I returned to the US this past Thursday without incident. I keep expecting one of these days to be stopped by Customs and Immigration and asked pointed questions about my loyalties due to my tendency to be critical of the current administration’s approach to governance but so far it’s always been a wave on through. Maybe it’s because I’ve reached the age at which men become ‘distinguished’ and therefore am assumed not to be a troublemaker (my inner John Lewis doesn’t like that one) or perhaps it’s because I’m under surveillance and I am disappointingly visiting museums and hanging upside down from zip lines rather than meeting with leftist political figures or carrying secret cables for George Soros.
I’ve spent the weekend catching up on what piled up in my absence at work. Something over 2000 emails, chart notifications, and other pieces of miscellany that accumulated in various inboxes, electronic and otherwise. So here, on Sunday evening, everything has been tidied up until the tsunami of the average work week strikes again starting about 8 am. 19 months… and in two weeks I’ll be able to change that to 18 months. I don’t know yet if retirement from medicine is going to be piecemeal stepping back from thing at a time or if I’m going to hang a large ‘gone fishin’ sign on my office door and walk out. Question for another day.
This weekend I have been meditating on questions of community. What is it? What is mine? How do I fit into it? I’ve decided I’m rather fortunate in that I exist in so many overlapping areas that a Venn diagram would look like something I drew with my Spirograph when I was 8. If I’m not getting what I need from one, there’s usually another closely allied at hand which can help. While having this many is in some ways a blessing, in others it’s a bit of a chore. Human organizations, no matter their purpose, have similar group dynamics no matter where you go. One of the chief rules is that roughly 5% of the membership does 95% of the work and vice versa. As I’m a somewhat results oriented type, I often end up in that minority that gets the job done. I learned this at an early age from my parents. There wasn’t an organization that I or my siblings belonged to during our childhood and adolesence that one or both of my parents didn’t join and usually run. They were organized, methodical, and knew how to delegate. By the time I hit my early 20s, I was sitting on the boards of arts and human services organizations and that has continued to the current day. Sometimes I am the mover and shaker, sometimes I sit back. Usually what I ask for are defined tasks that I know I can accomplish with the time and energy I have available.
I’ve learned a lot from all of these endeavors. How to network (once upon a time I used to sit next to Maureen Reagan’s husband Dennis at our monthly Sacramento Chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association board meetings – he liked my jokes). How to use soft power. How to gently encourage. How to build consensus. How to exercise comity and get along with those with different agendas. And I think that’s what bothers me the most about our current political moment. All of those skills, which politicians have had to learn to get where they are, have been thrown out the window in favor of news cycle/meme driven immediate gratification episodes which do no good to anyone and widen chasms rather than build bridges. The president’s little video from this morning was really a new low. You can search it out for yourself. I’m trying to imagine a Roosevelt or a Reagan pulling a similar stunt and I just can’t.
I went to the Birmingham No Kings rally yesterday morning. Somewhere around 5-7,000 people showed up at 10 am at Railroad Park. The weather was lovely. The speakers were good. It was peaceable and a lot of saying hi to acquaintances from various walks of life. While it sounds like a lot, ten times as many turn up at an Alabama home football game. There’s been a lot of criticism about the No Kings movement in that it’s performative and isn’t really accomplishing anything. I would disagree. It’s true that yesterday is unlikely to change much of anything in this political moment but it does so a few things. First, millions of people turned out all over the country with a message that they are not happy with the current administration. There were fewer than 20 arrests nationwide, nearly all of MAGA counterprotesters who went too far. This dispels the administration narrative that those who disagree with their policies are violent marxist criminimals or whatever other derogatory words they’re using this week. Second, it reminds people that they are not alone in their feelings and that community surrounds them if they’ll only reach out for it. Third, they were celebratory in nature and there’s an innate human need for celebration and who doesn’t like a good street party?
95% of the people who turned up will go back to their ordinary lives, maybe slightly more energized but the 5% who do the work will be reminded of why what they are doing matters and will push on. My best metaphor for what we are doing and why comes from theologian Howard Thurman who wrote a brief statement in 2009 regarding the work that follows the celebration of Christmas and I find that it applies here.
The Work of Christmas
When the song of the angels is stilled,
When the star in the sky is gone,
When the kings and princes are home,
When the shepherds are back with their flock,
The work of Christmas begins:
To find the lost,
To heal the broken,
To feed the hungry,
To release the prisoner,
To rebuild the nations,
To bring peace among others,
To make music in the heart.
So I am asking myself this evening what I am doing to do this work. I’m not a politician and never will be one. (Far too many skeletons in the closet for that). But, I can support those of that calling who are moving to improve the human condition and human dignity. I can help my communities of artists, LGBTQ, healthcare providers, Unitarian Universalists and all the rest who advocate for policies that improve the human condition and uplift the human spirit. I’m about to do two plays with the local African American theater and I will continue to do what I can to bridge the gaps between White Birmingham and Black Birmingham.
Last night, I went to the theater to see a production of the musical The Spitfire Grill. I can’t say it’s a particularly good piece of material. While the book is sound, the music isn’t particularly distinguished and the lyrics are hardly Sondheim – they’re not even Charles Hart and Richard Stilgoe. But the production at Terrific New Theatre was spot on. The small cast of six singers (and a seventh key role which is silent), all of whom I’ve had a chance to work with on other projects, were sensational. They’ve all either had national careers or could easily have national careers if life choices and responsibilities did not keep them in Birmingham. I am constantly amazed at the wealth of talent we have here and even more amazed that I am occasionally invited to play in the sandbox with them.
The story of The Spitfire Grill, based on a 90s indie movie that I saw somewhere along the way and have minimal memory of, is that of a young woman, paroled from prison, who comes to a small town in Wisconsin and gets a job as a waitress at the titular diner. Her arrival is the catalyst which changes the town for the better. We never know where life will take us, what form redemption will take. I’m rolling into this next week (dominated by Alabama Symphony Orchestra and Beethoven’s 9th Symphony repeating my mantra in my head. Get up. Get dressed. Go out. Do good. I occasionally want to skip that second step but UAB gets miffed when I show up to work naked.
Life, The Universe, and Everything 