This afternoon just as I awoke from a nap I had one of those little insights, a moment of clarity that you have sometimes.
Sometimes something that’s happened comes into focus and its meaning is revealed to me.
My naps usually don’t seem like I’m asleep, my mind keeps running but in a different mode of consciousness.
The moment that I cherished today was watching President Obama's speech at the inauguration.
Being able to see it today, and who I saw it with was the result of a series of random happenstances.
I don’t have TV, well I have a machine, but no cable. I called the company and turned it off in 2003 after I accidentally discovered Bill O'Reilly and his hateful red-faced spew one night while clicking past to the Weather Channel.
I knew the inauguration was on today and regretted I was going to miss it.
Then my Mom called.
She’d been saving my birthday cake since last week.
(Jan. 14 was my actual birthday. 60 this year, a Big one)
We held off on the cake last Monday because my Dad’s best friend, like her and I, is also a January birthday. Mom insisted we all go out together to dinner last Wednesday but we had an ice storm and everyone cancelled.
So today I finally said I’d come in and have some cake with her. A family celebration of a milestone. Just the 2 of us.
While I was en route she decided to invite some friends over, dear friends of hers who she made at her church and one of whom has a multi-generational tie to my family.
Frank and Richard are an older gay couple. Richard was very close to my grandmother. I first met him when she was dying and I went to see her in the hospital and he was sitting there quietly keeping vigil. Like family members do in times of loss and stress. That touched me deeply. That was 12 years ago.
Frank and Richard have a little girl. 5 years old.
She is black, half black actually. She is the product of a relationship Frank’s sister had I believe, no one cares enough to ask. Frank has formally adopted her.
Remember Frank and Richard are gay. They go to our church. A Christian Church. With their little ‘black’ girl. Where they are accepted, although not befriended by all.
My Mom took to them immediately. That’s my Mom. That’s my family. That’s me.
They live nearby her and look in on her when I can't get in. I live 20 miles from town in the countryside in a 200 year old log cabin not far from Blue Mountain where my first ancestor settled from Germany in about 1750. Where he and his brother were killed by Indians, er, Native Americans during the French-Indian War.
Our church is pretty cool. It’s a fairly old school protestant church, but they’re very enlightened compared to what has come to be called "Christian" these days. They don't care about anyone’s color or sexual preference. (officially, but some people are still people as you’ll see in a bit...) They are about community, sharing, fellowship, coming together. You know, following the actual teachings of Jesus of Nazareth, instead of strictly enforcing archaic old social laws designed for a small tribal desert society many 1000s of years ago.
The official name of our family’s church is Unitas Fratrum. You know what that means? United Brethren. Brothers. United. Like a family. That is how they managed to survive the first few decades of their settlement here. They lived together. Communally. The buildings still stand. Next door to my family home.
The Central Moravian Church and national offices are a block away. The graveyard going back to the Revolutionary war is in the block just behind my family’s house. The first couple rows are soldiers who died in the communal congregational buildings which were used as a hospital during the Revolutionary War. Many converted Christian Native Americans are buried there as well, including the man The Last of the Mohicans was based on.
My grandfather was the chief financial officer for the national church for the last couple decades of his life. I am named after him. He ensured their fiscal health for a century among many other acts of community and generosity. He's been gone for 30 years. A few years ago, I met an elderly gentleman at a local historic preservation gathering. I told him my name when he asked. He stopped dead. After a long pause, he said reverently, "That's a name that carries a great deal of respect around these parts, son."
My grandmother ran just about every auxiliary group, founded countless outreach and other service groups, chairman of the cancer society. She was supposed to raise money, but she was also the one who took dying people to the hospital for their treatments, because no one else could bear to do it. Pillars of the community. Family history is deep and strong in that block.
It is a very special church to me, even though I no longer have the faith, (the son of god, he died for our sins, believe that=go straight to heaven, sorry, no.) I do accept the teachings on how to be a moral human, what is required of us toward our fellow man. And I love and respect the way they choose to practice their religion. Most of them.
[side bar. I hadn’t been there, to church, in decades. When I moved back to care for my grandmother who had fallen at age 95 while living alone, I re-met the pastor who came over to give her communion. He said with a huge smile of greeting: ‘Hi Stan. Welcome home.’ I said sheepishly ‘Sorry its been awhile.’ More than twenty years. He said ‘We don’t care. You’re here. We’re thrilled. Welcome.’]
Not everyone in the church is as open and accepting, just like folks everywhere, there are those who still have some of the old prejudices holding on.
Yesterday was the installment service for a new minister at the Central Church. A Jamaican-born man of color. One of Mom’s old church lady ‘friends’ refused to go. His race or color wasn't given as a reason, only that they 'weren't happy with the selection.' It was repeated. Mom is pretty sure she got the message. (*updated, see note below)
Mom said, ‘well, now I know who my friends are.’
Mom hadn’t been out for several weeks, bad arthritis in her knees. Painful to walk. Missed church last week. She refused my offer to drive in and take her. I was furious about her 'friend.' I wanted to drive in and carry her there. She wouldn't let me.
She said. ‘I’m going.’ She went. Frank and Richard and Lulu went.
So back to this morning.
I was surprised when I got there and Frank and Richard and Lulu came over. Pleasantly of course. Thrilled to share this family occasion with them. My extended family.
Not expecting company, I hadn’t shaved or showered, so I apologized for my disheveled appearance and stench.
Richard laughed out loud and dismissed it. “We’re family” he said.
All 5 of us sang happy birthday and blew out the candles and ate some cake. Mom was overjoyed and in her element getting to be "The Mom" and having a party for 'the kids' and being the hostess. Nana Nancy we all call her. The TV was on in the other room. We heard a huge burst of applause. I turned to Frank and said Obama must be coming on. Together we said “We have to watch this.”
So there we were. Our extended family, sitting in my grandparent's historic home in the most historic section of Bethlehem mere yards from a Revolutionary War and Native American graveyard, a Civil War musket carried by my great great grandfather at Gettysburg leaning in the corner, an elderly widowed second generation immigrant Slovak woman from the south side of Bethlehem, who was never accepted on the north side by the Bethlehem society she married into, 2 50-something 'married' gay men, a beautiful mixed race little 5 year old girl, and me, an unmarried 60 year old white guy with mental issues who never fit in anywhere, watching a mixed race man accept a second term as President of the United States of America and talking about what a diverse nation this was and how our strength as a nation was based in all of us coming together despite that diversity while millions across the country watched on Martin Luther King’s birthday, a day set aside as a national holiday to honor a Black man who was shot to death for trying to bring us all together peacefully, yet whose legacy and spirit lives on.
Young. Old. Single. Widowed. Married. Gay. Straight. Black. White.
History. Diversity. Conflict. Acceptance. Peace. Unity. Love.
A lot packed into that vignette. A lot to try and unpack.
Then it sank in.
Family.
We. Are. All. Family.
We are all brothers.
Unitas Fratrum.
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