Ribbon of Highway

In early December, I put the car in gear and traveled east, while my friend Lauren left her New Jersey home to head west, our paths intersecting in Altoona, Pennsylvania. We’ve been collaborating on a book on retirement for women in ministry, sharing ideas and manuscript files by e-mail, and we needed time together to tie up some loose ends on the project. We hoped the book project would serve as a valid cover story for a girl’s getaway.

I was grateful for the ease and speed of the interstate, especially since I got a late departure from Ashland on my ride eastward, but I chose a different route for my journey home. The backroads allowed for a brief visit to my daughter-in-law’s hometown of Jerome, Pennsylvania, nestled in the Laurel Mountains near Johnstown, one of the many small coal-mining towns that stretch into Kentucky and West Virginia. From there I headed home, traveling through small town Pennsylvania and Ohio. What beautiful country, with signs of both poverty and wealth spread across the miles.

The car pointed in the opposite direction this week, as Larry and I traveled west for his brother-in-law’s funeral in Kansas. Again, the interstate provided a swift and simple route: I-71 to I-70, through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Kansas. While most of my passenger time was spent with my eyes on the pages of Louise Perry’s Inspector Gamache mysteries (a new-found reading companion), I saw enough of the passing landscape to see similar sights. Miles and miles of farmland and forests, hundreds of rural towns, and the suburbs and cities of places like Columbus, Dayton, Indianapolis, St. Louis, and Kansas City.

Travel, especially by car, provides an opportunity to think about the land we are passing through, its history and economy, its landmarks and its people. As we sped along the pavement, I thought about those who traveled these miles at a much slower pace, on foot, on horseback, in wagon trains, and even on the early railroads that belched noxious smoke into the air. I thought, too, of those who made their way to our destination in Kansas on the treacherous underground railroad, hoping to find safety among the new state’s abolitionists.

Driving through Johnstown, I thought about the 2200 people who died in the great flood of 1889, and those who lived on to rebuild that community. I thought about the miners in Jerome who carried canaries deep into the coal mines, desperate to hear the continuous song of the caged birds that signaled enough air to breathe.

My recent travels have reminded me of the vastness of our country, and of the great moments and the many sorrows its history bears. While we long to capture our hopes for the future in catchy sound bites, the reality is that when 324 million people live together in a land with huge differences in landscape, resources, and culture, we will not be able to find our way forward based only on proclamations from on high or in wishful thinking. Yet by revisiting the values held dear in the early days of our republic, we can find the common denominators that bind us together as Americans.

If we are anything, those miles reminded me, we are resilient. As a land populated primarily by immigrants, we left behind all that was familiar for the hope of a new life. Together, we built a nation, imperfect as it may seem at times, that stretches from coast to coast. While I didn’t make it to either ocean on my trips, I saw enough of its multicolored ribbons of highway to be reminded of Woody Guthrie’s words: “This land is your land, this land is my land.”

It’s a wonderful song, often sung by Peter, Paul and Mary, and a favorite at elementary school concerts. But one of its seldom-recorded verses from the prophetic troubadour asked a troubling question in the context of poverty, hunger and exclusion: “Is this land made for you and me?” It seems to me that we answer “yes” to Guthrie’s question by moving ahead just as our ancestors did, with resiliency and courage, one step at a time.  

For the new year . . .

New Year’s Eve. By definition, “eve” is the day immediately before an event or occasion. It’s likely we’ll use the transition from 2016 to 2017 to look forward to the days ahead, perhaps with resolutions for improved behavior (diet and exercise usually top that list).

Yet we also use this passage of time to reflect upon the year we’re leaving behind. We’ll read of the top ten news events of 2016, as well as the losses that shook our world, such as the deaths of famous people, the loss of those we loved, and even the demise of “The Good Wife.”

One such loss is the ending of “The Diane Rehm Show,” a NPR radio program that began as a 1979 show designed for homemakers. Rehm’s frustration with that format led to her demand to her boss: “I’m bored. I’m really bored. Unless I can change this show and do politics, do science, do medicine, do everything that’s happening in the world, I’m outta here.” Consequently, “The Diane Rehm Show” was instituted in 1984, and, as NPR colleague David Folkenflik noted, “It became a place for policies to get dissected and politicians to get tested.”

I’m glad Diane Rehm got bored. Not just because of those interviews on policy and politics, as informative as they’ve been, but also because Rehm welcomed many voices to her show. In the week following her final live broadcast, she aired her favorite interviews from the archives. I was hoping for poet Maya Angelou or actress Julie Andrews, but they didn’t appear – but authors Maurice Sendak (Where the Wild Things Are) and J.K. Rowling (Harry Potter) did.

Rehm also selected a poignant conversation with Fred Rogers to broadcast again. Their slow, thoughtful talk, about parents and children, voice, and the life and care for others was precious in retrospect. She remembers: “I’ll never forget talking with Mr. Rogers. He was in Pittsburgh at his piano and he was doing all those wonderful voices. And I said to him, ‘Mr. Rogers, what do you do when you’re sad?’ I don’t know why I asked him that, except that he always seemed to be so happy.”

Mr. Rogers responded: “I play the piano. I think I’ll be playing the piano a lot today.” When asked why, Rogers replied, “Because my stomach hurts.” Rehm notes, “I did not have the courage to say to him, ‘Why does your stomach hurt?’ I was afraid. I was afraid, and he was dead three months later.”

My favorite of these classic interviews was from 2014, with Peter Yarrow and Noel Paul Stookey of “Peter, Paul, and Mary” fame. While missing Mary Traver’s voice, who died in 2009, these two folk singers sang on, and Diane and I sang with them, of lemon trees, five hundred miles, magic dragons, and answers “blowin’ in the wind.”

While I’m not generally a New Year’s resolution person, these last few days with Diane Rehm have encouraged me to formulate commitments for the new year. First, in 2017, I want to sing more. I need to sing “Puff, the Magic Dragon” with the lovely Madelyn Simone and the delightful Elizabeth Holiday, for every child should know the love between a little boy and a magic dragon who “lived by the sea and frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honnah Lee.”

As I sing, I also want to remember. First, the passion of my teen years as I sang along with Peter, Paul and Mary; the hammer, the bell, and “the song I have to sing,” for justice, freedom, and “the love between my brothers and my sisters, all over this land.” I want to remember the stories and the people who have formed my life. I don’t want to forget.

And I want to have courage. I don’t want to be afraid to speak, to act, and to connect, beginning, as Maya Angelou wisely offers, “by doing small, courageous things.”

In 2017, might we sing, even if our voices are raspy or off key. Might we remember, even when the memories are clouded or painful. And might we not be afraid, even in the darkness. Happy New Year.

Noel. Aleppo.

About ten years ago, I wrote a tender Christmas carol called “To the Holy Family.” Each verse focused on a member of the small family from Nazareth whose story is told in the gospels of Matthew and Luke. What might it have been like for Mary and Joseph as they lived through what we call the story of the nativity? It’s tempting to sanitize the account, awash in glorious singing and twenty centuries of artistic interpretations. Surely, the beasts were friendly and the angels were encouraging to the new parents, right? “Fear not.”

And yet. If Mary had written her birth story, it might have included an exhausting trip to Bethlehem, a frantic search for a midwife, a crude substitute for a cradle, and a bevy of unwashed and less-than-welcome visitors – and nobody brought a box of Pampers. From the unexpected annunciation by Gabriel to the prophetic pronouncement of Simeon in the Temple (“and a sword shall pierce your very soul”), there was little of the normal in the narrative of the nativity.

A final component to the Christmas story gets less attention from the pulpit or the pen of the songwriter than the angelic announcement or the visit of the shepherds and magi. Recorded in the second chapter of Matthew’s gospel, these prescient words hint of what is to come: “After Jesus was born in Bethlehem . . .”

After the birth, the celebration – then what? For Mary and Joseph, there was to be no return to their home in Nazareth, at least for the immediate future. Instead, they became refugees, heeding the divine directive to escape into Egypt. The life of their baby was threatened by the “slaughter of the innocents,” which took place under the direction of King Herod. ‘Kill the babies,” Herod ordered. Here’s how I described Joseph’s challenge: “When Herod rages, run for His life, harbor your babe and trembling wife.”

This is the part of the Christmas story that has been ever-present to me in these waning days of December, 2016, and it has been echoed in the name of a Syrian city: Aleppo. Ten years ago, the population of Aleppo was more than two million, more than twice the size of Cleveland, Ohio. Today, its ancient structures are in ruins and its population is on the run. Aleppo has been described by a United Nations representative as “a meltdown of humanity.”

The tragedy of Aleppo is captured in an image from August of this year, the picture of Omran Daqneesh, a five-year-old child photographed in the back of an ambulance. If you’ve seen it, you remember. Last Sunday, as I sat in the opening worship time in church, I couldn’t escape the image of Omran, nor could I ignore what it must have been like for Mary and Joseph as they were forced to depend on the goodness of others as they made their refugee journey to Egypt.

And yet. “Noel, noel, born is the king of Israel.” The congregation joined the song leader in the familiar refrain of the sixteenth century carol, singing of stars, angels, shepherds and magi. As the music swelled around me, I clung to the delightful Elizabeth Holiday, drifting off to sleep in the comfort and safety of my arms. “Noel,” the music repeated. “Aleppo,” my heart cried.

Under deadline to submit these words to the newspaper, I wonder, “Where am I going with this?” I want to wrap up my words in a neat package, tie a pretty bow around them and push “send” to the newsroom. But not this week.

And yet. As unsettled as these December days have seemed, as persistent as the pain from Aleppo has been, I still believe that love can triumph over hate. I still believe joy can be found in the mist of sorrow. It is possible, as Pastor Nate Bebout reminds us, to find “celebration in the midst of the rubble,” no matter what our rubble looks like. And so I claim the words of Charles Wesley for myself and for my readers, a prayer and a promise for Christmas 2016: “Hark, the herald angels sing . . . peace on earth and mercy mild.”