Waiting for Snow in Carlisle
Today, I carpooled to a daylong meeting with several colleagues. As we rode back toward home, we heard weather forecasts calling for several inches of snow tonight and into the morning. Now, you should know that unlike much of the rest of the country, we have had little to no snow in Central and Eastern Pennsylvania this year. My colleagues and I were all wishing for a blizzard or at least enough snow to have a snow day. Yearning for a snow day . . . a quiet day . . . a chance to slow down. . . and spend a little more time with my husband. I am just like a kid wanting a day off from school.
As she got out of the car, my friend said she would pray for snow and we wished each other a happy blizzard. I appreciate the beauty of snow when I am safe and warm inside, and I love the quiet hush that seems to fall with the snow. I even imagine playing in the snow. Yet I wonder why my colleagues and I want a snow day in order to slow down, to care for ourselves, or to take time with family. Our highly connected world has many of us working wherever we are and at all hours of the day and night. Many of us spend too many hours living like this quote from Marie Curie, “One never notices what has been done; one can only see what remains to be done.” Our souls and spirits need time. We need to slow down and spend time not thinking about to do lists. We need to take time to celebrate what we have done, to notice where we are and reflect on where we have been. We need to time to play. Some folks wait until they get sick to slow down and take time for themselves.
So snow or no snow, apparently my colleagues and I need to slow down. I wouldn’t be surprised if you, too, need some slow time, some play time or reflection time. Do we need excuses or external events to care for ourselves – body, soul and spirit? If there is no snow, maybe we need to name some days “no snow” days.
May you give yourself the blessing of the time and space that you need to flourish.
Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
As we approach the 40th anniversary of the Roe v. Wade Supreme Court decision, I am grateful to have been born and raised in a religious tradition, Unitarian Universalism, that has stood strong through the history of the struggle for reproductive justice. Today, I lift my voice to thank some of those Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Universalists who have gone before, and who labor currently, for women’s equality, health and moral agency.
It’s always risky to call out folks simply because we share an identity, especially a religious identity. It can seem as if we are separating ourselves, or declaring ourselves to be part of a club. For me, this is an act taken to ground myself. As my own congregation prepares to hold an online service honoring the complexity and dignity of all families engaged in making moral choices around reproductive issues, I have been asked, “How dare you speak out about this, as if we all agree?”
I would never believe that a few thousand Unitarian Universalists would agree about anything whatsoever! All the studies show that people of other religions don’t begin to agree either, however, and yet their leaders have no trouble declaring that they speak the absolute truth, God’s truth. They claim that God is pro-life, anti-abortion, against women’s equality. So I, who have spent my life laboring in interfaith coalitions lifting up this other point of view, feel it is incumbent upon me to speak clearly as well.
Here come my thanks, to those who have gone before me and labor still, who ground me in this work, who dared before me and handed their daring to me.
I thank Margaret Sanger, who opened the first clinic in Brooklyn in 1916, violating obscenity laws for telling women how to prevent unwanted pregnancies. While we certainly challenge her beliefs on eugenics, she had nothing if not bold courage!
I thank all of those who labored for women’s suffrage, women and men, Universalists and Unitarians, allowing politicians to be elected who would support women’s equality. Abigail Adams, Susan B. Anthony, Rev. Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Rev. Olympia Brown, Julia Ward Howe, Rev. Lydia Jenkins, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and so many others. I lift up your names with gratitude. Amendment 19, 1919. 19 is our lucky number.
I thank all of the Unitarian and Universalist women who worked to make birth control legal and available in the US. I think of the church women, whose names I do not know, who looked through birth notices in Connecticut papers and mailed information to new mothers, illegally offering them birth control access. They weren’t just being kind; they were spoiling for a fight. Eventually they got one, and in 1965, in Griswald v. Connecticut, the Supreme Court ruled that criminalization of birth control violated the right to marital privacy.
I thank all of the Unitarian, Universalist, and Unitarian Universalists who worked to make abortion safe and legal. The women, and leadership, of First Dallas UU congregation moved this case forward. UUs passed statements at our General Assemblies beginning in 1963. Clergy, especially men, were part of founding and leading the Clergy Consultation service. Hundreds of people were involved with this; many of whose names I don’t know. Please share your own knowledge in the comments section!
I thank the religious educators who, in 1967, agreed that comprehensive sexuality education is part of religious education, and began the groundbreaking sexuality education programs that have been part of religious education programs ever since. There are thousands to name here—deryk Calderwood, Rev. Eugene Navias, Judith Frediani, Rev. Sarah Gibb Millspaugh, and dozens of other writers and curriculum editors. Hundreds of teachers and youth advisors who have led young people through it.
I thank those who continue to focus their ministries on reproductive justice and sexual morality. I think of Rev. Deborah Haffner, Rev. Robert Keithan, Rev. Kelli Clement, to name only a few. I thank the congregations who are actively engaged with supporting reproductive justice. There are so many folks to thank here! Please add their names in the comments section.
Finally, I thank the Unitarians, Universalists, and Unitarian Univeralists who have laid your bodies on the line supporting women as they struggle through these difficult choices. People in medical clinics, providing escort services, literally standing by women. I think especially of my late friend, June Barrett, who was shot in Pensacola Florida, while providing escort service to women as part of her service to the Pensacola UU congregation. June’s husband, Colonel James Barrett, and the doctor they were escorting, Dr. John Britton, were killed. As she lay still in the truck, wounded, but not dead, with these bodies beside her, she told herself that she survived for one reason: To continue to help women have access to legal and safe reproductive choice. This she did until her death.
How dare I speak out about reproductive justice? I can honestly say that I have been given this daring by thousands of others upon whose shoulders I stand. Please join us on Tuesday, January 22, at 3 PM and 7 PM Eastern time, for our online service at www.livestream.com/questformeaning. We’ll be gathering as part of a long tradition.
A Grandson’s Rage
Politicians throw about plans for health care, Social Security, and Medicare as if they were stand-up comedians trying joke after joke to see what gets a rise out of their audience. To many of us, the effects of these plans are abstract and distant. We intellectually engage with them, thinking that our rational side is best when evaluating how our nation should take care of its old, poor, and vulnerable.
Perhaps instead, we should feel something. This week, I’m feeling anger—make that rage. Why? Allow me to introduce you to my grandpa.
My grandfather turned 87 last week, and I visited him to celebrate and take him out to dinner. Grandpa has an amazing history: Born in Marseille, France, he served in the French Merchant Marine, and then fought in the French Resistance until the liberation of France from Nazi rule in 1944. Soon after, he came to the United States, where he met and married my grandmother and became a U.S. citizen.
Grandpa worked on the docks in Brooklyn, unloading cargo ships, until his back was injured at work, forcing him to find less-physical labor. For years after that, he worked for an independent governmental agency. When he retired from that agency, he was promised a pension as well as health insurance for life (the same health care given to retirees from New York City employment).
Knowing that this was assured, he worked a series of jobs with few benefits: he managed a McDonald’s, he drove a commuter van, he managed a boutique. Then, at the age of 65, he graduated from Police Academy, becoming a special forces policeman in Saddle Brook, New Jersey. There, he was a crossing guard and worked events like parades and school dances as extra security. When he finally retired from work altogether, he was 75 years old.
In late 2010, the governmental agency he worked for was closed down by the state and city. Legislators could not reach a deal to keep the agency, which was supposed to make money, solvent. When the agency was dissolved, retirees got a letter saying that the city and state would no longer be providing them with health insurance. The courts ruled that this was legal, despite the promises that were made by generations of politicians. My grandfather’s health care was left to the whims of Medicare.
No more dental insurance, either, apparently (it was part of the package he was promised for life). For a birthday gift, my parents, brothers and I paid for my grandfather’s dental bill. One of his teeth had become infected, and the extraction and subsequent false tooth cost some $2000. Grandpa otherwise couldn’t have afforded it, and he would have lived with a big gap in the side of his mouth.
Did I mention that my grandparents live only on Social Security checks and that small pension check (thankfully, it’s against the New York State Constitution to renege on the promise of a pension)? From their less-than-$2000 a month in income, they have to pay rent, utilities, food, car insurance, gas (thankfully, they don’t drive much), doctor’s bills and medicine.
Which brings us to Medicare. My grandfather has asthma. My grandmother has high blood pressure. It’s not like they take a raft of pills every day, but those conditions require constant medication. Here in September, they find themselves in the infamous Medicare “doughnut hole.” Apparently, the asthma medication costs $400 a month, and the blood pressure medication $200.
My grandparents don’t have $600 a month to spend on medicine, but because they would die without this medication, they find a way. They beg their doctors for free samples so that they don’t have to refill their prescriptions quite as often. Grandma is currently calling the drug companies to try to qualify for discount programs. Neither of them can wait until 2014, when the Affordable Health Care Act closes that hole.
Because every spare dollar is going to pay for asthma medication, they can’t afford the health care they need, either. My grandfather’s back hurts so much (from that injury 45 years ago) that he can hardly get in and out of a car. I watched him struggle to go out to dinner with us, and I could hardly believe it. His doctor thinks that regular physical therapy would help—but he can’t afford the three-times-a-week co-pays. I’m going to be paying them for him.
Thankfully, my grandfather has a family who can help. But at 87, he doesn’t want to have to ask for it, and he knows that we have other financial considerations. My parents are retired, too, and not exactly flush with cash. My next youngest brother supports his family of 4 on his income. My youngest brother is about to start graduate school. I’ll be paying for grandpa’s physical therapy.
Which makes me mad. Our society is failing our elders. It is utterly contemptuous that someone who worked hard all of his life could be reduced to having to decide whether to seek the medical care he needs or ask his grandson for money. It is beyond the pale that my similarly hard-working grandmother (none of whose jobs left her with retirement security either) has to call the doctor and beg for another free asthma inhaler.
So the next time a politician says something about the “doughnut hole,” I want you to think of my 87 year-old grandpa. The next time a politician mentions the promises that we make to our senior citizens, think of my grandpa. The next time someone decides that cutting Medicare spending is the only way to save our nation, think of grandpa. I know I will be.