Family and Church Communities

 I’ve written three previous blog entries about communities and ones that I’ve been involved with. There are two that I haven’t touched on: family and church.

During my thinking about community, the family came up in a number of different ways. With so much mobility in our contemporary world, many parents find their children not close to them. We currently have sons living in New Jersey, Rhode Island and California. Contrast that with my wife’s family where five of her mother’s siblings lived in the same town as she did. Or my parents’ situation where, when they retired, they moved to a town where three of my mother’s siblings were living.

In thinking about family as a community, I think about our situation when our four sons were growing up. Our life, as parents, was focused around our family and our children. Certainly there were times when Pat and I arranged for a baby sitter and went out for dinner. But most of the time, our focus was on our family. Our activities were family activities. Our vacations were family vacations. As our boys got older and started school, we made friends with parents of kids they were in school with. When they started playing sports and got involved in band and theater, we made new friends with parents of kids involved in those activities. Pat and I and our sons formed a small community and the larger communities we were involved in had connections to our family community.

I grew up as an only child. My father left Canada as a teen-ager and most of my relatives on his side of the family are in Canada and I have met few of them. On my mother’s side of the family, I had only 3 cousins, who did not live near us. (One has passed away and the other two now live in California.) My wife, on the other hand, has four siblings who live within two hours of our house in NJ. She stays in close touch with her siblings and through them keeps up with what their kids are up to. Over the last few years, we have gotten together with her siblings and their spouses a couple times a year. I look forward to these get-togethers and sharing a meal and conversation with them. Over the years, there have been regular family gatherings with the larger family (Pat’s siblings and their kids and grandkids). The larger family gatherings give us, our children and grandchildren the opportunity to stay connected to our family community.

The Catholic parish we belonged to for more than 40 years was also an important community for me in a number of ways. Our regular participation at Sunday Mass provided an opportunity to express and deepen my faith in God and Jesus Christ as part of a worship community. Having come of age around the time of the Second Vatican Council, I approached Sunday liturgies as a community experience, not just as an individual worship experience. When I was growing up, attendance at Mass was more of a spectator experience, following along in our English language Missal as the priest, with his back to us, recited the Latin prayers. But Vatican II put the emphasis of the liturgy on the community and spoke of the priesthood of all the faithful, not just the ordained among us.

So I benefitted from the larger community of the parish. But Pat and I also were part of smaller communities within the parish. We were involved in Pre-Cana (marriage preparation for engaged couples) and the Food for the Needy Committee, which organized a Thanksgiving food drive that provided the fixings for Thanksgiving dinner for 400 families. We were also Eucharistic Ministers, so we established connections with others involved in that ministry. I was involved for about 10 years in the parish High School youth group. In each of those activities we established connections with the others involved.  Additionally, when you go to the same Sunday Mass for over 40 years (we almost always attended the 9:30 am or 11 am Mass), you see the same people every week and feel a connection with many of them. Also, when our boys were growing up, the sports teams they played on were teams organized by the parish.

This blog entry is the fourth one I’ve written about community. I’ve described may communities I’ve been involved in: one that involves a reunion with friends I was in minor seminary with; some that I did not actively choose and others I entered into by choice; some that were small and others large; some that were short-term and others long-term. They’ve all helped give my life meaning and a sense of belonging. They’ve provided me with support networks as I dealt with ups and downs in my life. Writing about them has brought back memories of the communities I’ve been involved in during various periods of my life. I’m grateful to all of the people who were part of these communities for their friendship and their support. I trust you have had similar experiences of communities that have supported and sustained you in your life. Be grateful for them!

Communities We Choose

 In a previous blog, I wrote about communities I have been part of where I had no choice about the community, but became part of smaller communities that developed out of the larger ones. In this blog, I want to talk about communities that we choose to be part of.

As I said in previous blogs, I believe that communities give our lives meaning and a sense of belonging. I think they also provide a support network for us as we deal with life’s ups and downs. And, people develop communities our of shared interests.

I think of two communities my parents belonged to because of their choosing. The first consisted of couple other families of French Canadian descent. (My father was born in Canada as were my mother’s parents.) I remember that, when I was a child, my parents would visit regularly with these other families. We also shared holiday meals with one or other of the families. Both families had sons who were the same age as I was. After my parents retired, they moved back to the town in Connecticut where my mother grew up and where some of her siblings still lived. My parents joined the local senior center and for many years attended the Senior Center five days a week and participated in activities, got their lunch there and attended trips organized by the Center. The Senior Center and the friends they made there were a big part of their lives.

My wife, Pat, has written a number of children’s books. For many years, she belonged to a writers’ group based in Bucks County, PA. The group met monthly and she became friends with the members. A smaller group evolved out of the larger group and also met monthly on a different day. Although the groups met to review each others’ writing efforts, they seemed to develop friendships that were based on more than just the writing. The larger group would go out to lunch after their monthly meeting. Even after a number of them stopped writing books, they have continued to get together periodically for lunch. During the pandemic, the smaller group continued spending time with one another over Zoom. Members of both groups continue to keep in contact with and support each other through emails.

As for me, I have belonged to a number of groups/communities of my choosing, including our local Habitat for Humanity affiliate, our town’s Democratic Committee and a couple peace groups located in the Lehigh Valley. I have been involved with the Habitat for Humanity for more than 15 years. I enjoy working with the people involved in actually building the houses and my time with them provides me with really the only group I am physically with on a regular basis at this time. For a number of years, I was involved actively with Catholics for Peace and Lepoco (a peace group started during the Vietnam War and still going strong). For the last few years, I have been involved with the local Democratic Committee. I ran for Town Council five years ago and have been involved campaigning for Democratic candidates for various offices. Each of these gave me a sense of belonging to a group that shared my interests and provided support in my efforts to achieve different goals.

Sometimes we get involved in communities that seem to have a special character or have more significant impact on our lives than most other groups or communities. I can think of two communities in my life for which this was true. When I was 31 years old, I started working at a public residential facility for people with developmental disabilities. The State of New Jersey had just started to participate in a Medicaid program that provided funding to improve services to these individuals. One of the requirements was that interdisciplinary teams had to meet to develop Individual Habilitation Plans (IHPs) for each resident. I was part of a department that would be the leaders of these interdisciplinary teams. Initially there were 9 of us in the department and we were charged with developing procedures and processes for developing these IHPs and monitoring the their implementation. It was a very intense time, we all had desks in a 3 room office suite, met daily to work out the details and even discussed issues during lunch. I believe these things helped forge a strong bond among those involved. The office gradually grew larger but the bonds seem to hold. We would go out for lunch regularly as a group. We celebrated birthdays each month. We had after-work get-togethers for a yearly picnic and other activities such as bowling.

An even more special community for me involved my time at a private residential facility in southern NJ. Again, it was a residential facility for people with developmental disabilities. But the experience did not involve an intense process developing a new program. Rather, it was an immersion into an existing program. The facility had a residential program and a school program for the younger residents and some others who were day students. I worked in the residential program as a houseparent for a group of 8 teenage boys. Many of the residential staff lived on the campus, either in the dorms with the residents or in a couple of staff buildings on the grounds. As houseparents, we ate our meals with our group of residents in a central dining hall. But, we were also able to eat our meals there on our days off, if we chose. During the summer, we took all the residents to a camp in mid-coast Maine. The facility provided housing for all staff who came to the camp. Some staff lived in the cottages with the residents; some lived in staff housing provided on or off the camp grounds; and some chose to rent a place on their own. The camp situation, away from our usual homes and friends, probably forced even more interaction among the staff. I worked at the facility for 8 years and made a number of friends. 

Some of those friends have remained friends even 50 plus years later. Because of our connection to mid-coast Maine, for many years as our sons were growing up, we spent a week in Maine each summer with friends from New Jersey, who had sons around the same age as ours. While in Maine we would get together with two other couples who lived in Maine and had kids around the same age as our boys. All of us had a connection back to the school and the summer camp. We continue to go to Maine and get together with these friends that we made so long ago. We have also traveled with some of them. Over the last couple years we have had Zoom get-togethers with some of them. Although we don’t get together physically very often, I feel a deep connection to this group of friends and consider myself closer to them than to others that I see in person more regularly.

The communities we choose to associate with provide us with a strong sense of belonging and an important support network that celebrates with us in the best of times and holds us together in the worst. Some are short-term and some are long-term; but they all play an important role in our lives.

New Year's Eve in Belfast Maine

New Year's is frequently a time of reflection for people. For many, it's a time to make New Year's resolutions. There was a time in my life when I would spend the day before New Year's Day reading books that encouraged reflection. Many times they were spiritual books. It's been a while since I did that.

This year, my wife Pat and I spent New Year's Eve in Maine with some friends. As we've done on a couple previous New Year's Eves, we attended the New Year's By the Bay celebration in Belfast, Maine. There were many performers in a variety of venues. Most are from Maine. We saw four different performers. Our favorites were The Gawler Family and Hawk Henries. They were relevant acts for the NewYear for different reasons.

We've seen The Gawler Family perform before and always enjoy their performances. The thing that struck me most during this year's performance was how much fun they seemed to be having. They clearly enjoyed what they were doing and enjoyed the people they were performing with. There was a lot of looking at each other and smiling. They also seemed to enjoy their audience. There were a few songs where the audience got to participate and the Gawler Family seemed to be energized by the audience participation. It was a rousing performance, with people dancing in aisles during the last instrumental song.

The Gawler Family band includes the father and mother, three daughters and a son-in-law. I had a difficult time finding a video of the entire Gawler family that I thought presented well what they do. So, I'm adding two links here: one of the parents performing with two of the daughters; and one of the 3 sisters performing.

Hawk Henries' performance was a completely different experience. Hawk Henries is a Native American flute maker and player from Maine. His performance involved him talking about the flutes he would play and instrumental performances of those flutes. For me, listening to the flutes provided a meditative experience. It was easy to close my eyes and let the soft, mellow music just float through my body. Here's an example of his music.

So, two very different types of performances. But they were both significant to me as New Year's experiences. The Gawler Family performance provided a joyful experience of interpersonal relationships. For the coming year, I pray that all people can learn to interact with each other in a respectful and joyful way, that will lead to a more loving and peaceful world. Hawk Henries' performance points more toward an inner experience of peace. There is so much going on in our world. We can become so fascinated by technology, so much involved in our work and family activities that we don't take the time to sit quietly and give ourselves some time away from the hustle and bustle. I also pray we can all allow ourselves the "luxury" of this quiet time and that it will fortify us and help us build a solid inner core, so we can more easily deal with the rest of what comes at us in life.

Happy New Year!

The Trump Election

I was in a daze the day after Donald Trump won the 2016 election for President of the United States. How could this have happened? Hillary Clinton was ahead in virtually all the polls. I’ve read and listened to many analyses of what happened. I’m sure the analyzing will go on for many more years. Here’s my take on what happened.

I think Donald Trump won the electoral college vote because of convergence of a number of different groups voting for him. Initially I thought of using the word “coalition” instead of “convergence’. But I decided to not use that term because I don’t think he established a coalition. I think different groups decided to vote for him for their own particular reasons and the sum of all these groups together brought him enough votes to win the election. One group included white nationalists, Americans who believe we should be a nation controlled by white men. These people cheered his condemnation of Mexican immigrants, his call for a ban on Muslim immigration, his promise to deport all illegal immigrants, and his denunciation of a judge of Mexican descent as not able to be objective in hearing a lawsuit against Trump.

Another group that supported him are white evangelical Christians. More than 80% of those who voted from this group went for Trump. You would think that the many things that came out during the campaign about his crude language and behavior would have led to them rejecting Trump. But, apparently, his pro-life position and his pledge to appoint only pro-life justices to the Supreme Court trumped all the rest (pun intended).

Trump also got the votes of the die-hard Republican voters. He got the endorsements of many Republican elected officials, even those he disparaged and told lies about (e.g., Ted Cruz and Paul Ryan).

Finally, he got the votes of many working class Americans who believe the system is not working for them. These folks came out in big numbers to give Trump wins in states like Michigan, Ohio, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In some of these states, Republicans had not won the popular vote for President in many years. In many states, working class people who don’t usually vote came out and voted for Trump. He hit the right chord with these folks. He called for change and this was very appealing for working class people whose real wages have gone down considerably over the past few decades. For some, their wages have gone down because manufacturing jobs, which paid good money, have now been replaced by service jobs with much lower wages. For some, the issue goes beyond the replacement of high-paying jobs with low-paying jobs.

In the September/October issue of Mother Jones magazine, Arlie Russell Hochschild wrote an article about Donald Trump’s appeal to working class voters. Hochschild’s article is based on interviewing and spending time with 60 people in Louisiana over a period of 5 years, in an attempt to understand supporters of the tea party. One paragraph struck me as providing a good insight into his appeal.

She says that the “deep story of the right goes like this: You are patiently standing in the middle of a long line stretching toward the horizon, where the American Dream awaits. But as you wait, you see people cutting in line ahead of you. Many of these line-cutters are black – beneficiaries of affirmative action or welfare. Some are career-driven women pushing into jobs they never had before. Then you see immigrants, Mexicans, Somalis, the Syrian refugees yet to come. As you wait in this unmoving line, you’re being asked to feel sorry for them all. You have a good heart. But who is deciding who you should feel compassion for? Then you see Barack Hussein Obama waving the line-cutters forward. He’s on their side. In fact, isn’t he a line-cutter too? How did this fatherless black guy pay for Harvard? As you wait your turn, Obama is using money in your pocket to help the line-cutters. He and his liberal backers have removed the shame from taking. The government has become an instrument for redistributing your money to the undeserving. It’s not your government anymore; it’s theirs.” Hochschild says she checked this story with the people she interviewed for her article and they agreed it was their story.

You may read the description above and say that it’s not an accurate portrayal of what’s going on in America. Whether it is or not, it’s an accurate description of how some Americans see their situation. We can’t just dismiss it out-of-hand. We have to acknowledge it. The failure to recognize what’s happening to the working class and lower middle class may be what caused Clinton to lose the election.

Here are some additional thoughts about the election:

American voters wanted a change. Hillary Clinton got almost 17 million votes during the Democratic primaries. Donald Trump got over 14 million votes in the Republican primaries. He beat out 16 other candidates (mostly career politicians). But we should not forget that Bernie Sanders also got more than 13 million votes in the Democratic primaries – these were also votes for change. In the general election, Clinton was seen as supporting the political status quo; while Trump was seen as an outsider and an advocate for major change in Washington. During the primaries, polls generally showed Bernie Sanders doing better against Trump than Clinton against Trump. We’ll never know whether he would have beaten Trump. But I believe his outsider/change message would have appealed to many of the working-class voters who went for Trump.

Also, Donald Trump lied. At times, he said one thing and then later said the opposite. At other times, he asserted things that were contradicted by facts (e.g., that President Obama was not born in the United States, that Ford was taking jobs from the US and sending them to Mexico, that the murder rate in our big cities has increased). He frequently denied that he said certain things that audio or video tapes could prove that he had indeed said. My wife, Pat, read an interesting analysis of this. The author believed that Donald Trump was not concerned with whether the things he said were true or false. The most important thing to him is winning. He emphasized during his campaigns that he is a winner and would make America a winner (we would win so much that we will get bored of winning). Thus, he said things he believed would help him win. Truth or falsehood was beside the point. Based on what I saw and read during the primary and general election campaigns, I think this is a pretty good analysis of how Trump operates. And now that he has won he is moderating many positions that probably played a big part in convincing people to vote for him (e.g., a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary, repealing Obamacare).

We also cannot overlook the voter suppression effort that Republicans have engaged in over the past half-decade. Under the guise of fighting voter fraud, Republican legislatures in a large number of states have enacted laws that have made it more difficult for traditionally Democratic voters to cast their votes. One Pennsylvania legislator admitted on camera that the purpose of that state’s voting fraud law was to help Republicans win elections. In Alabama, the new law required a voter ID. The state then closed more than 30 Motor Vehicle offices (where the IDs could be obtained) mostly in rural, majority-black counties. In Wisconsin, a federal judge ordered the state to provide voter ID to applicants within 6 days of receiving the appropriate documentation. But Motor Vehicle agencies in the state did not comply with the order. These voter ID laws were enacted despite the fact that actual fraud at the voting place is almost non-existent. A study by Prof. Justin Levitt at Loyola University found that from 2000 to 2014 there were only 31 instances of voter impersonation fraud out of one billion votes. The Nation magazine described voter suppression as the most under-reported story of 2016. Ari Berman’s article describes the results of these voter ID laws.

OK. We have to face facts. Donald Trump won the election. He didn’t get the most votes in the general election. But he did get the most electoral college votes. And that’s the way our system currently works. We have to live with him being our president for the next four years.

I have two take-aways from this election. One, there are a lot of people who are saying and writing that we have to give him a chance, we have to wait and see how he will govern. I agree with that. But, I also believe that we have to be vigilant. We can’t allow him and the Republican Congress to enact laws that violate human rights, foster discrimination, or violate the Constitution and say “Let’s wait to see how these laws play out.” We need to act quickly if these things occur and make our voices heard through letter writing, protests, etc. Two, the Democratic party abandoned the working class, which used to provide the base of its support. Bernie Sanders recognized this and there are other prominent Democratic politicians who also understand it (e.g., Elizabeth Warren, Al Franken, Keith Ellison). The Democratic party has given lip-service to addressing the plight of the working class; but it has not translated into meaningful action. In order to win future elections, the Democrats must return to their roots.