Hey Friends, 

Just a note to let you know I will be largely offline (and 100% out of the blogging world) for the balance of 2011. A lot of incredible things (and a few that sucked) have hapened in 2011, and I want to be able to give them the introspection they deserve.

I hope you and your family have an incredible holiday season, and I wish for you every good thing in the coming year.

See you in 2012. 

Grace and Peace, 

Hugh

PS: If you need me, twitter or email are going to be the best way. But then again, they are always the best way. 

I was 16 years old the first time it really sank in how much we depend on each other.

It was the summer between my Junior and Senior year of high school. I was on my way to get my senior pictures taken, driving my 1972 Ford Torino, with the souped up engine and the amp driving the bass in the speaker box in the trunk. I was doing something like 45 or 50 miles an hour, which is not a bad thing, except the curve was rated at 15mph.

So, I crashed into the ditch, totaling the car.

Along the way, I totaled a guy’s culvert. Dad thought it would be an excellent idea for me to dig the guy’s culvert out and replace it with one I had bought and paid for, as penance for trashing it in the first place. In a fit of pity, Dad agreed to help me do it.

My location as I dug this culvert out is marked on the map by the red dot. That right angle? That was the curve that did me in.

In any event, I was in a ditch, digging a culvert out that I had destroyed with my car by going too fast. Meanwhile, many people were in cars, hurtling at my head, turning at the last possible moment. If any of them were driving the way I had been driving, I would have been dead.

It was then that it occurred to me for the first time how interconnected we all are. How much of our lives depend on our agreeing to do certain things a certain way. I can drive down the street because we have agreed that you will stop at a stop sign. I can walk on the sidewalk because you have agreed to drive on the pavement. I need not fence my front yard, because you have agreed to stay off of it.

Last Friday, I was driving around the block, testing our car after making a small repair to it, when a guy in a large SUV shot out of a side street directly in front of me, in reverse(!) and I hit him.

To clarify: I am driving along, a guy shoots out of a side street in reverse directly in front of me and I plow into him. It turns out, he had crested a hill, seen a police check point and threw it in reverse and hit the gas.  He then went backwards for a while, refusing to stop at the appropriate stop sign and jumped out in front of me, when I hit him.

As you might expect, his erratic behavior drew the attention of the police, who were on the scene almost immediately. They arrested him, of course, and called a tow truck for me. And 23 years later, I am struck once again by how much my life is dependent upon everyone else keeping up their end of the agreement.

Twenty-one years ago, I was an economically poor kid living in the poorest region of the poorest state in the country. Everything I knew told me that education was the way to break the cycle of inter-generational poverty. No one disputed this.

So who helped me pay for the education that broke that cycle? Not the church – I could afford to go to no denominational affiliated schools – of any denomination. If there was one, somewhere, they surely were not recruiting me.

Instead, the reason I have career choices that do not involve being bent over a car all day or driving a garbage truck is thanks to the Unites States Marine Corps.

Do not mishear me – I am a pacifist (now), but when it came to getting an education, the church was silent, and the only option I had was the offer from the Marines: Let us teach you how to kill people, and we will pay for the schooling that allows you more choices in life – if you live, that is.

Which, when you think about it, is a pretty screwed up deal.  But, they kept up their end of the bargain, and I was faithful. And thankful.

I did not know many middle class or higher kids when I was in the service. We were victims of the economic draft – just poor boys, conscripted to fight a rich man’s war.

It reached 32 degrees last night in Raleigh. I know for my friends in other parts of the country that have had snow for days this is no big deal, but for us, it is just cold.

I woke up like I do most mornings, to the sound of my cell phone alarm going off. The contrast between the warm bedroom and the unheated kitchen was bracing – seeing my breath while making my coffee is going to take some getting used to. I retreat back to the heated bedroom, coffee in hand,  and fire up the laptop to see what new things have happened on the internet in my absence. After checking in with my virtual communities on Facebook and Twitter, I shut down and give some more thought to what I am going to say when I preach later this afternoon.

It is now 8:30 and I must get dressed for going to Moore Square, where there will be hot coffee and fruit and a hot breakfast sandwich for anyone who wants one. Most of the folks that will be eating there are chronically homeless, the visible living evidence that the American dream does not happen for everyone.

There I see my friends who sleep outside, whose cheer and tenacity shame me for bitching about the coldness of my kitchen. While it is true that I cannot afford to turn the gas on in my house and thus use the central heat, the truth is we sleep quite toasty with our space heaters and thick blankets, two things none of these people have access to.

I spend some time talking to Jim, who is wearing a leather biker’s jacket, a cowboy hat and tops off the outfit with a walking stick with a purple leopard print on it. I comment on his clothing diversity and he tells me that most folks don’t understand his fashion sense. To be Jim is to be misunderstood.

After checking in with dozens of folks, drinking coffee and laughing at bad jokes, I hug bunches of folks and climb back into the still cold car to drive the six blocks back home. I often walk or ride the bike, but today’s chill forces me to drive. Walking to the door, I see the pepper plants in my flower bed have bunches of bell peppers that really ought to sit another day or two, but with the frost last night probably won’t last that long. So, I pick six or seven peppers to be diced and frozen for omelets and the Southern mirepoix we call Trinity.

When I come in the door, my two cats Felix and Tony come from the warm bedroom and into the cold hallway and sit at the ready, staring at me as if I contain wisdom or, more likely, with the recognition that I am the dispenser of cat food.

I have been up for four hours and have felt joy, pain, exultation, sadness, love and devotion. I have received dozens of hugs, been told by several folks that they were praying for me, had my hands in the dirt and harvested the fruits of my labors, both metaphorically and literally.

It is on mornings like this that I remember that I love the life I have. It is all too easy to be frustrated about things like not being able to afford to run the central heat, or by the judgmental email I get or the online wars I get sucked into.

It seems to me that being happy or not is, fundamentally, a choice. And today, I choose to be happy.

Somewhere, there is a writer who can write a better short story than Peter Taylor. She can craft sentences that make you weep from the sheer compactness of the prose.

Instead, she will go to college, study marketing under the illusion that writing something successfully is better than failing at writing something great, will have a semi-successful corporate career and one day, die.

Her grandchildren will come across her computer files, filled with scenes that never got fleshed out. They will marvel over her lyrical talent, and muse how Grandma could have been a famous writer “if only things had been different”.

Things are never different. Space is never given – space is only taken. Things don’t change – we change.

Thoreau said that most of us lead lives of quiet desperation. I would say that is because most of us die with our music still in us.