The Last Mile

Where do we stop?

As a representative of the US Federal Government, I find it to be a significant question.

In my agency, we answer the question - in some form - every day.  The feds have nothing to do with paving your street.  The feds don't get into the business of trimming the trees on the railway lines, or throwing away garbage.  They don't make sure that your boat's slip is deep enough for your boat, or that your carport's roof doesn't leak.  For our day-to-day decisions, we have a concept of what comprises Federal Interest - what makes an investment to be one of national importance.  If it does not rise to that level, it might be nice to do, but it is not in the purview of the Federal Gummint.  (Unless Congress tells us that it is, which happens from time to time: see New Orleans' SELA project for an example.)

In times of disaster, however, those lines get blurred a lot.  We tend to do things in the wake of a disaster that we don't normally do, just to make it so people can get their lives re-started.  Things like blue roofs.  And debris cleanup.

And like my work - power restoration.  (Not usually a Corps mission)

But how far do we go to complete the mission?  Do we deliver electricity to the substation?  To the last transformer in the neighborhood?  To the power pole next to your house?  To your house?  Inside your house?

High Flying

The lady in the theatre stopped me and said, "Your sister is so amazing."

I went to Boston this week to watch my sister in her play at Wheelock Family Theatre, Charlotte's Web.  And Holy Hammer in Hicksville, she is awesome.  The play is amazing, and the whole cast grabs you and doesn't let you go for the whole ride.  Templeton is snarky spectacle in her pure rattiness.  Wilbur is humble and radiant.  The goose and gander make me laugh every time they are on stage.  The baby spiders are ridiculously cute...

Gary Ng took incredible shots of Charlotte and Wilbur.

But the woman was right.  The high flying Caroline Lawton is amazing.  Her aerial maneuvers display an incredible strength and show off her dedication to learning new things - she just started circus school a few months ago when she was cast.  And she is mesmerizing - you simply can't take your eyes off of her when she is on the set.

But the performance was not what the woman stopped me to talk about. She continued:

"Your sister is so kind on set.  She has really just set the tone for the whole play, of one of kindness, and the way that she has been with my daughter...."

The woman looked away to giver herself a moment to gain control of her voice again.  "Caroline has been so wonderful to all of the kids.  Your sister is amazing."

The play Charlotte's Web is about what it means to be a friend.  What it means to go from thinking only about yourself to thinking about the needs and wants of somebody else, and figuring out how you can help them.  The theme, woven throughout the script, is of selfishness versus selflessness.  Charlotte embodies the latter characteristic, and Caroline inhabits that part of the character completely, both onstage and off. 

The moment of triumph in the show for Charlotte is not the moment in which she saves Wilbur's bacon (#sorrynotsorry), but the moment when Wilbur comes to the realization that he needs to look for ways that he can be nice to others. When the gift of received friendship causes someone to move outside of self interest and find ways of doing something for others - that is the climax of the story.

How often do we do that?  Not me.  I am focused on getting my memo through the bureaucratic hoops.  I am worried about my Wednesday briefing, and how I am going to survive the next week of meetings?  I am aggravated about the paperwork, frantic over the emails, concerned about how overwhelmed I am feeling....

I.  Me.  My.

What if my focus instead were on the people around me?  What if I looked to see what Jenny is struggling with, and acted out of kindness, instead of just looking to use her to get my projects done? What if I stopped by to talk - really talk - with Brenda, instead of only leaving my desk to deal with the crisis at hand, exploding with anger that yet another memo had been hijacked and delayed?

What if I practice kindness?

I want to be amazing.  Just like my sister.

What makes you give?

"When Sean V. sends me an email, I can ignore it.  When he comes to my desk, I pay attention."

Heads nodded around the room. They knew the guy, and had all done the same.

Thursday I met with some co-workers and colleagues about the CFC. The Combined Federal Campaign is the Fed's version of United Way.  It is a clearinghouse for money donated by federal employees to national and local charities.  Hundreds of charities to choose from, each with their own mission, overhead, and goals.

And every year, we go through the same thing.  Skits.  Poking fun at the bosses, who are asked to humiliate themselves - pie throwing, dunking booth, silly skits, whatever.  But the result has been a decline over time in participation rate. 

It used to be the case that employees donated to the church and to whatever the office charity was.  And the donations continued throughout the career, adjusting for increases in pay and promotions.  If you were in charge of getting donations, you could pretty much count on the combination of peer pressure (everyone is doing their part) and a little bit of amusement to get full compliance.

And then came Dateline.

Now, with 24-hour news channels, we have exposés about everything under the sun.  And there is little that we love more than seeing the CEO of a non-profit go down.  So hidden cameras and gotcha moments and microphones stuffed into the face of people who are gaming the system... all part and parcel of our modern lives.

Corporate Stinkeye

And so begins a distrust of charity.  The mistrust does not only extend to the one charity who was exposed, but to all.  The underlying assumption now is, everybody cheats.  Only one got caught.

So the youngest workers tend to have no faith in the system we are in charge of pushing.  They are demanding; they want to see real results for what they do. They are ready to volunteer than donate, and they give the stink-eye to large, corporate-style fundraising.  Like what we are doing.

Unfortunately, the resulting harm is often greater than the benefit.

I am no homebuilder.  My volunteer hours are better spent apprenticing for a job where I show some aptitude - say, cleaning latrines or shoveling horse manure.  (Maybe removing bees from columns - but that one comes up very rarely in charity work.) 

Wedding Belles

I attended a wedding this weekend, and it was a joyous affair.  I was acquainted with the couple through mutual friends on facebook, and had grown to love them both through our conversations.  They had, in essence, become the modern equivalent of the old-time penpals.

They got married at the church down the street from where I live, at the church that they attend, in the company of fellow church members and friends.  In the middle of the service, the elderly pastor asked us, "For how many of you is this the first same-sex wedding you have attended?"

With maybe one or two exceptions, the entire congregation raised their hands.

"I suspected as much," he said.  "See, if you had asked me two years ago, whether I would preside over a same-sex wedding, I would have told you no."

"And in the past two years, God has been changing my heart.  It has not been an easy change, but I suspect that we are all on a journey of understanding of one kind or another.  But what I have seen has reminded me that marriage is about the celebration of love.  And what we are seeing today, in Hope and Julie, is exactly the kind of love that we need to celebrate, before God and each other.  These two people have pledged themselves to one another twelve years ago in their wedding.  The only thing that was missing was for the state to catch up, and allow them to submit the legal paperwork."

I, myself, am on that journey that the minister described.  I grew up with a certain way of understanding the world.  That way limited me to defining marriage as a covenant before God and witnesses between a man and a woman. That is what I saw, and what I knew.

Over time, I have had my eyes opened to other expressions of love.  A friend who had just gone through a 'divorce' with her girlfriend (she told me in passing of the divorce, but then really explained it to me three days later when I screwed up the courage to ask her out on a date.) A long-term relationship between two men that I knew for years. Meeting friends of friends, and finding out that they are lovers.  Or married. Over and over again, I have the concept of love challenged for me, and I get to re-write my own understanding of what it means.

The fun part, for me, is discovering my own love for these people as they come into my life.  The harder part is working to redefine what my understanding of what love is. That part, I have to confess, is not always easy.  I still screw it up, and misunderstand, and misrepresent, and make clumsy references to 'these people' (see the first sentence in the paragraph).  Finding out that whatever my understanding is.... well, it is bound to be wrong anyway.

I have come to realize that if I am so flawed in my understanding of love between people for whom I have love.... can I really believe that I have a lock on the love that my Creator has for all of his creation?  One thing is certain: I am bound to get it wrong.

I am not 'enlightened'.  I am finding every day that my understanding of what it means to be a white, protestant cisgendered, straight male in today's society is flawed, because of what it means to NOT be a white, protestant, cisgendered, straight male in today's society.

I don't understand it.  I don't pretend to.  But what I can do, then, is to express my love for people who I see around me.  Today, that means expressing my unbridled joy for my friends, Hope and Julie Darby.  Newlyweds in the eyes of the State. 

Today, I raise my glass, in celebration of their relationship.  I am joyful in their marriage.  And I hope for great joy throughout their married life.
 

Police Brutality. And Police Safety.

by Caroline and Crorey

As siblings, we come at the question from different directions.

We have been arguing about the issue of police brutality pretty intensely for the past few weeks.  We both agree that police brutality is wrong. We both agree that police safety is paramount. And we agree that there is something fundamentally wrong with a system that takes such a toll on lives. Especially black lives. Especially young black lives. Especially the lives of young, black men.

We also agree that the toll is not just physical. The psychic impact of the internalized prejudice against a young black male - it isn't able to be quantified in numbers or summed up in a casualty chart.

The discussion between us has been very animated, but because we love each other, we have been able to keep perspective. And we agreed to open this discussion between us up to public review. Not because we have the answers, but because it is too important not to discuss the issue carefully. In love. In compassion.

The opening salvo was a meme. The quote, from Peter McElliot, was:

 

Crorey responded with what he considered a clever retort, that as long as 'rape' is a job, and rapists run the risk of being killed in the performance of their job, that the statement has validity. Caroline considered it an ill-formed comparison, and stood firm in her stance that victim blaming is not how the problem is solved.

With two more points made in discussion, it got taken offline. Neither of us wanted our discussion to be misunderstood as attacking each other, and we did not want to involve our friends on one side or the other.

But what we discovered was that as we carefully listened to what the other was saying, the sides were not so far apart.