Things I learned at my high school reunion

At my 35th high school reunion. Photo by the waitress.

We spend our teen-age years lamenting, or denying, our families’ dysfunctions. We yearn for a “normal” adolescence.

By the time we reach our 35^th high school reunion, as I just did, we might as well accept we all came from dysfunctional families. The only thing normal is that there is no “normal.”

Or, as my wife says, we put the “fun” in dysfunctional.

This tends to take the pressure off reunion weekend. There’s little need to pretend anymore we’re someone we’re not. The expanding midriffs and receding hairlines tell truths we can’t mask.

That, and Facebook has punctured the façade of reconnecting under pretenses of who we are. We keep up with one another between personal visits, so we don’t have to spend time rehearsing false scripts of our true identities. 

Congregations often tell me they like that their church feels like a family. I sometimes think, “Are you sure you want to take on all the stuff that comes with being a family?”

At my class reunion, it struck me that high school classmates really are like a family. You don’t get to choose your siblings, and you don’t get to choose your classmates, unless you transferred in because a crosstown coach coveted your jump shot, or you went to private school.

You just get your locker assignments and make the best of things. 

After 35 years, I look back on my high school years as one part “Glee,” one part “Friday Night Lights,” and one part “Dead Poets Society.”  

Thirty-five years beyond graduation, we celebrate this shared heritage. 

In the decades since, some of us have found God, others lost our way. We’ve hooked up, broken up, hurt and healed. We’ve been hired and fired. Whether we have children or grandchildren is a present-day demarcation, just as in high school our differences were marked by who could sing or run or pass or who was popular.

Some of us have our health. Some don’t. 

Some of us are living the dream. Some not.

But we are a family 35 years on. Back then, we often hid the selves we really were in favor of presenting ourselves as something better.

Now, we can relax. This is who we are. 

If high school is like a musical, then it’s fitting the tune swirling through my head as I drove away from my reunion was the final song from Wicked as Glinda sings to Elpheba:

“I've heard it said

That people come into our lives for a reason

Bringing something we must learn

And we are led

To those who help us most to grow

If we let them

And we help them in return

Well, I don't know if I believe that's true

But I know I'm who I am today

Because I knew you ...

Who can say if I've been changed for the better?

But because I knew you

I have been changed for good.”

Synergy: It's what's for breakfast

I attended a breakfast meeting recently with the president of St. Mary’s Hospital in Madison. Once a month he invites two dozen community leaders to meet for conversation, coffee and croissants.

A few decades ago, “community leaders” likely would have meant CEOs, bank executives and Chamber of Commerce presidents. Today, “leaders” also include:

The founder of 100 State, a non-profit “co-working” cooperative where building tenants not only lease space but collaborate on creative ideas regardless of their particular business.

The owner of Madison-based Red Star Pictures, which provides mobile lighting for President Obama's public appearances.

A Merrill Lynch financial adviser who also happens to be an Air Force pilot with a law degree and who travels regularly to Germany to advise the U.S. military on developing five-year plans to deal with emerging geopolitical conflicts in Africa.

Frank Byrne [pictured], St. Mary’s president, sees the value in bringing these seemingly disparate interests together: Synergy.

Today, leadership is not just about in-house technical knowledge – although that’s critical – but about meeting challenges holistically by inviting all sorts of thinkers and problem-solvers together to dream and strategize.

Church folk often see themselves as protectors of tradition instead of entrepreneurs. But this creative synergy is a biblically sound concept.

We are one body with many parts, as Jesus said, so we can bring different perspectives to modern challenges. We face many: poverty in the midst of societal affluence, cynicism toward organized religion in the midst of spiritual hunger, self-interest in the face of Jesus’ prayer that we would all be one.

Rather than following the crowd, I pray the church might seize its power to creatively face the world and find new ways to energize it with peace, joy and promise.

Spring training

Growing up

Cousins

For a little flashback from 2008 ...

A night not fit for man nor beast

I hit a reindeer on Christmas Eve. Or it hit me. Either way, my Honda of nearly 10 years and more than 263,000 miles took it on the chin. The insurance company totaled it. I've downsized to a Honda of smaller though newer vintage. In Europe, they call it the Jazz, which I prefer to the Fit. Either way, at least my mpg will increase. R.I.P. CRV.

Easter

At the moment Mary recognized the risen Jesus in the garden, we wish the copious questions and doubts and struggles and battles and suffering of humanity were answered, settled and banished once and for all. But certitude wasn’t born in that moment. Faith was. A faith whose destiny was to change the whole created order.

That moment changes this moment and all that are to come.

Cooper for Governor

Our Cavalier sports a campaign-worthy pose in front of the State Capitol on Saturday, April 9.

This Weinermobile cuts the mustard

Spotted during yesterday's snowstorm on our way back from central Illinois, on Interstate 94. We were able to ketchup and pass.

How do you baptize someone who's 6-foot-11?

See Dwight Howard's other dunking here.

I long to be, in a church by the sea ...

"For more than 15 years, I didn’t go to church (except for lots of visits in my professional capacity). When I was in my early 20s, the Episcopal church I attended regularly split. Factions formed, sides were taken, harsh words were spoken. A spiritual tug of war ensued and left the community in tatters. It was awful, traumatic — the worst that church has to offer."

That's not my story. The only part in common is that I didn't go to church much in my 20s because I worked until 2 a.m. Sundays (Saturday nights). At least, that was my excuse.
The above, rather, is the story of one of my former religion writer colleagues — and I'm stretching the truth to include myself among her ilk, as she was one of the best.

Her tale — here — is worth reading, regardless of what you believe about church.