Sparkling

Today, our house is sparkling—not the tidy, freshly polished kind of sparkling, but the kind spangled with twinkle lights, glistening with chipped bits of tree ornaments, littered with shreds of metallic wrapping paper, scattered with glitter fallen from children's craft projects, and sprinkled with colored sugar and a fine dusting of flour all around. Very messy. Very merry. May your Christmas be so blessed it sparkles.

We Are the 99 Percent

We are the 99 percent. We are getting kicked out of our homes. We are forced to choose between groceries and rent. We are denied quality medical care. We are suffering from environmental pollution. We are working long hours for little pay and no rights, if we're working at all. We are getting nothing while the other 1 percent is getting everything. We are the 99 percent.

These are stark and disturbing claims, are they not? The above is the summary statement on the home page of the "We Are The 99 Percent" website, a blog where supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement can post their stories of worry, deprivation, and suffering at the hands of the wealthiest 1 percent of the American population–the 1 percent who own and manage some of the world's largest corporations.

A tale of two Americas

I confess that I have not been following the protests closely. But the protesters' signs are big, and their complaints are loud, so it would be hard to miss their point: Corporate moguls are selfish moneygrubbers who couldn't care less about the little guy. They would rather line their own pockets at the expense of the other 99 percent of Americans than consider the economic hardships the rest of us are enduring. And while we dig ourselves deeper into private debts, they cruise carelessly above us in their private jets. Somebody (Congress, are you listening?) had better make them give back some of what they've taken from all of us.

By now, of course, we've seen plenty of opposing commentary highlighting the benefits these corporations bestow upon us Americans, and I know that I myself have enjoyed many of the goods and services that they provide. But let's grant, just for the sake of argument, that these corporate billionaires really are nothing but heartless financial dictators who would rather starve a child than lose a dollar. Let's say that they truly do care more about the bottom line than about the bread line. Let's grant, in other words, that the ugly portrait that the protesters have painted of these Wall Street Scrooges is perfectly accurate. It's not a pretty picture, is it? Wall Street has some serious penance to pay.

But now, just for a minute, let's shift our focus away from those bloodsucking CEO's and back on the protesters themselves. They are the 99 percent. Their signs say so. And they have been painting a portrait not only of Wall Street but also of themselves. You can see it on their website. You can read it in the quote up above. The contrast couldn't be starker: The 99 percent are suffering. They have no rights. They are, to put in their words, getting nothing.

Nothing. Let's meditate on that.

How impoverished, exactly, are 99 percent of the American people? How accurate is the self portrait these protesters have been painting? What if, for the sake of perspective, we took away their paintbrush and instead handed these 99 percent a mirror? What, I had to wonder, does it look like to get nothing? What does suffering look like in the US of A? What does it mean to have no rights? Well, I've got eyeballs, and so, I hope do you. So pull up on Google any Associated Press photo of the Wall Street Protesters and tell me what you see.

Living with nothing

What I see over and over again is a gathering of apparently clean, healthy, well dressed, well fed individuals carrying cell phones and digital cameras and being respectfully allowed to take over city streets to voice their opinions—even in spite of their violation of minor laws about the acceptable use of public spaces.

What I do not see are swollen, malnourished bellies. I see no open sores or untreated diseases. I see no dirty rags or disintigrating shoes. I see no one being beaten or shot or arrested merely for voicing their opposition to the status quo. Nor am I seeing that sort of thing on the streets where I live—or on any American street, for that matter. So, while appearances can be deceiving, just on the face of it the claims of the 99 percent seem suspect.

That's not to say that nobody is suffering, that nobody is underfed, that nobody is being crushed by corporate greed. That's not to say that some Wall Street corporations haven't taken merciless advantage of some of us American citizens. I do believe that more and more people in our country have been struggling to make ends meet in recent years. I might even count myself among them.

I myself have known well enough what it's like to be uninsured, to go without certain luxuries, to live "paycheck to paycheck." Our family spent several years in which my own kids were eligible for Medicaid. Just this past year we lost some of our health coverage due to the economic downturn, and even now our family fits squarely within the definition of "low income" according to federal guidelines for a family of seven. I am the 99 percent, I guess. So it's not that I think these people are completely delusional when they say that times are tough. But the question is, tough compared to what? 

I have no doubt that among the Wall Street protesters there are individuals with legitimate grievances. But do they represent the 99 percent? To ask it another way, for every 100 people in these United States, are 99 being robbed and cheated and trampled upon by Wall Street? I found that hard to believe, so I decided to do a quick search of the internet to find some reliable statistics that might show what life among the 99 percent is actually like during these dark financial times.

A better summary?

Don't get me wrong. I understand the rhetorical power of hyperbole, but is our plight truly as bad as the "We Are the 99 Percent" crowd describes—that 99 percent of Americans are, in essence, homeless, sick, starving, poisoned, unemployed, or "working long hours for little pay and no rights" and are "getting nothing"?

Exaggerated claims like these are, in part, what prompted the government of North Korea, of all places, to issue official public statements claiming that these dire conditions in the United States now prove that capitalism has failed us. Would you, the 99 percent, prefer to emmigrate to North Korea, that great land of economic equality, in order to enjoy the wealth and freedom that it has to offer? Would you trade your American poverty for their prosperity? Yeah, me neither. 

I'm not saying that we couldn't do better. I'm not saying that Wall Street is guiltless or that poverty—even relative poverty—should be ignored. What I am saying is that, before we decide to condemn greed, we might want to take a look in the mirror; before we march through the streets lamenting our poverty, we might first do well to learn what poverty actually looks like in this country. Our "necessities" look surprisingly like luxuries to most of the world's population.

If we compared our poorest citizens to the wealthiest one percent of the rest of the world, I suspect that we might be astonished by the resemblance.

As most of us know, legitimate statistics can be used, and routinely are used, to cloud the truth. So I fully realize that the following percentages are unlikely to paint a completely accurate portrait of American life. What I do hope to prove, however, is that these statistics bear very little resemblance to the portrait painted on the We Are the 99 Percent website.

If nothing else, I hope that after reading the statistics below the response that we come away with is gratitude. We Americans, we 99 percent, have been given far much more than we realize. Thanksgiving is coming up. Allow me to help you get ready:

According the US Department of Energy (2005), of all Americans at poverty level or below,

99.7% have a refrigerator

97.9% have a TV

95.2% have a stove and oven

81.7% have a microwave

74.7% have air conditioning (Really? I am now slightly envious of 74% of poor Americans.)

72.3% have one or more VCRs

66.8% have more than one TV

64.9% have cable or satellite TV (!) 

64.8% have at least one DVD player

63.9% have a clothes washer

53.1% have a clothes dryer

54.5% have a cell phone

51.7% have both a VCR and DVD player

38.2% have a personal computer

29.3% have a video game console

29.3% have internet service

28.4% have a computer printer

24.2% have more than one DVD player

22.7% have a separate freezer

17.9% have a big screen TV

(I should add that these percentages are even higher among poor families with children.)

According to the USDA,

85.5 percent (101.5 million) of U.S. households were food secure throughout 2010.

Food secure—These households had access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members.

According to National Geographic,

Americans on average have the largest homes of the 17 countries surveyed.

97% have hot running water

94% have a reliable source of heat

82% have air conditioning

85% regularly eat chicken

79% regularly eat beef

79% of Americans drive cars alone (So that's why the carpool lane is always empty during rush hour!)

67% have a dishwasher

57% have 3 or more TVs

48% have their own washer and dryer

19% have 3 or more cars per household.

16% of American homes have 10 or more rooms.

According to Pew Research:

96% of 14- to 29-year-olds own a cell phone

85% of all American adults now own a mobile phone

76% of Americans own either a desktop or laptop computer

47% own an dedicated MP3 player such as an iPod or Zune

42% of Americans own a video game console

And lastly, according to the CIA World Fact Book,

the current average life expectancy in this country is 78.3 years, compared to a global average of 67.2 years. (Throughout much of Africa, you would be doing extraordinarily well to reach age 50.)

After looking at what the majority of us really do have, I think we would do well to rewrite the summary found at the beginning of this post. If we are being honest, most of us could sign our names to something more like this:

We are the 99 percent. We drive our own cars. We have free K-12 education. We watch TV. We play games on our cell phones. We take hot showers regularly and turn on the AC in the summertime. We eat meat several times a week. We wear new clothes and have machines to wash them for us. We live long and prosper. We are the 99 percent. 

That Is Why It Is Called the "Present"

The day before my 33rd birthday I nearly died.

Yesterday morning was nothing remarkable. I had made a few loose plans to do laundry and read books with the kids. I had lunches to pack and errands to run and chores to do. I was preoccupied with a collection of quotidian details as I was driving home from my sons' school where I'd been helping with reading groups.

Just as I was starting to cross the highway to turn left at a green light, out of the corner of my eye I noticed a car flying like a bullet toward the intersection and showing no signs of slowing down.

I slammed on my brakes and lurched to a halt. My front wheels had already advanced half-way into the crosswalk the moment the speeding silver sedan shot through the red light. It was gone before I had gathered enough wits about me to honk my horn or read license plate numbers. With the sound of my heart swooshing rapidly somewhere behind my ears, I rolled forward again, trying not to let my knee shake as my foot pressed the gas pedal. I turned left, catching the eye of one of the drivers who had stopped at the red light. Her mouth was hanging open, and she raised her hands and shook her head in utter disbelief.

Death had just looked me in eyeballs, and my eyeballs were now open very, very wide. My vision, for that moment, was as sharp as shattered glass: My time is decidedly not in my hands.

Had I left the school just a split second earlier, had I proceeded from the stop sign up the hill just a moment sooner, had I driven just a hair over the speed limit on my way down that hill, I might have spent this day not enjoying birthday hugs from my children or lunch with my grandmother or a dinner out with my husband and some good friends but in a hospital bed or, worse, in a morgue.

Ironically, it's brush a death that may revive a love of life in all is mundane details. After that near escape, the fall leaves look a little brighter, the sky a little bluer, the laundry a little softer, my breath a little warmer, my family a little dearer. Life is good.

That "every day is a gift" may have been reduced to a greeting card platitude, but it's a truth nonetheless. Today I feel acutely that the mere fact of a beating heart is the gift of a lifetime.

Today I celebrate the day I was born. Today I celebrate that first day that life was given to me. But today I will also celebrate the other 12,044 days when that precious life was given to me again and again. Today is my birthday. Today I am alive. It is a very happy birthday indeed.

Why, Yes. Yes There Is a Doctor in the House.

The African elephant, I recently learned, has the longest gestation period of all mammals—22 months. That sounds painfully exhausting if you ask me. But I can tell you with certainty that the African elephant has nothing on the American PhD candidate.

Nine years ago, when we had one tiny baby (and we thought our lives were busy), we moved to Dallas, Texas, where my husband would pursue a Master’s Degree in Literature. A year later, he was enrolled in the doctoral program at the University of Dallas and was on his way to earning a PhD.

I, naïve young thing that I was, truly believed that in a mere three, or at most four, years we’d be walking away from that fine institution cradling a sweet little diploma in our arms.

I, of course, ought to have known better; I have had a college student in my household for all but a few short years of my life. I have had a graduate student in my immediate family for half my life, at least. Higher education is and has always been my bread and butter. My own father, if I’m not mistaken, was a college student for fourteen years, and I was old enough to remember when he finished his PhD. (There was great rejoicing.) So why I assumed that my husband would have no trouble accomplishing such a feat in a few short years, I do not know. Looking back now, the expectation seems completely ridiculous.

“I recognize a workhorse when I see one,” said my husband’s professor as he introduced Jayson before his final public lecture two weeks ago, “and when I took one look at Dr. Grieser’s faculty description on the website of the college where he teaches, I could see that that’s exactly what he is.”

It’s true. Only a workhorse (or maybe an elephant) would do what my husband has done. But at that moment, I wanted to stand up and tell everybody present, “You don’t know the half of it.”

For the young, childless bachelor living on nothing but student loans and ramen noodles to complete a doctorate is nothing to sneeze at, I suppose. But for the family man who does the same thing—while simultaneously retaining a full-time job, a social life, and a church life, as well as the love of his wife and five children—some special honor should certainly be added to the degree: PhDE, perhaps (Doctor of Philosophy, Extraordinaire.) Give that man an extra stripe on his academic robe, say I, and an extra tassel on his tam. It wouldn’t be too much, would it, if I followed him around town holding a flashing neon Applause sign over his head, would it? Surely not.

Plenty of people have asked me, “Isn’t it such a relief for him to be done?” And the answer, of course, is yes. But it is more than a relief; it is pride and gratitude and euphoria and fatigue, all rolled into one. If you have ever given birth to a child, you know exactly what I mean.

But just as with the birth of a child, when one kind of labor is finished, a new kind of labor begins. Much as I may wish we could take an extended vacation to celebrate the completion of this degree, I have to remind myself of the saying repeated every year at graduation by my husband's students: Omni cui multum datum est, multum quaeretur ab eo. (To whom much is given, much is required.) Jayson, workhorse that he is, had hardly taken on the title of "doctor" before he moved on to the task of planning new classes to teach and making improvements to the classes he currently teaches. He finished his glass of champagne, and then took up his books again for the work ahead. After all (as Shelley once observed), "nothing wilts faster than laurels that have been rested upon."

Now that the dissertation is complete and successfully defended, you can only imagine how good it feels to be delivered of that 250-page burden. It took my husband nine years of graduate school to bring forth that baby. Nine years. That, if you're counting, is the gestation period of the African elephant five times over. So if you notice a new lightness in his step, you now understand why.

After all these years, I am delighted to finally report that yes, there is indeed a doctor in the house.

The Birds and the Bees and the Flowers and the Trees

I have done some writing in the last month. Honest. As a matter of fact, I've written more than usual during the past five weeks. But unfortunately, all those words weren't coming together into any proper shape, which is why editing was taking far too long. I felt like I was sculpting jell-o. So rather than publish the formless, strawberry flavored blob I've been chiseling away at, I thought I'd be better off sharing something a bit more concrete to ponder instead.

Here, therefore, are 2,000 "words" from my photos this week:

A Little Local Limelight

Famous people don’t often rub shoulders with folks living in this small Idaho town surrounded by wheat fields. Red carpet premiers and star-studded galas simply don’t happen up here. So whenever some big name arrives in town, it’s almost always front page news. When Jesse Jackson came to speak at the University of Idaho last year, half the population turned out to hear him. Nevermind that half the population thinks he’s a joke. He’s famous, dadgummit, and that gets us excited.

But if the mere arrival of somebody famous gives us a thrill, you can imagine how much more thrilled we are when somebody from around here—somebody we actually know—becomes a household name.

That is why a bunch of us here in Moscow are all abuzz this weekend over our newest—and probably our biggest—encounter with fame. The J.J. Abrams/Steven Spielberg movie Super 8 is opening nationwide on Friday, and it just happens to star one of our local home-grown kids. We are more than excited; we are practically intoxicated. This sort of thing just doesn't happen here.

I remember listening to NPR while washing the dishes in my kitchen in Dallas one day when an album review came on the air. “Our next artist hails from Moscow, Idaho,” said the announcer. I stopped scrubbing. Nobody had ever mentioned my home town on a Dallas radio station before. Who on earth could they be talking about? “Josh Ritter’s newest album, The Animal Years…”

Wait. What? Josh Ritter is a musician? I know that guy! Well, sort of. He’s in my junior high yearbook! I used to go to the Lutheran church with his family!...Whoa. So, of course, I had to look him up online where I discovered that he’s actually made something of a name for himself on the folk/pop music scene. And that made this Moscow girl feel mighty proud. I like to see my home town on the map from time to time, and I know I'm not alone.

When Sarah Palin's name went global during the last election, our town—well, half of it at any rate—was happy to remember her as having spent her college years here in Moscow.

When track star Dan O'Brien made sports headlines when I was a kid, our local university named its outdoor track after him. We claimed him as ours.

And then there’s N.D. Wilson who graduated from high school with me (lo, these many years ago) in our little class of 17 and now lives just down the street. And he is a bestselling author who has appeared on a National Geographic special and the Today Show. Every time Nate's work makes the news somewhere, we small towners who know him immediately start posting links all over Twitter.

Successful people are impressive. There’s no denying it. We get a charge out of our little brushes with fame. We’ve all heard people tell those long stories in which some chance encounter with a rock star is the punch line of the whole narrative. And most of us actually like to hear those stories told. (Count me among them.) If you shake hands with Alice Cooper at a Target store in Phoenix as my husband did many years ago, you’re going to tell people about it. And if you have a movie star as one of your acquaintances, you and I both know that that tidbit of information will find its way into plenty of casual conversations.

And I think all of that is just fine, to a point. It’s inspiring to watch friends succeed. We love our hometown "heroes," we love to tell their stories, and we especially love to be somewhere within their orbits. There's something just plain fun about being little moons to their sun—satellites that are just near enough to reflect some of the glaring spotlight; the higher their stars rise, the brighter we ourselves seem to shine. But sometimes (maybe more than sometimes) the glow of that limelight turns us a bit more green than it should. To be honest, when astonishing success comes close to home, it can be subtly tempting—all too easy to start thinking that hey, it could have been me. The thought, fleeting though it may have been, has crossed my own mind more than once.

But no. Actually, it couldn't have been me. And to think so would poison the delight of seeing our friends being publicly recognized. Far better to rejoice with them and for them. Far better to enjoy the show than to stupidly regret not being a part of it. It is inspiring to watch a friend succeed. And that, I think, is the reason for all the excitement over tomorrow's release of Super 8.

It’s been entertaining and a bit surreal to see Joel Courtney, who attends our sons’ school and whose family has been part of our church community for years, on the cover of Entertainment Weekly and showing up next to Steven Spielberg on MTV. That cute kid with the bed head who used to sit in front of us in church is a movie star? And we’re not just talking about a bit part in a low-budget, limited-distribution art-house flick. We’re talking about the lead role in what some reviewers are calling the must-see movie of the summer. It’s a bit hard to process.

But most of us who know him and his family are thrilled. We know a movie star! We know somebody who knows Steven Spielberg! I can’t scroll through my facebook news feed without finding link after link to reviews and interviews about Super 8. And I can’t say that I mind. I could take a ride on my high horse and ask what the big deal is. I could wonder aloud why everyone is so worked up about this. After all, it’s not like he found the cure for cancer. It’s not like he’s some kind of genius. It’s just a movie, for pity’s sake.

But that wouldn’t really be the truth. For us, it’s not just a movie. It’s our movie. It’s hard to say how long the thrill will last or whether we’ll get used to seeing our local boy’s face on billboards and movie posters all over the country. But for now, we’re enjoying the ride. Joel’s success feels, in some small way, like our own.

Earth Day

One Good Friday, when I was a child, we attended the Tenebrae service at our Lutheran church, and while we sat in our pews a storm rose outside. The wind began to blow wildly, and while Christ made his way to the accursed tree, every tree on the hills around us was made to bow and bend. Hail, King of the Jews. The sun went dark. The windows shook. The clouds shed tears. Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep for yourselves, and for your children. From the steeple at the center of the circular sanctuary hung a large wooden cross on a chain, and as the rain lashed the roof, the steeple began to vibrate. As those wind vibrations worked their way down the chain, the cross began to hum. To buzz. To moan. The wood itself seemed to cry from out of the depths—a basso profundo wailing. Eli, Eli, lama sabachtani? I remember the chills I felt as the massive Bible was slammed shut and the lights flicked off, the creak and groan of the wooden pews as we filed wordlessly out of the service, the whip of cold air as it snaked its way through the glass doors, biting at our heels, making me shiver.

Truly this was the Son of God.

That Good Friday storm was one of the more dramatic events of my church-going life. In retrospect I have wondered what physics were behind that mourning cross. More than physics, perhaps. That the storm blew in at the perfect moment, that a cold Canadian front met with a mass of wet southern air at that precise geographical location and sent the wind swirling in just such a way as to communicate grief through the glass, down a chain, and into that heavy wood seems almost unbelievable. As unbelievable as the death of God. But I was there. I was a witness. And I do believe.

Today is Earth Day. Today is Good Friday. On this day, two holidays—two holy days—collide. Today, Evangelical pastors and Greenpeace activists share the same hope: the hope that the earth will be saved.

We Christians and we earth-lovers want this world to be redeemed from destruction. None of us want it to go up sulfer-scented flames. I, for one, would rather not turn the wetlands into a trash heap. I'm all for biodegradable grocery sacks, and I don't mind the green glow of my compact fluorescent bulbs too much either. I do have a mandate to care for creation, but by composting my potato peelings, I am not, ultimately, saving the world. We all want to restore paradise, to bring heaven to earth. But at this point the Good Friday and the Earth Day visions diverge. Today we preach our respective gospels to the dying:
    Christ was crucified.
    Plant a tree for your tomorrow.

And yet, in a twist of irony, the salvation of the earth does, as it turns out, depend upon a tree—a tree that was planted on a hill outside Jerusalem two millennia ago. Creation itself also will be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty of the children of God.

There was an earthquake that day on Golgatha. Seismology played a roll at the crucifixion, but something more than plate tectonics was at work; the earth itself was taking part in Christ's passion. There was a storm on that Good Friday of my childhood. Perhaps a meteorologist could explain the peculiar atmospheric fluctuations that arose that dark evening when the earth, again, acted out its passion play. Was climate change behind it? Should we try to prevent those conditions from arising in the future? Somebody, after all, paved paradise to put up that church. But that church—that cross—is where the heavens met the earth that day. And where heaven and earth are joined, paradise is restored.

The cross, that deadly collision of heaven and earth, is where the true lover of the world—He through whom the earth itself was created—bled to save it. If He did not come to restore the earth, then all the neighborhood recycling programs in the world be damned.

Good Friday is Earth Day, this year and every year. For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.