FOOD. ICE CREAM FLAVOR. ACTIVITY.
Here are mine:
Pizza, thin crust.
Coffee ice cream, with peppermint a close second.
Hiking in Sedona with Martin. Playing with Olivia and Leah.
Now it’s your turn!
photo courtesy of Brookyn Pizza, Birmingham, MI
Martin and I met Ted in a roundabout way. Friends we knew in Sedona shared his photo site with us. He is a phenomenal photographer. Ted and I got to be email pen pals and our next time in Sedona I invited him over for scones. That is our tradition now whenever we are back in Sedona: scones, great coffee and delightful conversations.
Renaissance man doesn’t even begin to describe where Ted has taken his life for eight plus decades. Attorney, gemologist, writer, lecturer, inventor, pilot, photographer, devoted caregiver to the love of his life, his wife Corky. Corky developed MS when she was 28. Their daughters were one and two. Ted is one of the most alive people I know, thankful for each breath, eager to meet each moment.
I’m grateful to Ted for his friendship, for welcoming Martin and me to his monthly photography reviews with his camera buddies (who are all incredible as well), and for modeling what it means to be engaged with life no matter what. And one more thing: I’ll never forget the afternoon Ted took me up in his two-seater plane. I didn’t know it at the time but Mariah would soon be sold to a new owner. I was Ted’s last passenger.
It was an incredible flight. Not till I was strapped in did Ted mention that some of his passengers threw up on their first flight. I didn’t. When Ted made that first turn over the valley, I lost all sense of proportion. If my heart had had a jaw, it would have dropped in astonishment at the view. It was thrilling t to look down on the trails I’d hiked so many times. Ted pointed out extinct volcanoes, rock formations and valleys. From above, the area was so green. This is high desert and heavily treed. It was a relief to see that the madness of development down below was still dwarfed by junipers and pines. Too soon, Ted began turning toward the airport. A perfect landing and we were back on earth. I understood why Ted went up every afternoon and I am eternally glad for the experience of riding shot-gun with him that late December afternoon.
Who is Ted Grussing? A really great guy who makes me smile whenever I think of him.
Visit Ted’s photo site and sign up to recieve his photos (4x/week.)
The time will come. Day by day some of the binds are loosening. The CDC has announced that those who are vaccinated no longer need to wear masks for small outside gatherings. The end may not yet be in sight, but it feels reasonable to envision it around a not-too-distant corner.
I would love to go to the movies again, to sit in the dark with fellow movie-goers all of us experiencing together cinematic storytelling. I look forward to seeing my children and grandchildren, swooping them to me in great big jubilant hugs, the pall of the pandemic a thing of the past. What will it be like to speak to someone full face? To see their smile and hear their laughter unmuffled by a mask? I think of Alfred Eisenstadt’s iconic image of the sailor embracing and kissing the nurse on V-J Day in Times Square. Will there be such an image capturing Covid’s end? What do you imagine it to be? What is the first thing you intend to do?
In synagogue last week, we read a passage from Samuel that left us stunned by the unfairness it recounted. Uzzah and his brother Ahio were charged with transporting the Holy Ark of the Covenant from one place to another. When the ox pulling the cart in which the Ark was being transported stumbled, Uzzah reached out and touched the ark to steady it. Touching the Ark, to which was affixed the Divine Name, was a no-no of Leviathan proportions. Immediately, God struck Uzzah down “on the spot.”.
What? Why? How unjust! How unfair! Would it have been better to let the Ark fall? To wait a beat or two to see if the ox would steady itself thus putting the cart before the Ark? The more my friend and I kept at it, I realized that perhaps the finding of an answer was less important than the actual search for an answer.
How could God do that? has kept students and scholars discussing this and other impenetrable questions for millennia. Arrive at an answer and you move on, putting the question aside once and for all. But if you are returned to the struggle time and again, different insights can arise. A conversation with a different friend can shed new light and/or perspectives. Pat answers close a door; the search for answers props doors, and minds, open for as long as it takes. Sometimes it takes forever.
Then again, some questions are simply unanswerable. I no longer grapple with, Why the Shoah?* God is either all knowing and powerless or powerful and indifferent. Neither option invites relationship. My answer to that question is this: my puny human spirit-mind is beyond understanding such impenetrables. Think Jack Nicholson on the stand in A Few Good Men. The answer is a truth I cannot, and have not been created to, handle. Some may call mine the coward’s way out. I prefer to think of it as setting aside the impossible to leave energy for taking on the possible.
God’s first question to Adam, indeed the first question in the Hebrew Bible is Where are you? The Divine had caught wind of Adam and Eve’s encounter with the snake and their alfresco fruit sampling. Centuries of answers grapple with that question. Where are you? invites a lifetime of answering, discovering within hidden wells of strength and potential growth.
One year our answer to Where are you? might be, “snared in pain and resentment.” Then one day, Where are you? comes at us again and we have a new answer, one sourced from compassion and forgiveness. Another year and perhaps we might answer from a place of understanding and empathy.
Answers matter. For me, however, the questions matter more.
*Shoah is a Hebrew word meaning utter and complete destruction. Holocaust is derived from the Greek word holokauston meaning a sacrifice that is consumed by fire, as was done in Biblical times. The preference for using Shoah reinforces the truth that Hitler’s murder of six million Jews was not a sacrifice to a deity but an incomprehensible destruction of human life
Hard to believe we’re edging up on a year of Covid. The virus weaves itself through nearly every consideration in our lives. Multiply by, say 50, the number of lives claimed and you have twenty-five million people mourning their family and friends. Scientists of all disciplines will likely be studying for years to come the emotional, physical, educational and social implications of this pandemic.
The goal of this site is to “enhance your now” to bring a bit of brightness to you, my readers. Amidst it all, this year has also brought silver linings, and that is where questions come into play. What silver lining has this pandemic year brought to you? Have you taken the opportunity to do something you might not have attempted otherwise, a new hobby perhaps, or skill? What of your relationships? Which have been strengthened and how? Which have been weakened? The song “For Good” from Wicked comes to me. How, and possibly who, has changed you this year? For the better? For good?
Photo credit: “Zodiac sign of LIBRA in a 15th century manuscript” by VirtualManuscript Library of Switzerland, licensed umdr CC BY-NC 2.0