Day 2 of Advent - The Holy Family:

Are we all cozy now? Tucked well in for the night, windows shut against the cold, bellies warmed with some sturdy winter fare. Perhaps a pint of ale, or draught of wine nearby. Perhaps some handwork in your lap, or a puzzle before, and best of all to pass a winter eve - a story, a familiar one, one that we know by heart.

Bring a torch, Jeannette Isabella
Bring a torch, and quickly run
Christ is born, good folks of the village.
Christ is born, and Mary's calling,
"Ah, ah, beautiful is the mother,"
"Ah, ah, beautiful is her son."

I love that carol, it's lilting melody, the echo of the last two lines. The celebration of beauty, the hastening of hearts to Jesus. Somehow I hear the vunerability of Mary and Joseph, of their journey, and of the birth in the old song. It's there so clearly for me.

That vulnerability has been on my mind lately. All life seems so tender that it seems remarkable to me that we survive. So I imagine with compassion what it might have been like for Mary, little more than a girl, most likely younger than me seeing her life so clearly before her. And then the Angel appears:

"Greetings you who are highly favored! The Lord is with you."

And Luke mercifully records, "Mary was greatly troubled by his words and wondered what kind of greeting this might be."

What a relief that she was troubled - I think any of us would be, then, "Do not be afraid..."

We get the annunciation, the greeting of Elizabeth and Mary's song, and it's so easy to think that that's all there was, but there was nine months of carrying a child for her, there was morning sickness and aches, there was the shame that must have been cast upon her from those who questioned her honor, there was surely a delicate relationship to work out with Joseph, even amidst and through the joy of being highly favored by the Lord.

And that final difficult journey - what did Mary and Joseph talk about? Did they talk at all? Were they grumpy and afraid? Were they tender and patient? Were they all those things?

And the birth, I think for Mary, and probably for Joseph too, must have felt like the final crucible of that whole experience from Angel to manager. Did Joseph feel ashamed that he could do no better for his betrothed and baby than a stable? Was he afraid for Mary? Was there anyone to help them through the birth?

I think that in that final great test, Mary's beauty must have become transcendent, as does the look of those who come through trials for the better and whole, and I think Joseph must have seemed his strongest and best, as do those who keep the faith through difficulty, and the babe in their arms, Ah, beautiful is the Son.

Who knows of Mary and Joseph stopped and looked at each other in all the noise and action, and said, "My God, has it come to pass?" Or if they were able in their weariness to grasp what the Shepherds understood - that in the bosom of the beautiful boy beat the heart of a Savior, beat, indeed the heart of God veiled in flesh. To think about it for a moment is like looking into the bright light - one can do it for a moment, but one has to look away, it's too much to take in at once.

That remarkable beauty, the admirable strength, the wonder of the child - I think that's what the Shepherds saw for a brief moment, and what Mary and Joseph felt for a brief moment. It was bright, and too big to take in all at once.

So Mary stored those things up in her heart, and thought over them. And the Shepherds who had hastened to the manager, sang their praise to the Almighty who gave the good gift, and the hope for all men and women, for all time.

The first Sunday of Advent:

There is a line in Bob Dylan’s “Song to Woody,” that always reminds me vividly of advent - that captures so poignantly the longing and the waiting that we enter into this season:

…I wrote you a song
‘Bout a funny ol’ world that’s a-comin’ along.
Seems sick an’ it’s hungry, it’s tired an’ it’s torn,
It looks like it’s dying an’ it’s hardly been born.

Somehow, I can imagine Simeon and Anna in the temple, waiting for the Messiah and praying the Hebrew equivalent of those lyrics. There are certainly psalms that come close to them.

While Simeon and Anna waited for the consolation, the nation of Israel endured the Roman conquest and occupation. There was poverty, corruption, illness, meanness, and all manner of other ills.

But there in the temple waited Simeon and Anna, waiting for the “consolation of Israel, for the Lord’s Christ.” Did they raise their voices with the Psalmists and say, “How long, O Lord, must we endure?”

When we find them in the gospel of Luke, we get four verbs in description. About Simeon we read that he was “waiting,” and in regards to Anna we find that she “worshipped” by “fasting and praying.”

These are fine verbs for advent, the season when we remember the coming of Christ to this world, and when we prepare our hearts in expectancy for the time when He will come again.

Wait. Worship. Fast. Pray.

These are uncomfortable verbs for me – I prefer things that have much more action or at least, busyness. Can you imagine the sisters Mary and Martha confronted with these verbs. Mary would say, “No problem, I’m on it.” Martha would probably roll her eyes at Mary, and say, “You gotta be kidding me – there’s cooking or tidying, or something I could be doing.”

Wait. Worship. Fast. Pray.

This funny world is still turning, and though Christ has begun His redeeming work, there is still so much suffering and pain all around us. Certainly there are any number of good works to be done in His name.

Still, it would be wrong to forget the lessons of Simeon and Anna, those first waiters whose story is left to us. It’s so easy to think that the work of God is dependent on our own strength, or cleverness, or wisdom, or whatever point at which our vanity deceives us into trusting in ourselves rather than God.

I look around this world and say, “Surely something more can be done,” but in saying that, I so often forget to wait, to worship, to fast, to pray. To remember that even though I can’t see it, the Almighty is yet at work redeeming and reconciling His creation to Himself.

New York Tavern, and Lady Gaga

My least favorite story as a kid, though I recall reading it often, and always with the same sense of disappointment, was “The Emperor’s New Clothes.”

There were no talking animals. Not even elves. Just people, wicked, mean, and stupid people – how could the emperor and all his court be so taken in by those original dirty rotten scoundrels. Reading it was like watching someone’s most embarrassing moment unfold, and equally as painful. Which of course is the point – the child is the only one in the kingdom who remains pure enough of heart to tell the truth, the poor child, with neither power nor name, with nothing to lose or gain who points out what is obvious while those who should have been wiser promote the harmful lie. Ahh, a morality tale.

One of my favorite students was a little boy whose name meant King, but who was largely ill-cared for. My co-worker, who was his homeroom teacher, kept a drawer of clean uniform clothes for him; I kept school supplies. After trying unsuccessfully to reach his mother for months with no success, we both sat through a social services meeting and listened to her lie about King having clean clothes and school supplies at home. We’d seen him and his siblings everyday, the truth had spoken steadily to us.

He had a lot to grieve for, but he was resilient and the most truthful child I taught – I never saw him lie, even to save himself or his friends. He was as honest as Gatsby’s Nick.

King worked hard to be good in my classroom, and I promised him that if he stayed on Green all day, I would call his parents to say how well he’d done. He did, and I did. There was no answer at his Mom’s and no answering machine. So we called his Dad, King and his friend were standing right by my desk. We had turned on the speakerphone. The rings gave way to a message – an entire hip-hop song that presumably his father identified with. As the song played, King shook his head, his buddy shook his head in solidarity and unobtrusively patted King’s back.

King gave him a look that said, “Can you believe that mess?” and his buddy sighed and nodded his head in a way that said, “I know, man, I know.”

“Man, that’s just stupid,” King said to me. “He should grow up.”

The emperor, said the child King, has no clothes.

I was shocked by both boys’ ability to see it through the excess to the truth, and it gave me a tiny flicker of hope.

This morning I heard two seemingly unrelated news briefs.

From NPR about a New York Tavern:

The owner of O'Casey's Tavern in Midtown Manhattan will unveil on Thanksgiving what he says is the nation's first 100-proof turkey. The bird will be infused with fruit-flavored and 100-proof vodka for three days before roasting. The meat will have hints of peach, raspberry, cherry and apple. The gravy also will be laced with liquor.

And this one from CNN’s coverage of the American Music Awards:

The most unusual performance may have been by Lady Gaga, who used a microphone stand to break into a large glass box to get to a piano that started burning as she played

If I hadn’t heard these two pieces from those two sources, I would have thought they were from The Onion.

Now let’s remember to be kinder than necessary, cause everyone’s fighting a battle. It’s been a tough year for businesses everywhere, the owner of O’Caseys is pulling a Barnumesque stunt to bring in business. No worse, and certainly no better, than any other thousand and one circus acts that have gone before and will come after.

Still, what if the excess is indicative of something else, some rot in our culture that would take a perfectly tasty-on-its-own bird, treat it to a frighteningly Las Vegas style booze binge, take what will already be its liquor soaked broth and lace it with yet more liquor. It rather debases the poor turkey.

And Lady Gaga, well I know that her music is embraced and adulated by many, but if you have to violently smash a box to play a burning piano (with terrible posture I might add – no piano teacher would stand for crossed legs at the bench), well what’s really the point – the music, or the excess?

Musicians are not universally well known for their charming behavior, but while Mozart may have been a womanizing, ill-behaved nincompoop, I don’t recall hearing about that time he played the Royal Court of Vienna, and before tickling the keys cast his candelabra into the instrument – it would have distracted from the music.

But the turkey, and the music isn’t really the point in these instances, it’s the excess that’s meant to grab, inflame, entice or revolt.

Frankly the video of Lady Gaga’s performance is a little frightening, masked dancers in flesh toned costumes manage to look like bird-like dinosaurs – and not nice herbivores either. This creepy effect is exacerbated by the lyrics which kick off with what elementary school teachers would call nonsense syllables (Oooh, roma, gaga) and lead up to I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything as long as it’s free… and continues to I want your psycho…Baby your sick.

Winning, no? Pardon me if I don’t swoon. It gives me an icky feeling in my stomach – this isn’t worthy of commendation, it’s low, it’s base and crude, it demeans, it does not add dignity to anything or anyone – The Emperor has no clothes!

So what is it that makes so many of us, myself included, parties to the ruses, the illusions of the Emperor, of the Wizard (who is that finally unmasks the ruler of Oz as a little man behind the curtain – why a clear eyed child), of the Circus Ringmaster.

I don’t know, but I find it troubling. Excess in food used to be confined to thinks like the Terducken – a chicken, stuffed inside a duck, stuffed inside a turkey – silly and excessive, certainly, a little like your odd great-uncle who’s a little too familiar with the bourbon, but destructive or harmful? Not particularly.

Excess in music, well let’s not forget that it was as recently as 1964 that The Beatles performed on the Ed Sullivan show with their long hair! and their shocking lyrics: Close your eyes and I’ll kiss you, tomorrow I’ll miss you; Remember I’ll always be true. And then while I’m away, I’ll write home everyday, and I’ll send all my loving to you.

Let’s not forget that this tour was precipitated by their chart-topping single, I want to hold your hand that included the lyrics, Oh please, say to me, you’ll let me be your man, oh please say to me, you’ll let me hold your hand.

It’s a bit sweeter than “I want your disease.” It’s positively quaint. Still, it only took 45 years to get from promises of being true to Lady Gaga. I think we might need a lot of clear-eyed children for the next 45 years who will be able to call the kingdom to its senses with unabashed truth in the face of unmitigated, even dangerous display.

Keeping the Feast

I’m thinking about what it means to keep the feast.

It’s a funny little line in the liturgy.

Let us proclaim the mystery of faith:

Christ has died.
Christ is risen.
Christ will come again.

Therefore, let us keep the feast.

Let’s just chase a small rabbit for one moment: 23 words that contain an entire world history – faith, unseen and hoped for, thus a mystery, the known elements of that faith and hope, and our response to it. How many volumes have been written? And yet there it is in 23 words. Beyond that, the beautiful poetry of verb tenses – surely this must have appealed to those church fathers steeped in Latin, it takes me back to the drilling of conjugation, amo, amas, amamus. Has, is, will – past, present, future. Keep – now, in response.

I’ve been going to a church here in St. Louis, I don’t know why typing that sentence feels oddly confessional. Maybe it’s because the church has several campuses, and TV monitors (!) that put the songs up interspersed with Bible verses, maybe it’s the well edited mini-doc they show once a week telling the story of how someone was in crisis, found Jesus, and now they’re plugged in, maybe it’s the electric guitar and the drums and the pounding bass. Maybe because it’s a non-denominational, non-liturgical congregation – so to sum up, everything I’ve complained about in the modern church for years.

In fact, I almost left today, in the middle of one of the songs that sounded a little to reminiscent of a power-ballad worthy of senior prom, and after five people didn’t return a good morning as I stepped aside to let them into the row.

I grabbed a cup of coffee – definite perk to this church, and sat down in the very back row. I mean, it was church, and I like the way the pastor preaches – well, at least the three sermons I’ve heard.

This is largely because the pastor reminds me of my high-school Bible Teacher, also the football and wrestling coach, willing to, in his diction: “bring the smackdown on the field, the mat or the classroom.”

And the grape juice they serve at communion. It’s been 7 years since I went to a church that didn’t serve wine for communion.

So the combo of a reminiscent Coach A., and Welch’s standing in for the cup of salvation, it’s like ex-Southern-Baptist soul comfort food.

I told my Mom that I was perfectly fine with poached eggs for Thanksgiving dinner, that it was really all the same to me.

Truly it probably will be. Food does anything except thrill me now and for the past four months. It feels funny in my mouth, it doesn’t appeal to my taste, it seems awfully pushy. I haven’t cooked in about four months, except for cheddar cheese risotto once. I’ve been eating lots of fruits and veggies, in fact almost entirely vegetarian, which is uncharacteristic. I mean, I enjoy(ed) food, enjoy(ed) cooking, thoroughly enjoy(ed) meat, but my general feeling towards it currently is meh.

So the idea of an 8 pound bird, with accoutrements out the wazzu, well if anything, it kind of gives me a feeling of dread; it’s intimidating.

Food’s all wrapped up in love for me, cooking grounds me in a way, it connects me to my mother and grandmothers, it gives me a place to stand still in the middle of a this crazy-tilt-a-whirl world. Cooking for people is sacred, and also one of the ways I give love to the people I care for, and apparently has been so for a long time.

John Doe (yes, that really is his nickname), my radical-feminist-agitating friend, called just the other day, out of the blue to say, “Do you remember that one time you made your grandma’s spaghetti – I still dream about it.” Mind you that was at least 5 years ago.

But four months ago my small world went one whirl too many, and I’m still catching my breath. Cooking’s still all wrapped up with love for me, and well…I’m not going to talk about that here.

So the calendar pages are falling away every passing day, and here it is November, the festival of the Turkey, the gratitude and the kick-off of egg-nog season; I’ve never looked forward to a Thanksgiving less.

Still I’m betting it’s going to be better than the year my Dad almost died after a disastrous surgery. We ate Thanksgiving at the dining room table while Dad was plugged into the home-medical equipment – he was feeling poorly, but he was game. I’m sure he even carved the turkey.

After I remembered that Thanksgiving, I emailed my mom again – I told her we’d do it this year, the roast-beast, the relish, the potatoes, the pies. If Dad could do Thanksgiving while plugged into a wall, then I can probably do thanksgiving even as I still sorrow.

I am keeping the feast, at least a really tiny portion of it, and a half of a turkey sandwich.

The other day, I read: “Be kinder than necessary, everyone is fighting a battle.” I recognize sorrow more easily now in others, because I too experience(d) its depths. It has made me more compassionate, and kinder. It’s all so fragile what we have here, there’s too little time to stomp about with 10-league boots on.

Everyone’s fighting something – grief, or stress, or worry, mistakes, regrets – there’s such a list of human woe.

I didn’t leave church today, and I heard a message about heresy. I abstained from the Lord’s Supper, but I sat quietly and peacefully, just at rest.

During the sermon, I felt really noticeably hungry, or rather, I noticed that I desired food specifically a Chipotle burrito. This once familiar feeling of wanting food was especially surprising and unexpected, and so after church, I went in peace to the restaurant.

They didn’t open till 11; I had 10 minutes to kill. I spoke with an older couple who needed directions; I looked in shop-windows.

When I walked into the restaurant, the staff was still sitting around a table eating and jawing. I smiled and said “Good Morning.” A gentleman got up to take my order. We made pleasant conversation.

I got to the register to check out and the lady said, “It’s free.”

I smiled and said, “Thank you.”

I don’t really know if the Lord is involved in details as small as me feeling hungry for a burrito and then getting a free one, but I had just left His house. I do have faith and hope, that the dear Christ does enter into this messy-tilt-a-whirl-world to bear upon Himself that which we cannot. And I think He very kindly gave me lunch in a way too obvious for me to miss.

The gift of that burrito made me smile and laugh. I grinned all the way back to my car, three young men on their way to a coffee shop even commented on how happy I looked, “she’s all smiles,” they said. I told them to have a great day.

So I went home. I bowed my head; said thank you. Kept the feast.

So I proclaim the mystery I can’t understand, but in which I hope:

That Christ has come.

Christ is risen, and is near.

Christ will come again.

Therefore, though I yet sorrow, though I do not understand, though I have questions that at the moment have no answers, still will I in His grace and borrowed strength, keep the feast He sets before me.

The District of Columbia is, like any city, a living-breathing organism. A great deal more than intersecting streets, public transportation and interesting bits of history. It is a city driven by largely by image, prestige, intellect and ambition.

It's fit, young, has few smokers, is well educated. It's chockablock full of type-A folks who are out to change the world and who think they have a shot.

And some of the them work on Capitol Hill in the halls of legislative power. Other's work in the hallowed rooms of the White House. Still others in the oddly-reminiscent-of-Oz building that houses the Justice Department, or in the cloistered rooms of the Supreme Court.

Then there are the thinkers in the tanks - working for a legal group that specializes in a particular branch of constitutional law, working at the program that brings international students here to show them the good Ol' US of A, folks who are working on the environment, education, elevating morality, elevating liberty and, of course, elevating themselves.

There are the young graduate students studying medicine, or public policy or law. There are those just back from the Peace Corps, and those blackberry punching interns that work for the two-blackberry handling Chancellor of Schools.

There are the young ladies who light up the shops of Georgetown, and the cadre of young, beautiful and carefree who linger in the streets of Adam's Morgan and raise their glasses to the glorious cause and to themselves. Those who spend weekends toting their Ethos water bottles, kayaking on the Potomac, taking Sunday brunch and slugging back the mimosas and Bloody Marys.

And it is easy to linger in the perception that the young, the beautiful, the driven are what composes D.C. Full of people who look just like me, just the same, and they're always in front of that gleaming Capitol Dome, aren't they? And the sunlight glints off their sunglasses, and off the dome and it's pretty; it's the American dream.

But that's not the whole of D.C., not the whole story, and storytellers have got to tell it all, right?
So it is that in the gleaming city on the hill, where rest the pretty hopes and dreams of so many, where resides so much intellect, so much altruism, so much of the zeitgeist, reside also the invisible citizens of D.C.

Those born and raised and living there in the shadow of the dome. They are on K St NE where 6 were felled by gunfire, and on I St SE where two or three were roughed up and mugged, in Columbia Heights were names get crossed off a graffitied list of names on a brick wall. They are the residents of Trinidad, the neighborhood, not the country, who lived within police roadblocks that restricted all access to their community.

They are the residents of Anacostia, across the river, where the young, the beautiful, the idealistic do not go. Where there are no glittering shops, where there are no bars playing the understatedly-cool-hipster-anthem of the moment.

They are the children who attend a school where lights and windows are broken, where the heat doesn't work and the kids have to wear their coats during class, where there is violence and the threat of violence, and hunger and insecurity.

They are the children who wrote to President-Elect Obama and suggested that after he finished the war in Iraq, maybe he could help clean up Potomac Gardens, where they live.

Here in the shadow of the gleaming dome, the embodiment of the liberty we hold so dear, here are the parents who are trying to finish their GEDs, who are trying to find a tutor for their son who is about to enter the maw of secondary-education in the inner city. Here is the Aunt or the Grandma who is taking in the children because their mother has died. Here is the little boy in fourth grade who cannot recognize or write his name.

And you've probably guessed that the invisible part of D.C. doesn't look just the same as the golden, beautiful dreamers who think their golden, beautiful thoughts about changing the world, or winning the election, or getting the principal into the newscycle and perpetuating themselves just a bit longer.

It's easy for the two worlds never to cross. Two cities. One face that we show the world, and the other invisible, ignored, forgotten and discarded, way across the river, where the idealistic, the young, the beautiful, the glittering do not go. Talk about your lands of Oz.

But there a lot of non-profits that work precisely in that invisible city. They don't get reported on in the national media, and a lot of times the local media misses them too. They don't have operating budgets that reach into the stratosphere; they have donated space, and older computers, and toilets that they fix themselves. They are helping with the GEDs and the kids in Trinidad. They are working in Columbia Heights to end the violence. They are advocating in the school systems for their kids.

One in particular, a small one with a great deal of heart is providing a safe space in Potomac Gardens for the kids. This non-profit is making sure that the fourth grader is learning, and that the disparity in the school conditions is known, and above all this non-profit is loving those children every single day with a love that is so kind, and so big, and so unfailing that the kids just light up in it. In that love, for the smallest of moments, the kids shed their cares like their winter coats, and forget about the men who are dealing the drugs in the stairwells, and the sewers that are backing up into the apartments and the way they felt so hungry over the weekend.

It was a great victory last year, when that little-engine-that-could-of-a-non-profit landed two apartment units in the Gardens. Two units where the kids would have space - space for studying and cooking, for making music, and for playing. For wonderful, care-free, old-fashioned, American playing.

And to that end were donated tvs and game systems. I saw a picture of it in use just last week, four kids who from their imagination into reality shaped their bean-bag chairs into little racecars, and were sitting in the cockpits of their chargers, racing each other, competing in a version of Mariokart. And before someone starts asking why they're not using that time to study, let me just ask how much time you spend on Facebook playing "Farmville," and decompressing, and once you've answered that, go ahead and begrudge a ten-year old their 20 minutes of "chill time."

Earlier this weekend, while sunlight glinted of the pretty dome, while the young and the beautiful took their dogs to the park, or gamboled through the Eastern Market, while heels of dress shoes clicked down marble hallways, someone broke into those units at the Gardens, where the kids come everyday after school to do their homework, eat dinner, engage in choir, or cooking club, or hear a visitor talk about the career. That someone stole the three TVs, and four game systems that those kids played with, and looked forward to playing with and enjoyed.

Just another invisible crime that happened in an invisible city.

And the real kicker for me is that the closing accounts of the bar tab at that hipster-chic locale, the bill for that influential lunch, all those bloody-marys and all those mimosas over which so much reminiscing about the good-old days was done could easily cover the cost of replacing what was lost.

Some folks talk about a "real" America, in a tone of voice that reminds of me of a history teacher I had who said that the conquest of the New World could be boiled down to "God, gold and glory."

We're all in the shadow of the gleaming dome though, and the real America can be found in the chasm that separates the circles of power from the circles of the infernal poverty of the inner city, or rather in what it takes to cross it. Only in bridging that chasm first with attention, acknowledgement, and then compassion, and action will the true American dream - the one that Thomas Jefferson dreamed, the one that Lincoln and Truman and Dr. King dreamed, the one that Marian Anderson sang of, the one that the veterans yielded up their lives for - the dream of life and liberty for all men equal be realized.

Dear brothers, who will lead the charge across the gap?

Remembrance Day

I was waiting to catch a flight out of St. Louis last Friday evening.

There were a handful of servicemen and women - all Army, destined for Fort Sam Houston, waiting for the same flight. I noticed an older lady with frosted hair and lovely jewelry talking to them, engaging them, asking about themselves. I knew she must have been from Texas when I heard her say, "Well, bless your heart."

I thought about buying them a round of beers, and then I looked at them, and realized that most of them were not old enough to drink. This was confirmed when I heard one of them tell their age to the nice woman with frosted hair.

They were wearing camoulflage, heavy boots, and heavy bags. They looked impossibly young, but assured at the same time. When they rose to board the plane, the folks waiting at the gate applauded.

Several Novembers ago, I took part in Remembrance Day in London. Where for the weeks leading up to 11 November, old soldiers stand in the tube stations and sell paper poppies, and everyone buys one, and wears it everyday. There was no coat lapel that did not bear the red paper construction that reminded of those poppies yet rustling in the wind upon Flanders Field, and of the quiet crosses, and of the stilled lives that lie beneath.

And there was solidarity, all of us wearing our poppies, remembering who has gone before and protected what's dear to all of us.

So I think of my own Grandfathers, and my Dad who served. I think of the lady I worked with in London who was a child during the bombing of London. Whose family refused to leave the city. I remember her talking about what it was like to be at play and hear a bomb descending upon a city street. I think of the soldiers and pilots who defended London while she was just a girl.

I think of all the kids I grew up with who went on to serve in all the branches. Who have served and serve in the war in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

And tomorrow I hope you'll join me in raising a glass and prayer for all of them.

In defense of Virtue

There was a heartbreaking story in the Wall Street Journal today, about a trend of the spouses of Alzheimer sufferers who begin to date even as their spouse sinks deeper into the depths of mental oblivion.

The reporter says that, “Caregivers often face a stark choice: Either start an extramarital relationship and risk estrangement from friends and family – not to mention their own guilt – or live without a real companion for many years. The trend is prompting religious leaders, counselors and others to rethink how they define adultery.”

There was a seemingly unrelated story about the fact that Harvard has produced 10 Medal of Honor recipients – more than any other university outside of the service academies. The key sentence in that story was when the author said that “few of our leading newspapers…ever deem these medals worthy of front page attention.”

Now Alzheimers and Medal of Honors don’t have a lot in common, but the issues at the heart of both sentences are two sides of the same coin: the disturbing trend of our culture to minimize the lack of, or the presence of virtue.

Virtue, as Webster’s defines it, is a conformity to a standard of right; a particular moral excellence.

This is part of the criterion for Medal of Honor recipients, that they should have distinguished themselves with “gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his [or her] life above and beyond the call of duty.”

A particular moral excellence indeed may be found in that. The fact that we still award this medal, means that somewhere deep in our cores we are able to recognize that self -sacrifice for others is an action worthy of honor.

We are reluctant to recognize the virtuous among us, because it might imply that virtue is something for which to strive and gain, and something that many of us may lack.

Which brings us back to that prickly sentence from the Alzheimer’s article about the choice that the spouses face: “Either start an extramarital relationship and risk estrangement from friends and family – not to mention their own guilt – or live without a real companion for many years.”

In sickness and in health till death does part is what the traditional vow says. Not “until a horrifying illness makes it too emotionally difficult for me to remain your steadfast and loyal partner.”

To make the vow is to acknowledge and accept the risk that one may sacrifice self, and self’s desires in its fulfillment. The very language of the vow acknowledges that there is a darkness that might impel one to consider leaving in the face of illness. However, the language of the marriage vow binds and compels one to listen to better angels, rather than to society which says, “you deserve to be happy, you deserve a companion, and if your’s proves defective than get another – even while the husband or wife of your youth still breathes.”

What insidious evil that is. We are missing the concept of what is wrong in this era of moral relativism. This time that celebrates the journey of individual freedom and discovery at the cost of honor, character and relationships; this time that elevates self-preservation above sacrifice.

The fact that clergy are rethinking what adultery is illuminates this relativism. We place our self-fulfillment and happiness at the pinnacle of what it means to live a good life, and religious leaders, counselors and life coaches who go along for this ride rather than call the proverbial spade a spade enable this, and affirm this self worship that tears the fabric of the marriage vow, that devalues virtue and celebrates moral ambiguity.

Yet there’s a kernel of hope, a small one, but still there. That family and friends would estrange the adulterous spouse, that the cheating spouse his-or-herself would feel guilty, shows that deep in our human cores we retain the voice that says, “It should not be.” In some deep hidden recess placed in us at the beginning we retain the ability to recognize virtue’s absence.

And while we retain that, there may still be hope for loyalty, for honor, for courage in the face of trials, and it is that small flame of hope that we must fan if we wish for virtue to remain a recognizable value in our culture.

Perhaps then the story will be, “Spouse sacrifices own happiness to care for ill beloved.”