Wish List

Here are ten things I wish I could do right now:

1. Take a road trip with Mark.

2. Shop at a thrift store.

3. Exercise at my gym.

4. Eat indoors at Toast.

5. Watch a movie at the Carolina Theatre.

6. See fewer people on beaches.

7. Read political-free advice about church re-openings.

8. Take comfort that Americans are wearing masks.

9. Learn that Congress is supporting state and local governments.

10. Watch a responsible president take charge.

On Memorial Day. . .

. . . a fitting quote from Mark Twain:
"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time, and your government when it deserves it."

Memorial Day

It's Memorial Day and I'm not sure what to write.  I've had an uneasy sense of this holiday for much of my life, seeing myself as a pacifist.  The two most recent American wars, those in Iraq and Afghanistan, have seemed so misguided to me.  And re-reading Margaret Mitchell's masterpiece Gone with the Wind has reminded me of the devastation that the Civil War wrought throughout the South, devastation that still reverberates today.

Yet I realize that those who fight in our wars, whether they're relatives or friends or strangers, fight on my behalf whether or not I agree with the cause.  They've given of themselves in ways that I would not.  On this holiday, then, I'm reminded every year to offer up thanks and remembrance for those who have served.

Guiding Words

The late Unitarian Universalist preacher Forrest Church, who led the All Souls congregation in Manhattan for nearly three decades, articulated three guiding principles for life shortly after September 11, 2001. His mantra, as he called it, was simple:

Want what you have;
Do what you can;
Be who you are.

Not necessarily easy to live by, these words nonetheless help me to think each day about how to be in the world.

Mma Ramotswe, the protagonist and lead detective in The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency series, proposes a similar set of guidelines at the end of Book 11, The Double Comfort Safari Club. She tells readers that her father, the late Obed Ramotswe, taught her "almost everything she knew about how to lead a good life":

"Do not complain about your life.
Do not blame others for things that you have brought upon yourself.
Be content with who you are and where you are,
And do whatever you can do to bring to others such contentment, and joy, and understanding that you have managed to find yourself."

Echoing much of what Forrest Church says, Mma Ramotswe could be his Botswanan counterpart. They both offer wisdom for this Memorial Day, when we honor those whose service to our country reminds us, the living, of the precious gift of life.

For as Forrest Church says, "The purpose of life is to live in such a way, that our lives will prove worth dying for."