Big Apple, Bryn Mawr, Jersey City, Hoboken, Buzz, El Salvador, Berlin: Where I've A-Been Running To

The snow would not defeat me. I've been flying. Through crusty white landscapes and down the slushed streets of the Big Apple (on Friday). Into the quiet calm of Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church, where I spoke about memories and memoir after Nicole Duran gave her powerful sermon on turning the other cheek. (That is my father, that is me, that is the Reverend Charles Grant, who extended the invitation and introduced me.) Up to Jersey City, then along the Hudson into Hoboken, to spend an evening and then a morning with our son (he showed us where Eli Manning is rumored to live; he showed us where Justin Timberlake recently collected a crowd (my son among them)).

Then a dash back to my home, so that I could interview two corporate clients and then set off running again—to the train station and into my own city and up through the campus of Penn, toward Kelly Writers House, where Buzz Bissinger, one of three 2014 KWH fellows, gave the best reading of his life before both students and friends who have known him for a very long time. Buzz was powerful. He was honest. He was among those who deeply respect his talent and heart. (There is Buzz, above, with the great Rolling Stone writer Sabrina Rubin Erdely, the fabulous famous author/editor Stephen Fried, and myself). After that a meal hosted by Al Filreis (who runs the hugely popular KWH fellows program) and another dash to the station. This time I missed the train, but it didn't matter that much; I had my students' papers with me and plenty to do.

Now I am moments away from heading back down to Penn to greet a classroom full of students whose expectation essays filled me up with joy and wonder. That's what my students—year in and year out—do. I think some angel up there is plucking strings.

In between everything, Serena Agusto-Cox found a book I'd written long ago—my memoir about marriage to a Salvadoran man (Still Love in Strange Places)—and wrote beautifully of it. Thank you, Serena. Finally, a dear book/life friend wrote to me about Going Over, that Berlin novel due out in a few weeks. She wrote with words that bolstered me.

My red shoes are at the door. I lace them up. I go running.

Read more...

Flowers for my Mother, on the Third Sunday in Advent (at Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church)

Earlier this morning, 5 AM, I was on the phone with my son, who is Los Angeles bound. It's a business trip—a chance to spend some time at the parent company of his media planning firm. It's also a chance for my son to see a city he's never been before—a few hours of not work for the hardworking son who has taken just a half day off in the past nine months of his first out-of-college, it's-for-real job.

In time, he set off in the dark for his adventure. I waited for a little more sun, then stepped outside into the crystal palace the world had overnight become to chop the ice away from the car. It's the third Sunday in Advent. I needed to be in church, near Christmas words and Christmas songs. I was married at Bryn Mawr. Our son was baptized there. My mother was beloved there and in her absence my father has become so engaged in the life of this community that I call him The Big Man on the BMPC Campus. He modestly shakes his head. He says, No. But I know. I see. I go to church there with him now, whenever I can. At Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Church my father is equally vital and young. He's necessary, and happy.

Today my father (having gone to the early service) was long gone, on his way to see my brother, when I finally cleared the crystals and got on the road. The ice on the trees and electrical lines kept shattering as I drove—dazzlingly minor key crashes. By the time I opened the door to the sanctuary, the St. Cecelia Girl Choir, St. Andrew Boy Choir, Youth Chorale, and Sanctuary Choir were already bringing Christmas into Christmas. Soon the advent candles were lit, and now Reverend Agnes Norfleet, nearly one year into her job as the pastor of this church—into her bold, bright, life-giving tenure—was giving the kind of sermon that we remember for how it moved us and how it made us laugh as well (she tends to do this). After that the Reverend Nicole Duran webbed together the big and the small of now into an artful prayer, and then there were more songs, another prayer, the postlude. I stood to go.

At the door, Reverend Norfleet gave me one of her welcoming hugs and asked me if I had noticed the flowers. I had. They were full-headed, unusual, white, and many times throughout the service I had studied them, thought how rich and prepossessed they were, how perfectly graceful for Advent.

"They were given by your dad in honor of your mom," she said.

Just like my father, at Christmas.

Read more...

Grateful to Nicole Duran, at St. John's Presbyterian, for Easter Day

Nine or so months ago, Dr. Nicole Duran quietly slipped into her role as a transitional minister for my own St. John's Presbyterian Church and—without overt fanfare—changed the lives of many. She never gave the expected sermon. She brought intelligence to history and now to the stories of then. She found an old stone baptismal font long wasting away on the church property and installed it to its proper glory—simply, almost matter of fact. Nicole engaged the young with words and seeds, felt boards and icons. She visited those who had fallen ill, spoke eloquently and with genuine emotion at funerals, inquired after others, attended to small fractures and bigger ones, and listened. Nicole Duran is not an overt entertainer; she doesn't need to be. She is, instead, a quiet, never self-congratulatory innovator, someone who has something to say, and how I have loved paying attention to the connections her fine mind makes, how I have loved the resonant power of her messages—relevant, real, and searching.

Today Nicole gave an extraordinary, alive, personal Easter Sunday sermon—looked at us through the thick black frames of her glasses and said precisely what she thought about religion today, the role of a holy place in our lives, the difference between seeking out the familiar for familiarity's sake and finding faith in the changing and new. And then, during communion, she invited every person in that quiet church to take a single flower from so many flower-filled vases and lace it into the netting of a large wooden cross she'd had built for us. Tulips, roses, carnations, twizzlers of blue and red, striped petals—one by one we laced our flowers in, and when we were done, that cross was alive, the dark day was bright, and we had lived Easter.

People touch our lives. Sometimes they don't know just how much they do, or why. I will never forget Nicole Duran—transitional but not temporary—nor this particular Easter day. She is a woman walking a stone wall in a simple dress, lifting her hopes—for us—to the sky.

Read more...

remembering Mike Ruhl, celebrating the good

Earlier this week I took a walk with my little point and shoot to document my neighborhood for a friend.  This is my house, this is my street, this is my church, this is my office, I said.  And I loved the sound of each camera snap.

So that this, yes, is my church, my own St. John's, and this is where, earlier today, we came together to remember the life of Mike Ruhl, a man described by all who knew him (and by those conducting the service) as extraordinarily good.  Good being a big word.  Good being the biggest word.  Good being how we think of those who actively listen and overtly care, those who want the right things and work on their behalf, those who love their families, those who leave us with grace, those who purify us by their presence.  Mike Ruhl was all those things, and by his wife and son, by his sister and mother, niece and nephews, by his co-workers, by his friends, he will be forever missed.  His spirit is still out there, on this blue-sky day.  But oh, he will be missed.

After the service, those who had joined together—seamlessly, under the leadership of a compassionate minister and with the guidance of Lisa, Mike's wife—stood on the church lawn and in the parking lot.  I stood too, and took it in.  I thought of all the easy rancor in the world, the shots fired, the punches thrown, the lines that get crossed.  I thought of those who confuse cruelty with wit, those who seize upon someone or something with one objective only—to trump, for a nano-instant, to gain nattering fame at another's expense.  I thought of politics, and what it does to us.  Anonymous comments.  Spiced Twitter feeds.  Failed apologies.

But there is, in goodness, beauty.  There is, in kindness, intelligence.  There are people like Mike Ruhl who crowd a church on a blue-sky day to be celebrated, to be remembered, to instruct us.

I turn my eyes in that direction.

Read more...