Month: January 2016

I Am Not Usually Political

/ howardshapiro / 8 Comments

DemsRepubsI am not excited with our presidential political process yet. I should be; there certainly has been enough drama and the spectacle has unquestionably been anything but flat. But it’s been a show. The real issues that touch people’s lives and that impact our culture and society are back stage and haven’t broken through the fourth wall.

Not that they haven’t tried. I think there have been six Republican and five Democratic debates so far. The sponsoring network tries to make the run up and the follow up compelling, but somehow I don’t feel connected. And I’m not being partisan here – this sense I have crosses both party lines.

I have tried to figure out why. It is no secret to most people who know me that I was energized eight years ago, excited in “the change we can believe in”. It is just none of the candidates work for me. Conceptually, I would love to see a woman president. With some embarrassment I say, I would love to see a Jewish president, no matter how unobservant. With a little bit of trepidation, I timidly say I would love to see a young and bright candidate whose family are recent immigrants. But nothing is motivating me, until this morning.

Front page of the New York Times, next to a picture of two feet of snow in Prospect Park, Brooklyn, there is this headline. “Bloomberg Is Considering 3rd Party Bid.” My heart soared. I read the article through carefully. Is there really a chance that a knight in shining armor can come and save this our beloved country? Is there really someone who can galvanize all those people like me who are sick of politics the way it is being played out and don’t want to vote for any of the current runners? Is there hope?

Here comes the caveat and my need to back peddle a little bit and make sure I am being clear here.  These words are not an endorsement of Michael Bloomberg. They are a testimony to the need for someone in this political process to understand me and people like me: life-time democrat who believes in an agenda firmly rooted in America’s promise in the potential and right of every individual to live up to their highest potential no matter where they were born, how much pigment they have in their skin, what their religion, what their faith. To know that I am looking for a president who can unite this country with a practical vision that encompasses a plan to address a crumbling infrastructure which for me means bridges and roads but not just physical ones: bridges between races, roads that promise pathways to the American dream for the poor and underprivileged, beltways that force politicians to face the real problems of gun violence and terror both home grown and imported. I want a president who can bring us together and make me believe in the American political process again.

Am I expecting too much? Am I an inveterate and impossibly naïve dreamer? Am I looking for the messiah? You tell me.

 

Is It Good Enough?

/ howardshapiro / 13 Comments

old filing cab

It is at least seven weeks since a metal box containing files with 6 x 8 blue note cards was found in a storage room at the Temple. The blue cards were all filed neatly with rubber bands around each pile, rubber bands that if you touch, now break from age and dryness, even in this Florida humidity. Most of them are typed and they have dates and occasions, rarely titles. It has taken me till this morning to look into this file box. I’m not sure what I was afraid I would find.

They are sermons from the 1970’s. (I know some of you reading this weren’t even born.) I don’t know what is keeping me from going through them. I think it is an adequacy issues – are they good enough. It reminds me when I first began Spiritual Direction. My “director” was a Roman Catholic Dominican Sister who works at a retreat center nearby. When I started she encouraged me to write and journal. I chose to record my sense of the sacred and what being spiritual meant to me at that moment through poetry. The first time I shared a poem with her, she responded with silence. There was lots of silence in those spiritual direction sessions. But I was new and the absence of words felt strange. I jumped right in: Is it good, I asked.

Is it good? There it is. Are they good – those words typed in dark black ink on light blue cards? What has 40 plus years done to them? What have they done to the 40 years? Forty is a special number in both the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. It rained for forty days and nights as Noah’s ark floated back and forth across the waters. The Israelites wandered for forty years in the wilderness till they were ready to cross the Jordan. Jesus was tempted for 40 days and nights till he passed the test. And that is just for starters. Some say forty is associated with humility; some say transition/change.

I am going to read what’s in that box – there is no doubt in my mind, but not just yet. I don’t know why but it definitely is an adequacy issue. Or maybe it goes back to the symbolic number of the biblical forty. Am I humble enough to be willing to see that I have changed/grown/developed over the years and life is all about transition? Am I strong enough to recognize that maybe I didn’t? The days and the years grow you; the trials and the tests refine you; the blessings, challenges, opportunities and failures hone and polish. Am I willing to accept that some of them may just not meet my over perceived and probably falsely filled standards and some of them may just be plain dated or lousy or saturated with unrealized potential?

This has been helpful; thanks for hanging in with me. I think reading them would be a good exercise in humility. I think it will “grow” me. Stay tuned.