Election Dribble

Last night probably proved just how worthless pundits are.  These jokers make John Madden look cerebral.

Nate Silver's stats trump Dan Rather's "gut."  In the words of my son's favorite children's album: "Science is REAL, Science is REAL....Science is REEE-EEE-EEEAAL."

Attention Republicans: It's time the thoughtful, intelligent, and reasonable MAJORITY of you tell the Tea Party to shut the hell up.  Also, don't blame the storm.

Attention Democrats: Get over yourselves...you beat a one-term Governor who has all the charisma of milk toast.  Also, grow a pair and raises taxes like you said you would....and you DID say you would.

My adopted home state is now represented by Conservative Hero Ron Johnson and Liberal Tammy Baldwin.  We're also governed by Scott Walker, but we supported Obama by six percentage points.  We're officially the most purple State in the Union...and by purple, I mean schizophrenic.

On a serious note, the most hopeful thing for me about electing a gay woman to the Senate is that her sexuality was essentially a non-issue throughout the campaign.  I don't love Tommy Thompson, but I give him credit for keeping the conversation about politics.

John King on CNN's magic map is obnoxious, but the prosaic grace with which he said the Romney campaign was full of crap about stealing Ohio was a feat to behold.

Pot is legal in Colorado and Washington State...Amsterdam just got slightly less cool.

The government's right to regulate whom you marry was rebuked in spite of opposition from small-government Conservatives...wait, what?

Florida....eh....I'm done here.

Chapel Talk

We live in small, somewhat insular community, which has been described as the “Wayland bubble.”  Our days are so focused on the work that must be done in the classroom and elsewhere, that it is easy for us to lose touch with the world around us.

But there are times when we must look outside our community, outside the bubble.  This past week, I think, was one of those times.

As many of you know, this past week parts of the Caribbean Sea and the East Coast of the United States were struck by what has been called a “Superstorm:” The violent collision of a tropical hurricane and an another variety of storm called a Nor’easter.  Last week, these two forces of nature combined to great calamity, and as of this morning, over 150 people have lost their lives, and countless more are without basic necessities like food, clothing, and shelter.  The economic cost of Hurricane Sandy is estimated to be over 55 Billion dollars.

The natural question to ask is simple:  “why?”

The answer, on the other hand, is far from simple.

We are not far removed from a time in human history when faith was the answer to all questions.  The almost ubiquitous belief in a higher power was used to explain all things, good and evil, a time when health, prosperity, and personal liberty were seen as marks of Divine favor.  From that perspective, a disaster like Sandy would have been seen as punishment for evils committed by evil men.

Few of us, I think, espouse that worldview now.  We frame our understanding of natural disasters in the lens of science, which tells us that storms, floods, earthquakes, and other catastrophes are part of our planet’s natural function, and that catastrophes strike without passion or prejudice, and that while we may pray or hope for calm and safety, we still live in a dangerous and an unpredictable world.  This truth is both frightening and comforting, for while no amount of sin will earn us such punishment, no amount of virtue will truly keep us from it.

What role, then, does faith have in such a world?  What good does it do any of us to profess a belief in any deity, if that deity cannot or does not protect innocent people from calamity?  What role does faith play in a world where there is no apparent causal relationship between good actions and good fortune?  Is a higher power who does not protect innocent people against calamity even worth believing in?

Further, can a Faith-based worldview continue to exist as science reveals more and more about our universe to us?  After all, anthropologists generally assert that religion and faith became a part of the human condition in an effort to explain the inexplicable.  And if the world’s great questions can be addressed with science and logic, what is left for religion to explain?  What purpose can it serve for a rationale mind?

Well, there are certainly those among us who would say….none.  Who would argue that faith is and always has been unnecessary and irrelevant, and who would point to moments in history where people of power have deliberately halted the progress in the name of their faith. 

And perhaps the problem lies there…

Perhaps it is perhaps because of these moments of zealotry that we perceive such diametric opposition between faith and science.

Maybe it doesn’t have to be this way.  Maybe there is a way to address a tragedy like Sandy scientifically, and a separate, but equally valid way to explain through the prism of faith.

There is an idea, which was posited by Bishop Katherine Jefferts Schiori, about the role of faith in a world like ours.  Bishop Schiori has a unique insight on this matter: She is the presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, but is also a former professor of Oceanography, a subject in which she holds a doctorate. Accordingly, she is a person with a strong, scientific worldview. 

Bishop Schiori has opined that Science and faith can coexist in a complimentary fashion.  Science, in her view, is meant to answer questions of mechanism: how and why things happen….why storms form and strike, which diseases afflict whom, and so forth. The nuts and bolts, if you will.    

Faith, on the other hand, answers questions of meaning, questions which are decidedly less certain and more personal. 

Now for many of us, faith can be a tricky term.  Often, it connotes espousing one of the world’s great religions, or at least a belief in a higher power.  But, and I’m speaking only for myself, I think that faith can also simply mean a belief in human dignity, or in secular values like justice or liberty.  Like religious deities, these ideals cannot be seen or heard or felt, but we can put our faith in them, and like organized religion, they can help us to find meaning in the world.

Faith cannot answer our questions about how Hurricane Sandy came to be, but it can inform our reaction to it. 

As we sit comfortably in this Chapel, other people, who are our brethren, had their lives turned upside down.  While science can tell us the cause of the disaster, it is our faith that can help us see it as a reminder of life’s tenuousness, and to remind us that a disaster as severe as Sandy could arrive on our doorstep at any time.  It can also inform us that each life lost in any catastrophe, natural or otherwise, is tragic and, accordingly, that each life lived is worth caring about. 

Our faith can move us to awareness.  Certainly, in cases like a Hurricane, that might mean finding ways to help, through charity or volunteerism.  But perhaps more importantly, faith can make us aware that disasters happen every day to everyone, and that, unlike Sandy, they’re often neither public nor publicized.

No amount of faith on earth can undo the damage done by this mighty storm, but our faith can guide to small acts of kindness and compassion, to a kind word to a sad friend, a smile to a lonely stranger, or a quick phone call home to remind our families that we love them.  Such actions are small in scope, but grand in meaning. 

Finally, our faith can move us to a realization of what we have, to a new appreciation of the community in which we live and study each day, and to the families who love us, both nearby and on the other side of our small planet.  It can also move us to care for and preserve these things, which we hold dear.

If our faith can move us to these virtues, then truly, it has served us well.

Thinking of Fall

It's hard to walk around campus these days without noticing that the seasons are changing.  Summer's warmth is gone, and it has been replaced by the cool winds and falling leaves of autumn.  Autumn, for us, means a great many things: school is in full swing, sweaters are brought out of the closet, and the days are gradually getting shorter. We hunt for pumpkins, enjoy Apple Cider, and as children we dress up and go trick or treating.

We like autumn well enough, but we don't assign any great spiritual meaning to it.

Throughout much of human history, however, autumn has meant something quite different.

Nearly every ancient culture saw the autumn as a time of not only great importance, but also as an opportunity for spiritual reflection and introspection.

Autumn is the time of the harvest, when crops and livestock, which have been cared for since the spring, are reaped from the earth to be sustenance for the long winter.  This process was of enormous importance to ancient peoples; it could literally mean the difference between survival and starvation.  It also had an enormous spiritual meaning,

as a bountiful harvest was seen as a sign of good favor with the many deities which ancient peoples believed presided over the earth and the elements, and, accordingly, a validation of the harvester's good virtue and actions. 

Conversely, a poor harvest was perceived as a punishment for sins committed throughout the year.

Simply stated, the ancients believed that "we reap what we sow."

As we sit in this chapel, in the twenty-first century, we are long removed from this worldview.  We no longer need to worry about our survival as the ancients did, and the holidays and festivals which celebrate the harvest are largely lost to history. 

And yet, the idea of having a good or bad harvest, of reaping what we sow, is still relevant to us.

We have had a harvest of sorts this past week....only we call them grades.

Like the harvest for the ancients, the end of the first quarter for us serves largely as a validation or a repudiation of the work we have done during the first part of the academic year.  All of you, for better or for worse, have reaped what you have sown.

Now, in spite of how some of you probably feel....I assure you...You will survive.  I promise you that your parents won't ACTUALLY kill you.

But perhaps you have made some mistakes, and perhaps your harvest is not what you'd hoped it would be.  Now, as for the ancients, is your opportunity for self-assessment and introspection.  The ancients believed that no one understands our own errors like ourselves.  They further believed that the self was the only real agent for meaningful change.

And so it is in the spirit that I humbly offer advice to each of you.  If you are unhappy with your harvest, consider what you have done, or what you have not done, to earn it.  Reflect upon your actions with honesty and accept ownership for your mistakes.  But, recognize that your mistakes do not define you, and that yes, you will survive.   And for those of you who are pleased with your performance, remember that the bounty of one harvest does not guarantee the success of the next....we all must start anew.

To the ancients, the only blessing greater than one harvest was the opportunity to  plant for another.  Each one of you has that opportunity and that challenge.  For even as we reap one harvest, we also plant and work for the next. 

Lessons Learned Part 1

Do not underestimate the power of has-been athletes and competition.

Do not underestimate the power of enthusiasm for the absurd.

The aforementioned lessons are some that we probably all know on some level, but which were reinforced to me this past weekend at my wife's family reunion.

Let me begin by clarifying my feelings toward the family I married into almost seven years ago.  My wife's family is a model of unity, forgiveness, unselfishness, and love.  This is a family who accepts all newcomers and visitors with open arms and a cold beer.  I love them, and I'm privileged to call them family.

That said, there appears to be a deficiency in the gene pool, particularly toward discretion and restraint.  Nowhere is this deficiency more clearly displayed than at the annual family reunion.

The reunion is held at the home of one of my wife's uncles and his family.  Their home is beautiful, complete with a man-made lake that houses paddle boats, a dock with a diving board, and various other fun-making accouterments.  And fun, after all, is the name of the game at family reunion.  Fun at all costs.

And I do mean, ALL costs.

A few years ago, it was decided that fireworks would be a great way to cap off the family reunion.  But, it was discovered that launching the kind of fireworks that were "worth a damn" required a commercial firework technician license.  So...my wife's uncle got his license.  In all fairness, the fireworks were pretty damn cool...until a wayward bottle rocked(two words that should never be put together) set a hill on fire.

That day, I learned two things:  That an entire hill can be set on fire, and that the State of Wisconsin should really revisit the requirements for a firework operator license.

This year...for the third or fourth time, it was decided that a competition was in order a "family reunion Olympics" should be held.

I could hardly wait...

DON'T do it for the kids

There is much which could be said about the following observation... And a better writer could likely spin it together with oddly-similar anecdotes and craft a profound funny and poignant unifying theme.

But alas, you're stuck with me, and so I'm just going to say that this is a pretty funny.

I was at a children's museum with my family today. I love museums like this, and not because I get to spend quality time with my son(though that is important), but because, frankly, there's some pretty cool stuff there. Attendance at such a place is a real perk of fatherhood....how else could I get to play with a giant bubble machine without looking like a total weirdo.

At any rate, while at said museum, I witnessed something which I can only say borders on child abuse. There was a child, who by all accounts looked healthy and happy; he was accompanied by his doting mother and typically-aloof father. I thought nothing of the kid until I noticed it....

The kid's collar was popped.

Pardon my acronyms...but WTF?

First of all, who came up with popped collars in the first place? Was someone at the country club so concerned with yuppy vampires that they felt compelled to place some solid Ralph Lauren cotton around their neck? Or did we as as society just need one more way to look like a total d-bag. But more to the point, why subject your child to the inevitable mocking he will endure circa ten years from now?

If you want to engage in this strange Danny Zuko meets Judge Smails fashion faux pas, be my guest.

But keep it to yourself...for the children's sake.

Conflicts of Good Advice

I have been given a lot of advice over the years...

My two favorites pieces are both wonderfully vague and ambiguous, just as truly good advice often is.

They are: 

"Be kind" 

"Be authentic"

But what happens when two really great pieces of advice come into conflict with one another?

Let me expound...

A friend of mine recently created some art(I mean this in the most general way possible)  He was quite proud of it and clearly had put in a great deal of time and effort into this endeavor.  He proceeded to go on Facebook and, with appropriate pride, ask everyone to behold said art and to offer their respective opinions.

Like a good friend, Facebook or otherwise, I did.

It was bad....like...really bad.  I don't posture to be an artist or to be an expert in art.  Hell, I routinely ask you poor people to read my feeble attempts at humor in much the same way.  But as least I know it's bad, whereas I doubt the friend in question knew the depths of this suckiness.  To make matters even worse....He asks ME specifically for "feedback."  Which is to say that he wanted ME to tell him how awesome it was.

So here's where the advice thing gets tricky....I could "be kind" and tell him how awesome it was and how moved I was by his effort.  None of this is patently false, of course, if by awesome you mean terrible.  

Or I could be "authentic" and tell him the truth.  No sugar coating, just honesty.  

Which is what I did...and it went...badly.

"Geez man, you could've just said nothing." Was, minus a few explatives, the response which I got to my "authentic" feedback.

So, there you have it....all my pondering...for naught.

Going for a run...all of me's

So, I started running again... I've always been an avid gym-goer, but running has never been my thing.  However, since my family and I moved to the country, it's started to seem like a great exercise option...I have more open road space than anyone could want, and I don't have to drive all the way into town to hit the gym. Running, to me, is a great many things...It is not, however, fun. Below is a transcript detailing a conversation in which I partook with my NikePlus iPhone app, my self, my body, and my common sense. Self: Okay...I can do this, four and a half miles is really not that far, and I did four last week. Sense: Yes, but it wasn't ninety degrees then. Self: Oh, whatever...it'll be fine. Sense: Oh sure, just dismiss me...that worked out well when we were in college. NikePlus(voice of a lovely, kind woman): Begin workout. Self: Woo-hoo...Let's go! Two minutes later... Nike Plus(voice of a firm, driven coach): Point two five miles completed. Self: That can't be right...I was faster than this in high school! Sense: And thinner, and with more hair.... Eight minutes later... Body: Our legs are starting to hurt....are you sure you're doing this right? Self: Of course I'm sure...I've been running since I was three years old...Liam even knows how to run. Sense: He's also afraid of the shadows in his room...oh wait...so are you. Self: They look as if- NikePlus(voice of drill instructor from Full Metal Jacket): one point two miles completed...move your fat ass. Forty minutes later... Self: This...bad...idea Sense: I tol- Self: Oh, shut up! Body: Full system shut down in...five...four... NikePlus(voice of the devil himself)- point zero one eight miles to go....you're not done yet! Self: Isn't this where I'm supposed to get runner's high? Sense: Runner's high is a myth propagated by runners trying to convince you that what we just endured is a worthwhile and pleasurable activity. Self: For once, I think we agree.

Fun with Headlines

A great many of my friends and family have developed a rather noticeable dislike of the news media.

I disagree.

Granted, I don't think the news is actually delivered with any integrity, nor do I find it particularly informative, but you have to admit....It's stinkin' hilarious.

And so in an homage, or a pastiche if you will(and you will) to Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, who are at least forthright about the absurdity of their news shows, I offer my own news bulletin....

- It was reported that Greece voted to stay in the Eurozone.  (HFB Translation: Greece voted in a party that might, if it's able to form a majority coalition, accept some of the terms of the bailout set by the rest of Europe in exchange for continued membership. In order to form said coalition, the winning New Democracy party must woo a separate politic party with wholly separate ideals to join it because...oh, details details, are they really important?)

-Rush Limbaugh defended Neil Munro, the reported who interrupted the president during speech, and said that Munro was not a racist. (HFB translation: Limbaugh said "Clearly, Munro was mocking Obama's "white half."  or, more clearly stated: "Neil Munro is not a ractist....I am a racist.)

- The Housing Market improved in May (HFB translation: the actual building of houses fell, whereas permits to build houses rose.  Just to be clear....one cannot live in a permit nor earn a living constructing them.)

-Blistering Heat covers most of Wisconsin (HFB translation: Um...it's summer.  Any meteorologist surprised by odd weather in the Upper Midwest has proven him or herself a worse prognosticator than Stephen A. Smith)

The Systematic Wussification of Camping

My family and I went camping this past weekend, and we had a lovely time...

...therein lies the problem.

Let me back up.  I did not grow up going camping.  My father and mother both grew up in Chicago, and neither cared for the great outdoors enough to spend an entire twenty-four hour period living in it.  Some people say that their idea of camping is a room at the Holiday Inn.  My mother's is a room at the Chicago Hilton and Towers.

As an adult, and especially after I met my outdoorsy wife, I sought camping experiences because it fosters a sort of toughness that I, frankly, do not have.  I've always loved being outside, playing sports outside, hiking, and so forth, but at the end of the day, I was always game for a comfy bed nearest the air conditioner.

So now when I go camping, I want to GO CAMPING.  I want to MacGyver my way through a sticky situation, I want to make fire from twigs, leaves, and a hissing cockroach.  I want to have the sort of experience that, if retold to Bear Grylls, might elicit raised eyebrows.

This past weekend, while again quite lovely, was not that. 

Let me clarify that I am not disparaging my family, especially my in-laws who planned the excursion, or the nice people at the very nice place where we stayed.  I'm just saying that it didn't help me become less of a wuss.

My in-laws have a 5th wheel; which is a camper just slightly less well-appointed than Bon Jovi's tour bus.  The bathroom is nicer than the bathroom in my house, and they have a flat-screen TV and a sound system that does most any action movie justice.  Given the option, and I was, I slept there over a tent. 

The campground itself was equipped with a pool, complete with water slide, a bar and grill with really excellent food, and a general store.

Swimming, it is my understanding, is an integral part of camping.  That said, if I'm going swimming while camping, I want to be ankle deep in quasi-safe mud, not a chlorine-filtered pool with a froggy water slide.  And as for the general store...You don't have a store on a campground to provide campers with the essentials they forgot at home...If you forget your bug spray, you suck it up, deal with it, and then tell a story ten years later about how shitty West Nile virus is.

That's camping, folks.

I realize that the needs of people are changing, and that not everyone craves the rustic experience that I do.  But speaking for myself, I want things simple next time.

Just give me my Vibram toe shoes, air mattress, self-staring gas grill, polarized sunglasses, clip-on bug repellent, iPad, and mobile hotspot, and I'll be just fine.

You know, the  basics.

My Big Pile of Shit

Pardon my French, but sometimes there's really only one word that works.... As many of you know, I am a displaced city boy living in the country.  I live there mostly because it's what my wife wanted to do, and well....it's what my wife wanted to do.  Since moving to the country, I've found that surprises are rarely surprising....that is to say that I'm surprised so much, that I barely remember what it feels like anymore.   That said, I had the opposite experience a month or so ago when, upon returning from coaching a track meet, I pulled into my drive way to see my father-in-law's truck sitting in the driveway with a rather large trailer hitched to it.  This was not unusual, as my in-laws are my wife's primary resource for amateur horticultural gear and knowledge.  What made this particular trailer different was that it was covered with a blue tarp.  Curious, and at that point suspecting that my father-in-law was using the tarp to prepare for a "big reveal" later, I approached the mystery cargo. It took about six second and one stiff breeze for me to figure out what was under the tarp... "So...." I said as I entered the house.  "The trailer is full of..." "Horse manure." replied my beloved bride, with enthusiasm befit a Ringling Brothers Ringmaster. "For the garden." I looked over at my in-laws, who were decidedly confused at my confusion. "You guys drove two hours on the highway with a pile of shit hitched to your truck?"  The tarp seemed immediately necessary.   It seemed like a perfectly reasonable question, but I was the one who was getting looked at as if he were a crazy person. After lunch, I proceeded to follow the aforementioned truck on foot to a shady spot behind our defunct swine barn.  My son, who was walking with me asked "What are we gonna do with all that horse poop?" "Ask your mother." The trailer went up, and, as it were, the shit went down.  As the largest member of our ragtag crew, I was handed a shovel assigned the enviable task of making sure that none of the shit was wasted.   File that one under tasks I never thought I'd be given. Truth be told, there was a fair amount of black dirt mixed in with the shit, and the smell was much more tolerable that I first imagined. When the work was done, I stood beside my wife and said: "You know, honey, when we first got married, I had a lot of aspirations for us, and one of the loftiest was for you and I to stand together next to our very own pile of horseshit." She took my hand and replied: "Me too." One of us was kidding. Sent from my iPad

Going Bracketless in March

While many of my neighbors here in the Upper Midwest are enjoying going jacketless in our unseasonably warm weather, I’m also enjoying the absence of something that’s usually around this time of year: my NCAA tourney bracket.

Let me begin by saying that I’m a college basketball fan.  To call myself a “fanatic” would be a bit generous, but I’ve been filling out a bracket since I was about seventeen, and like many American sports fans, it’s one of my favorite events of the year.

So I’m definitely not trying to be a contrarian.

But this year, more through circumstance than choice, I didn’t end up filling out a bracket.  It certainly felt a bit…different…But I didn’t feel that I was missing anything terribly important.  I was still going to watch the tournament; I was still going to root for teams that I hadn’t heard of three weeks ago.  I do have to say that I would miss the banter, the trash talk, and the fun of being in a tournament pool and acting as if my success or failure had to do with anything other than luck. 

I guess I was pretty much ambivalent.  I hadn’t gone bracketless before…but I was willing to give it a go.

Fast forward to today.  The tournament is down to sixteen teams, and like every other year, there are some powerhouse teams and some underdogs.  As for me, I have watched about as much basketball as I have every other year…only I’ve had about twice as much fun. 

Going bracketless has been a revelation. 

I know I’m flying in the face of so many people much smarter than me who would characterize bracketology as integral to enjoying the tournament, but I have not enjoyed March Madness this much in a long time…perhaps ever.  My fan experience this year has not been about my own knowledge (or rather, dumb luck) in picking the “right” team more often than my friends.  This year, it has been about the stories. 

After all, why else do we watch sports?  Or participate in it?  It’s for the stories.  In the past, the stories about March Madness for me have been about a great pick that I had made; about the big upset that I’d successfully predicted.  This year, I’ve realized that the best stories from March Madness are about the young men on the court.  With very few exceptions, they are ordinary kids.  I don’t know the statistics, but I can say with some certainty that the overwhelming majority of the players on the court in any given tournament game will not play professionally.  Most will go on to become doctors and lawyers and accountants….they will become, by our standards, ordinary. 

But in March, the kid from the small school who’s got a double major in accounting and economics and who is literally playing in what might be his meaningful basketball game could, for a moment, play basketball as if he were something else entirely.  His play could, for a moment, be the stuff not only of highlight reels, but of legend and of poetry.

Now, that’s a story.

Will I fill out my bracket next year?  I don’t know…I certainly have no intentions of starting a “bracketless” movement.  Maybe I’ll figure out how to love the Madness on two levels, as I imagine many people do.  But I can say this…I’m glad this year that I watched basketball, and not just the tournament.

Not Exactly Funny...

Here's the text of a talk I gave at school a few weeks ago on love...

As you all know, Valentine’s Day is upon us, and so we’re all starting to think about love.  The brand of love that is most associated with Valentine’s Day is romantic love…that visceral feeling we all get when we’re around someone special.  Many of us have been there, me included, and I’m blessed to say that like some of you, I’ve very much in love with someone right now; in fact, I’ve been in love with my wife since the moment I saw her almost nine years ago.  When we got married, I remember feeling many of the same things that some of you probably do around your significant other.  I remember a lump in my throat, butterflies in my stomach, and a sudden inability to speak (and if you have me in class, that might be hard to believe).  But what I also remember about that day was the conscious choice that she and I made together: to love each other through good times and bad, in sickness and in health, and for better or worse.

And it is that second manifestation of love that prompted me in this Chapel talk. 

Christian Scripture, in St. Paul’s first epistle to the Corinthians, describes love as “patient and kind” and state that it “protects, trusts, and always perseveres.”  These are wonderful sentiments, and it warms the heart to hear them or to speak them; you have likely heard them at a wedding or even read them in a card.  But I urge you to note that while love is described here as a great many things, easy is not one of them   Genuine love, as it is presented here and throughout the doctrines of so many of the world’s religions, is not that characterized by how we feel when we’re with blissfully enamored with a special someone.  Rather, it is characterized by consciously loving everyone, even, and especially, when it is difficult to do so.

Real love, my friends and colleagues, is a choice.   And it is not only difficult at times, but it is also necessary.

Indeed, His Holiness the Dalai Lama describes Love not as a Luxury, but as fundamental to the survival of the human race.  In his view, we need love as we need food or water.  He further opines that as human beings, we do not only to receive love, but to give it as well.

Now, I imagine that many of us in this chapel know what it is to be loved, and we are perhaps so used to the love of our friends and family that we may not take notice of it.  But try, if you can, to imagine your life without being loved, or without loving others. 

Let me offer an example from my own life….

A few months ago, on November 9^th, I celebrated my birthday.  Like most of you, I grew up celebrating this day.  But I have another special day: November 15^th.  That is the day that Mari and Bob Cleary adopted me.  They gave me my name, took my into their home, they became my mom and dad, and I became their son.  I am an only child; medical issues prevented my mom and dad from having children of their own.  But there was nothing which could have prevented them from being loving parents….there is no ailment that potent.

I literally would not be who I am today without the choice that they made.  I don’t know where I would be if not for the freely-given love of my mother and father.

My parents owed me nothing.  I wasn’t born to them; I was not, by nature, their responsibility.  No, my mom and dad chose to take me into their lives, and to have their lives turned upside down by parenthood, which is something I’ve found to be an inevitability.   They chose to love me, even though it was hard, and they have always loved me, even when it is hard.

So then, how do we know if we are loving one another as we should?

The great writer and Nobel Lauriat Elie Wiesel wrote in his marvelous and tragic memoir Night. that “the opposite of love is not hate…the opposite of love is indifference.” 

Wiesel is a Romanian-born Jew, and his statement was made in regards to the time he spent as a teenager in four separate Nazi concentration camps, including Auschwitz.  In his assessment, it was not a lack of courage or military might that led to the atrocities of The Holocaust, but rather a lack of love. 

As we sit in this Chapel at Wayland Academy in 2012, we are a long way removed from that dark chapter in human history, and as such our circumstances are quite a bit different.  But nonetheless, Wiesel’s statement is still profoundly relevant.  It is easier for us to be indifferent, toward our roommate who seems overwhelmed with stress, to our classmate who is struggling with difficult material, or to our families back at home….who just plain miss you, and need a good talk once in a while.

It is easier to be indifferent, to write off your roommate’s troubles as their own problem, or to NOT take the time to help a classmate because you have plenty of your own work to do.  Or to not call your parents back because you’re just too busy.  It is easier to be indifferent.  But it is better to love.  I challenge each of you, when the time comes, and it will, to love

And I further challenge each of you to stop and recognize all the love that you have been shown throughout your lives.  After all, none of us is always easy to love.  And I challenge you to recognize the difference that this love has made in your lives.  How it has made you who you are, and how it sustains you each day.

We are each better for having been loved, and we can all become better by loving.