Pajamas TV – PJTV Daily – Klavan on the Culture: Shut Up – Video

Pajamas TV – PJTV Daily – Klavan on the Culture: Shut Up – Video.

 

Conflicting Images

It’s been tough to stay upbeat these days.  Every time I read a news site, talk to a friend, or receive an update on my firm’s revenues, I receive more fodder for despair.  Today the government is supposed to announce more astounding job loss statistics, each number among those hundreds of thousands representing another crisis for some family somewhere. 

A lot of folks were hoping that the economy would start to turn with the new administration, if for no reason other than a renewed sense of optimism.  But whether due to intellectual honesty or an opportunistic desire to create a climate of panic conducive to introducing radical change, the new administration hasn’t offered much in the way of hope.  Instead, we hear words like “catastrophic,” and the market reacts.  The first of my two conflicting images is a chart showing the Dow-Jones Industrial Average performance since the passage of President Obama’s stimulus bill.  The direction of that line may as well indicate the trajectory of  my emotional outlook on our economic future.

 

 

But even as earthly fortunes diminish, I continue to experience the deeper joys of relationship.  That brings me to my second image.

This is a picture of my cousin, Major Chris Luther, USMC, upon his return home from Iraq.  This picture captures one of those perfect moments, a father reuniting with his sons, the younger of whom probably recognizes him only from pictures and conversations on Skype.  The signs they were holding lie on the airport floor, discarded after their owners went to hug their Dad.  Chris’s arms completely engulf the small boys, his hand balled into a fist as he clings them tight and buries his face into their shoulders.  Months of anxiety, angst and absence dissolved in an embrace.   Chris’s lovely wife holds the camera, I’m sure fighting tears as she experienced the release of  months of pent up emotion.  I’m don’t know, but I can guess that the day wasn’t perfect.  I imagine that the boys got tired and fussy.  I’d guess that Chris took a little time to find his footing back at home after being gone for so long.  But at this instant, we see the perfection of human connection.

Both images are accurate, but only one is true.  Some things are for a season, and some things last forever.  The Dow-Jones Industrial Average, the companies that it represents, and the country in which they exist will all pass away.  But love endures forever. 

People have been more tense lately, more prone to lash out in frustration and blame, more likely to withdraw and fume.   I don’t know anything about investment strategy (I used to think that I did), but I do know a little about relationships.  And I know that now, more than ever, we need to create more moments like the one above, because that’s what matters, and that’s what lasts.

 

On Righteousness and Grace

When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the “sinners” and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and ’sinners’?” On hearing this, Jesus said to them, “It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:16-17

The current evangelical ethos seems focused on the example that Jesus set in the story related above.  At least that’s been the focus of the young, hip, “relevant” crowd.  I’ve been right there with it, even though I’m not so young anymore.  There’s good reason.  For a long time the evangelical community has stood to the side, casting stones and condemning the rest of the world for not toeing the line of our deeply held convictions, resulting in a separate and ineffective presence in the world that we are called to transform.  But despite those benevolent intentions, I am a supremely flawed person, and the pendulum between righteousness and grace swings wildly in my life.  For many of my years, I have been self-righteous and isolated in a holy huddle of like-minded friends.  For many of my other years, I have reveled in my liberty in Christ, while ignoring the call to live a life above reproach.  The thing is, neither of those orientations is right.  I am simultaneously supposed to live a life reaching out to the ”sinners” of the world, while still living the righteous life to which I am called.

It’s easy to forget that even as Jesus associated with the prostitutes, tax collectors and other reviled peoples of the world, he also called them to repentance, to turn from their ways.  Consider the story of the woman caught in adultery, a favorite of those who chafe whenever challenged for their unrighteous behavior.  For those unfamiliar with the story- Jesus was confronted with religious leaders who brought out a woman caught in adultery with the intention of stoning her.  Jesus stooped and began writing on the ground (we can only speculate as to what he wrote), and said, “He who is without sin, cast the first stone.”  He continued writing, and one by one the religious leaders left.  It’s easy to miss the last part, where Christ instructs the woman to “go and leave your life of sin.” (John 8) 

Sin still matters.  I recently sat down to read the book of Revelation.  I admit that I generally avoid that book because I find it so thoroughly confusing.  Due in part to that confusion, I sat down to read it through so that I could try again to figure out the “gist” of John’s revelation.  Depending on what God intends to say on a given day, I think I could come away with a lot of different “gists” to the book, but this time my take way was that God hates sin, and judgment will come because of sin. 

Then I saw a great white throne and Him who sat upon it, from whose presence earth and heaven fled away, and no place was found for them.And I saw the dead, the great and the small, standing before the throne, and books were opened ; and another book was opened, which is the book of life ; and the dead were judged from the things which were written in the books, according to their deeds. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and Hades gave up the dead which were in them; and they were judged, every one of them according to their deeds.Then death and Hades were thrown into the lake of fire. This is the second death, the lake of fire.And if anyone’s name was not found written in the book of life, he was thrown into the lake of fire. (Rev. 20)

 The only escape from judgment is to have your name written in the Book of Life.  It’s not my intention here to write a full treatise on what gets us in the Book of Life, but suffice it to say that God’s grace alone is sufficient to grant us that listing, and God’s grace comes through faith in Jesus Christ who said “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father except through me.” (John 14:6).  My primary intention here is to assert that sin matters, and I think some of us have become too blase about it.  Because Jesus came in part to forgive, and because he reserved his harshest condemnation for the self-righteous religious leaders of the day, we can sometimes forget that sin matters, a lot.  He came to teach, he came as an example, and he also came to die as the atoning sacrifice for our sins because his death was necessary.  Sin is not without consequence, it requires sacrifice.  Fortunately, we serve a God who is both Holy and merciful, and so God provided the very sacrifice that He requires, just as he did for Abraham.  But we, as the beneficiaries of his gracious gift, can start to presume upon that grace as we live a life that is manifestly unpleasing to Him. 

Those of us whose names are written in the Book if Life would do well, even as we reach out to the world around us with love and without condemnation, to examine our own lives, to confess and repent of our sins, and to live a life worthy of the calling.  I confess that in my liberty I have had too much to drink, I’ve been careless in my speech, I have been materialistic, and I have often spoken ill of others, among other things.  I repent of that.  If a lot of us repent, if we begin to live a life distinct from the world, not in self-righteousness but in true righteousness, then perhaps we will begin to experience the  revival for which so many of us have prayed for so long.

 

Outrunning the Cold

On Saturday I went for my second run in as many days with temperatures below 30.  It’s hard to get out of bed for a run when I know I’ll be greeted with a blast of stinging cold, but once I get going I move pretty quickly.

Until Friday I hadn’t exercised seriously since before Thanksgiving.  I went through a brief busy season at work, and  I was off the fitness wagon as I sought to bolster my billable hours for the year.  Then on Wednesday I closed my last deals of the year, and suddenly had some time on my hands.  For the first time in my career, it appears that I will fall short of my billable hours goal for the year.  Another sign of the times.

I’m not sure why I run faster when it’s cold.  Maybe it’s an effort to get warm, maybe I’m just a little more eager to reach the finish so that I can go inside, or maybe I’m subconsciously trying to outrun it.  In any event, the adverse conditions are a motivator. 

These are sobering days.  “Sobering”, that’s an overused word these days.  I’ve normally got a cue full of big deals that I’m rushing to close before the end of the year, but now I’m struggling to keep busy.  There’s not much trading going on in commercial real estate as buyers and sellers are struggling to figure out what property is worth, and dealing with more stringent lender requirements.  2009 isn’t shaping up to be any better.

Perhaps these adverse conditions will push me to do something unusual, something unexpected, something extraordinary.  We’ll see.

 

Munich

For the student of 20th century history, few place names carry as much baggage as Munich.  Depending on your particular bent, Munich might be synonymous with “Nazi”, “appeasement”, or “terrorism.”  Despite all that, it’s a beautiful place and ranked by some among the best cities in the world in which to live.  Last Sunday I returned from a business trip to the famed city, and having spent a little time there, the word “Munich” now has a different significance to me.

Munich is the most popular city to visit among German tourists, which might lead one to wonder whether it more closely resembles New York or Orlando.  Quite honestly, it’s a little of both.  Like New York, Munich is a significant center of commerce, full of rich culture and art,  and one of the most expensive places in the world to live.  And yet the older portions of the city look quite a bit like the German area of Disney’s Epcot Center park, right down to the kitschy beer halls and souvenir shops.  The difference, of course, is that Munich’s now tarted-up Hofbrauhaus does actually date from the 1500’s.

The city doesn’t quite qualify as ancient.  Its first mention is in a document dated 1158, quite a bit older than any of our cities, but not terribly old by European standards.  It grew to become, and remains to this day, the capital of the Free State of Bavaria.  The city suffered the Black Plague, the devastating 30 Years War, and the instability of constantly shifting autocrats, but most of us Americans know it for what it came to symbolize over the last 80 years – simultaneously the origin of the most universally recognized evil the world has ever known, and evidence that even the greatest evils are capable of redemption.

In 1923 Hitler staged his failed “Beer Hall Putsch” in Munich.  After Hitler’s resulting imprisonment, Munich became a Nazi stronghold as Hitler led the party to national power in 1933.  Munich served as the locale for the culmination of negotiations leading to British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of appeasement that he promised would deliver “peace in our time.”  Instead of being appeased with the annexation of the ethnically German Sudetenland of Czechoslovakia, Hitler seized the balance of Czechoslovakia, then Austria, and ultimately Poland, thus igniting the most cataclysmic war the world has ever known.  In the midst of it all, Hitler built his first concentration camp, Dachau, on the outskirts of Munich.  It stands today as a reminder to Germans, and to all of us, of the vast human capacity for evil.

No one is more aware of this painful history than the Germans themselves.  Any German I’ve met over the age of 40 carries with him an unspoken guilt for the sins of his fathers.  I once asked a German, born well after the war had concluded, how he thinks he would have behaved had he been born a generation earlier.  Without hesitation, he said “I cannot lie.  I’m sure I would have been in the Nazi youth, screaming ’seig heil’ and marching in martial parades.  I cannot pretend that I would have been so different than everyone else.  But in Germany, we are taught to be ashamed of our past, and we are.”  I’ve never encountered a people so grateful to have been vanquished.

There is much in Munich that I envy.  There are bike paths along all of the major roads, and it’s not uncommon to see a 50-year-old man in a formal suit pedaling along the road with an expensive brief case strapped to his bike.  I think that Munich must host more museums of significance per capita than any other city in the world.  One woman described Munich as the “northernmost Italian city.”  In the warm months, Munich lives outside in the sidewalk cafes and parks.  The English Gardens, near the central part of the city, are larger than New York’s Central Park, and I explored some of its paths on a 10 kilometer run one morning, when at moments I felt as though I were in a secluded forest rather than a major city. 

I spent Saturday morning in the “Residenz”, the royal palace complex begun in 1385.  The palace boasts room after room of gilded elegance.  Despite its 623-year-old origins, most of the rooms are somewhat newer, and most of the furnishings are either reproductions, or antiques brought in from other locations.  I carried an English language recording with me for the tour, and for almost every room the recorded voice expressed the disclaimer that “the room you see is a reproduction, the original was destroyed in 1944.”  Many of the buildings of architectural interest in Munich include pictures showing the bombed-out shell that the building had become some 60 years prior.  Each time I found myself thinking, “we dropped those bombs.”

The historian Stephen Ambrose estimates that as many as 40% of the Americans serving in the European theater during WWII were of German origin.  In his book “Band of Brothers”, he said that American soldiers reported that of all the people they encountered during the war, the Germans were most like them.  Similar we may have been, but we killed some 7.3 million Germans in that war, including over 1.6 million civilians. 

Hitler represents perhaps the most unambiguous evil the world has ever faced, and World War II perhaps the last “good” war in living memory.  The casualties that the Germans endured were a result of a conflagration that they started, and yet I am still forced to wonder at the proper response of a nation to evil.  It’s a question with which we’re wrestling today.  Not even critics of the current war in Iraq question that Saddam Hussein was evil, but was he evil enough to merit our conduct?  If we are willing to go to war against one evil, then why not another?  Is war merited only when the evil directly affects us?  Is any evil sufficient enough to justify war?

As a Christian I am faced with two seemingly divergent, but not necessarily contradictory paradigms.  On the one hand, Jesus said:

You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth”.  But I say to you, do not resist an evil person; but whoever slaps you on your right cheek, turn the other to him also.  If anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, let him have your coat also.  Whoever forces you to go one mile, go with him two.  Matthew 5:38-40

Yet, God himself mandated military conquests in the Old Testament that seemed to violate any concept of “ethical” war.  As believers, we struggle with this, but point to the passage in Genesis where God had stayed his judgment on Canaan, saying “the iniquity of the Amorites is not yet full” (Genesis 15:16), suggesting that only when the occupants of Canaan had become unspeakably evil did God bring the judgment of Hebrew conquest. 

In the New Testament, Paul states that governments are a “minister of God, an avenger who brings wrath on the one who practices evil.”  (Romans 13:4).  For much of Christian history, believers have clung to that passage to justify the right of governments to oppose evil with violence.  And I am not writing to say that they are wrong.  I recoil at the consequences of Chamberlain’s capitulation in the face of evil back in 1938.  I recoil also at the annihilation of civilian populations in Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  I’m aware of the justifications, and I generally agree with the justifications.  I just think too many of us are gleeful and glib when it comes to matters of war, and we do violence to our own souls when we stop considering the consequences of our actions.

Twenty seven years after the war, the world community selected Munich to host the 1972 Olympic games.  During the games, Palestinian terrorists kidnapped several Israeli athletes, and Germany had so thoroughly demilitarized that they had no effective answer to the crisis.  After a horribly botched rescue attempt, Jim McKay memorably announced, “they’re all gone.”  The event highlighted the dangers of pacifism in the face of evil.  Stephen Spielberg titled a movie based on those events simply “Munich”, capitalizing on the loaded name of the city.

While I was in Munich, I attended a Fourth of July party hosted by a client.  The party was in honor of his American guests, the most prominent of whom were part of a Jewish family that is a development partner in some of his American real estate ventures.  Our host took the microphone at one point and gave a moving speech about when he was a boy and the Americans occupied his home.  Despite what you might think, he and his family were more than eager to move to the attic and surrender their normal rooms to the American army because they viewed their occupiers as their only hope for survival against the encroaching Russians.  The American colonel who occupied his house played a key role in keeping the Russians at bay and drawing a boundary line between the occupied zones that kept my client’s ancestral home in western hands.  His life would have been dramatically different had it been otherwise.  My client went on to describe the effects of the Marshall Plan, when the Americans invested billions to reconstruct the cities that they had so recently destroyed.  He also relayed his personal memories of the Berlin airlift, another incident where a strong reaction to evil caused evil to back down.  He urged his contemporaries to remind the younger generation of the wonderful things the Americans had done for them, and reminded his audience that Germany itself would not have been so generous.

Munich is again beautiful, its treasured buildings painstakingly rebuilt to match their previous grandeur.  Our bombs destroyed them, and our dollars helped rebuild them.   It is hard to imagine the conditions that drove a similar population to such evil within living memory.

As I walked among the Germans last week, it was hard to imagine them as an enemy.  From my Starbucks barista to the cab driver, they all spoke English.  On an individual level they were unfailingly gracious and hospitable.  But in a more generalized sense, Germany is marked by a pervasive anti-American sentiment fueled by disagreement, misunderstanding and divergent interests.  While they were charitable to me, they are less forgiving of the American stereotype.  I supposed that’s how it starts, when a population ceases to be a collection of individuals and instead becomes representative of a loathsome generalization.

I found myself wondering “could it ever happen again?”  Yes, it could.  But directed by Christ’s mandate to love our brother, we could also experience the power of restoration and reconciliation so powerfully illustrated by the fact that Munich stands today - beautiful, peaceful, and increasingly distant from its regretable past.

 

Alex Supertramp Revisited

On March 28, 2008, I wrote a post for this blog titled “Alex Supertramp.”  I had been moved to write the post after reading John Krakauer’s “Into the Wild”, which tells the story of Chris McCandless.  McCandless was an unusually bright and sensitive young man who came from a well-to-do family, graduated from Emory University in the Spring of 1990, and then embarked on an adventure that ultimately resulted in his death in August of 1992.  But most of you reading this post already knew that, and more.  In fact, most of you have passionate and informed opinions on Chris McCandless, which is why I feel compelled to write again.

“Alex Supertramp” has taken up permanent residence in the “Top Posts” section in the margin of my blog.  That post has been read more than any other post I’ve written by a factor of 10, and not a day has gone by since I originally wrote the post that “Alex Supertramp” has not been the most-read post of the day.  And I’ve got to say, I’ve written some pretty decent stuff since then.  Fully 90% of the people accessing my blog through Google have used a search term that relates to Chris McCandless.  His story has obviously captured the hearts and imaginations of a lot of people.  In my first post, I explored what motivated Chris McCandless.  In this post I want to explore why his adventure has captivated so many people.

My theory isn’t complicated.  In a society saturated with needless things, yet  plagued with insatiable wants, Chris McCandless’s lifestyle choice was uniquely counter-cultural.  People are disillusioned  and exhausted by their pursuit of things, and the notion of pitching it all to live a simpler life has powerful appeal.  But, as we humans are prone to do, I think we project more onto McCandless than is merited.  The bus where McCandless died has become a shrine of sorts. People, including John Krakauer, trek through the rugged 30 or so miles between the highway and the bus in search of illumination.  I’d be curious to learn what they find there.  An old rusted bus, some graffiti, and depending on the season, probably a lot of mosquitoes.  But illumination?  I doubt it, other than what the mind conjures under compulsion to justify a lengthy trip to the Alaskan wilderness.

Don’t get me wrong.  I think Chris was more right than most folks.  But I think he made it about half way.  He realized what many never do – that a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.  But he never seemed to fill the resulting void.  Of what, then, does a man’s life consist?  That’s where I think he fell short, and that’s why I fear that many following his path will find only disillusionment.

One of the readers commenting on my last McCandless post wrote that he is reading Jack London and Thoreau (two of McCandless’s favorite authors), and that he is making plans to see Bus 142 with his own eyes.  What does he hope to find at Bus 142? 

A woman commented that as soon as her daugher leaves for college, she and her husband are going to follow the path that Chris took.   What path, exactly, does she plan to follow?   The path of aimless homelessness, hunger and solitude? And if that is the right path, then why not start now and take her daughter with her?

McCandless chose odd heroes, and his followers seem to be choosing another one.  Thoreau’s much-lauded time at Walden Pond was not the sort of wilderness experience that Chris McCandless sought.  Walden Pond was at the edge of town, and only 1.5 miles from Thoreau’s regular home.  He actually spent much of his adult life working in a pencil factory.  On those occasions where Thoreau did seek true wilderness, he came away disappointed.  Roderick Nash writes, ”Thoreau left Concord in 1846 for the first of three trips to northern Maine. His expectations were high because he hoped to find genuine, primeval America. But contact with real wilderness in Maine affected him far differently than had the idea of wilderness in Concord. Instead of coming out of the woods with a deepened appreciation of the wilds, Thoreau felt a greater respect for civilization and realized the necessity of balance.”  Note that the idea of wilderness was much nobler and more profound than its reality. 

Jack London, for his part, dabbled, but did not live, in the wilderness he so ably captures in his writing.  He was part of the Klondike Gold Rush, and he suffered many physical depredations there.  He leveraged that year-long experience into most of his successful stories.  But for most of his life, he lived in the much populated and well developed Bay area of California.  He had a number of character failings, but my purpose here is to contrast his writings with his life.  He did not, as one of his titles might suggest, answer the call of the wild.

I love the woods, probably more than most.  And I am probably more qualified than most to opine as to its merits.  As I wrote in a much earlier post, I grew up backpacking and have never lost my passion for the outdoors.  There is nothing more beautiful to me than watching the movement of the sun over a distant ridge, little more pleasant than waking on the ground on a crisp autumn morning, and no therapy so effective as lying on a mountain bald surrounded by wildflowers.  Still, nature alone does not have the capacity to fill the human heart. 

To quote Thoreau, “[t]he mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.”  That is tragically true.  The vast majority of us are working frantically to acquire and consume.  Like rats on a treadmill, we run with vigor, but with no purpose and to no end.  I think that Chris McCandless recognized and rejected that futility, and his recognition is praiseworthy.  But what did he put in its place? 

Look, for a moment, at the fruit of Chris McCandless’s life. He rejected most relationships.  He left a confused and grieving family.  Among the many who encountered and befriended Chris along his journey was an older man in the west who took Chris in, provided him with transportation and greatly admired Chris’s unorthodox views.  The older man was reportedly devout, compassionate and content, living a simple life as manager of some sort of apartment complex.  Chris encouraged him to ditch his already simple life and answer the call of the wild, and he did.  He left his job and moved into the Arizona desert to live in an R.V.  After hearing of Chris’s death, he renounced God and became an atheist.  If he’s still alive, I picture him sitting in the hot Arizona sun, embittered and occasionally wondering how life came to take such cruel turns.

Jesus had a lot to say about these things, including the quote I used above that “a man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  (Luke 12:15(b)).   In a sentiment that Chris would have embraced, Jesus also said “[s]ell your possessions and give to the poor.”  (Luke 12:33(a)).  But it didn’t end there, Jesus didn’t simply remove our earthly props and leave us with nothing.  He told us to replace those worldly pursuits with “purses that will not wear out, a treasure in heaven that will not be exhausted, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys.”  (Luke 12:33(b)).  How do we do that?  “Seek first his kingdom, and these things will be given to you as well.”  (Luke 12:31). 

Neither the possession nor deprivation of created things gives us joy, peace or significance.  Romans 1:25 describes most of us so aptly – “[t]hey exchanged the truth of God for a lie, and worshiped and served created things rather than the Creator – who is forever praised.”   Those created things include the wilderness that Thoreau, London and McCandless so idolized, even as they were disappointed by its reality.

I can learn a lot from Chris McCandless.  Unlike him I often find myself churning away on the treadmill, seeking the trappings of success.  But I do strive to have more awareness, and seek to hold whatever I have been given with an open hand.  So, how do I fill in the blank?  I leave you with these words:

Peace I leave with you; my peace I give you.  I do not give as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled and do not be afraid…I am the vine; you are the branches.  If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing…As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you.  Now remain in my love.  If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have obeyed my Father’s commands and remain in his love.  I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.  My command is this:  Love each other as I have loved you.”

from John 14, 15

 

John Tanner Triathlon

Well, the official results aren’t posted yet, but I kept careful track with my stopwatch and saw partial preliminary results before I left the park this morning.  It’s a good thing to be able to swim 600 meters, bike 12 and run another 3.1, no matter who you are or how fast you do it, but in terms of how I gauge success, it was a mixed bag.

I saw a neighbor friend of mine during body marking. Body marking is during pre-race when volunteers use a Sharpie to mark your race number on your arms and legs, and write your age on your calf.  It doesn’t wash-ff easily, so all day people have been asking me what “38″ means.  My neighbor Chad and I have trained together in the past, but neither of us knew that the other was running this race.  I commented to him that it seems that the intensity of the athletes ratchets up a bit with every race.  The first time I ran a triathlon, in 2005, many of the athletes were using hybrid bikes and tri bikes were a novelty reserved primarily for the sponsored athletes.  The first time that I ran this particular race, I’d estimate that fewer than a third of the competitors were wearing wetsuits, even though the water temperature was wetsuit legal.  At this tri, easily half of the bikes were tri-specific bikes, and most everyone had a wetsuit, except me.  I’m still riding the same old TREK 1000, and haven’t sprung for a wet suit.  It’s a lot of money to spend for the one race a year that I’m likely to use one.  It was brisk this morning, but I figure I can endure almost any temperature for 600 meters.

 I saw competitors ranging in age from 13 to 86.  Yes, 86.  It’s not hard to spot the real competitors.  They’re generally lean, muscular, handling expensive gear and wearing a sponsor’s shirt.  I’m not lean (though much leaner than I was when I started doing these races), not terribly muscular, and my gear is out-of date.  Still, I love the electricity of fit, focused people setting up in the transition area, waiting for the race to start.  I never feel quite a part of it.  I generally stand just outside the transition area watching everyone else, wondering if they peg me for being as out of place as I feel.

My goal was to finish in under 1:20.  I knew that was ambitious because my previous best time was 1:25 on this course.  Five minutes is a near quantum leap, but I thought it was in reach.  I trained fairly regularly in the off-season, and I’d had an encouraging time in the ING Half Marathon.  On the downside, my bike training, such was it was, consisted exclusively of spin classes at the YMCA, and I had only swam three times in the last six months.  Almost all of my training had been in the run.  But if you only train in one discipline, I suppose that’s the one most deserving of attention.

After my gear was arranged and I had taken care of other pre-race business, I walked over to the beach.  The park’s lake is pretty small, and the race course generally follows the perimeter of the lake.  Fog had rolled in since I had arrived, and when I first reached the beach I couldn’t see the buoys marking the course.  The temperature seemed to be dropping below the 61 degrees that had registered on my car thermometer when I pulled into the park.  I kept looking back over my shoulder to see if Toria and the kids had arrived.  I knew that they were planning to come.  I was self conscious at being one of the very few people without a wetsuit.  For the uninitiated, wetsuits are legal if the temperature is below a certain mark.  In addition to keeping you warm, the wetsuits create a buoyancy that creates some competitive advantage, though you lose a few seconds in transition.  But they are expensive, so I haven’t bought one, and not a lot of people are eager to loan them out for the same reason.

I was in the second swim wave.  The first was men 29 and under (blue swim caps), the second was men 30-39 (green swim caps), the third was men 40-49 (purple caps), and the fourth was women 29 and under (pink caps), and there were some more waves after that.  The waves were separated by three minutes. 

It was a wade-in start, so I waded in the murky water out to the start mark.  It was cold, and the water tasted like gasoline because of the support boats.  The starter sounded, I pushed the button on my stopwatch, and off we went.  Even in prior races where I had been training in the swim more regularly, I have found the swim to be a jarring start to a race.  All of the things that I practice in the pool quickly go out the window.  My cadence is off and there is no elegance or rhythm to my stroke.  Oftentimes as I reach out I inadvertently hit another swimmer’s leg, and the wet suit makes it feel like I’ve taken hold of a seal.  I had done abysmally in last year’s swim on this course, and figured with only minor tweaks I could improve dramatically.  I did worse.  I don’t know if it was the lack of training, the fact that I’d been sick this last week, or a general lack of sleep, but I felt lethargic and my stroke lacked any thrust or power.  As I was finishing the swim a series of pink caps passed me, women who had started six minutes after I had.  That was among the more demoralizing developments of the tri.  We’ll call it #1.  As I ran out of the water I heard my wife and kids calling my name, and that gave me a bit of a lift.  Then I looked at my watch and spit in disgust. 

I did have a decent transition and passed a cluster of folks early on the bike course.  Shortly after that a 15-year-old girl flew past me.  We’ll call that demoralizing event #2.  As has been my past experience, I struggled on the bike.  This time it wasn’t just my level of fitness, but I was also having bike problems.  Something is wrong with my derailleur, and the bike kept shifting on its own at inopportune times.  It made for a very inefficient ride.  At one point I was struggling up a long hill, and threw my chain.  Suddenly I found myself spinning to no effect, so I looked down and saw that the chain was off.  My forward motion ceased, and I nearly fell before I could clip out.  I was able to get the chain back on pretty quickly, but I lost time and momentum.  That was #3.  People kept passing me – and it seemed like most of them were women, children, and really large people.  As someone was passing me (one of the few other guys who was running the race without a shirt), he commented that something was wrong with my derailleur, but I couldn’t understand what he said and didn’t really know what to do about it.

Toward the end of the bike leg, I picked up a little steam.  My legs kept churning, and despite my technical problems, I didn’t allow myself to coast.  If the preliminary results are correct, I still managed to finish the bike about three minutes faster than last year.

I had another speedy transition, at least speedier than last year.  I used a number belt for the first time and ran the entire race shirtless.  That spared me a few seconds.  I felt decent at the start of the run, but there’s a long hill about halfway in, and for the first time since my first tri I was tempted to stop and walk.  My quads ached and my lungs were burning.  But I pressed on.  I passed a lot more people than passed me, mostly because all of the really fit people were already finished. 

As I turned the corner toward the finish, I saw two people ahead of me in the next quarter mile.  Some of the early finishers were along the race course and encouraged me to chase them both down.  I did, and that was a small victory in itself.  With the finish line in the distance, I looked at my watch and it registered 1:20.  I was sad that I hadn’t met my goal, but at the very least I wanted to finish strong in front of my family.

I passed the second runner a few yards ahead of the finish line and cruised in at 1:21:24 (unofficially at this point).  Short of my goal, but better than my previous best on this course by over 3:30.  Unimpressive among the field, but a nice improvement over my past performances.

A volunteer handed a water bottle to me, and then took off my timing chip.  I was breathing hard, and she was probably afraid that I was about to collapse on her, but I didn’t.  My family raced over to greet me, and they were more excited than I was.  I knew that I needed to set aside my disappointment so that the morning would be fun for them.  Mary Kate gave me some hand-picked dandelions, and I thanked them all so much for coming to see me.  For now, at least, I’m still their hero.  I grabbed a banana, we took a picture, and talked to my neighbor who had finished a few minutes in front of me.  He set a personal record too.  After refreshments, I moved over to the transition area to pack up my things.  As I finally finished packing and moved toward the car, the race monitors yelled “biker coming in!”  I looked up the road, and there he was, Mr. 86, coasting into transition. 

As I drove out, I saw him coming out of transition.  He was walking and holding a water bottle.  I assumed that he’d had enough, but I still respected the guy for going as far as he had.  That 86-year-old man had just swam and biked as far as I had, and he had nearly 50 years on me.  My window was down as I passed him, and I heard him asking everyone around him “where’s the run course?”  I pointed him in the right direction, and off he went.  He hadn’t quit after all.  The race volunteers had assumed that the race was over and were no longer there to guide him.  Will God be so kind as to grant me that kind of vitality at 86?

Toria and I drove in our separate cars back into Atlanta and met at The Flying Biscuit for lunch.  I asked her if I’d looked fat running without my shirt on.  “You didn’t look that fat”, she said.  #4. 

Update:  Official time 1:21:25.43, 39th of 47 among men 35-39.  I keep improving my times but losing ground against the field.

 

Race Day Minus 2

I plan to run the John Thanner Sprint Triathlon on Saturday morning.  I’ve been running, swimming and spinning, but haven’t been on my bike for a serious ride since September.  The spinning will help, but I’m still nervous about the bike, which is always my weakest discipline.  I ran this race in 1:25 last year, and hope to shave a full 5 minutes off of that time.  That’s pretty aggressive, but I think attainable.  I plan to use shot blocks, lighten my bike by not carrying a water bottle, and I have a few new ideas to speed transition.  But of more potential benefit than all of those things, I simply plan to go harder.  I think I’ve left too much in the tank in previous events.  On the downside, I’m either coming down with a cold or battling allergies.  Either way, I feel congested and dazed.  I also have some sort of odd sensation in my shoulder that’s been bugging me for weeks.  It’s not painful exactly, but it is distracting.  We’ll see how it goes.

Toria has also been training.  She’s signed up for a womens’ tri in August.  She’s been working hard and looks spectacular.  Like most folks preparing for their first tri, she’s most nervous about the swim, but she’s received some helpful instruction and is coordinating with other women in the neighborhood to train together in our subdivision’s lap pool.

Hard to believe that race season is upon us and that school is almost out, but I am excited about the months to come.

 

Grief, Once Removed

It’s a beautiful day in Atlanta.  Temperatures in the high 70’s, a clear sky, and a light, invigorating breeze.  For some reason a friend has been on my mind all afternoon.  I’ve not been able to shake the thought of him.  I won’t mention his name here out of respect for his privacy, though most anyone who knows me will know him.  I’ll call him Ed.   

Several years ago I was Ed’s associate.  I had been in my own small firm with one partner, and Ed’s firm had taken us both on.  Ed was as native as a Georgian gets, and received both his undergraduate and law degrees at UGA.  He met his lovely wife there, and we learned that his wife and mine had been in the same sorority. In fact, they had lived in the very same room some 15 years apart.   Shortly after I started working for him, Ed and his wife invited us over for dinner and we got a glimpse into what our life would look like in a few more years.  They had three daughters, twin girls who were about 8, and a precocious young daughter who I will call Ashley.  She was funny, and bold, and initially just shy enough to be charming.

Ed was successful.  He had a beautiful house and owned his own plane.  Once he flew another associate and me to Orlando to watch the Braves in spring training.  I sat next to him under the warm Florida sun and said “Ed, when you were a kid, did you ever think that life would look like this?  That you’d be a lawyer with a big house, a beautiful wife, your own airplane and three lovely girls?” 

“No,” he said.  “I thought I’d be a doctor.”

About a month after that spring training game Ed and I were flying in his plane to a deposition in Austin, Texas.  I probably could have handled it on my own, and I ultimately did, but Ed had lived with the case for a long time, and frankly I think he was still a little suspect of his new associate’s level of ability.  Plus, I think he just wanted to fly.

He had me wear headphones, and I could hear the radio traffic.  For someone unaccustomed to flying in a small plane, it was a fun experience.  He let me fly the plane a little, taught me the meaning of some of the dials and instruments, and pontificated on life.  Ed was a good guy.

Somewhere over Texas, air traffic control came on the air and asked for Ed by name.  They told him to call home as soon as he landed.  We were still 90 minutes or so away from Austin, so he asked further why they needed him to call.  They wouldn’t answer his question.  Ed knew that it was highly unusual, and told me so.  I started to worry.  Ed asked for permission to land at the nearest available airport, and it was granted.  Just a few minutes after receiving that radio call, we were on the ground in College Station.

As soon as the plane was still, I jumped out and ran to the phone (no, I didn’t have a cell phone back then).  As far as I knew, the instruction to land could have easily been for me as it was for Ed.  I reached my wife right away, and she sounded relieved. 

“What’s wrong?  Are you okay?  Is someone hurt?”, I asked.

“I’m okay, but there’s been an accident.”

“Is everyone okay?”

“No.”

“Did someone die?”

“Yes, one of Ed’s daughters was killed in a car accident.”

“Which one?”

“I don’t know, I can’t seem to get all the information.  But one of the other partners called and said there had been an accident.  I thought it was you.  Then he told me that Ed’s daughters had been in a car accident, and one of them had died.  He didn’t know which one.”

At that moment I realized what Ed was about to hear, or had heard already.  I ran back over to the plane, where one of the airport employees stood with his hand on the propeller of the plane, as if he was standing guard.  I heard Ed scream “No, not Ashley, no!” and he placed his head in his hands and shook as he wept.  When I could see his face again he looked like he’d aged ten years.  Life had drained from his face.  I watched and listened as he asked his wife questions, occasionally stopping to sob.  With each moment he seemed to diminish.  If grief itself were fatal, he would have died right there on the tarmac.  It was the most frightening thing I’d ever seen.  I fear it still.

College Station was not a commercial airport, so we had no easy way to get back to Atlanta.  I coordinated with the employees there and learned that a Continental flight was leaving Houston for Atlanta and that we could probably catch it.  We paid an exorbitant price for the two remaining tickets, both in first class.  I convinced a 19-year-old at the airport to fly us to Houston in a borrowed Cessna.  I don’t remember how long that flight was, perhaps an hour or 90 minutes.  I sat in one of the rear seats and watched him repeatedly come to the realization that his daughter had died.  It was as if the news came to him in waves, each one forcing him under and threatening to drown him.  He’d come up for air and take a breath of denial, or rationalization, or the occasional lucid awareness that he still had a family that needed him.  Then another wave would force him down into near fatal grief once again.

We landed in Houston late for the flight.  I grabbed all of our heavy bags and raced through the concourse.  I was dripping with sweat when I reached the gate attendant and desperately tried to explain our situation.  She already knew, they all knew.  Flight control, the gate attendants, the flight attendants.  They all knew, and they were waiting for us.  They looked at us both with helpless pity.

I’d never flown first class before.  I asked one of the flight attendants for scotch and reached for my wallet.  “You don’t have to pay honey.”  I wrapped my arm around Ed and tried to console him.  He was worried about his other daughters, convinced that he hadn’t been told the whole truth about their condition.  He went through a thousand rationalizations and questions.  “Why were they out?”  “How did the accident happen?”  And repeatedly “I don’t want to live without her, I just don’t.”

This was pre-911, when loved ones could still greet you when you got off the Jetway.  Several of the other partners of the firm were waiting for us.  He collapsed into the arms of one of them.  Another one took the bags from my hands.  We drove him to the hospital, and then one of them lent me a car to drive home.  I guess it was sometime in the early hours, maybe 1:00 or 2:00 when I got home.  I walked into my new son’s nursery, and watched him sleep.  I crawled into bed with my wife and held her until morning.

 I was one of the first into the office.  Ed and I were the only two litigators, and I was bound and determined to take on everything that he needed done.  I made some calls, checked messages, checked the mail.  The managing partner called a meeting as soon as everyone was in, and we met in the conference room.  At that moment, when I felt like I had done all that I could do, I somehow felt helpless.  I’d gotten Ed and I back to Atlanta, I’d gotten into the office, I was ready to work.  Now there was nothing left for me but to face our new reality.  Without warning I was racked with sobs.  My secretary became my mother in that moment, and wrapped her arms around me and someone else brought me tissues.  I felt embarrassed, and horribly weak.

In the coming days we attended the funeral and graveside service.  I tried my best to manage Ed’s caseload and my own.  Ed wasn’t able to come back into the office for a long time.  I felt sad a lot.  I also felt guilt.  I had been relieved when I learned that Toria and Jack were okay, and I couldn’t forgive myself for that horribly selfish reaction.

Of Ed’s other daughters,  one was almost completely unhurt, and the other one had to endure some surgeries.  But they both emerged okay.  They are both at prestigious universities now.  Ed and I haven’t worked together for years, though I direct work his way whenever I can.  About five years after the accident Ed and his wife divorced.  The odds aren’t good for a couple who loses a child.  It seems there’s just too much grief for a relationship to endure.

I called Ed today.  He wasn’t in the office.  I left him a message and told him I’d been thinking about him.  There was a catch in my voice when I left the message, and I don’t know if I made much sense.

It’s hard to watch someone live your greatest fear.  I often wrestle with the expectation that one day those waves will overtake me.  And I still have abundant guilt – guilt that I hadn’t sparked enough confidence in Ed to let me take the deposition alone, guilt at my relief when I learned that it was not my loss, guilt for stealing someone else’s grief.  She wasn’t my daughter, and I knew her only a little.  How dare I carry that angst with me?  These things are hard to explain.

Over the years I think about it less, but I couldn’t help thinking about it today.  I tried to think why.  I thought maybe it was the weather, or perhaps because it had been too long since I called him.  Then I looked at my calendar.  The accident was 9 years ago today.   Somewhere in my mind that date is indelibly written, and I will never be free of it.

 

 

Escaping the DDR

It’s hard for me to believe that East Germany ceased to exist eighteen years ago.  For anyone under 25, the notion of two Germany’s separated by a hostile border is an historic anachronism.  For those of us who are a bit older, the separation of West and East Germany once seemed as permanent as the Cold War that created it.  Back then, the world’s political scene was both simpler and more terrifying.  Virtually every world conflict was a proxy war between the same two ideological combatants, and we could identify the loyalties of a soldier based on the silhouette of his rifle – it was either an American supplied M-16 or Soviet designed AK-47.  ”They” were the Evil Empire and “we” were the Defenders of Freedom.   Perhaps no place on earth was more emblematic of the tension between those antagonists than East Germany – where the once-allied, victorious armies of World War II stood within view of each other, armed for the seemingly inevitable, apocalyptic conflict to come.  Though that war never came, the two artificial Germanys competed in everything else.  The East produced steroid-enhanced athletes, while the West rebuilt glimmering cities.  Despite its success in the Olympics, most of us viewed communist Germany as the real Germany’s failed, tragicomic doppelganger to the east.

If that seems melodramatic, search your memories and read Time and Newsweek magazines from the 80’s.  I recall issues of those magazines devoted to tallying the estimated number of tanks, warheads and troops maintained by NATO and the Warsaw Pact.  I remember being anxious when reading that the Warsaw Pact tanks outnumbered NATO’s 3 to 1, or that their army was significantly larger, or that they had developed a new, superior fighter plane.  I remember one of my teachers weeping when Ronald Reagan beat Jimmy Carter in 1980’s Presidential election because she was certain that Reagan’s strong stance against communism would lead to war.  The constant specter of nuclear conflict was our reality, and we knew that Armageddon was a missile launch away.  By the 1970’s, schools has stopped teaching kids to hide under their desks in the event of a nuclear attack, not because it was less likely, but because hiding under a desk was useless.  And we all knew it.  Security came in the form of Mutually Assured Destruction (“MAD”), the hope that no one would be crazy enough to launch an attack because it would be the end of the world.  It’s amazing the things to which you can become accustomed.

The recent German movie “The Lives of Others” artfully captures an aspect of that era.  The movie swept Germany’s cinematic awards, and went on to win the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.  The plot is set in East Germany, primarily in 1984, and follows a Stasi (secret police) agent who is ordered to spy on a playwright.  The agent is a staunch supporter of the eastern regime.  We aren’t given his age, but he was likely born around the time of the war, without any personal recollection of a unified Germany.  The movie is powerful in its subtlety.  As the protagonist observes the lives of others - thoughtful people, lovers of beauty who are tormented by the corrupt and oppressive regime under which they live, he begins to change.  Ulrich Muhe portrays the Stasi agent masterfully, and takes his character through incremental changes that alter forever the lives that he observes.  Muhe himself grew up in East Germany, and his experience certainly informed his role.  Others have written skillfully about the movie, and I won’t pretend to add to those efforts except to strongly suggest that you see the film.  Upon seeing the movie, William F. Buckley wrote “I turned to my companion and said, ‘I think that this is the best movie I ever saw.’”

The movie brought back memories of my brief time in the the Deutsche Demokratische Republik, or “DDR”.  In 1985 I traveled with a group of high school and college students to Poland for a summer-long missions trip.  Poland, then also under Soviet control, had recently undergone a series of strikes and agitations for reform that led to the imposition of martial law.  “Solidarity” was the slogan of their revolution, and the stylized Solidarity logo was plastered on building facades the world over.  But to get to Poland, we traveled by train through the DDR. Though we were only supposed to be in the country for a few hours, we ended up spending two memorable days.

At the border between West and East Germany, DDR immigration officers boarded the train wearing what looked like a suitcases around their necks.  They were escorted by soldiers wearing uniforms eerily reminiscent of the German Wermacht uniforms I’d seen in a dozen WWII movies.  The “suitcases” opened and served as portable desks.  They spoke with the typically clipped tones of an immigration officer, but unlike the others I’d encountered in Luxembourg and West Germany, they made no effort to speak English and seemed intent on intimidation.  I was only 15 and was not obligated to pay a fee to get a stamp in my passport, or so I discerned through their gestures at the birth date in my passport. 

As our train probed deeper into East Germany I was stunned at the stark contrast between the West and the East.  The West had been immaculate, full of sparkling Mercedes, and dotted with exquisitely appointed houses and landscaping.  The East still seemed to bear the marks of a 40-year-old war, and the buildings were covered with a film of soot.   There were no serene, panoramic views of the countryside.  Everything was gray and industrial – smokestacks everywhere belching more of that soot into the air.  But more sobering than the condition of the buildings and the countryside was the vacant expression on every East German’s face - completely devoid of hope, seemingly unacquainted with joy.

None of us spoke much German, and somehow we ended up either boarding the wrong train or failing to change trains.  In any event, we ended up somewhere we weren’t supposed to be and disembarked only after realizing that we were quite lost.  We hadn’t eaten in some time, and rummaged through our bags for some of the food we’d brought for the summer.  We found a few items that required no preparation and ate as we sat on the train platform.  Being kids, and being Christian kids on a mission trip, we sang a song of gratitude.  When we finished, the train station was perfectly quiet.  I looked up and saw that all of the Germans on the platform were completely still, stunned and staring. 

Not long after our song, we were greeted by members of the communist red cross.  They already knew who we were and where we were supposed to be.  I don’t know if someone in the train station had called an official, or if someone had been keeping track of us all along, but they instructed us to take no pictures, escorted us to a small building, and gave us some food.  For some reason they asked us to wash our feet.  After a few hours, they escorted us to another train and sent us on our way.  I’ve never felt more observed.

We ended up in Karl Marx Stadt (which, other than from 1953-1990, has been known as the City of Chemnitz), near the Polish border.  Again, the bureaucrats with the suitcases boarded the train, but this time there were more soldiers, and several of them were managing German Shepherds.  When one of the agents reviewed my passport he flew into a rage because I didn’t have a DDR stamp, at least that’s what I discerned when he held up my passport and compared it to the passport of one of my fellow travelers who had such a stamp.  I didn’t know what to do, or how to explain that I was told that I didn’t need one, because he didn’t speak English.  One of my companions was in the same boat, so they put us in the same compartment and kept us there for what seemed forever, but was probably a half hour.  It was about 4:00 in the morning, and I was sitting in a hundred-year-old train station, pulled by an apparently antique engine, surrounded by angry soldiers dressed like extras from Kelly’s Heroes. It was surreal.  Eventually, they let us go. 

Zywiec, Poland was a much prettier, less oppressive place.  But even there, the locals wore the sad expressions of a people who had long ago stopped looking forward to tomorrow.  They were drunk whenever they could afford to be.  In a candid moment when we were hiking in the hills outside Krakow, our interpreter, a Zywiec native, told us that the deeply held hope of every Pole was that the American armies would one day come over the hills surrounding the city and free them from their oppressors.  He said he was never able to tell us that when we were in the city because he feared he was being watched.  I was sad when he told us that, because I knew it was never going to happen.

 ”The Lives of Others” reminded me that the worst elements of my brief encounters had defined the daily existence of millions for some 40 years.  Yet we seem to have very quickly forgotten how wicked things were behind the Iron Curtain.  We inexplicably deny that people are now, today, similarly oppressed in places like China and Cuba.  The chief difference between Cuba today and East Germany in 1984 is that Cuba’s people are significantly more impoverished.  Like the East Germans of 20 years ago, many are willing to risk their lives to attempt an escape.  Just a couple of weeks ago, several members of Cuba’s national soccer team disappeared during a tour of the United States.  They were presumably among the privileged in Cuba, and still they left it all because the uncertainty of hope is more appealing than the certainty of oppression. 

I am sure that there are millions wondering, like my interpreter once did, whether their liberators will one day arrive.  While I neither expect nor advocate direct military action against those remaining vestiges of a failed ideology, I fear that we’ve stopped believing that we really do have something better to offer, and so we’ve stopped applying the pressure that once led to the collapse of the Eastern Block and the end of the seemingly permanent Cold War.  Our popular culture has decided that patriotism is comically naive, that we are the oppressors, and that it is presumptuous to suggest that our system is better than anyone else’s.  We may all suffer for that one day, but for now, the ones who suffer most are the ones who know best that our America really is worth preserving, because they are living the nightmarish alternative.