During this season of gratitude...

During this season of gratitude, I encourage each of us to remember the community that we are...fellow humans.

As we focus on the end of the year and all of the additional responsibilities that come along with the holiday season, let's place a high priority on our own self-care and that of others in our community.

Take breaks, connect with friends, breathe, plan ahead, continue healthy habits, reach out to someone, share a cup of coffee, or even a simple smile. It’s the small things that sometimes have the greatest impact.

With gratitude daily for those in this life, near or far, past or present, here but gone, and those yet to cross the path.

It's not fatal if we shepherd change.

A seven-year old has a natural curiosity to understand the world around them. Everything is new and most anything invariably involves asking why it is so. That was most certainly true in 1970 in Huntington, West Virginia. 

I recall that evening in October when my father came home from the Marshall University campus after students protesting recent drug raids were tear-gassed. As an Episcopal minister it would not have been unusual for my father, also an adjunct teaching social work at the university, to believe his campus presence a necessary protocol as a member of the faith community. He certainly would have been easy to identify with his white clerical collar. Whether he chose, was asked or just happened to be on campus that evening one thing remains vivid in my memory and that was the sense of relief my mother expressed when he returned home. (Tragically this unfortunate event was followed by the plane crash on November 14, 1970 that claimed the lives of thirty-seven members of the Marshall football team, its coach, its doctors, athletic director and 25 team boosters. To say that Huntington as a community introduced me to the art of resilience is an understatement. It remains a special place.)

Flash forward to Ithaca, New York in October of 2015 when a campus wide assembly was

called by the Ithaca College administration to address racism and cultural bias. I remember catching the clerical collar out of the corner of my eye and denoting the gentleman’s location in the lobby as I, along with other alumni, members of the staff, faculty and student population proceeded into the College’s Athletics & Events Center. Truthfully, this assembly was crafted as poorly as prior attempts for fostering genuine dialogue. A heavy uniform presence, staff instructed to marshall attendees to fill seats on the floor, a panel of speakers comprised of white-haired caucasian men...all the trappings and appearances of inflexibility. However, what made this particular evening different was a student protest by POC at IC who took to the stage to verbally deliver a bevy of information recounting the campus experience for students of color. When the students concluded their remarks they asked the audience to join them in walking out on a panel prepped to talk at them rather than include them. By my estimate 75% of the audience elected to leave the assembly and I was part of that procession.

At the onset I intended to listen fairly to the discussion, taking in all that was to be said, but one look at the panel suggested my good intention would be lost on yet another misguided, maligned attempt to control the conversation. I grabbed a quick video clip of the procession out of the building, walked up a short flight of stairs on a mission to locate the man in the clerical collar. When I found him I hugged him, whispering quietly to him “Father, I think we’ve been here before.” I gingerly gripped his arm in recognition and walked away. In that moment, hugging a man of the cloth, it was as if I had the chance, some fifty years later, to understand fully my father’s commitment to his faith and to the students at Marshall University that fall evening in 1970.

While one can deliver instruction on recognizing discrimination and embracing an ever-expanding definition of diversity it is wholly another challenge to grasp the impact of bias academically, economically, and culturally. Change takes time. That is especially true when it seems to be languishing in the bureaucracy of decision-making and disingenuous dialogue on a college campus. Thus, sometimes negotiating a new way forward necessitates action. 

As similar calls to action are made at several institutions of higher education I imagine those with the greatest to lose are those seeking to avoid or negate the conversation about doing things differently.

Frankly, presidents, Board of Trustees, administrative heads, alumni, faculty, staff and students at any of these institutions will find they are compromised by inaction perhaps even culpable. It's only fatal if we don't take action to shepherd change. 

How to vacation charitably

Once upon a time taking a "vacation" meant complete abandonment from life's routine.  No schedule,  no agenda and certainly no expectations or planning. The act of going on vacation meant a time to rest and relax by putting away the world that engulfed my existence in any other given moment.

There were the teenage years of inviting friends to accompany our family on the annual summer excursion to Surfside Beach. Those years were memory makers.  However, as family members passed away the location grew to become a stark reminder of absence. Family vacations then became a means to keep grief at bay. There were destination shifts to Ocracoke, North Carolina, Destin, Florida and Tybee Island, Georgia. Each location with undeniably beautiful attributes never really kept those feelings of loss from surfacing, they simply didn't reinforce it.  Looking back, my relocation to South Carolina in later life was driven by a desire to reside in the landscape where those warm family memories were made.

The young adult years entailed being invited to join others in their adventures near and far.  This period spans both coasts of the United States. Road trips with sorority sisters, conferences for professional development, packing and moving to accept a new job, and attending weddings (there were a lot of these). These years are memorable. However, notably missing in these jaunts are many of the in-between states that we either flew over or slept through.

Decades after graduating from college vacation travel became fodder for exploration both of self and places outside the United States. Cruises, canal tours, sandy beaches, mountain top retreats and a myriad of food and music festivals.  These years created a presence of just being. Several earlier blog posts allude to destination travel and while it's habit to denote these experiences via FaceBook, Instagram and Twitter there's a notable shift in my thoughts on how vacation time should be spent in present day tense.

I'm definitely late to the notion of vacation as a philanthropic opportunity. Congregations of people and civic groups have dedicated themselves to mission work, student exchanges, and immersion programs for far longer than I've been alive.  A recent visit to Eleuthera, Bahamas was a catalyst in viewing time away in a different light.  I met a librarian at a bar. Truly, a serendipitous  meeting, while picking up a pizza at the Rainbow Inn in Rainbow Bay.  Turns out the individual, Susy Siel, is the executive director of Freedom to Read, Inc and she endeavors to build settlement libraries in Eleuthera every summer.  Outside summer months, she's a media specialist at a high school in Wisconsin. It was not so much meeting her, but the post conversation exploration of the organization's website and FaceBook page that it dawned on me, someone who believes that reading is fundamental and who has even tutored reading in her local community, that here's an individual that gets it right. Susy through community development and a league of committed volunteers is making an investment in young people, creating a legacy that reaps benefits beyond the books that stock the libraries shelves.

While it's still important to escape the daily routine either in union or isolation there's a host of opportunities to do good work, make a difference and give back.  Perhaps embracing this concept gives rise to the desire to step back from life and incorporate charitable endeavors into a ritual once reserved for self indulgence.  I don't doubt that there was purpose in the universe placing Susy and I in the same location for that brief period of time.  It was my aha moment.