, the Jewish new year, which begins Monday evening — a two-day observance as rich in millennia-old traditions as it is in how 21st-century Jews in Utah and across the planet understand and experience the holiday.

  “Rosh Hashana has so many different meanings to it,” Rabbi Samuel Spector of Salt Lake City’s Congregation Kol Ami acknowledges. “In Judaism, we say that this was the day that God created humankind. There is a big focus during Rosh Hashana on togetherness, on seeing the holiness and humanity and one another, and in coming together as a community.

  “It’s a time for us to really reset. Ten days later is Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement,” Spector says. “We learn that, leading up to Yom Kippur, we are supposed to do an accounting of our souls and think about how we can be better, how we can both make our world better and be better ourselves, and make our world better in the new year.”

 To read the rest of my story, and see more photos, click on this link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/09/05/utah-jews-enter-high-holy/

St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral celebrating sesquicentennial in the heart of Salt Lake City

    Having an occasional freelance assignment now, in semi-retirement, from The Salt Lake Tribune has been a nice change. What is old is new again, kinda sorta. :)

This is my latest assignment for Religion Editor Dave Noyce (friend and former boss).

    "In the mid-19th-century Mormon theocracy ruled by pioneer-prophet Brigham Young, plans by smatterings of Episcopalians to carve out their own religious niche in the Utah Territory seemed audacious.

    But, in July 1867, two decades after Young had led Mormon pioneers into the Salt Lake Valley, newly consecrated Episcopal Bishop Daniel Tuttle — having first paid a courtesy call to the leader of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints — presided over his church’s first services in Salt Lake City’s Independence Hall.

    These pioneering Episcopalians went on to establish one of the earliest organized, permanent Protestant presences in Utah.

    “You could characterize it as both a gamble and a miracle, but it’s also what love does — it spreads out and drenches every nook and cranny [of a community],” says the Rev. Tyler Doherty, dean and rector of the Episcopal Diocese of Utah’s Cathedral of St. Mark, which is celebrating its sesquicentennial in September. . . . 

Read rest of my story, with photos by clicking this web link: https://www.sltrib.com/religion/2021/07/10/after-years-utahs-second/

A bright spring morning, an old dog, a wagon, and honoring the Walk of Life

 Part of my daily routine is a contemplative morning walk along riverside trails or in parks. I put on my earphones and log on to a podcast, or play portions of an audio prayer book, psalter, or if I'm in a more secular mood, an NPR, Axios or BBC newscast.

 Today, it was the prayer book on play as I did several circuits around a soccer fields complex above the Murray City Park. The air was invigorating, cool and crisp ahead of a warm spring day, a slight breeze in the trees where sunlight dappled a swaying canopy of leaves, while nesting birds chirped and fluttered through the branches.

 Then, as I got into stride and sipped my Starbucks French roast, I saw him -- an athletic man in his late 30s or early 40s towing his mixed-breed, gray-muzzled dog behind him. The canine lay nearly motionless on a small mattress and blanket aboard a wagon.

 Perhaps, in days and years passed, the man's four-legged friend had taken his human for long walks. Like so many other dog owners do with the wide open greenspace there, human and dog had played on the acres of green, tossing and chasing balls or frisbees. But now the years had taken their toll, replacing a puppy's boundless, energetic youth with the ragged, slow breaths and half-closed eyes of an ancient dog.

 Stamina had faded, aches in hips and shoulders grown, the runs becoming walks, the walks becoming shorter until this routine of quiet, simple companionship became what I saw today.

This day may have been the dog's last, or at least one of them. Yet, his human friend was honoring a life that had been -- and remained, even in its twilight -- precious and beloved.

 I remembered the many dogs I have had the privilege of knowing and sharing all-to-brief moments in time and unconditional love with over my life.

 I did not intrude on this moment of bonding and honor between the man and dog he dutifully towed behind him. Instead, I just stood still, quietly witnessed the pair as they went down a hill and disappeared.

 And, with a smile and wet eyes, I said a prayer for two souls on the Walk of Life.

 

Soul Searching: On Confusing the Duties of Faith with the Lure of Political Power

    Hopefully, this will truly be a time of soul searching for Evangelical Christians (as for us all) over confusing faith with political power, and thus a bitter harvest -- often borne of willful ignorance of moral compromise in leadership.

    And of course it is not just Evangelicals who detoured into this dead end path; still this uniquely American Protestant community seemed to fall hardest for a false secular gospel that clothed itself in fear -- and ultimately looked little different than the violence and hate that likewise betrayed and usurped other, initially peaceful protests over legitimate racial and justice concerns this past year.

   My friend, and a mentor in my Eastern Orthodox Christian faith, Fr. Steven Clark, put it this way in a comment:

"The evil one showed the world and said: 'This I will give you, if you bow down and worship me.'

And. . . well.. . . . you know."

Please read, and consider: 89.3 KPCC | 'How Did We Get Here?' A Call For An Evangelical Reckoning On Trump (scpr.org)

Grace in the Time of Covid: On a cold winter's morning, a lesson from Michael

 It was a bone-chilling cold, pre-dawn Tuesday morning. The 5 a.m. alarm on my phone sounded, and for several minutes -- nestled in my warm bed -- and debated with just turning it off and drifting back to sleep.

But I got up, with a moan. It was the day for early-morning liturgy and communion at Sts. Peter & Paul Orthodox Church in downtown Salt Lake City. I knew I needed it, and needed to be there. 

After the service, the guys would meet for coffee and scriptural study with Fr. Paul downstairs -- a time that has become especially precious to me during this season of prolonged Covid-19 related isolation.

Showered and dressed, I donned a heavy coat, scarf and gloves and bundled myself into the car, first scraping a sheet of ice from the windshield. My decades-old Honda Civic coughed to life, I turned on the heater full blast, and drove down the road.

It's a 15-minute trip to the church, and to my usual morning prayers and added not a few laments about life as we have come to know it in the age of pandemic. Finally, as I drove on near-empty, slippery streets, I passed the homeless camps of shopping carts draped with makeshift tents that regularly pop up along the curbs of the Salt Lake County-City Government Complex.

Deseret News photo

But I was so self-absorbed, irritated that the old Honda's heater was just beginning to warm the car's interior, that I hardly noticed the desperation and poverty of wrecked lives that have become part of the urban landscape.

Pulling into a dark side street and then the small parking lot behind my parish church, I sat for a time behind the wheel, relishing a belated moment of warmth. Then with a grunt I got out, put on my mask, shivered, and began walking down the alley to the entrance of Sts. Peter & Paul.

The homeless, I'm ashamed to say, have too often become the faceless, nameless backdrops of our lives today. If not ignored, then they only elicit a brief thought or an occasional a few bucks quickly handed over to appease the inconvenience of guilt.

But there is one denizen of the street many in the parish have come to know, and some befriend.

"Michael," also the name of his patron saint, adorns the sleeves of his arms and coat with iconic images of saints and angels, secured with transparent plastic and duct tape. Slight and gaunt, his beard and graying hair often seeming as wild and surreal as his thoughts, Michael has good days and bad.

Some days, he holds forth on the warfare of angels and demons in the skies above, where clouds may swirl, punctuated by thunder and lightning. "See? There they are, fighting over the souls of the dead? Right there," he once told me on a summer day, pointing and nodding.

On other days, he seems to have the simple clarity of a saint. That is the case on this particular frigid December morning, as he steps out from behind a plastic tarp draped over his nest of blankets and sleeping bags near a building's steam vent.

He won't do the shelters. He has horror stories of sickness, bed bug-infested cots, drug use and violence inside them. He's often been robbed of his few possessions. Over the years, our priest and parish have tried to arrange other housing and psychiatric care, without success.

So, one does what one can, meeting this brother where he is, and with what he needs -- warm clothing, food, a few dollars for coffee or a snack, and friendship, to the extent this gentle and enigmatic man allows that.

So, on this morning, I just want to get inside to the warmth, comfort and spiritual refuge of the church. Michael recognizes my voice, this time, and hurries to my side. I'm grumpy; he is ebullient, and our pace toward the open iron gates of the entrance slows.

"It's a good day," he rasped. "It's a cold day," I grumbled back.

He either didn't hear me, or ignored my reply. "God is so great! He provides what you need. Even a hot shower!" Michael pointed to the steam coming out of a head-high pipe. "They shut down the showers where I was going," he explained, vaguely waving toward an undefined downtown Salt Lake City location, "But then God provided this!"

He went on to list a few other things he attributed to Providence. A place to fill his water jug. People cared enough to check on him, feed him, take him to the free clinic, even just talk for a few moments.

Then, Michael grinned, pointed at the church where he, like me, received baptism a few years back, and said, "And we get to go inside His house and have communion! Hey, it's the Breakfast of Champions!"

And we did that. We climbed the steps inside to the candle-lit darkness, venerate the icons of the saints and stood for the ancient prayers of the liturgy, culminating with the Eucharist.

I watched Michael approach the chalice, a look of awe on his smudged face as he received the mystical Body and Blood of Christ.

As he made his cross and silently walked away, I sighed, ashamed at first, then humbled, and then grateful for the lesson.

For Michael.

Lord have mercy, indeed.