Hope – Hugh's Blog

The one about hope.

I’ve been in a position several times recently where I have been asked what I do. To which I replied, “Do about what, exactly?,” which I think is funny and they never do.

It turns out, when people asked that, they mean, “What is your occupation?”, and I don’t have a good answer for that. The closest I come these days is “storyteller”, which is somehow both true and not helpful, either to them understanding what I do, or to my getting paid work that uses my skills.

But the other day, a guy called my bluff.

“You mean you just tell stories? About what?”

“Well,” I said. “They are mostly stories that make people feel good, or happy, or hopeful.”

“OK, cool. Tell me a story about hope.”

I wanted to tell him that I could tell him, but I’d have to charge, but he seemed the sort of person who would not get the reference, AND, as luck would have it, I had just that morning remembered a story I had heard long ago, and I was pretty sure I had remembered the whole thing after mulling it over in my head. Now I just needed a no-risk place to try it out. So, I said OK.

In olden times, there was a king. He was a powerful, rich king who spent money on his caprices and whims. And one of his most prized possessions was a donkey. He and his donkey were inseparable.

But not all was utopia—there was trouble in the king’s court, and one of his trusted advisors had committed treason and was now before the king to receive his sentence. With sadness, because he had trusted the man, the king sentenced his advisor to death.

The advisor hangs his head, pauses, and then kneels.

“Oh, sire. Your wisdom is legendary, and no one doubts your pursuit of justice. I accept responsibility for this crime and understand your sentence. The timing is a pity, however, for just this morning I learned the secret of how to teach a donkey to talk. If only I had 12 months to do it in, your favorite companion could speak as plainly as you or me.”

The king perked up.

“Is this a gag? You really know how to teach a donkey to talk?”

“I would not lie to you, oh king. In just 12 months, you and your donkey could spend the evenings talking over the news of the day. “

The king was doubtful.

“I’m not sure I believe you, but I don’t see as I have anything to lose. I will spare you for 12 months. You will continue to live in your home, and each day you will go to the stable to teach the donkey. If, at the end of a year, the donkey talks, I will not only spare your life, I will reward you beyond measure. BUT, if you are lying to me and the donkey doesn’t talk, I will make your death as slow and painful as I can imagine.”

The king then set the man free. The man practically skipped all the way home, he was so happy. When his wife heard what happened, she called him a fool.

“You had the chance to die quickly and not suffer; now you will suffer and bring shame to us all.”

The advisor scoffed.

“Nonsense. I traded death today for 12 months of life. Besides, many things can happen in a year. The king might die. I might die. The donkey might die. Or, and hear me out here, the donkey might just learn to talk!”

Goodbye, 2025

I hate the winter, but I love New Year’s Day. It’s a time when we at least consider what we can do differently in the future, while remembering the things we have done in the past. If you, like me, have the twin addictions of hope and nostalgia, it can be a wonderful time.

It can also be a time of depression and anxiety if you are not careful, especially if when you look back you see pain, and if you look forward, you see anxiety and scarcity.

Although I am addicted to hope and nostalgia, I live with anxiety and depression. And 2025 has been rough, y’all.

The back story:

In 2024, I was hired to build a nonprofit to connect living wage employers to formerly incarcerated folks. They had some funding commitments, and a general plan, so most of what I needed to do was to bring about implementation. In late fall of 24, those funding commitments disappeared, so we pivoted to getting federal money commitments to fund it. We reached terms in the first full week of 2025—the future looked amazing.

And then the inauguration happened. Federal money disappeared. People who had been eager to talk to me suddenly quit returning calls. Some of our best relationships lost their jobs. We came up with alternative plans to downscale, but couldn’t downscale enough, fast enough. By April, we didn’t have any money left to pay me. I lost my health insurance at the end of May.

I went into organizer mode and began having lots of one-on-one conversations with folks—here’s what I’ve been up to, here’s what I would like to do. Ideas coalesced, and people got excited, and some folks who were trying to reboot a failing nonprofit with an amazing legacy hired me to bring this vision to their org. They had some money, not much, but had funding commitments, and a rich legacy they were under-utilizing.

Friends, four months later the funding commitments fell through, and the philanthropic world had changed, and what would have been easy to fund in 2024 became a nightmare in 2025.

So, in early November, I found myself back to beating the streets. Right before the holidays is always a good time to look for your next career move (that was sarcasm). But more than that, I began to have some pretty severe doubts about the future, this country, and my role in it.

The navel gazing:

I have spent almost all the last 20 years doing “social justice work”, broadly defined. Most of my money has come from the nonprofit sector, but I don’t think of myself as a nonprofit professional. I just wanted to do good work, and that was the easiest, most legible way to get paid for it. And it has always been relatively easy to find work that needs doing, and that I am interested in doing, and that there were enough people willing to pay me to do it.

But the world has changed. I spent this whole damn year talking to philanthropy, and they are scared out of their gourds, y’all. It’s always hard to raise money for things in Mississippi—nationally, only 3% of philanthropic dollars come to the South. But the left-leaning folks who have always been eager to try new things are now holding onto every dollar, because the work they have funded until now is in danger. And they are scared of the IRS being weaponized against them for funding “woke” causes.

Individual philanthropists (read: rich folks of good will) are scared, too. Don’t attract too much attention, don’t take risks, don’t draw the ire of the administration.

As a straight white Christian male, I’ve never really been afraid of drawing attention—but that is when you can count on due process, and a stable federal government. But I am the sole income earner in our household. My spouse is disabled and dependent on insurance provided by the federal government to stay alive. Her meds alone would cost 36,000 out of pocket. My wife and five cats depend on my earning money to keep them all alive, and there is zero hyperbole in that sentence.

So, do I really want to invest in, and depend on, a future where I derive my income by being someone who gets paid to be a high-visibility, active combatant of the government?

It does not feel safe to do so. Or wise.

I dislike saying that. I dislike feeling afraid for my family and the people I love. And I dislike making money decisions based on fear.

So here we are at the end of this horrible year, and our country is in chaos, and our elected officials are untrustworthy, and I worked full time only eight of the last 12 months, and am really not sure I want to keep working in the nonprofit sector. And I’m 53, and God help my algorithm, which is filled with articles telling me how scary the job market is for folks over 50.

To be clear—I earn income from several places. I do some contract work for a local nonprofit—I earn about 20% of my annual income from there. I have a newsletter I publish, and other writing, and that is all supported by a team of patrons—that is another 25% or so. And I occasionally sell something I made, or a commission piece, and that is maybe 8-10%.

So, right now, bills are being paid, but losing half your income and all your health insurance leaves a mark. Emotionally, having started this year on a high note and leaving it in a severe deficit has messed with my head in all the ways you might expect it would for a 53-year-old male with depression and anxiety and ADHD.

Some conclusions:

In 2026, I will have to focus on making money. That is pretty much the filter for taking on new things next year: do they make money?

I’ve removed myself from some boards, and shucked myself from some other commitments. I’ve formed a new company to hold my creative work, and it will have a store where I sell the things I make and write (expect several big announcements on January 5^th!).

Related to that, expect me to make and to write more things to sell. I’m working like a madman to revamp and improve my membership program, so it provides even more value to the members who support my work. (Expect an announcement on February 2^nd.)

I’ll be writing more, and Facebook monetized me earlier this year, so I’ll have to figure out how to actually work that. God bless my heart and your feed.

And yes, while I love the idea of making a living from just the things I make and the words I write, I know I will have to find at least a half-time job to fill in the edges. So, if you know of work you think I would be good at, please let me know.

Over 2025, I’ve felt at various times hopeful, fearful, optimistic, and betrayed. I’m tired and yet know the fight in front of us is long and hard.

One thing I love about social media is the opportunity to share in your joy, even when my supply of joy is in severe deficit. I love seeing your kids’ Halloween costumes, that perfect view from your window, the crumpled wrapping paper on Christmas morning, the excitement that is evident when you post the cover of the book you just finished.

I see you, and am thankful for you. And thanks for sharing your joy.

Wishing you every good thing in the new year.

PS: This is the sort of thing I used to write regularly, and which got me a reputation for being vulnerable. There are lots of people who are close to me who haven’t known about all the financial chaos of this year because I have been reluctant to write about it. I mean, “a straight white man is afraid—news at 11”.

And honestly, being vulnerable about your fears and doubts gets you clicks, but also takes a toll on your mental health.

But I still hold to the wise words of Mr. Rogers, who said that anything human is mentionable, and by talking about it, it becomes more manageable. Thanks for being the people to give me a place to talk about it.

Living off the rage

The restaurant was quiet, despite its being the lunch hour. The rain came down outside, no doubt part of the reason for the low turnout.

We hadn’t seen each other for a while and were catching up in that meandering, slow way friends do. Here is what her son did, and here are the pictures. Here are pictures of our cats, and did you hear about so and so?

Like that.

Eventually, we got to the current political chaos. It feels like that is the subject of a lot of conversations I have these days. How did we get here? How do we fight back? What can we do?

This led to different people we know doing various kinds of work around this, including one person in particular I think of as The Instagram Activist.

They are at every protest. Their Instagram page is filled with the hashtag de jour. They have an instant opinion on every issue, despite their lack of knowledge of the issue. From matters as wide-ranging as labor policy to race to LGBT issues to food accessibility, they are out in front of the cameras, giving their solutions. They show up at city council and school board meetings with a camera, trying to play gotcha with board members. They have selfies with every significant Civil Rights personality.

And whenever I mention this person to anyone, all people talk about is how angry this person is. No local politician will take their call or trust them with a meeting. All they have is rage.

But here’s the thing—the whole anger thing is a public persona. I’ve spent a fair amount of time with them one on one, and they are not like that at all when the cameras are off.

“They are angry for a living,” I said to my friend at lunch that day.

She laughed and said that was exactly it.

“They are so caught up in the way it is, they don’t have a plan for what it could be like. They are not giving birth to anything; they are just living off the rage,” she said.

I know lots of folks who are living off the rage. Their Facebook feed is filled with “I told you so” posts. Outrage at the current administration leads them to fat-shame people who disagree with them. They are so mad they call other people who disagree with them names or slurs. The world is broken up into two camps, with the dividing mark being whether you agree with them. They are right; you are wrong. No curiosity, no nuance. Just rage.

Some people just like to fight, and are so busy fighting they never stopped to ask what they are fighting for. What happens if you win?

In May of 1780, John Adams was in Paris, trying to get help from the French government for the American colonies, then in the middle of the Revolutionary War. In a letter to his wife Abigail, he said,

“I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce, and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.”

I want to be clear: I hate war, and every war results from a failure of imagination. But at least Adams knew what he was fighting for. There was a larger vision at work than just “owning the [political party I oppose]”.

Don’t tell me what you are against: what are you for?

Don’t tell us what you want to destroy: what do you want to build?

I don’t want to know what you hate: let us know what you love.

Podcast Appearance: Soul + Practice

Kathy Escobar and Phyllis Mathis interviewed me on their podcast Soul + Practice: Raw Conversations, Real Practices, and it went live yesterday.

Kathy was an early role model as I carved out this weird life I have now – she is one of perhaps 5 folks whose work changed my life. I think I’ve known her for 19 years now.

If you are new here (or not), there is a lot that might interest you on here: My “origin” story, beauty as an antidote to despair, practices that can sustain you over time, and making room in the midst of it all for joy to happen.

I also talk a bit about what it means to live in the deep south when the country is on fire, and it’s probably not what you might think.

It was a lot of fun, and Kathy and I are currently trying to figure out more ways to work together. I know I’m really looking forward to that.

An Inconvenient Truth

I want to tell you a secret. Or maybe “secret” isn’t the right word since it’s pretty evident when you think about it. Either way, virtually nobody wants to talk about it.

And what’s worse, they plan movements and actions as if this secret doesn’t exist.

Are you ready? Here goes:

If we are going to win, we have to convert people to our side who currently disagree with us.

We want to think this is not true. We want to believe that because of social media, the strength of our ideas, and the rightness of our cause that we can find what Richard Nixon called “The Silent Majority” that agrees with us but just is not being talked about or listened to.

But the truth is, that silent majority doesn’t exist. Because we have had the internet widely available to the public for more than 2 decades now, and they haven’t shown up yet. Just because you can find someone who already agrees with you in Peoria, Illinois, doesn’t mean you have anything like critical mass to change the outcome of an election.

No, changing the world will require the cooperation of those who currently disagree with you.

Let’s do an exercise. In your mind, imagine the last time you went to a crowded place – an airport, a bus station, Walmart, wherever. If it helps, and you are in a place where it’s safe to do so, close your eyes.

There are people everywhere. All kinds of people – some fat and some thin, some white and some people of color. Some gay, some straight. Some men, some women, some are older and others are kids. Republicans, Democrats, Independents. All kinds of people.

Got it?

OK.

Most of those people don’t want the better world you are offering. They don’t share your dream. Because they have a lot of things going on in their lives, and their own self-interests, and so your dreams are not their highest priority. Most of them, even if they like your ideas, will just find it easier to go along with the Powers That Be, content to live their life on default.

If your stated goal is resistance, then almost by definition, the majority of the world disagrees with your goal. Because if they agreed with you, then you wouldn’t need to resist.

Back to our imagination: you are surrounded, in a large public place, with people who, by and large, disagree with you. So my question is this: Let’s say you win. You get the better world you are wanting. What do you do then with the people who disagree with you in the better world you are dreaming of?

What do we do with them in this new world we are building? Because if we succeed in building this better world – and I’m planning on it – then we either have to learn how to convert them to our side, or… I dunno – lock them in a cage? I mean, seriously, what will their place be in this new world you dream of?

More than a decade and a half of building intentional cross-class and cross-racial relationships has taught me that people only change if they have reasons to change.

It is not from ourselves that we learn to be better than we are – we learn from others.

And if we are to have any influence in changing the minds of others, we have to learn what they want and find ways to show them how our goals align with their self-interest. Because people, by and large, are motivated by their own self-interest.

The world would be a much more fun place if we could just show up at marches and denounce the oppressor class and buy fair trade coffee and talk smack about corporate interests, but the reality is, to build this better world, we have to find a way to get others to buy into it. Because the better world we all dream is possible is only possible if we can all achieve liberation.

Prayers

I don’t understand prayer. I mean, not really. I don’t know how it works, or if it works, and I have noticed that when I pray for something to change, the thing that changes the most is usually me.

Maybe that is how it works, after all.

I once was pastor to a woman named Karen. Her partner – let’s call him Tony – was routinely physically abusive to her and trafficked her to support his drug habit. I knew she needed to leave him, she knew she needed to leave him. But she didn’t have the strength to leave. She, like many in her situation, was afraid.

Those of us who loved her tried to be supportive of her, and we all pretty much despised him. During our weekly chapel service, we would all pray for her safety. She and I would talk regularly, and she would tell me that she was praying something would happen to him so he wouldn’t hurt her anymore.

Several men in our small community volunteered to whoop his ass, but she asked them not to. It was a combination of her fear of him and that none of them could afford to catch a charge for assault.

But Tony was his own worst enemy. One day, he smarted off to the wrong person in a drug deal gone bad, and 6 guys beat the ever-loving shit out of him. I mean, they broke his legs, broke his jaw, broke his skull, broke his ribs, broke things inside of him. He was inside the hospital for more than a month and when he finally did leave, he left in a wheelchair.

While he was in the hospital, we bought her a bus ticket to go live with a friend of hers in another state. She was free. He would never hurt her again.

The following week, in our chapel service, we lifted her name up during prayer time and thanked God for her safety. One lady asked if it would be wrong to thank God for Tony’s being in the hospital. Or wrong for them to be glad he would never walk again.

I told them that they got to feel what they felt. I told them that there is no one prescribed response to trauma, and no one way to feel after trauma was over. And I told them that Jesus said he was in favor of tying rocks to people and chucking them in the sea if they harmed vulnerable folks. David, a man we are told is a man after God’s own heart, wanted to smash the heads of his enemies’ babies against the rocks.

I told them it was complicated, sometimes, this desire to protect the vulnerable while also wanting to model a better world.

But I also told them that Karen had been in danger, and now she was not. Because this happened, she was now safe. And I reminded them that this was caused 100% by his own actions. In other words, Tony got his ass beat because he was the sort of person he was. This was entirely the consequence of his own actions.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think there is a plan. I think God, or the Universe, or whatever metaphor you want to use for whatever is larger than we are, is just frugal and, since the universe wastes nothing, the tragedies that befall all of us are not debris left over from disasters, but building materials from which we build our lives.

So I don’t know if our prayer is the reason Tony will never walk again or the reason Karen is still alive. But I do know that those prayers changed me.

The Plan

Some years back, I was hanging out in the smoking rea of the day shelter I ran at the time. It was one of my favorite community-building activities – it’s hard to have any agenda in a smoking area, especially if you yourself do not smoke.

If you just hung out there long enough, people would forget you were the guy in charge of everything, and eventually, they would just talk. And if you were willing to just listen, you heard some amazing things.

Like the time I heard how one of our guests had been in a drug deal gone bad, and so the other party to the deal was looking for him to kill him, but our guest had hidden in a dumpster and the would-be killer overlooked him.

He turned to me and then said, “Pastor, that’s why I believe in God. Because he was protecting me that day.”

Well, as the old saying goes, the Lord protects fools, drunks and, I guess, drug dealers.

Anyway. Another time, and to the point of this conversation, I overheard two guys talking. It seems that this was homeless because he had cheated on his girlfriend, and she found out about it, and she had then thrown all his stuff out in the street when he wasn’t home, changed the locks, and also called the woman he was cheating on her with, who was unaware he was cheating, and who also threw all his stuff out and locked him out.

So he’s telling this story to another guy who we will call Guy #2.

Guy #1: I ain’t mad though. This is all part of God’s plan.

Guy #2: Oh, how do you figure?

Guy #1: I mean, I just figure everything happens for a reason.

Guy #2; Sure. But sometimes, the reason is that you did some stupid shit.

Well, yes. There is that.

Our impulse to make meaning from chaos is strong. I have spent more time than most people at the deaths of youths who died violent deaths, and I always hear folks say that God needed them more than we did, or that this is all part of God’s plan, or that God won’t give us more than we can handle – all of which are really stupid things to say that bring comfort to no one but the speaker.

But they say them anyway.

I get how it happens though. As I look back over my life, I see things that turned out poorly – a bad relationship, a job I got fired from unjustly, a friendship gone bad – that at the time seemed horrible, but which, in time, became a turning point for my life, and that led to my finding a better partner, or a more rewarding job, or led to my developing healthier relationships.

And so it is tempting to believe that the bad thing that happened was part of the plan – God’s, The Universe’s, hell – somebody’s – and that it was foreordained that as a result of this bad thing, I would be better off eventually.

But I don’t believe that to be true.

What I believe is that the universe is inherently frugal, and wastes nothing. The leaves that fall from the trees in Autumn become compost that feeds the trees in Spring. The flurried attempts to get nourishment by bees from flowers are also the accidental means by which flowers get pollinated, and thus exist. The spring ephemeral flowers only exist because the leaves fall off the trees, and thus bring sunshine to places that are normally in darkness.

The Universe is a very frugal place.

And I exist in that frugal universe. And so do you. We don’t just exist in it – we are part of it. Like the leaves, or the bees, or the flowers. And so, since the universe wastes nothing, the tragedies that befall all of us are not debris left over from disasters, but building materials from which we build our lives.

And so the fact that I spent most of my 20’s doing a job that I hated, that required me to do things I found abhorrent and that led to my drinking an unhealthy amount to survive was neither a personal disaster nor part of a benevolent god’s plan, but rather the source of the skills (such as public speaking, persuasive writing skills, and confidence in dealing with people) that I have used to build a 15-year career advocating for people who have their backs against the wall and effecting culture change. Work I would not have had the tools to do had I not learned them then, in that ugly period of my life.

Like bones and water, which, with time. Heat, and intention, form broth, the things in our past are the materials with which we build our future.

I once knew a lady who lived in a van. Her story was harsh and brutal, and she had legitimate grievances about the circumstances that led her there, and her reasons for being unable to be rehoused. But she wasn’t angry. I asked her why not, and she told me she never really thought of it that way.

“I don’t focus much on what got me here. I just ask myself what I’m supposed to be doing now that I’m here.”

That sounds like a plan to me.

Guardian Angels

A thing I do, when overwhelmed by the pain of the world, is to look through the memory box I carry around in my head and try hard to remember everything I can about a particular thing.

Last night, processing the shootings and the huge loss of life, I closed my eyes and went back through time to Strickland Road, in Desoto County, MS, and I was maybe 8 years old and in my Aunt Louise‘s house – a house I have not set foot in for more than 38 years.

The house, which had been her husband’s house before his death, and his parent’s house before it had been his, was a converted dogtrot house. A dogtrot is a style of farmhouse popular that existed in the hot and humid south before air conditioning, where the building was a rectangle, with a room on either end, and the center was a covered porch. For the most part, the real living was done under the covered porch, where you could take advantage of the dominant breezes, but the bedroom and sitting rooms were capable of being secured.

When AC came along, many dogtrot houses had the center room boxed in, so now you had three rooms, and not two. Which was what had happened to this one. The house had a long covered screened-in front porch that had been added later, and when you walked across the front porch and through the front door, the room you came into – the former porch of the dogtrot – had no windows, so it was always dark.

In my mind’s eye, I can see it still – the beadboard paneling, the high ceilings, the hard, uncomfortable couch with the scratchy upholstery on the far right, along the wall, and on the left wall a couple of chairs and a table with a record player on it. We virtually never sat in this room.

Except when there was a storm. Because there were no windows and it was in the center of the house, if there was a bad thunderstorm, she and I would sit in the living room on that scratchy couch, and I would curl up next to her, and she would shut the doors to the other rooms so we wouldn’t see the flashes of lightning and the thunder was muffled and we and the dogs would sit in that room and wait the storm out, and I always asked her to tell me the story about the kids in the picture.

I don’t know how she came about it – it was a dollar store print with a heavy gilt frame – 18 inches by 24, including the frame – that hung on the wall opposite the front door of her house, the first thing you saw when you came in. And when we were in the living room – which we only were when there was a storm and I was scared and most likely the power had gone out and we were sitting in candlelight- she would tell me stories about the people in the picture.

It showed two small children on a bridge – a sketchy bridge, at that – and in the background was an angel, watching over the children, ready to swoop in lest they be in danger. It was a popular print in Appalachian America during the first half of the last century, and somehow, she had ended up with a copy on her wall.

The stories she told me varied. Sometimes the little boy had gotten lost, and his sister had found him and was bringing him to safety. Sometimes the sister was scared and he was walking over the bridge with her so she would feel safe. Sometimes, the kids were late getting home, so they took the sketchy bridge to save time. But always, the guardian angel was watching out for them.

My aunt was agnostic, but her theology of angels was strongly an interventionist one. I was evangelized to believe, in that paneled living room, sitting on a scratchy sofa, while looking at a dollar store print in candlelight, that we were cared for and watched over by guardian angels, who cared for us and protected us. And if I ever came to doubt, she would tell me that the guardian angels were watching over us right now, and soon the storm would end and the sun would come out and the power would come back on and we would be safe once again.

And then it would happen, just like she said it would. I mean, how can you argue with that?

When she died suddenly when I was 12, I got that print – it hung on my wall over my bed all through my high school years. I then got put in a closet in my parent’s house, and last year, when they were cleaning out a room there, Mom found it and called me to ask what she should do with it.

It hangs now on my wall in my bedroom. I look at it every night before I go to bed – not because I believe in literal angels out there, watching over me, ready to catch me when I fall off a sketchy bridge, but because I absolutely believe in the power of story to make us feel safe and loved when the world is conspiring to make us feel neither.

Hey there

Hey there.

Yes, you.

How’s it going? I mean, for real?

Yeah. Me too.

It’s exhausting. All of it. Like, so many good things are happening, and new possibilities are opening up, and also the world is a damned dumpster fire, and the rights we have fought for are being rolled back and democracy seems so fragile and COVID numbers are rising again and people I love keep dying and … it all seems too much.

I feel constantly behind right now. Like, there are so many things I need to be doing and I have no energy for any of them because I am just watching the world collapse around me and I told someone the other day it was like the collapse of Rome, but with Wi-Fi and Netflix.

I’m not sleeping well. I mean, I fall asleep OK, but I wake up at 4 AM and about half the time can’t go back to sleep. I just lay there and think about all the ways I am behind and the despair of it all and finally, I just get up and make breakfast because at least that is something I can focus on and accomplish.

The world is opening back up, but that doesn’t mean it’s wise to do it – people like my wife who don’t have functioning immune systems and kids under 5 who aren’t vaccinated, and oh, by the way, lots of folks still aren’t vaccinated and I guess they’ve just decided to hell with those vulnerable people.

So yeah. I get it.

What’s keeping you going these days?

For me, it’s nature. Every morning I make my coffee and go outside and walk around my yard. I look at what’s blooming and take pictures and watch the birds play at the feeder and I make gardens in my head. Later I will probably go for a walk – I like doing that more than swimming, now that it’s warm again. I love strolling through the neighborhood, checking in on my favorite trees and flowers, getting harassed by a tiny, but very vocal dog at the end of my street, and waving at people I do not know in their cars who wave at me first. It all makes me feel connected to the world, a part of something bigger than myself.

Oh yeah – I’m building a pond. Can you believe that? I mean, it’s a small pond, 6×10, but it is shallow – more of a huge birdbath, really, The birds love moving water – hell, so do I, when it comes to that. I am looking forward to watching the water splash on the rocks in the evening, after supper, when the sun is going down and the birds are singing. It won’t be long now.

Anyway. That’s what gets me through. Birds. Water features. Building gardens in my mind.

It’s my birthday in a few weeks – June 5th. I’ll be 50. That doesn’t make sense to me at all. But that’s probably a whole other letter.

But basically, I just wanted to check-in. To let you know that I know it’s hard right now. I see you, doing the best you can. I see you, hanging on.

I wish I knew something pastoral to say when it feels like the world is crumbling around you, but I don’t. At least not anything I haven’t said before.

Stay hydrated. Get plenty of sleep. No, more sleep than that. Eat good food, and preferably with people you care about.

Don’t let them steal your humanity – look for opportunities to help others, even if on the smallest of scales. Find humor where you can, and laugh as much as you can.

In the midst of powerlessness, search for things you can still control, and do that.

And remember that love always wins in the end. Always.

And if it seems like love didn’t win, it’s only because it isn’t yet the end.

Don’t give up, and don’t give in. And love really, really hard.

The Bad News

It was perhaps six years ago that I found myself at the hospital. It was, to be fair, a nice hospital, as hospitals go. I didn’t have clergy credentials at this one – my people almost always ended up at the much less nice county hospital. But still, here I was – well, me and my buddy Shelden. He was good as gold, Sheldon was, but his missing teeth and unkempt afro garnered some stares from folks in the lobby.

Shelden had come to me earlier that day and told me that his brother was in the hospital with lung cancer. And then he asked if I would go with him to see his brother.

I said that of course I would, but that I didn’t even know he had a brother. Sheldon said something about his own brother had acted like he didn’t have a brother. I didn’t push it. When you don’t have a home, sometimes family dynamics get complicated.

The first clue that something was wrong was at the front desk when Shelden asked for his brother’s room number. The receptionist looked at the computer and then picked up the phone. A cryptic exchange happened, then she hung up and said, “You need to go to the nurse’s station on the fourth floor, they will tell you where to go.”

So we go off in search of the elevator. We get lost and wind up on the wrong elevator, and at the wrong nurse’s station. We ask for his brother’s room.

The nurse looks up the name, makes a bit of a face, and then picks up the phone. And that was when I knew this is not going to end well.

She sends us to the other end of the fourth floor, to the correct nurse’s station. Shelden starts that way, while I linger.

“He has passed, hasn’t he?” I ask the nurse.

She looks at me with sadness and nods, probably violating eight different privacy laws.

I take a huge breath and then hustle down the hallway to catch up with Shelden, who is shuffling along, head down. There are no rules in such a situation, other than to take care of your people. Actually, that is really just a good rule any time. Figuring that it’s better for him to hear this from me than a nurse, I stop him in the hallway and, for probably the 10th time in my life, I told someone who mattered to me that someone who mattered to them is dead.

The hospital staff had been watching us, and when Shelden broke down in the hallway, they were right there with a chair and a wet rag. They assured him his brother had gone easily in his sleep that morning. One, in such a scene that only happens in the South, told him his brother was “with the Lord now.”

Fifteen minutes or so pass, and we’re handed more wet rags and ginger ale and boxes of tissues and Shelden gets hugs from a few nurses. Then he looks at me and says, “Can we get out of this hallway?”

We go to the chapel to sit for a while. That’s the nice thing about hospital chapels – they are almost always empty.

Again – no rules. We sit. He cries, and at his request, I read “some stuff from the Bible.”

No, in all these things we are more than conquerors through him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor rulers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. – Romans 8:37-39

He asked me what I thought that meant. I told him that it meant that there wasn’t a damn thing that could keep God from loving us. He nods.

We sit and time passes. A few more tears. Then he is ready to go. It’s almost dark as we walk to the car. I ask him where I should take him. He asks to be dropped downtown, where he can hang out until he finds out if he has a bed for the night at the shelter.

We stop at the big park downtown – the one that had the statue of an acorn in it – and we get out, the wind whipping at our cheeks. It’s not bitter cold yet, but it’s down in the fall and the wind makes it a little uncomfortable. I hugged him and told him I loved him, and that I want him to come by my office tomorrow and we will see what needs to be done about the arrangements.

And then he headed toward the bus station, hands in pockets, head hung low, and I got back in my car and drove home to get ready to meet friends for dinner.