Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Whether all is really lost or not depends entirely on whether or not I am lost.     Václav Havel
 
This is the time of the year when lots of faith traditions have significant observances. We have just passed Nowruz, the Persian New Year, and anchor holiday for a number of traditions. This year (2023), Ramadan occurs during this month and next, sacred time to Muslims. The essential holiday to Christian faiths of all stripes is Easter. And for Jews like me, there is Passover, known indigenously as Pesach.
 
Ask an outside observer about the common thread for each of them and the answer is likely to point to the vernal equinox. It is true enough, but not entirely true. While all these holy seasons connect to some astronomical and/or agricultural phenomena, too much effort has been put into crafting these observances when a simple bonfire or festive meal would have sufficed. Like most religious observances, no matter the label, all these springtime devotions are about finding a sense of place in the world.
 
I learned a long time ago neither to speak for nor interpret religions that are not my own. (I barely get away with presenting the one I allegedly know first-hand!) Looking at the Passover story, I am surprised to discover that the notion of being lost is not more prominent. The exodus from Egypt begins with a story of a lost home in Canaan, continues with lost freedom, proceeds to lost children (and one particular lost child), emphasizes the lost reliability of nature through the plagues, descends into the lost first-born on the night of departure and leaves us lost in the wilderness for forty years. So much is lost!
 
I encourage you to imagine what it is that “lost” means in the defining stories of the other traditions that celebrate now (and at other times). The back-stories may conveniently place themselves in the context of natural phenomena – spring renewal, phases of the moon, harvest of the winter – but more profound is their teaching about what it takes to be oriented in this world, how I once was lost, but now I’m found.
 
Václav Havel introduced the notion of being lost in his poem entitled “It is I Who Must Begin.” It is this last verse that carries the burden of meditation this poet/politician expresses: how do I know the path ahead. It is not just the famous and powerful who must contend with the need for orientation and direction. As faith communities also know, it is a challenge that faces each and all of us as well.
 
The absence of direction, that is, the sense of being lost, is probably one of most usual and inescapable fears in human life. For something so common, it is surprising that it has the power to persuade each of us that we are alone in our struggle with it. Along come the religions we embrace – those human constructs to communicate spiritual values – to let us know that there are directions, external and internal, to point the way. Whether it is Haft-Seen, five pillars, a miraculous resurrection, or a tower of fire by night and smoke by day, the voices and experiences of our ancestors resound in the rituals of the season to let us know that all the direction we need is embedded within. The road ahead may sometimes lead to nowhere known, but it never leads to nowhere.
 
Let me add that a close reading of Havel’s wisdom is important. He talks about whether all is lost, and even in translation, the play on the word “lost” and the nuance of what it can mean is important. Of course a person can be lost. Try driving in Boston, finding your way around the Phoenix airport, or figuring out the quadrants of Washington, DC. Try sitting through unfamiliar religious services. Try raising a child. Like Waze, crowdsourcing can help.
 
But the direction that comes from the faith and cultural traditions that inform our lives is the data that activates our existential GPS, giving us (I hope!) confidence that all is not lost because others have been here already.
 
At the beginning of Passover, I sit with family and friends for hours at a table. Yes, we eat and drink and chat and sing, but we are really there to figure out where we are going by rehearsing where we have been and how we got to where we are. You will do it, too, whichever sacred season you embrace, even if it is March Madness. If I am not lost, then all is not lost, and if all is not lost, then neither am I. And all is not lost.
 

 
Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Do you suppose God created diamonds only for the rich?  Dorothy Day
 
A long time ago, I had an argument with a friend who worked in the President’s administration. The public assistance program of the federal government was undergoing one of its cyclical reevaluations, and a proposal had gained some currency that required recipients without a disabling condition to find work after a period of time or lose their benefits. I was opposed, and I told him so. He replied that, like it or not, the way we consider worth in this society was through work. It was not enough to provide subsistence to people in need. They also deserved dignity. And there was dignity in work.
 
I have presented his argument to many people over the years, and mostly they argue the politics, not the principle. Those who disagree with the work requirement say that there is no dignity is not being able to feed your family or keep a roof over your head. Those who disagree with a welfare program of any kind say that there is no dignity is living off a handout, especially from the government.
 
But as I think about, nobody argued against dignity.
 
Dorothy Day was a hero to the poor and an exemplar of goodness, especially to her Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. I was introduced to her name before I knew anything about her legacy because the volunteer shelter and food bank in Danbury, Connecticut, where I served my first congregation, was named for her. Look her up to know more, but the source of this quotation may tell you all you need.
 
A wealthy patron approached Dorothy one day in her “hospitality house” and gave her a diamond ring as a donation. She tucked it in her apron. Later that day, a surly and unpleasant woman who was a regular at the kitchen came in. Dorothy gave her the ring, saying she thought she might like it. Another worker challenged her, saying it might have been better to sell the ring and pay rent for the woman for a year or more. Dorothy replied that the woman had her dignity and could do what she liked with the ring. She could sell it for rent money or take a trip to the Bahamas. Or she could enjoy wearing a diamond ring on her hand like the woman who gave it away. She asked, “Do you suppose that God created diamonds only for the rich?”
 
I doubt I would have the moral audacity to make such a decision. Like most people, I imagine I would do some mental calculus about where the greatest good would be served and whether the recipient was the best steward of this unexpected windfall. And, I imagine, if Dorothy Day had a board to which she had to answer, there might have been some exasperated questions for her to address.
 
But there is no denying that in her passion to live out her faith in service to those without, she placed dignity at the top of the list of unmet needs for the poor. And those of us who are richly blessed with the security of stocked refrigerators and rainproof roofs can understand that. Dignity may be an inherent entitlement, but without the wherewithal to make discretionary decisions for oneself – how to spend a paycheck, for example – it is too easy for others to deny.
 
You might well ask “what is dignity?”  (I’ll wait.) I am not sure I can give you a definition. But I can tell you what it is not. Prescribing the choices for others that we cherish making for ourselves is the opposite of dignity. That includes the wrong choices and, not incidentally, the need to take responsibility for them.
 
If you are fortunate enough to have a pocketful of diamonds, I do not suggest that you have an obligation to distribute them among the poor. But should you decide to do so, rest assured that just like other rare and remarkable treasures – love, rainbows, family, health, learning, arts – God did not create them only for the rich.

Wisdom Wherever You Find It
 
Poets have been mysteriously silent on the subject of cheese.  G.K. Chesterton
 
He was serious. Well, sort of. G.K. Chesterton was one of those English literary figures whose popularity somewhat mystifies Americans. Mostly, he wrote and spoke about serious stuff – politics, values, Catholic faith, Jews (don’t ask). His essay on cheese bemoaned the lack of attention to it in ancient and modern literature, including poetry. A man of considerable girth and questionable style, most of the essay described his adventures eating cheese and bemoaning restaurants in London that believed biscuits (we call them cookies) were a better snack than, um, cheese.
 
Maybe he was trying to be funny – you’d have to ask a mid-century fusty Brit to know. But this week in particular (I write this on the cusp of Purim, arguably the precursor to Mardi Gras), I take issue. Not merely in poetry, but everywhere, the cheese never stands alone. Especially in America.
 
Currently on television, you can see a commercial for a popular mayonnaise that highlights the name Brie, identifying a famous actress who is about to become part of a sandwich. Late night television boasts the popular star who is the offspring of Colby and Camembert, first name Stephen. Everybody loves Ray Romano. Linda Ronstadt had a huge hit with “You’re No Gouda.”  Robert Blake starred in the police drama “Burrata.” Emily Litella often called Chevy Chase “Cheddar Cheese.”
 
And if that reference isn’t old enough for you, think of Arthur Godfrey’s famous greeting, “Havarti, Havarti, Havarti.” Or of famed actress Dorothy Provolone.
 
In education, the two schools of thought in Italian early childhood approaches are Montessori (which everyone seems to know) and Parmigiana Reggiano (which everyone seems to prefer on Caesar salad). Children of privilege often go from there to Swiss boarding schools, where they live in nine dorms, called the Neufchatel.
 
Geographically, cheese is everywhere. Towns in Texas (Muenster), Indiana (Munster), and Wisconsin (New Munster) are governed by a mayor known as the Big Cheese. I have visited coastal California and the suburbs of Cleveland where I was known, at least temporarily, as Monterey Jack and Pepper Jack.
 
And what is the name we bestow on the best there ever was? From Lebron to the Beatles to Eleanor Roosevelt to “Citizen Kane,’ it is GOAT, which also enhances salads other than Caesar.
 
Chesterton, being British, was most concerned about poetry, and he might very well have dismissed with a pooh-pooh and poppycock all of these other embedded cultural celebrations of cheese in the colonies.  But there is no denying that the great American poets were anything but silent on this subject.
 
It was Edgar Allen Poe who wrote:
                It was many and many a year ago, in a kingdom by the seas, that a maiden lived, whom you may know, by the name of American Cheese.
 
It was the great Robert Frost who wrote:
                …miles to asiago before I eat..
 
And it was Emily Dickinson who wrote:
                Hope is a thing with feta.
 
And with that, this column is a feta complete.