Just hang on
Hang on, you know
Until the day is bright and it's all better
Hang on
Just hang on, you know
Until the place where you can remember to think, to feel
The place where it can be different
The place where hope is real
And colors aren't in danger of losing luster
And shapes aren't in danger of losing form
And songs aren't in danger of falling flat
And rhymes aren't in danger of dying young.
Hang on
Just hang on
Because Jesus is there
Waiting to make it all new
Wanting to make it all new
For those who ride hope to tomorrow
And just hang on
To Him.
11.16.2013
6.01.2013
412.
I’ve always loved numbers. When I was a kid, I would borrow the Money section from my dad’s USA Today and add up lines upon lines of stock quotes. I loved played Monopoly, I was great in math class, and the back of baseball cards were better than the front.
Digital clocks were one of my favorites. I had all sorts of games I would play whenever I saw time displayed. One is to “cast out nines,” which is a trick you use when checking division problems. Basically, when all the numbers add up to nine, they cancel each other out. So, 4:50 was an even one, as was 8:01 or 2:34.
I would also count the lines that made up each glowing number, and I knew which times of day had the perfect number of lines to make up perfect 8s with no spaces wasted. 3:18. 8:47. 2:34 (again!).
Now that you know I’m crazy, let’s move on to those glorious times in life when certain numbers gain a special meaning. It may be your birthday — seeing 10 and 31 anywhere makes me smile, because Halloween is when I was born. I’ve always liked 21 (the first day of winter, and the first of summer — and the day my grandmother was born), and 3 and 7 always worked out for me, probably because I was raised reading the Bible.
In high school, 24 became my lifelong favorite number. It was the jersey number of my hero, and the number I wore when I played basketball. I would forever use it for passwords or pins.
But the newest number for me has been 412 (a variation of 24, mind you). This number popped up sometime when I was working a sad job at a sad newspaper. At first, I couldn’t place it, but I was seeing it everywhere.
I was supposed to be at work at 4:00, but I usually rolled in around 4:12 (which, technically, was 4:07 because my clock was five minutes fast). When I went to bed, it was often 4:12, too, the time I finally unwound from a long day at work.
Whenever I saw 412, it gave me hope. It seemed to say that God was there, and that He was keeping track of me, and that even in the mess, there was a sign. It was my snake in the wilderness, my fleece in the dew, my raven by the stream.
The number 412 soon got an unfortunate cousin in the number 146, which was the “tube number” of a very inept coworker of mine. (We used a DOS-based editing system, and each station was assigned a number. Mine was 245. His was 146. When you saw 146 pop up when you tried to get into a story, you groaned. When you saw an article that originated at 146, you groaned. Eventually, when you saw 146 anywhere, you groaned.)
God gave me a lot of 412s at that job, but I also got a lot of 146s. No matter how many time I saw 146, though — often waking up in the middle of the day after my night shift (1:46), there was a 412 when I rolled into work.
For every 146, there’s a 412.
I wrote that on a piece of paper and hung it in my cube, and no one had a clue what it meant but me. I knew, though. I knew every time I saw those numbers, and I knew it when 146 walked over with one of those things he always did and jumbled my day.
For every 146, there’s a 412. It works in math, and it works with God — except, maybe, during the times when God is so amazing that He lets you see 412 more than you see 146, even if there’s an equal amount out there. (I haven’t seen a lot of 146s since I left that job.)
The cool thing about these numbers popping out and surprising you is that it often happens when you aren’t expecting it, and that’s what makes me say it’s from God. I’ll be having a crappy day and will be praying that He’ll show Himself to me, and all of the sudden my savings on a grocery receipt will be $4.12. I’ll be muddling through a day at work, and then I’ll see it’s April 12 (4/12). I don’t go to work at 4:00 anymore, and I don’t go to bed at 4 a.m., but I still see so many 412s.
(I realized later that the place where I probably picked up “412” was from a Switchfoot song called that. And, yep, the words describe my life around the time of 412 perfectly.)
I was working on my checkbook tonight, thanking God for the three-paycheck month yet wondering how I was going to pay my car insurance and my rent and that credit card bill that just keeps getting bigger. I had enough to cover it this time, but the margins keep getting thinner.
Last week in church, my pastor had talked about a tithing challenge. Apparently, some people who weren’t raised in repressive Judeo-Christian households haven’t had the 10% rule drilled into them, and they need to be reminded to give their firstfruits, and a full tenth, to the local church God has placed in their lives. (Just kidding. I’m aware this is a complex topic, but I couldn’t resist.)
I’ve always tithed, although sometimes I didn’t have a local church, or I had to move money around. Recently, though, I’ve been in a pickle. I stopped tithing to my local church for several months this past year because my work schedule changed, and I worked every Sunday. I was also feeling disconnected from the church in many ways, so I had welcomed the schedule change as a way to take a break and reassess. Since I was not actively involved in the church, I did not consider it my local church, and I instead invested my tithe money in some missionaries I already supported otherwise who were dealing with a shortfall on their monthly support.
When I returned to the church this spring, I started tithing again — but not 10% to the church. I didn’t really know what to do, in fact. I wasn’t going to cut back on the missionaries; I had prayed and asked God to keep providing enough that I could give them this extra amount. But I also couldn’t afford to tithe 10% to my church, because the amount I was giving to the missionaries was already about that much of my salary.
If I tithed and kept my promise, I would be giving away 20% of what I earn, right off the bat. And I’m in a living situation where my rent is about 60% of what I earn. I would prefer to still be able to buy food.
But then the pastor got up and talked about tithing, and the challenge, and I knew what was right. It’s just money. I don’t need new clothes, and I haven’t spent anything on myself in forever (and I don’t really intend to, if it’s between spending on me or God). This means no more eating out for lunch, or not letting my car break down, or skipping some things I would like. But it’s just money. And, as the great C.S. Lewis says, you’re not really giving if it doesn’t hurt in some way.
So tonight, thanking God for my three-paycheck month, which took care of the old car insurance, I added in this week’s deposit and went to write my check for my church. I totaled up how much I made and cut off the last digit. I wrote the check for what is a very big chunk of change for me.
And then, as I ripped off the boring, cheapest-you-can-buy check, I saw the number: 412.
Of course my step of faith would be written on the 412th check I had ever written from this account. Of course it would be when I was asking God whether He would really hold me together through this. Of course He would open the door for me to give a 412 when there wasn’t a 146 in sight.
I once used my 412/146 thought in a song I wrote, the theme of which was grace. The main line to that song, in which I tried to capture the incredible feeling I had one night when I realized something God had done just for me, was, “I didn’t need it but You gave it anyway. I need to remember that.”
I have trouble remembering sometimes. But that’s why God made clocks, and numbers like 412.
Digital clocks were one of my favorites. I had all sorts of games I would play whenever I saw time displayed. One is to “cast out nines,” which is a trick you use when checking division problems. Basically, when all the numbers add up to nine, they cancel each other out. So, 4:50 was an even one, as was 8:01 or 2:34.
I would also count the lines that made up each glowing number, and I knew which times of day had the perfect number of lines to make up perfect 8s with no spaces wasted. 3:18. 8:47. 2:34 (again!).
Now that you know I’m crazy, let’s move on to those glorious times in life when certain numbers gain a special meaning. It may be your birthday — seeing 10 and 31 anywhere makes me smile, because Halloween is when I was born. I’ve always liked 21 (the first day of winter, and the first of summer — and the day my grandmother was born), and 3 and 7 always worked out for me, probably because I was raised reading the Bible.
In high school, 24 became my lifelong favorite number. It was the jersey number of my hero, and the number I wore when I played basketball. I would forever use it for passwords or pins.
But the newest number for me has been 412 (a variation of 24, mind you). This number popped up sometime when I was working a sad job at a sad newspaper. At first, I couldn’t place it, but I was seeing it everywhere.
I was supposed to be at work at 4:00, but I usually rolled in around 4:12 (which, technically, was 4:07 because my clock was five minutes fast). When I went to bed, it was often 4:12, too, the time I finally unwound from a long day at work.
Whenever I saw 412, it gave me hope. It seemed to say that God was there, and that He was keeping track of me, and that even in the mess, there was a sign. It was my snake in the wilderness, my fleece in the dew, my raven by the stream.
The number 412 soon got an unfortunate cousin in the number 146, which was the “tube number” of a very inept coworker of mine. (We used a DOS-based editing system, and each station was assigned a number. Mine was 245. His was 146. When you saw 146 pop up when you tried to get into a story, you groaned. When you saw an article that originated at 146, you groaned. Eventually, when you saw 146 anywhere, you groaned.)
God gave me a lot of 412s at that job, but I also got a lot of 146s. No matter how many time I saw 146, though — often waking up in the middle of the day after my night shift (1:46), there was a 412 when I rolled into work.
For every 146, there’s a 412.
I wrote that on a piece of paper and hung it in my cube, and no one had a clue what it meant but me. I knew, though. I knew every time I saw those numbers, and I knew it when 146 walked over with one of those things he always did and jumbled my day.
For every 146, there’s a 412. It works in math, and it works with God — except, maybe, during the times when God is so amazing that He lets you see 412 more than you see 146, even if there’s an equal amount out there. (I haven’t seen a lot of 146s since I left that job.)
The cool thing about these numbers popping out and surprising you is that it often happens when you aren’t expecting it, and that’s what makes me say it’s from God. I’ll be having a crappy day and will be praying that He’ll show Himself to me, and all of the sudden my savings on a grocery receipt will be $4.12. I’ll be muddling through a day at work, and then I’ll see it’s April 12 (4/12). I don’t go to work at 4:00 anymore, and I don’t go to bed at 4 a.m., but I still see so many 412s.
(I realized later that the place where I probably picked up “412” was from a Switchfoot song called that. And, yep, the words describe my life around the time of 412 perfectly.)
I was working on my checkbook tonight, thanking God for the three-paycheck month yet wondering how I was going to pay my car insurance and my rent and that credit card bill that just keeps getting bigger. I had enough to cover it this time, but the margins keep getting thinner.
Last week in church, my pastor had talked about a tithing challenge. Apparently, some people who weren’t raised in repressive Judeo-Christian households haven’t had the 10% rule drilled into them, and they need to be reminded to give their firstfruits, and a full tenth, to the local church God has placed in their lives. (Just kidding. I’m aware this is a complex topic, but I couldn’t resist.)
I’ve always tithed, although sometimes I didn’t have a local church, or I had to move money around. Recently, though, I’ve been in a pickle. I stopped tithing to my local church for several months this past year because my work schedule changed, and I worked every Sunday. I was also feeling disconnected from the church in many ways, so I had welcomed the schedule change as a way to take a break and reassess. Since I was not actively involved in the church, I did not consider it my local church, and I instead invested my tithe money in some missionaries I already supported otherwise who were dealing with a shortfall on their monthly support.
When I returned to the church this spring, I started tithing again — but not 10% to the church. I didn’t really know what to do, in fact. I wasn’t going to cut back on the missionaries; I had prayed and asked God to keep providing enough that I could give them this extra amount. But I also couldn’t afford to tithe 10% to my church, because the amount I was giving to the missionaries was already about that much of my salary.
If I tithed and kept my promise, I would be giving away 20% of what I earn, right off the bat. And I’m in a living situation where my rent is about 60% of what I earn. I would prefer to still be able to buy food.
But then the pastor got up and talked about tithing, and the challenge, and I knew what was right. It’s just money. I don’t need new clothes, and I haven’t spent anything on myself in forever (and I don’t really intend to, if it’s between spending on me or God). This means no more eating out for lunch, or not letting my car break down, or skipping some things I would like. But it’s just money. And, as the great C.S. Lewis says, you’re not really giving if it doesn’t hurt in some way.
So tonight, thanking God for my three-paycheck month, which took care of the old car insurance, I added in this week’s deposit and went to write my check for my church. I totaled up how much I made and cut off the last digit. I wrote the check for what is a very big chunk of change for me.
And then, as I ripped off the boring, cheapest-you-can-buy check, I saw the number: 412.
Of course my step of faith would be written on the 412th check I had ever written from this account. Of course it would be when I was asking God whether He would really hold me together through this. Of course He would open the door for me to give a 412 when there wasn’t a 146 in sight.
I once used my 412/146 thought in a song I wrote, the theme of which was grace. The main line to that song, in which I tried to capture the incredible feeling I had one night when I realized something God had done just for me, was, “I didn’t need it but You gave it anyway. I need to remember that.”
I have trouble remembering sometimes. But that’s why God made clocks, and numbers like 412.
5.29.2013
Bright and Scary.
I’ve been doing a lot of driving, usually up and down Memorial Drive, next to the Charles River, black like glass.
I’ve long told myself that I like to drive there because I love Boston, and this is me enjoying the city. But it’s really because I love water, and dark winding roads that are split by yellow lines, and tall, beautiful trees that cover the road and disappear into the sky.
In short, I love driving on Memorial Drive because it reminds me of where I grew up, not where I think I like to live.
I drove Memorial Drive again tonight, and it was a good drive. Usually, I drive because I’m conflicted, and I need my hands turning the wheel and the music going to help my brain calm down. The past two nights, I’ve driven because I’m free, and I need time to sit there and love it, and to tell God thank you even though I don’t know how I came to be at ease.
I have big decisions coming in my life, big choices that have to be made. I didn’t how to make them before, and I still don’t know how to make them now, but the difference between driving in angst and driving in freedom has been just a few nights, and some well-placed words from friends, and some pure grace from God. I have long sought and prayed, and it appears that this time the road’s bends are going to end a different way.
The crazy thing about tonight was that, when I left a friend’s home and took to the darkened streets, a thunderstorm was coming. I’ve always loved thunderstorms — we get really good ones up where I’m from in the Adirondacks, where the air is thick and hot and sticky and then suddenly starts popping out big, wet raindrops. It was like that tonight, and I put the windows down as the drops began to fall.
The best part about thunderstorms, though, is the lightning. When real lightning comes at night, oh so close, it lights up the entire sky. For that brief flashing second, everything is like day and perfectly clear. It’s awesome.
I drove toward home, but when I got there, I turned down Memorial Drive instead, slipping along the curves in the dark night with the raindrops falling. The lightning was striking, more often and more often, and the whole river was being lit up. My path down Memorial Drive was getting me closer and closer to the source, closer to where I could see the white arcing down, closer to where it could be really dangerous.
It was so bright, and so scary. It was just like the freedom I just found. In a minute, everything is so clear and you just want to run into it, but at the same time, you know you’re flirting with something that could go very badly very quickly.
But I had a different card in my deck tonight as I drove down Memorial Drive. When you’re driving toward lightning and you think to yourself that you wouldn’t mind if your car got hit or something, because you’d just find a way to repair it, that’s a good sign that you may finally have peace. And I do have peace. I’m driving toward lightning, and I have all the peace and wonder I’ve ever had when I was a kid or a carefree teenager or a person who knows she’s not bound by expectations or what she could lose.
The thunder is loud, and the lightning is outside now. My only wish is that I could get in my car and drive straight toward it, right away.
I’ve long told myself that I like to drive there because I love Boston, and this is me enjoying the city. But it’s really because I love water, and dark winding roads that are split by yellow lines, and tall, beautiful trees that cover the road and disappear into the sky.
In short, I love driving on Memorial Drive because it reminds me of where I grew up, not where I think I like to live.
I drove Memorial Drive again tonight, and it was a good drive. Usually, I drive because I’m conflicted, and I need my hands turning the wheel and the music going to help my brain calm down. The past two nights, I’ve driven because I’m free, and I need time to sit there and love it, and to tell God thank you even though I don’t know how I came to be at ease.
I have big decisions coming in my life, big choices that have to be made. I didn’t how to make them before, and I still don’t know how to make them now, but the difference between driving in angst and driving in freedom has been just a few nights, and some well-placed words from friends, and some pure grace from God. I have long sought and prayed, and it appears that this time the road’s bends are going to end a different way.
The crazy thing about tonight was that, when I left a friend’s home and took to the darkened streets, a thunderstorm was coming. I’ve always loved thunderstorms — we get really good ones up where I’m from in the Adirondacks, where the air is thick and hot and sticky and then suddenly starts popping out big, wet raindrops. It was like that tonight, and I put the windows down as the drops began to fall.
The best part about thunderstorms, though, is the lightning. When real lightning comes at night, oh so close, it lights up the entire sky. For that brief flashing second, everything is like day and perfectly clear. It’s awesome.
I drove toward home, but when I got there, I turned down Memorial Drive instead, slipping along the curves in the dark night with the raindrops falling. The lightning was striking, more often and more often, and the whole river was being lit up. My path down Memorial Drive was getting me closer and closer to the source, closer to where I could see the white arcing down, closer to where it could be really dangerous.
It was so bright, and so scary. It was just like the freedom I just found. In a minute, everything is so clear and you just want to run into it, but at the same time, you know you’re flirting with something that could go very badly very quickly.
But I had a different card in my deck tonight as I drove down Memorial Drive. When you’re driving toward lightning and you think to yourself that you wouldn’t mind if your car got hit or something, because you’d just find a way to repair it, that’s a good sign that you may finally have peace. And I do have peace. I’m driving toward lightning, and I have all the peace and wonder I’ve ever had when I was a kid or a carefree teenager or a person who knows she’s not bound by expectations or what she could lose.
The thunder is loud, and the lightning is outside now. My only wish is that I could get in my car and drive straight toward it, right away.
5.25.2013
Testimony.
I was baptized Tuesday, May 21. Long story short, I was scared of putting my head under water when I was a kid, so I stalled on getting baptized, and then I didn't do it when I was older (and slightly less afraid of water) because I was embarrassed because I was older. I thought about it a lot, though, and decided that being obedient and getting a little wet was the least I could do for a really amazing God. This is the story I told at Ruggles Baptist Church on Tuesday, when my pastor from Reunion Christian Church baptized me.
I’m a writer, and I’ve always been a writer, and no matter what place I live or what job I have, that’s who I’m always going to be. I think, all the time, and I love to tell stories and talk things over with people. The way I see and understand the world is through the lens of words.
The reason I want you to know I am a writer is because that’s the simplest way I can tell my story. I could have brought any number of poems or lyrics or essays or novels up here, but there’s only one story I like to tell anymore. Rather than trying to describe my life and the hundreds of times God has done something in it, I want to tell you about Newbury Street, and darkness, and the place where I learned that it wasn’t a mistake that I turned out to be who I am.
I moved to Boston chasing dreams, like many people do, but in the grind and demands of life, things became very dark. I remember having been here for a few months and walking the streets, alone among crowds and staring up at what should have been beautiful buildings. Instead, my heart was heavy, and everything I had come here for — to share hope, to talk about Jesus, to show a lost and dying world that God made sense — that was all empty to me. I knew the truth; it set me free; so why was I wandering? Worse yet, nothing had meaning. Nothing could interest me. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t write, because I had nothing to write about.
I got in contact with an old professor of mine and told her I had no reason to write, and she and I talked in very academic terms about being “distanced from the source” and all these other big phrases that basically said that if God wasn’t real to me, nothing in life would be, either. That was nice to know, but it didn’t help. She then suggested she send me a chapter of a book she was writing called How Literature Helped Save My Soul. That is a fantastic title, so I agreed.
When the chapter arrived, I went to Newbury Street for my customary cup of coffee. The chapter was about Jane Eyre, and how this professor related to Jane Eyre, and how God had used Jane Eyre to teach this professor when she was a teenager that just because she was different and quirky and artsy and smart didn’t mean that she was in some way wrong, or that God had made a mistake. Instead, it meant something even better — that Jane could have a connection with God that few others could experience.
When I read that chapter, something inside of me died, and I was overwhelmed with a feeling that, despite being saved since I was five years old, I had never felt before. I remember writing in the margin of that printed-out chapter, my hand shaking, “God loves me.” God loves me. I wasn’t a mistake, and this wasn’t just something people had to tell me. God was telling me He loved me. For the first time in my life, I knew it was true.
Love isn’t the only thing I’ve discovered in this city. God has come and found me again and again, and He’s taught me that words like peace and joy have real meaning, too.
But the funniest thing that has happened since that day on Newbury Street has been that the professor didn’t heal me, persay. I still don’t write an awful lot. But that’s because, whenever I sit down with the guitar or the pen or the typewriter or the computer, I often find myself sitting there and just smiling at the wall like an idiot. How can you capture that? How can you put God into words? Sometimes you just need to let it all go free.
When we are no longer bound by the chains of who we think we have to be or the way we have always defined ourselves, Christ can become big in our lives.
Colossians 2:10 says, “You are complete in Christ.”
And if we are complete, then we can revel in 2 Corinthians 5, which tells us that, now that we know God’s love, hope, peace, and joy in a personal way, we can tell others what we’ve come to know so well ourselves: “Become friends with God. He’s already a friend of you.”
That’s what I want you to remember about this today.
I’m a writer, and I’ve always been a writer, and no matter what place I live or what job I have, that’s who I’m always going to be. I think, all the time, and I love to tell stories and talk things over with people. The way I see and understand the world is through the lens of words.
The reason I want you to know I am a writer is because that’s the simplest way I can tell my story. I could have brought any number of poems or lyrics or essays or novels up here, but there’s only one story I like to tell anymore. Rather than trying to describe my life and the hundreds of times God has done something in it, I want to tell you about Newbury Street, and darkness, and the place where I learned that it wasn’t a mistake that I turned out to be who I am.
I moved to Boston chasing dreams, like many people do, but in the grind and demands of life, things became very dark. I remember having been here for a few months and walking the streets, alone among crowds and staring up at what should have been beautiful buildings. Instead, my heart was heavy, and everything I had come here for — to share hope, to talk about Jesus, to show a lost and dying world that God made sense — that was all empty to me. I knew the truth; it set me free; so why was I wandering? Worse yet, nothing had meaning. Nothing could interest me. For the first time in my life, I couldn’t write, because I had nothing to write about.
I got in contact with an old professor of mine and told her I had no reason to write, and she and I talked in very academic terms about being “distanced from the source” and all these other big phrases that basically said that if God wasn’t real to me, nothing in life would be, either. That was nice to know, but it didn’t help. She then suggested she send me a chapter of a book she was writing called How Literature Helped Save My Soul. That is a fantastic title, so I agreed.
When the chapter arrived, I went to Newbury Street for my customary cup of coffee. The chapter was about Jane Eyre, and how this professor related to Jane Eyre, and how God had used Jane Eyre to teach this professor when she was a teenager that just because she was different and quirky and artsy and smart didn’t mean that she was in some way wrong, or that God had made a mistake. Instead, it meant something even better — that Jane could have a connection with God that few others could experience.
When I read that chapter, something inside of me died, and I was overwhelmed with a feeling that, despite being saved since I was five years old, I had never felt before. I remember writing in the margin of that printed-out chapter, my hand shaking, “God loves me.” God loves me. I wasn’t a mistake, and this wasn’t just something people had to tell me. God was telling me He loved me. For the first time in my life, I knew it was true.
Love isn’t the only thing I’ve discovered in this city. God has come and found me again and again, and He’s taught me that words like peace and joy have real meaning, too.
But the funniest thing that has happened since that day on Newbury Street has been that the professor didn’t heal me, persay. I still don’t write an awful lot. But that’s because, whenever I sit down with the guitar or the pen or the typewriter or the computer, I often find myself sitting there and just smiling at the wall like an idiot. How can you capture that? How can you put God into words? Sometimes you just need to let it all go free.
When we are no longer bound by the chains of who we think we have to be or the way we have always defined ourselves, Christ can become big in our lives.
Colossians 2:10 says, “You are complete in Christ.”
And if we are complete, then we can revel in 2 Corinthians 5, which tells us that, now that we know God’s love, hope, peace, and joy in a personal way, we can tell others what we’ve come to know so well ourselves: “Become friends with God. He’s already a friend of you.”
That’s what I want you to remember about this today.
4.20.2013
What Is Freedom?
When I woke up Saturday morning, my lingering feeling was this: Freedom.
On Thursday night, the most tense events Boston has seen in decades began to unfold in the city’s surrounding suburbs. Police had been investigating the Monday bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line all week, and on Thursday, they finally released footage of who they deemed to be the suspects.
The tape was grainy, the photos not exactly clear, but it was enough to know that if anyone had seen these two guys — who looked to be no more than local college students — they would quickly be caught.
Still, in a week that had been one big, long chunk of mourning and disbelief, no one was ready for anything to happen. Things had unfolded so slowly, and even those who watched the video three or four times before heading to bed Thursday night figured the pieces would begin to come together slowly, here and there, before an arrest was made.
Instead, the suspects shot a police officer at the MIT campus in Cambridge, carjacked an SUV, and drove into the night, leading police on a chase that wound through local neighborhoods until it devolved into a bomb-throwing firefight in Watertown in the middle of darkness.
On Friday morning, residents of Boston, Cambridge, Watertown and several surrounding suburbs woke to the news that one suspect had been killed by police, but the other had escaped — driving over the other suspect, his older brother, in his haste — and was somewhere in the area. Residents of those towns were told to stay indoors — no, commanded to — as Boston, for the first time in history save for extreme weather situations, told its citizens that they were not to step foot outside. A manhunt was on. The city had been shut down. Everyone was to stay put while the cops did their jobs.
The locals were only too happy to obey. While a typical Massachusetts resident will forge ahead through 12 inches of snow, danger is something else, and Monday showed just how dangerous these two were. With the police clearly on edge about the entire situation, and with them having already chased the culprits for some eight hours, there was no question everyone would stay home.
But as Friday wore on, it became difficult. While people can plan ahead for a snowstorm, packing away food and such, an impromptu day in the apartment gets old fast. While the news was coming in rapidly for hours, with more details surfacing about the suspects, that soon slowed. Cabin fever set in, with questions: If they haven’t caught him by now, could they?
Around 6 p.m., the lockdown order was lifted by a downcast police chief, and that was where the fear that had eased away earlier in the day came back. They were admitting they didn’t have him but telling everyone to go back on the streets. If it wasn’t safe before, why would it be now? Everyone was fine being brave and returning to their regular lives on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s because the bombs had gone off, the victims rushed to hospital, and the debris cleared. This danger was still in process.
I decided to take a walk. I wanted to do something, and I especially wanted to do something where I could come back and find that maybe something had changed. I knew my neighborhood was safe, but my feet and eyes needed to help. A quick swing around a few blocks confirmed it: People were out, and music was playing. It was quiet and eerie, a few stray raindrops falling and a storm coming in, but it was safe. Even the wail of sirens across the river, and the many red and blue lights, didn’t shake me. The entire police population of Massachusetts was here. They just had to keep working.
But I did wonder what we do now. If this kid was still out there with his guns and bombs, what do you do? It’s brave to go out after an attack and just keep living, but it’s foolhardy to charge into an area where danger hasn’t yet been contained. I felt complete confidence where I was, but I was already thinking of what areas I would avoid, and how many days it would take before we turned grumpy on the cops and asked them why they hadn’t nabbed this guy right away.
By the time I returned home, however, I learned that the recent batch of sirens I heard were fresh for a reason — shots had been fired in Watertown, and they had found the suspect again. Within three hours, which flew past like minutes, they had him in custody. Danger averted. Life restored. Heroes praised. Celebration commenced.
I did another swing around the neighborhood then, this time to see the people light on their feet and smiling. Crowds bubbled up around Boston — huge, cheering gaggles of people. Bars were packed; impromptu parades were held for the cops as they drove home.
That was it. They did it — we did it. The story had ended the way it should. All the cliches about Boston proved true, and our officers were truly the finest.
One of my roommates turned to me in this and asked about the patriotism showing up on the TV. She asked why this was a victory for America, and whether people were right to be waving flags and saying the usual pro-U.S. things they say at a time like this.
I tried to explain that this is a victory for America because the point of terrorism is to paralyze life, and to alter regular, everyday democracy. She was concerned that this kind of patriotism is what gets people so mad at us in the first place, and I concurred, but I said that stopping it in the face of something like this would be wrong. For all the cheesiness — and, let’s admit it, misguided or cheap patriotism — at such a time, people have the essence of it right. People who attack America and its ideals are attacking the ability to be free — to create laws, to spread good, to have democracy, to glutton ourselves, to spend hours of our days watching sports, to defend our amendments, to be uber-American, all the time.
It’s hard for me to explain how I grasped the American-ness of this moment, and why it was right to celebrate the U.S., but let me just say this: When September 11 happened, and everyone talked about what terrorists were trying to do and how you counter that by going back to normal life, I didn’t really get it. I lived through September 11, at an age where I comprehended what was going on, and I read news and analysis every year after. It was only that to me, though — test cases, and information.
But on Friday, I lived the threat of terrorism, and I lived the American response. Fear and danger are not tolerated in this country. Our law enforcement is geared to go crazy when terror tries to dominate us, and to take it down. They aren’t just defending our homeland, and the ideals and values of this country. They’re also protecting us — little, insignificant us, the ones who want to hop on a train or walk down the street without fear. I still believe America is that place because of what I saw this week. The people who protect us do not mess around.
I discovered freedom in the most real way Saturday morning, when I went to the corner store and bought The Boston Globe and a Coke and then walked down my street, through a park, across a busy road (I jaywalked!), and next to the Charles River. I looked across the river and watched dozens of cars zooming down Interstate 90 and Storrow Drive, and I glanced behind me and saw the newly rebuilt Boston University bridge, and the beautiful Prudential Center Tower (it casts it shadow over Copley Square) in the distance.
No one in Boston had to think to himself or herself, “I’m going to go out today and be brave so the terrorists don’t win.” We’re from Boston. We’re workers. How many days have I come home tired and stressed and thought, “I just want to lay down, or cry, or read,” and instead, I move on to the next thing and just keep working? That is Boston. That is a distinctly Northeast spirit. We don’t work to make a statement. We work because there’s things to do, and we’re Americans, and we’re going to keep doing them until the job is done. That’s why we were back at work on Tuesday, and those are the people I saw driving Saturday. It’s less a gigantic statement we’re all struggling to make and more the way of life that we will not let die.
I don’t know what’s behind terrorism or what people are thinking or what America is or what they’re trying to do to it. I don’t know how our patriotism plays into the terrorism equation. I also don’t know that it matters.
But I do know that Saturday morning, I was super-patriotic. I wanted to give out high-fives and talk about it and jump around and shout. I knew what had challenged us Friday, and I knew what had been done to overcome it. All this stuff I read for years — I understand that on a firsthand level now. I got this crazy sense of what it means to be an American, and why that’s not bad. I was smiling. I was ready to go again.
I was free.
On Thursday night, the most tense events Boston has seen in decades began to unfold in the city’s surrounding suburbs. Police had been investigating the Monday bombings at the Boston Marathon finish line all week, and on Thursday, they finally released footage of who they deemed to be the suspects.
The tape was grainy, the photos not exactly clear, but it was enough to know that if anyone had seen these two guys — who looked to be no more than local college students — they would quickly be caught.
Still, in a week that had been one big, long chunk of mourning and disbelief, no one was ready for anything to happen. Things had unfolded so slowly, and even those who watched the video three or four times before heading to bed Thursday night figured the pieces would begin to come together slowly, here and there, before an arrest was made.
Instead, the suspects shot a police officer at the MIT campus in Cambridge, carjacked an SUV, and drove into the night, leading police on a chase that wound through local neighborhoods until it devolved into a bomb-throwing firefight in Watertown in the middle of darkness.
On Friday morning, residents of Boston, Cambridge, Watertown and several surrounding suburbs woke to the news that one suspect had been killed by police, but the other had escaped — driving over the other suspect, his older brother, in his haste — and was somewhere in the area. Residents of those towns were told to stay indoors — no, commanded to — as Boston, for the first time in history save for extreme weather situations, told its citizens that they were not to step foot outside. A manhunt was on. The city had been shut down. Everyone was to stay put while the cops did their jobs.
The locals were only too happy to obey. While a typical Massachusetts resident will forge ahead through 12 inches of snow, danger is something else, and Monday showed just how dangerous these two were. With the police clearly on edge about the entire situation, and with them having already chased the culprits for some eight hours, there was no question everyone would stay home.
But as Friday wore on, it became difficult. While people can plan ahead for a snowstorm, packing away food and such, an impromptu day in the apartment gets old fast. While the news was coming in rapidly for hours, with more details surfacing about the suspects, that soon slowed. Cabin fever set in, with questions: If they haven’t caught him by now, could they?
Around 6 p.m., the lockdown order was lifted by a downcast police chief, and that was where the fear that had eased away earlier in the day came back. They were admitting they didn’t have him but telling everyone to go back on the streets. If it wasn’t safe before, why would it be now? Everyone was fine being brave and returning to their regular lives on Monday and Tuesday, but that’s because the bombs had gone off, the victims rushed to hospital, and the debris cleared. This danger was still in process.
I decided to take a walk. I wanted to do something, and I especially wanted to do something where I could come back and find that maybe something had changed. I knew my neighborhood was safe, but my feet and eyes needed to help. A quick swing around a few blocks confirmed it: People were out, and music was playing. It was quiet and eerie, a few stray raindrops falling and a storm coming in, but it was safe. Even the wail of sirens across the river, and the many red and blue lights, didn’t shake me. The entire police population of Massachusetts was here. They just had to keep working.
But I did wonder what we do now. If this kid was still out there with his guns and bombs, what do you do? It’s brave to go out after an attack and just keep living, but it’s foolhardy to charge into an area where danger hasn’t yet been contained. I felt complete confidence where I was, but I was already thinking of what areas I would avoid, and how many days it would take before we turned grumpy on the cops and asked them why they hadn’t nabbed this guy right away.
By the time I returned home, however, I learned that the recent batch of sirens I heard were fresh for a reason — shots had been fired in Watertown, and they had found the suspect again. Within three hours, which flew past like minutes, they had him in custody. Danger averted. Life restored. Heroes praised. Celebration commenced.
I did another swing around the neighborhood then, this time to see the people light on their feet and smiling. Crowds bubbled up around Boston — huge, cheering gaggles of people. Bars were packed; impromptu parades were held for the cops as they drove home.
That was it. They did it — we did it. The story had ended the way it should. All the cliches about Boston proved true, and our officers were truly the finest.
One of my roommates turned to me in this and asked about the patriotism showing up on the TV. She asked why this was a victory for America, and whether people were right to be waving flags and saying the usual pro-U.S. things they say at a time like this.
I tried to explain that this is a victory for America because the point of terrorism is to paralyze life, and to alter regular, everyday democracy. She was concerned that this kind of patriotism is what gets people so mad at us in the first place, and I concurred, but I said that stopping it in the face of something like this would be wrong. For all the cheesiness — and, let’s admit it, misguided or cheap patriotism — at such a time, people have the essence of it right. People who attack America and its ideals are attacking the ability to be free — to create laws, to spread good, to have democracy, to glutton ourselves, to spend hours of our days watching sports, to defend our amendments, to be uber-American, all the time.
It’s hard for me to explain how I grasped the American-ness of this moment, and why it was right to celebrate the U.S., but let me just say this: When September 11 happened, and everyone talked about what terrorists were trying to do and how you counter that by going back to normal life, I didn’t really get it. I lived through September 11, at an age where I comprehended what was going on, and I read news and analysis every year after. It was only that to me, though — test cases, and information.
But on Friday, I lived the threat of terrorism, and I lived the American response. Fear and danger are not tolerated in this country. Our law enforcement is geared to go crazy when terror tries to dominate us, and to take it down. They aren’t just defending our homeland, and the ideals and values of this country. They’re also protecting us — little, insignificant us, the ones who want to hop on a train or walk down the street without fear. I still believe America is that place because of what I saw this week. The people who protect us do not mess around.
I discovered freedom in the most real way Saturday morning, when I went to the corner store and bought The Boston Globe and a Coke and then walked down my street, through a park, across a busy road (I jaywalked!), and next to the Charles River. I looked across the river and watched dozens of cars zooming down Interstate 90 and Storrow Drive, and I glanced behind me and saw the newly rebuilt Boston University bridge, and the beautiful Prudential Center Tower (it casts it shadow over Copley Square) in the distance.
No one in Boston had to think to himself or herself, “I’m going to go out today and be brave so the terrorists don’t win.” We’re from Boston. We’re workers. How many days have I come home tired and stressed and thought, “I just want to lay down, or cry, or read,” and instead, I move on to the next thing and just keep working? That is Boston. That is a distinctly Northeast spirit. We don’t work to make a statement. We work because there’s things to do, and we’re Americans, and we’re going to keep doing them until the job is done. That’s why we were back at work on Tuesday, and those are the people I saw driving Saturday. It’s less a gigantic statement we’re all struggling to make and more the way of life that we will not let die.
I don’t know what’s behind terrorism or what people are thinking or what America is or what they’re trying to do to it. I don’t know how our patriotism plays into the terrorism equation. I also don’t know that it matters.
But I do know that Saturday morning, I was super-patriotic. I wanted to give out high-fives and talk about it and jump around and shout. I knew what had challenged us Friday, and I knew what had been done to overcome it. All this stuff I read for years — I understand that on a firsthand level now. I got this crazy sense of what it means to be an American, and why that’s not bad. I was smiling. I was ready to go again.
I was free.
4.19.2013
Catch him.
The old bait-and-switch, perhaps?
Did the cops call the press conference to get the suspect to let his guard down, and then pounce on him when he came out?
We'll know soon enough [update, 9:03 p.m.: WBZ Boston just reported that the homeowner left his home after the lockdown was lifted and saw blood on the boat in his backyard; he called police, and that is why they closed in on the suspect so soon]. But in the space of time when the lockdown was lifted and I went out and stretched my legs, this is what happened. Yes, they got him:
Here's some good links I've found today (no rhyme or reason for why I included them, other than they were helpful at the time).
Did the cops call the press conference to get the suspect to let his guard down, and then pounce on him when he came out?
We'll know soon enough [update, 9:03 p.m.: WBZ Boston just reported that the homeowner left his home after the lockdown was lifted and saw blood on the boat in his backyard; he called police, and that is why they closed in on the suspect so soon]. But in the space of time when the lockdown was lifted and I went out and stretched my legs, this is what happened. Yes, they got him:
What activity can I do that I can go and do it and come back to see they've caught the guy?
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013
I'm gonna take a walk.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013
If you expect #Boston ease up, you are not aware of how we treated Bill Buckner for 18 years after a baseball rolled between his legs.
— Garytt Poirier (@Garytt) April 19, 2013
Result of my walk: Tons of cops and ambulances. Teenagers talking about Cambridge Rindge & Latin. One awesome house blasting Neil Diamond.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013
@mikecolenesn Be safe be safe be safe.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013
I saw a whole bunch of cops and ambulances going toward Watertown, but I just figured it had been like that all day. First time outside.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013
Come on, guys. We've been behind you all day. Finish the job. Get him.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 19, 2013
If this works out, we're having Patriots Day again tomorrow, right?
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013
Proud of our cops, proud of our local coverage. Local TV has redeemed itself today, and I'm going to be thanking officers for some time.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013
@mikecolenesn Never doubted they would rise again. They've never failed on local in these past few years.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013
Anyone else just realize what time it is? Glued.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013
Suspect in custody #watertown
— Laura Krantz (@laurakrantzmwdn) April 20, 2013
TV slow to confirm. I'm ready to jump.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013
Congrats to the FBI, Boston police, Watertown police, state police. You killed it. By not killing the suspect.
— Doug Kyed (@DougKyedNESN) April 20, 2013
Sounds like this is it. We won't see it, but we can believe it. Well done.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013
In my head all week. Boston!youtube.com/watch?v=4ASJBX…I wrote earlier this week about what happened Marathon Monday, why Boston can still be a city on a hill, and why Friday was far more scary than anything else this week.
— Jen Slothower (@JSlotNESN) April 20, 2013
Here's some good links I've found today (no rhyme or reason for why I included them, other than they were helpful at the time).
- Anything by The Boston Globe. I've never been more proud of the paper I've stuck with since I moved here. [Live blog] [An intern who knew the suspect]
- The New York Times. We're not paralyzed, but "dragnet" is a good description. [Main Story] [a solid map]
- Deadspin. Say what you will about this site, but they were great at aggregating the details and calling out the morons today. It's not the first time they've done a great job at some form of journalism. [Posts Tagged "Boston Bombings"]
- NBC News: One of the best stories from the early morning.
- One of the saddest parts for me has been the conflicting reports between the evidence and recollections from people who knew the suspects. It's hard to reconcile the accounts and know what to think. [AP: Father's View; Boston Herald: Uncle's View; L.A. Times: Conspiracy Theory]
- The suspect's social media accounts. [Twitter account]
- Details on the two brothers.
- Instagram chronicles it all.
My backyard
I used to worry that I would leave Boston without ever really knowing my neighborhood.
When I lived in Lynchburg, I knew nothing outside of my college campus, how to get to Wal-Mart, and where to go if I wanted a long, winding drive on a sunny afternoon. That’s the way I wanted it.
When I return to my hometown of Schroon Lake, I’m always surprised how little I know of the Adirondack region besides the roads I always traveled as a kid.
When I moved to Boston, I decided I would discover my city. I drove the streets of Cambridge (where I live) and walked the avenues of Boston (where I worked, went to school and enjoy my free time).
Now I can say that this all happened in my backyard.
Here’s a map that gives you an idea of how the manhunt that started Thursday night and continued through Friday connected to me. It’s purposefully understated.
MIT area: This is where the 26-year-old police officer was killed around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. I had dinner in that area of Cambridge at 6 p.m. Thursday. I then drove down Cambridge Street and looped back into the Kendall Square area as I tried to unwind from a long and stressful week. The shooting was at the corner of Vassar and Main streets. I walk there all the time and drove past it Thursday night. The police were searching on Cambridge Street. That’s the first street I drove down Thursday, around 8 p.m. I saw the restaurants and stores that were being shown on Friday morning’s TV coverage.
Cambridge Rindge and Latin: This is where the second suspect, the younger brother, graduated from high school and was a wrestler. It’s a 15-minute walk from my house and next to the main branch of Cambridge Public Library, which I frequent to read and check out books. Finding a parking spot is hard if you miss the afternoon window and get there after Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out, because the street and big park-like area in front of the library are filled with teenagers. I walk past them all the time and think, “Man, they must think I’m old. These are high school kids.”
There’s also a Starbucks almost directly across from Cambridge Rindge and Latin that I basically live in. It’s right next to the Broadway Marketplace grocery store. If you get a nice seat next to the window, you can look to your left and see Harvard’s campus and to your right and see the beautiful architecture of Cambridge Rindge and Latin school.
A lot of kids from the high school play at the YMCA in Central Square where I go to play basketball after work. Some of them, innocently enough, asked if I went there, too. God bless those kids.
Shell station: This is at the corner of Memorial Drive and River Street. I pass this Shell station every single day on my way home from work — River Street is how you get from Boston (or Allston or Watertown) into Cambridge. It crosses the river, hence its name. It is parallel to Western Avenue, which is how you get out of Cambridge. I regularly stop at this gas station and buy milk, orange juice, candy or a New York Times. The shopkeeper and I are on friendly terms.
This station is where the suspects carjacked an SUV, or ditched the guy that they carjacked the SUV from. It has since been cordoned off with police tape. We saw photos of police searching the station Friday morning. It is a five-minute walk from my house — just a few blocks.
Western Avenue/Arsenal Street: Police reportedly chased the suspects in the carjacked SUV into Watertown. That means they drove down Western Avenue (how to get out of Boston) across the river. This road becomes Arsenal Street, which leads into Watertown. Along the way, the suspects were reportedly throwing explosive devices out the window. A four-mile stretch was shut down Friday morning, with police reportedly searching for more explosive devices.
That is the exact route I drive to work every morning. It’s a five-minute drive with no traffic, two minutes if you don’t hit the lights. It slows down considerably during morning rush hour, especially when tractor-trailers decide to park on half of the street. School buses have also made me late to work before. That’s the way you go to get to where I work, though — one straight route.
The shots that everyone saw on national TV on Friday morning — Arsenal Street, the surrounding areas, the lights, etc. — is as familiar to me as my bedroom.
Arsenal Street Mall: This area is where police gathered Thursday night and Friday morning after chasing the suspects into Watertown. This is where all the TV cameras congregated, and where most news gathering happened. They fanned out from here into the Watertown neighborhoods.
This is where I get coffee or lunch with my co-workers. We walk across Arsenal Street and down its sidewalks.
480 Arsenal St.: This is the address of NESN, my company. This is also the address that I woke up to Friday morning as the epicenter of the chase and manhunt.
There’s a lot I can’t say — just know that this is where all the cops and TV cameras were, and the street addresses given out later where they were reportedly looking for suspects — those are right behind NESN. That’s where my mind and heart was for most of the morning.
More people contacted me Monday asking me if I was OK than have on Friday. That’s likely because people don’t know the geography around here. Today has obviously been much, much scarier. We’re inside, with our doors locked. This is our backyard.
It’s more than my backyard, though — this is my neighborhood. This is where I work and live.
This is where I walk up and down the river, and this is where I drove last night to blow off some stress. This is where I buy my newspapers (I’ve dreamed of being able to walk down the street and buy anything since I was a little kid), and this is where every inch of my life happens every moribund day.
“Boston” has never referred to the land from the North End down to Jamaica Plain and Dorchester. You tell people you’re from Boston even if it’s the suburbs, because we’re all part of Boston – the city limits just can’t hold the amount of people who live and work around here. Watertown, Cambridge and Somerville are part of Boston’s transit system. We’re all in one town.
These are my neighbors and my friends. So today, of all days, pray for Boston.
When I lived in Lynchburg, I knew nothing outside of my college campus, how to get to Wal-Mart, and where to go if I wanted a long, winding drive on a sunny afternoon. That’s the way I wanted it.
When I return to my hometown of Schroon Lake, I’m always surprised how little I know of the Adirondack region besides the roads I always traveled as a kid.
When I moved to Boston, I decided I would discover my city. I drove the streets of Cambridge (where I live) and walked the avenues of Boston (where I worked, went to school and enjoy my free time).
Now I can say that this all happened in my backyard.
Here’s a map that gives you an idea of how the manhunt that started Thursday night and continued through Friday connected to me. It’s purposefully understated.
MIT area: This is where the 26-year-old police officer was killed around 10:30 p.m. Thursday. I had dinner in that area of Cambridge at 6 p.m. Thursday. I then drove down Cambridge Street and looped back into the Kendall Square area as I tried to unwind from a long and stressful week. The shooting was at the corner of Vassar and Main streets. I walk there all the time and drove past it Thursday night. The police were searching on Cambridge Street. That’s the first street I drove down Thursday, around 8 p.m. I saw the restaurants and stores that were being shown on Friday morning’s TV coverage.
Cambridge Rindge and Latin: This is where the second suspect, the younger brother, graduated from high school and was a wrestler. It’s a 15-minute walk from my house and next to the main branch of Cambridge Public Library, which I frequent to read and check out books. Finding a parking spot is hard if you miss the afternoon window and get there after Cambridge Rindge and Latin lets out, because the street and big park-like area in front of the library are filled with teenagers. I walk past them all the time and think, “Man, they must think I’m old. These are high school kids.”
There’s also a Starbucks almost directly across from Cambridge Rindge and Latin that I basically live in. It’s right next to the Broadway Marketplace grocery store. If you get a nice seat next to the window, you can look to your left and see Harvard’s campus and to your right and see the beautiful architecture of Cambridge Rindge and Latin school.
A lot of kids from the high school play at the YMCA in Central Square where I go to play basketball after work. Some of them, innocently enough, asked if I went there, too. God bless those kids.
Shell station: This is at the corner of Memorial Drive and River Street. I pass this Shell station every single day on my way home from work — River Street is how you get from Boston (or Allston or Watertown) into Cambridge. It crosses the river, hence its name. It is parallel to Western Avenue, which is how you get out of Cambridge. I regularly stop at this gas station and buy milk, orange juice, candy or a New York Times. The shopkeeper and I are on friendly terms.
This station is where the suspects carjacked an SUV, or ditched the guy that they carjacked the SUV from. It has since been cordoned off with police tape. We saw photos of police searching the station Friday morning. It is a five-minute walk from my house — just a few blocks.
Western Avenue/Arsenal Street: Police reportedly chased the suspects in the carjacked SUV into Watertown. That means they drove down Western Avenue (how to get out of Boston) across the river. This road becomes Arsenal Street, which leads into Watertown. Along the way, the suspects were reportedly throwing explosive devices out the window. A four-mile stretch was shut down Friday morning, with police reportedly searching for more explosive devices.
That is the exact route I drive to work every morning. It’s a five-minute drive with no traffic, two minutes if you don’t hit the lights. It slows down considerably during morning rush hour, especially when tractor-trailers decide to park on half of the street. School buses have also made me late to work before. That’s the way you go to get to where I work, though — one straight route.
The shots that everyone saw on national TV on Friday morning — Arsenal Street, the surrounding areas, the lights, etc. — is as familiar to me as my bedroom.
Arsenal Street Mall: This area is where police gathered Thursday night and Friday morning after chasing the suspects into Watertown. This is where all the TV cameras congregated, and where most news gathering happened. They fanned out from here into the Watertown neighborhoods.
This is where I get coffee or lunch with my co-workers. We walk across Arsenal Street and down its sidewalks.
480 Arsenal St.: This is the address of NESN, my company. This is also the address that I woke up to Friday morning as the epicenter of the chase and manhunt.
There’s a lot I can’t say — just know that this is where all the cops and TV cameras were, and the street addresses given out later where they were reportedly looking for suspects — those are right behind NESN. That’s where my mind and heart was for most of the morning.
More people contacted me Monday asking me if I was OK than have on Friday. That’s likely because people don’t know the geography around here. Today has obviously been much, much scarier. We’re inside, with our doors locked. This is our backyard.
It’s more than my backyard, though — this is my neighborhood. This is where I work and live.
This is where I walk up and down the river, and this is where I drove last night to blow off some stress. This is where I buy my newspapers (I’ve dreamed of being able to walk down the street and buy anything since I was a little kid), and this is where every inch of my life happens every moribund day.
“Boston” has never referred to the land from the North End down to Jamaica Plain and Dorchester. You tell people you’re from Boston even if it’s the suburbs, because we’re all part of Boston – the city limits just can’t hold the amount of people who live and work around here. Watertown, Cambridge and Somerville are part of Boston’s transit system. We’re all in one town.
These are my neighbors and my friends. So today, of all days, pray for Boston.
4.17.2013
City on a Hill.
Some saw marshy land. Others saw three big mounds. Most saw frightening weather, dangerous creatures, threatening forests and little hope that any new society could be formed, or that God-honoring life would ever prevail.
John Winthrop saw Boston, and he called it a City on a Hill.
Boston had three hills already, so the moniker fit, but Winthrop meant it for something else. He was nodding to all the symbolism that a new group of settlers striving for freedom for their faith could want.
“Ye are the light of the world,” Matthew 5:14 says. “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”
Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wanted Boston to be that city.
They looked for that city on Monday, the people without hope but plumb with fear.
They had seen it from above, from the sweeping view of the Prudential Tower, where the big Boston Public Library leads to Copley Square, with long Boylston Street and its shiny Apple store sneaking up on the left side.
They had seen it from the ground, when they looped in and out of the streets in the Back Bay, never knowing what curious brownstone they would find down this public alley or that.
They had run it from the south, watching the scenery grow from the trees of Hopkinton to the commerce-lined streets of the Back Bay, the stray statues and signs of the city’s great history appearing along the route.
But that city was gone Monday.
People don’t come to Boston for comfort. They didn’t come for it in the 17th century, and they don’t come for it now. Boston is a city for serious people, where the best of the best are so good that they critique even mere excellence. Boston demands champions of its sports team, presidents from its suburbs and hills from its runners.
But Boston isn’t just about crafty settlers fighting to survive, or idealistic freshmen thinking they’ll put this postage-sized city — from Paul Revere’s house down the Citgo sign — in their pocket. Boston was founded as a city of hope, and it’s that hope that can’t be forgotten as the minutes crawl away from a day everyone wants to forget.
The story of the original settlers, and the Founding Fathers, is often reinterpreted today. Schoolchildren get one version, and politicians give another, depending on how they’d like to defend the Constitution or advance propaganda.
But whatever the political views, or the fascination with tales of whether Revere or Sam Adams are as noble as people have made them to be, the reason for Massachusetts being settled in the first place is not contested. People came to this land for freedom — freedom from tyrannical rule, sure, but really freedom to practice what they believed to be truth.
The first residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony believed in hope: “A hope that makes us not ashamed” (Romans 5:5). They believed in peace: “A peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). They believed in grace: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). They believed in a God Who keeps His promises: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
From this original belief, and the specific doctrines to which these settlers held, has grown not only a varied city but also a vibrant state and a powerful nation. The new land began with the idea that there was a God worth counting on, and that the words He gave — hope, truth, peace, grace — had real meaning in real, difficult life.
Boston has morphed over the years into a city of its own. It’s now known for tolerance and diversity after a hiccupping couple of centuries during which its citizens battled in real-life case studies over religious tolerance, racial turmoil and increasing societal demands.
It has great pride in its universities and sports teams as well as some of the best research in the world in numerous fields. It has birthed unique political events, and it continues be a forbearer in matters of religion, even as faith in the city appears largely disfigured from what first landed on its shores.
But in becoming the city it has become today, as different as it looks, Boston has not necessarily failed to be the city it set out to be.
Boston is still a city on a hill.
Boston is a place that millions of people look to for inspiration, opportunity or guidance. It is the destination of teenagers’ dreams, it is the fulfillment of minor leaguers’ promise, and it is a haven for countless endeavors and ways of thought.
In establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop moved to create a city that would be a shining light to the world — a place that would speak of what could be, and that would invite new generations to make a fresh start. Centuries later, Boston does not run — save the blue laws — on puritanical rules. But it has done just what Winthrop envisioned: It has become a city that creates a space for people to see the goodness of God reflected in His creation, namely the people He created and the joy, hope and excellence with which they live their lives.
On Monday, people saw their city knocked off its hill. No longer was Boston a place to gather the runners from many nations for what many of them call the best race in the world. No longer was the marathon a proving ground for everyday men and women who wanted to inspire their communities and raise money to heal everyday pain. No longer was the city a spot where people could celebrate the beauty of God’s creation, and the good that remains in a world much wrecked by hurtful actions, mistakes and decay.
When the blasts shook Boylston Street on Monday, they took more than a race away — they also robbed the city of the hope and joy it was reflecting, and it left many to wonder whether God had disappeared, too.
A major theme — no, the only theme — of the Bible argues urgently that this cannot be the case.
Bad happens, the Bible teaches, but God redeems. Man fell in the Garden, but God provided a way to rise. Mistakes tear apart relationships, but God provides a way to bring them together. Entropy racks the world, but God promises a new creation — and He promises that it can start right now, on this earth.
But in that theme lies one very disconcerting fact: Every seed must die before it grows.
And that is how we arrive at that nasty philosophical point that is often given to try to dull the pain, but that seems horribly wrong and unnecessary. Why must the unthinkable happen for people to band together and triumph far more? Why must there be death to provide a rich life? Why must people have pain to see God in a new way?
John Winthrop can’t tell us, and even Jesus asked for a lot of faith when reconciling the wreckage of this world with the reality of fallen man and the promise of a patched-up future. The Christian doctrine, while understandable on paper, always faces the biggest hurdles when it comes to people’s gut.
But, whatever your creed, they were onto something when they stood on those principles to start this colony that became this city. Whatever your beliefs — whether you see good from God or not, and whether you think Winthrop and company had it wrong all along — know this: The tenets on which they founded this city, and the grand faith or ambition that Boston could always be a sign to the world of resilience, hope and a better tomorrow — that has never passed away.
“Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live by obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is our life, and our prosperity,” Winthrop said in 1630.
First responders rushing to the scene. Bystanders scooping victims from the blood. Citizens helping stranded runners. Police doing their jobs. The entire state standing in defiance, and promising to help and fight back.
Boston has chosen life. It may be living by many different creeds, and in a very different age, but Boston is still reflecting the goodness, joy and hope of the God for which this colony was made. Whether God is acknowledged or not, His redemption is being lived in this city, as hope swallows up hate.
Even in the darkness, Boston remains a city on a hill.
John Winthrop saw Boston, and he called it a City on a Hill.
Boston had three hills already, so the moniker fit, but Winthrop meant it for something else. He was nodding to all the symbolism that a new group of settlers striving for freedom for their faith could want.
“Ye are the light of the world,” Matthew 5:14 says. “A city that is set on a hill cannot be hid.”
Winthrop, the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, wanted Boston to be that city.
They looked for that city on Monday, the people without hope but plumb with fear.
They had seen it from above, from the sweeping view of the Prudential Tower, where the big Boston Public Library leads to Copley Square, with long Boylston Street and its shiny Apple store sneaking up on the left side.
They had seen it from the ground, when they looped in and out of the streets in the Back Bay, never knowing what curious brownstone they would find down this public alley or that.
They had run it from the south, watching the scenery grow from the trees of Hopkinton to the commerce-lined streets of the Back Bay, the stray statues and signs of the city’s great history appearing along the route.
But that city was gone Monday.
People don’t come to Boston for comfort. They didn’t come for it in the 17th century, and they don’t come for it now. Boston is a city for serious people, where the best of the best are so good that they critique even mere excellence. Boston demands champions of its sports team, presidents from its suburbs and hills from its runners.
But Boston isn’t just about crafty settlers fighting to survive, or idealistic freshmen thinking they’ll put this postage-sized city — from Paul Revere’s house down the Citgo sign — in their pocket. Boston was founded as a city of hope, and it’s that hope that can’t be forgotten as the minutes crawl away from a day everyone wants to forget.
The story of the original settlers, and the Founding Fathers, is often reinterpreted today. Schoolchildren get one version, and politicians give another, depending on how they’d like to defend the Constitution or advance propaganda.
But whatever the political views, or the fascination with tales of whether Revere or Sam Adams are as noble as people have made them to be, the reason for Massachusetts being settled in the first place is not contested. People came to this land for freedom — freedom from tyrannical rule, sure, but really freedom to practice what they believed to be truth.
The first residents of the Massachusetts Bay Colony believed in hope: “A hope that makes us not ashamed” (Romans 5:5). They believed in peace: “A peace that passes all understanding” (Philippians 4:7). They believed in grace: “My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness” (2 Corinthians 12:9). They believed in a God Who keeps His promises: “For I reckon that the sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the glory which shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18).
From this original belief, and the specific doctrines to which these settlers held, has grown not only a varied city but also a vibrant state and a powerful nation. The new land began with the idea that there was a God worth counting on, and that the words He gave — hope, truth, peace, grace — had real meaning in real, difficult life.
Boston has morphed over the years into a city of its own. It’s now known for tolerance and diversity after a hiccupping couple of centuries during which its citizens battled in real-life case studies over religious tolerance, racial turmoil and increasing societal demands.
It has great pride in its universities and sports teams as well as some of the best research in the world in numerous fields. It has birthed unique political events, and it continues be a forbearer in matters of religion, even as faith in the city appears largely disfigured from what first landed on its shores.
But in becoming the city it has become today, as different as it looks, Boston has not necessarily failed to be the city it set out to be.
Boston is still a city on a hill.
Boston is a place that millions of people look to for inspiration, opportunity or guidance. It is the destination of teenagers’ dreams, it is the fulfillment of minor leaguers’ promise, and it is a haven for countless endeavors and ways of thought.
In establishing the Massachusetts Bay Colony, Winthrop moved to create a city that would be a shining light to the world — a place that would speak of what could be, and that would invite new generations to make a fresh start. Centuries later, Boston does not run — save the blue laws — on puritanical rules. But it has done just what Winthrop envisioned: It has become a city that creates a space for people to see the goodness of God reflected in His creation, namely the people He created and the joy, hope and excellence with which they live their lives.
On Monday, people saw their city knocked off its hill. No longer was Boston a place to gather the runners from many nations for what many of them call the best race in the world. No longer was the marathon a proving ground for everyday men and women who wanted to inspire their communities and raise money to heal everyday pain. No longer was the city a spot where people could celebrate the beauty of God’s creation, and the good that remains in a world much wrecked by hurtful actions, mistakes and decay.
When the blasts shook Boylston Street on Monday, they took more than a race away — they also robbed the city of the hope and joy it was reflecting, and it left many to wonder whether God had disappeared, too.
A major theme — no, the only theme — of the Bible argues urgently that this cannot be the case.
Bad happens, the Bible teaches, but God redeems. Man fell in the Garden, but God provided a way to rise. Mistakes tear apart relationships, but God provides a way to bring them together. Entropy racks the world, but God promises a new creation — and He promises that it can start right now, on this earth.
But in that theme lies one very disconcerting fact: Every seed must die before it grows.
And that is how we arrive at that nasty philosophical point that is often given to try to dull the pain, but that seems horribly wrong and unnecessary. Why must the unthinkable happen for people to band together and triumph far more? Why must there be death to provide a rich life? Why must people have pain to see God in a new way?
John Winthrop can’t tell us, and even Jesus asked for a lot of faith when reconciling the wreckage of this world with the reality of fallen man and the promise of a patched-up future. The Christian doctrine, while understandable on paper, always faces the biggest hurdles when it comes to people’s gut.
But, whatever your creed, they were onto something when they stood on those principles to start this colony that became this city. Whatever your beliefs — whether you see good from God or not, and whether you think Winthrop and company had it wrong all along — know this: The tenets on which they founded this city, and the grand faith or ambition that Boston could always be a sign to the world of resilience, hope and a better tomorrow — that has never passed away.
“Therefore let us choose life, that we and our seed may live by obeying His voice, and cleaving to Him, for He is our life, and our prosperity,” Winthrop said in 1630.
First responders rushing to the scene. Bystanders scooping victims from the blood. Citizens helping stranded runners. Police doing their jobs. The entire state standing in defiance, and promising to help and fight back.
Boston has chosen life. It may be living by many different creeds, and in a very different age, but Boston is still reflecting the goodness, joy and hope of the God for which this colony was made. Whether God is acknowledged or not, His redemption is being lived in this city, as hope swallows up hate.
Even in the darkness, Boston remains a city on a hill.
4.16.2013
Boston.
“Were you at the marathon?”
“No.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes.”
No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.
Those are the words you fire off in the heat of the afternoon, as the news rushes in, as you try to figure out what happened. Those are the characters you type, hoping they’ll make it through a suddenly communication-embargoed city.
Cell lines are down. Text messages are failing. News is hard to judge.
No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.
My roommate is running in the marathon. Do they have a list of the runners who have finished, so I can have some idea where she is?
No.
I’m listed as her emergency contact. We joked about it the night before. “Sure — I’ll tell my boss to let me leave work so I can come peel you off the course when you flop over,” I told her. She laughed back — a good sign she was ready to tame the mental beast of this one as well as the physical, after her first marathon had thrown her for a loop.
Now, real emergency. Real, real emergency. Horrific emergency. Do I have her mother’s phone number?
No.
The co-worker had come over, the Sox having wrapped up a win in very 2013 Sox fashion. Did you hear there was an explosion at the marathon?
No.
“Very 2013 fashion” — 2013 won’t be owned by anyone else now. It will be owned by singed blue and yellow, by the tattered streamers over the plaza I walked through Sunday. A mother from my church wanted to show her children the finish line. We walked down Boylston, past those shops. We saw them unfurl the flags. “Can you tell what countries they belong to?” I ask the children.
No.
I could tell Germany and Australia. I could tell South Africa. We stood in front of the finish line, looked up at the grandstands, pointed at the library. “Have you ever been inside there?” I asked.
No.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. “It’s like a European castle, with this big courtyard and these giant lions.” A library built to be the finest, to hold the finest, in a city built to be the finest, to hold the finest.
What I left out is that this entire area is one of my favorites, the beautiful church and the beautiful square and the beautiful Gothic light posts hanging out. I would have coffee over there so many times on my long, midweek days off as a sports freelancer. I went into Marathon Sports back there to help my runner roommate pick out racing clothes. I would walk this side of Boylston, that side, around the library and through the square, on my many trips from Park Street through the Back Bay to the Fens, all on foot. Boston is a walking city. Boston is a running city. Have you walked it?
No.
It’s spring now. We’ve started it twice and stopped it twice, our nice days engulfed by that tattered edge of April that won’t less us move on. Boston folk are used to the cold, the rain, the winter, but after the messy last few months, don’t tease. Spring should be here to stay.
On Monday, real spring was here, at least in the minds of much of Boston. Twitter flooded with Boston Marathon well-wishers, and I was clicking on things I never click on, caught in the spirit. I remembered working for the daily paper that covered Hopkinton, and the runner profiles we churned out in the weeks leading up. I remembered a pair of Stoneham citizens I interviewed who were running in memory of a brother. I remembered the feeling I get when I step out of the Cambridge YMCA on a cold day, with no coat and just shorts as the heat from my basketball playing fights off the cold. The runners would be feeling that way today, no matter what April threw at them. They would conquer it in mass, gliding on the asphalt, whether spring was ready to stay or not. Could it be any more perfect?
No.
And then it struck, the details that I didn’t want to try to put together as soon as I knew — just moments after it happened — that something horrible had happened. The historicity, the fact that it was my city, the stats and figures and explanations — I don’t want to know. I just want it to stop. Will it stop?
No.
There was crying on the phone with my mother, longer text messages to the brothers since we couldn’t get through to each other on the phone, and finally, jogging up the steps to my Cambridge home, where I opened the door, ran the length of the apartment, and hustled up the final set of stairs to see her there, real, in person. The roommate. There was a dinner of salmon and asparagus — what was supposed to be my little feast — that I made for her that night, that I made with delicacies I had bought at a ship-shape rate at a Boston institution, Haymarket, just two days before. There was lounging in front of the TV, watching 30 Rock, doing what you do when you don’t want to talk about it, read about it or hear about it anymore. Would it stop?
No.
She gave me her parents’ phone number. I gave her the number of mine.
I looked away from photos, knowing so many were so worse off than me.
I wandered back to my computer a few times, scrolling through Facebook to see how everyone was doing. A former colleague from the daily paper, with whom I had complained about marathon coverage many a time, was celebrating his first non-Marathon Monday at JFK Library (you know the rest). Friends from college had friends running Boston. Buddies from graduate school, and pals from my current life, all checked in. I had seen the pictures, the horrible pictures. So many people were hurt, so badly. Was anyone I knew hurt?
No.
And then it started. The outpouring. The boasts that Boston was different. The cheesy memes that said you don’t mess with Boston, with the mascots of its four main sports dressed for battle and staring down the camera. I smirked at that one. The earlier ones — the ones where we act like only in Boston would first responders rush to the scene so well, where something unique about us is what made this day different than just a tragedy — those were hard for me to believe. Really? Really, in the face of this, could we know such things? But this, this silly little picture, touched a nerve.
It was then that I realized what was so revolting about this whole thing. They attacked us — whoever this was — on Patriots Day, on our day to celebrate the incredible history this little city has had. They attacked us when the charity runners were going through, when the families were gathered together. They attacked us on our first day of spring, on our day to stick our noses up to the cold and say that we will have sunshine from now on. They attacked us in Boston, a city where the dirty looks and crankiness are so common and so us that a day outside its cynicism — albeit the kind of cynicism that only comes from chasing after excellence, and greatness, and worth — makes me long to be back in its safety. You think you can come in here on Patriots Day and take away spring and hope and promise?
No. Not in our city.
My friends were changing their profile pictures to the Boston skyline, but mine is already set on a cityscape of the Pru and the John Hancock Tower, shot straight down the Mass. Ave. bridge, with a sticker-covered pole framing the edge. That is my gateway, taken on a perfect spring day, as I walk the hundreds of Smoots into the city and hang a left on Boylston to trek wherever I can go. Are you going to mess with that? Are you going to mess with our city?
No.
Were you at the marathon? Are you OK?
I answered the text messages, but I don’t know what’s going on more than anyone out there. It was a day of turmoil for me, so much more than can be captured in scattered thoughts.
But humanism and Boston bravado aside, I know this. We live here because we all believe in something bigger than ourselves. You don’t come to Boston for a comfortable life, or to just paddle along in an OK career. You come here because you want to be something, to see something, to do something, to go somewhere.
That’s why we're cranky. It’s also why we run.
And wherever this goes, it’s also why we’re all getting up Tuesday, and looking to see what we can do to help, to heal, to move on and move forward. That’s what marathon runners do, after all.
We will clean our streets. We will lift our broken. We will shake our heads at the sources of it all.
But most of all, whatever our story of Marathon Monday 2013 is, we will know how to answer the questions.
Is Boston a city on a hill?
Is this nasty, unconscionable act going to be answered?
Will its people keep running?
Yes.
“No.”
“Are you OK?”
“Yes.”
No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.
Those are the words you fire off in the heat of the afternoon, as the news rushes in, as you try to figure out what happened. Those are the characters you type, hoping they’ll make it through a suddenly communication-embargoed city.
Cell lines are down. Text messages are failing. News is hard to judge.
No. Yes. No. Yes. No. Yes.
My roommate is running in the marathon. Do they have a list of the runners who have finished, so I can have some idea where she is?
No.
I’m listed as her emergency contact. We joked about it the night before. “Sure — I’ll tell my boss to let me leave work so I can come peel you off the course when you flop over,” I told her. She laughed back — a good sign she was ready to tame the mental beast of this one as well as the physical, after her first marathon had thrown her for a loop.
Now, real emergency. Real, real emergency. Horrific emergency. Do I have her mother’s phone number?
No.
The co-worker had come over, the Sox having wrapped up a win in very 2013 Sox fashion. Did you hear there was an explosion at the marathon?
No.
“Very 2013 fashion” — 2013 won’t be owned by anyone else now. It will be owned by singed blue and yellow, by the tattered streamers over the plaza I walked through Sunday. A mother from my church wanted to show her children the finish line. We walked down Boylston, past those shops. We saw them unfurl the flags. “Can you tell what countries they belong to?” I ask the children.
No.
I could tell Germany and Australia. I could tell South Africa. We stood in front of the finish line, looked up at the grandstands, pointed at the library. “Have you ever been inside there?” I asked.
No.
“It’s beautiful,” I say. “It’s like a European castle, with this big courtyard and these giant lions.” A library built to be the finest, to hold the finest, in a city built to be the finest, to hold the finest.
What I left out is that this entire area is one of my favorites, the beautiful church and the beautiful square and the beautiful Gothic light posts hanging out. I would have coffee over there so many times on my long, midweek days off as a sports freelancer. I went into Marathon Sports back there to help my runner roommate pick out racing clothes. I would walk this side of Boylston, that side, around the library and through the square, on my many trips from Park Street through the Back Bay to the Fens, all on foot. Boston is a walking city. Boston is a running city. Have you walked it?
No.
It’s spring now. We’ve started it twice and stopped it twice, our nice days engulfed by that tattered edge of April that won’t less us move on. Boston folk are used to the cold, the rain, the winter, but after the messy last few months, don’t tease. Spring should be here to stay.
On Monday, real spring was here, at least in the minds of much of Boston. Twitter flooded with Boston Marathon well-wishers, and I was clicking on things I never click on, caught in the spirit. I remembered working for the daily paper that covered Hopkinton, and the runner profiles we churned out in the weeks leading up. I remembered a pair of Stoneham citizens I interviewed who were running in memory of a brother. I remembered the feeling I get when I step out of the Cambridge YMCA on a cold day, with no coat and just shorts as the heat from my basketball playing fights off the cold. The runners would be feeling that way today, no matter what April threw at them. They would conquer it in mass, gliding on the asphalt, whether spring was ready to stay or not. Could it be any more perfect?
No.
And then it struck, the details that I didn’t want to try to put together as soon as I knew — just moments after it happened — that something horrible had happened. The historicity, the fact that it was my city, the stats and figures and explanations — I don’t want to know. I just want it to stop. Will it stop?
No.
There was crying on the phone with my mother, longer text messages to the brothers since we couldn’t get through to each other on the phone, and finally, jogging up the steps to my Cambridge home, where I opened the door, ran the length of the apartment, and hustled up the final set of stairs to see her there, real, in person. The roommate. There was a dinner of salmon and asparagus — what was supposed to be my little feast — that I made for her that night, that I made with delicacies I had bought at a ship-shape rate at a Boston institution, Haymarket, just two days before. There was lounging in front of the TV, watching 30 Rock, doing what you do when you don’t want to talk about it, read about it or hear about it anymore. Would it stop?
No.
She gave me her parents’ phone number. I gave her the number of mine.
I looked away from photos, knowing so many were so worse off than me.
I wandered back to my computer a few times, scrolling through Facebook to see how everyone was doing. A former colleague from the daily paper, with whom I had complained about marathon coverage many a time, was celebrating his first non-Marathon Monday at JFK Library (you know the rest). Friends from college had friends running Boston. Buddies from graduate school, and pals from my current life, all checked in. I had seen the pictures, the horrible pictures. So many people were hurt, so badly. Was anyone I knew hurt?
No.
And then it started. The outpouring. The boasts that Boston was different. The cheesy memes that said you don’t mess with Boston, with the mascots of its four main sports dressed for battle and staring down the camera. I smirked at that one. The earlier ones — the ones where we act like only in Boston would first responders rush to the scene so well, where something unique about us is what made this day different than just a tragedy — those were hard for me to believe. Really? Really, in the face of this, could we know such things? But this, this silly little picture, touched a nerve.
It was then that I realized what was so revolting about this whole thing. They attacked us — whoever this was — on Patriots Day, on our day to celebrate the incredible history this little city has had. They attacked us when the charity runners were going through, when the families were gathered together. They attacked us on our first day of spring, on our day to stick our noses up to the cold and say that we will have sunshine from now on. They attacked us in Boston, a city where the dirty looks and crankiness are so common and so us that a day outside its cynicism — albeit the kind of cynicism that only comes from chasing after excellence, and greatness, and worth — makes me long to be back in its safety. You think you can come in here on Patriots Day and take away spring and hope and promise?
No. Not in our city.
My friends were changing their profile pictures to the Boston skyline, but mine is already set on a cityscape of the Pru and the John Hancock Tower, shot straight down the Mass. Ave. bridge, with a sticker-covered pole framing the edge. That is my gateway, taken on a perfect spring day, as I walk the hundreds of Smoots into the city and hang a left on Boylston to trek wherever I can go. Are you going to mess with that? Are you going to mess with our city?
No.
Were you at the marathon? Are you OK?
I answered the text messages, but I don’t know what’s going on more than anyone out there. It was a day of turmoil for me, so much more than can be captured in scattered thoughts.
But humanism and Boston bravado aside, I know this. We live here because we all believe in something bigger than ourselves. You don’t come to Boston for a comfortable life, or to just paddle along in an OK career. You come here because you want to be something, to see something, to do something, to go somewhere.
That’s why we're cranky. It’s also why we run.
And wherever this goes, it’s also why we’re all getting up Tuesday, and looking to see what we can do to help, to heal, to move on and move forward. That’s what marathon runners do, after all.
We will clean our streets. We will lift our broken. We will shake our heads at the sources of it all.
But most of all, whatever our story of Marathon Monday 2013 is, we will know how to answer the questions.
Is Boston a city on a hill?
Is this nasty, unconscionable act going to be answered?
Will its people keep running?
Yes.
4.06.2013
Maybe Tonight
So maybe tonight I need baseball
Why does that feel so wrong?
Maybe tonight I need singing
And someone to help write the song.
Maybe tonight I need solace
Someone else for once to be strong
Maybe tonight I need color
To tell me it won't be long.
Why does that feel so wrong?
Maybe tonight I need singing
And someone to help write the song.
Maybe tonight I need solace
Someone else for once to be strong
Maybe tonight I need color
To tell me it won't be long.
3.31.2013
Preach Grace Until You Believe It: The 99.
The difference between Lucifer and Michael is attitude, and perspective, and choice. They both believe the same things, but one accepts that truth.
One of my Bible professors once used the metaphor of a man on a ship to explain grace. The man was on a cruise where fancy meals were served in beautiful dining rooms. But he, being poor, stayed down in steerage and ate moldy bread he had brought with him. Near the end of the trip, he found out that the nice meals were free of charge — they were included in the fare — and he’d been eating the moldy bread for no reason.
I hated that story for two reasons: One, that stinks. Two, I know what it’s like to eat the moldy bread — to miss out on God’s free grace — and I hate to hear about it. But I especially hate to be told that it is essentially my fault that I wasn’t upstairs. How was I supposed to know? When I tried to leave my bread and go up, why did I feel regret and turmoil?
And why, Bible professor, do your lessons about grace always make me feel so unwanted and unable to access said grace? Why do they make me feel that something in my power is what’s keeping me from going upstairs? Real grace is from a God Who comes into the galleys and pounds on the doors until we leave our mold and follow Him. But we are often taught instead that He is a captain holding His caviar aloft with a tiny fork, waiting for us to wake up and shaking His head when we don’t.
I have often waded through the guilt from this approach, and my conclusion now is that grace, for us, is less about grace and more about the mental and emotional hurdles that keep us from it. Whether we don’t believe it’s true, believe that we can’t have it, or believe that the God behind it actually wants something from us in a sinister way, we fight it. It’s not banquets or moldy bread — it’s childhood heartache, legalism, broken relationships, or the waste of the world. These things tell us that, even if grace is real, it’s not there for someone like us.
I’ve often heard Christians who come from works-oriented backgrounds (read: poor understandings of grace) say that they are “one of the 99.” This refers to the parable where Jesus leaves all else behind and chases one lost sheep. When that soul is found and returned, the rest of Heaven — presumably including the 99 — rejoice.
The bitter Christians say they are one of the 99 — one of the good ones who lived “correctly” and never got to see the real love and grace of God because they were minding their business and doing right while He chased the bad ones. They lament not being able to experience God fully, and that them being too spiritually aligned has ruined their relationship with God to some end.
But the catch here is that these types of people aren’t one of the 99. They can’t be.
The real 99 understand grace. The 99 are in love with God. The 99 are the ones who get it and can’t help but be thrilled when another comes over — because they know that they themselves didn’t climb to Heaven. They, too, were carried in at some point, just like No. 100 is being embraced on his or her way through the door.
These Christians who think they are “one of the 99" are likely far worse. Far from being right with God, they have the most polluted view of their Savior. They know what truth is, but their actions question the basics of Who God says He is.
They’re outside the fold, or down in the basement of the ship, and they’re not coming in or up. They’re focused on whatever grieves them so — whatever lifestyle they feel bound to live to “please God” — and, because they’re so focused, they have little chance of seeing the God waiting patiently behind them, or knocking on the door, or holding the giant billboard telling them that the only thing keeping them from grace is themselves.
That makes the faux 99 the most bitter of all, because not only are they outside of the grace, as they thought, but they’re not pleasing God via another route, as they thought, either. He doesn’t want whatever they’re doing. He wants them to have His grace. But they’re so handicapped that they misunderstand grace to the extent that they don’t even know how to accept it.
These 99 are actually the one — but they’re the one whose head is still in the brambles, whose Shepherd is still waiting.
The difference between the 99, and the one, and the ones who are yet to become the one, is just one thing: acceptance. Do you accept that grace is what God says it is — wonderful, free, waiting to be given — or do you insist on making it whatever you have twisted it to be? Do you hate it for the mangled ways you’ve seen it in your life, or do you choose to believe what God says it is?
The difference between Lucifer and Michael is not what both know to be true. They both know Who God is. They don’t argue with His love and mercy. The difference is that one accepts, and believes, and acquiesces to God’s will. The other will fight it and hate it forever, no matter how badly it ends. Grace requires only the submission of one’s will, but for some, that is too much.
What turns us from the sheep whose head is stuck in a bush, or a person stuck eating moldy bread, is the same. We so desperately want the right, but we’re so desperately twisted in our attempts that we must be stopped. We have to be kept from trying, through our efforts, to access grace. We must be prevented from bleating our views so loudly that we can’t hear God’s. We must be rescued, pulled away, by a loving God. We won’t ever know to go upstairs — or know that we’re living or merely toiling outside the fold — unless Someone literally saves us.
The moral of the story is not the stupidity of the sheep, or the haplessness of the sea traveler. It’s also not how much we don’t want to be the servant in the parable of the talents, who thinks badly of his master and hides the blessing he was given, even though he knows he should be a thankful, joyful go-getter. It’s not how much we’re the nine who walked away when only one came back to thank Christ, and it’s not how we’re eternally the older brother, either. These, again, focus on us, and how we have always felt inadequate to change our hearts.
The point is that, even if we’ve only once been these people (and we all have, a hundred times over), we have thus fulfilled the one requirement for grace. Christ didn’t come to save the perfect, and those of us who in some way think we have done any good, and especially enough good that we’re somehow out of the reach of God’s full grace — well, we are the most lost of all.
Whether it be someone who has never found God’s grace, or those who know it and call themselves Christians but feel that grace has evaded them on a daily level, we all stand to be rescued again.
Call yourself the Lucifer, and say you’re one of the 99. Stay downstairs, paralyzed by the supposed middle ground. Know you’re unthankful, and unknowing of what to do with God’s greatest gifts.
Then turn around. You are not in a catch-22. You are not living in a world of regret, where you could somehow keep yourself eating moldy bread and miss out on the banquet of God’s grace. You’re not the vengeful servant, and you’re not one of the nine that walked away.
Because, if you’ve turned and looked behind you, you’ll have done the one thing required to find grace. You’ll have stopped looking at yourself, and you’ll be looking at God instead. He is the point of all this, after all — not the sheep, not the passengers. Now, accept.
One of my Bible professors once used the metaphor of a man on a ship to explain grace. The man was on a cruise where fancy meals were served in beautiful dining rooms. But he, being poor, stayed down in steerage and ate moldy bread he had brought with him. Near the end of the trip, he found out that the nice meals were free of charge — they were included in the fare — and he’d been eating the moldy bread for no reason.
I hated that story for two reasons: One, that stinks. Two, I know what it’s like to eat the moldy bread — to miss out on God’s free grace — and I hate to hear about it. But I especially hate to be told that it is essentially my fault that I wasn’t upstairs. How was I supposed to know? When I tried to leave my bread and go up, why did I feel regret and turmoil?
And why, Bible professor, do your lessons about grace always make me feel so unwanted and unable to access said grace? Why do they make me feel that something in my power is what’s keeping me from going upstairs? Real grace is from a God Who comes into the galleys and pounds on the doors until we leave our mold and follow Him. But we are often taught instead that He is a captain holding His caviar aloft with a tiny fork, waiting for us to wake up and shaking His head when we don’t.
I have often waded through the guilt from this approach, and my conclusion now is that grace, for us, is less about grace and more about the mental and emotional hurdles that keep us from it. Whether we don’t believe it’s true, believe that we can’t have it, or believe that the God behind it actually wants something from us in a sinister way, we fight it. It’s not banquets or moldy bread — it’s childhood heartache, legalism, broken relationships, or the waste of the world. These things tell us that, even if grace is real, it’s not there for someone like us.
I’ve often heard Christians who come from works-oriented backgrounds (read: poor understandings of grace) say that they are “one of the 99.” This refers to the parable where Jesus leaves all else behind and chases one lost sheep. When that soul is found and returned, the rest of Heaven — presumably including the 99 — rejoice.
The bitter Christians say they are one of the 99 — one of the good ones who lived “correctly” and never got to see the real love and grace of God because they were minding their business and doing right while He chased the bad ones. They lament not being able to experience God fully, and that them being too spiritually aligned has ruined their relationship with God to some end.
But the catch here is that these types of people aren’t one of the 99. They can’t be.
The real 99 understand grace. The 99 are in love with God. The 99 are the ones who get it and can’t help but be thrilled when another comes over — because they know that they themselves didn’t climb to Heaven. They, too, were carried in at some point, just like No. 100 is being embraced on his or her way through the door.
These Christians who think they are “one of the 99" are likely far worse. Far from being right with God, they have the most polluted view of their Savior. They know what truth is, but their actions question the basics of Who God says He is.
They’re outside the fold, or down in the basement of the ship, and they’re not coming in or up. They’re focused on whatever grieves them so — whatever lifestyle they feel bound to live to “please God” — and, because they’re so focused, they have little chance of seeing the God waiting patiently behind them, or knocking on the door, or holding the giant billboard telling them that the only thing keeping them from grace is themselves.
That makes the faux 99 the most bitter of all, because not only are they outside of the grace, as they thought, but they’re not pleasing God via another route, as they thought, either. He doesn’t want whatever they’re doing. He wants them to have His grace. But they’re so handicapped that they misunderstand grace to the extent that they don’t even know how to accept it.
These 99 are actually the one — but they’re the one whose head is still in the brambles, whose Shepherd is still waiting.
The difference between the 99, and the one, and the ones who are yet to become the one, is just one thing: acceptance. Do you accept that grace is what God says it is — wonderful, free, waiting to be given — or do you insist on making it whatever you have twisted it to be? Do you hate it for the mangled ways you’ve seen it in your life, or do you choose to believe what God says it is?
The difference between Lucifer and Michael is not what both know to be true. They both know Who God is. They don’t argue with His love and mercy. The difference is that one accepts, and believes, and acquiesces to God’s will. The other will fight it and hate it forever, no matter how badly it ends. Grace requires only the submission of one’s will, but for some, that is too much.
What turns us from the sheep whose head is stuck in a bush, or a person stuck eating moldy bread, is the same. We so desperately want the right, but we’re so desperately twisted in our attempts that we must be stopped. We have to be kept from trying, through our efforts, to access grace. We must be prevented from bleating our views so loudly that we can’t hear God’s. We must be rescued, pulled away, by a loving God. We won’t ever know to go upstairs — or know that we’re living or merely toiling outside the fold — unless Someone literally saves us.
The moral of the story is not the stupidity of the sheep, or the haplessness of the sea traveler. It’s also not how much we don’t want to be the servant in the parable of the talents, who thinks badly of his master and hides the blessing he was given, even though he knows he should be a thankful, joyful go-getter. It’s not how much we’re the nine who walked away when only one came back to thank Christ, and it’s not how we’re eternally the older brother, either. These, again, focus on us, and how we have always felt inadequate to change our hearts.
The point is that, even if we’ve only once been these people (and we all have, a hundred times over), we have thus fulfilled the one requirement for grace. Christ didn’t come to save the perfect, and those of us who in some way think we have done any good, and especially enough good that we’re somehow out of the reach of God’s full grace — well, we are the most lost of all.
Whether it be someone who has never found God’s grace, or those who know it and call themselves Christians but feel that grace has evaded them on a daily level, we all stand to be rescued again.
Call yourself the Lucifer, and say you’re one of the 99. Stay downstairs, paralyzed by the supposed middle ground. Know you’re unthankful, and unknowing of what to do with God’s greatest gifts.
Then turn around. You are not in a catch-22. You are not living in a world of regret, where you could somehow keep yourself eating moldy bread and miss out on the banquet of God’s grace. You’re not the vengeful servant, and you’re not one of the nine that walked away.
Because, if you’ve turned and looked behind you, you’ll have done the one thing required to find grace. You’ll have stopped looking at yourself, and you’ll be looking at God instead. He is the point of all this, after all — not the sheep, not the passengers. Now, accept.
2.23.2013
Read This Stuff.
This is a great article on what makes a true team. This is a great article on what makes a true human (hint: It's about Michael Jordan). Both should be read, the sooner the better.
2.22.2013
Journalists are stellar complainers.
The old adage about journalism is that it's there "to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted." What it doesn't mention is that journalists are often afflicted (real or not), and of the few places they find true comfort, one is when they are griping about their problems with each other.
That's what made me smile the most when I read this article about the New York Times' editor, Jill Abramson, and this quote especially (she was asked what the biggest drag was of being the executive editor): "I don't get to complain anymore. It's just true. Some of the most delicious time that you spend as a journalist is like, complaining. At no times have I had fewer actual friends to gossip with, and kind of complain with, or at least commiserate with. That is a hard part of being the boss. Newsrooms are just full of cantankerous complaining people. It's so enjoyable to be part of that."
Well said, Ms. Abramson.
That's what made me smile the most when I read this article about the New York Times' editor, Jill Abramson, and this quote especially (she was asked what the biggest drag was of being the executive editor): "I don't get to complain anymore. It's just true. Some of the most delicious time that you spend as a journalist is like, complaining. At no times have I had fewer actual friends to gossip with, and kind of complain with, or at least commiserate with. That is a hard part of being the boss. Newsrooms are just full of cantankerous complaining people. It's so enjoyable to be part of that."
Well said, Ms. Abramson.
2.08.2013
Journalisms.
I found some fun stuff on Poynter today. First up we have the war journalist action figure. He's got a pretty serious camera and nice duds, but let's be honest -- no man worth his salt is taking a goatee into a war zone.
The other find is this lovely piece that explains why I no longer have a job as a copy editor. It includes this video, which I have embedded for your viewing pleasure. One note, though -- the animosity between reporters and copy editors (and day people and night people) isn't just a byproduct of a newsroom. It's the larger life case of people who do it right vs. people who don't, or two sets of people who do it right but don't communicate. Newspapers are just awesome places to see it get really bad before people combust.
The other find is this lovely piece that explains why I no longer have a job as a copy editor. It includes this video, which I have embedded for your viewing pleasure. One note, though -- the animosity between reporters and copy editors (and day people and night people) isn't just a byproduct of a newsroom. It's the larger life case of people who do it right vs. people who don't, or two sets of people who do it right but don't communicate. Newspapers are just awesome places to see it get really bad before people combust.
2.01.2013
The Limits of Ambition.
30 Rock ended tonight, and that demands 5,000 words and a copious amount of cheese. But I'm going to limit myself, because if 30 Rock taught us anything, it's that you don't have time to give everything its due, and what it really deserves.
30 Rock has been with me my entire adult life. I discovered the show when I was looking to kill some time the summer before I started graduate school in Boston, and I quickly became addicted while catching up in Season 2, watching a half-dozen episodes a night. It stayed with me through graduate school, where I struggled to unite my goals and hopes with the possibilities and prejudices before me, and it continued on until I entered the job world, which was even more depressing.
When 30 Rock really got into my soul, though, was when I began my time as a young professional. You could only smile every time you heard Liz Lemon say, "You really can have it all!" because that was the battle we all were fighting. Home, work, school, friends -- Liz showed me how to balance, how to fail, and how to really not let it bother you that you can't balance and that you fail, even when you still really care.
The amount of similarities between Liz and I is astounding -- as it is, I'm sure, for any 20-something girl. Liz and I both have a distinct German heritage, which made me especially enjoy those bits in the show, and we both have the same personality, meaning we both tend to have to work with people of another type of personality (the freaking Tracy Jordans of the world). Her family structure, workplace decisions, and hapless love life were also familiar. The only thing I always lacked was a Jack Donaghy, but now that I think of it, I think I do have a Jack in my life. It's either a blend of my brothers or that ambition demon that sits on my shoulder.
Ah, ambition. That's what it was all about, wasn't it? Wesley Morris wrote a great piece for Grantland on 30 Rock, and while he had many fine points about the overall show, and especially its implications on race and the larger TV culture, my favorite parts were when he revealed how the show so truly reinforced that it was a mockery of itself. Tina Fey is a great writer, and a great actor, and Alec Baldwin, the other stars of the show, and the writers behind it are all excellent. But in their excellence, they chose to glory not in what we could do if we could create our own perfect world, but rather to glory in how we create just something in a world that is never perfect.
Morris calls 30 Rock "a farce about the pragmatic limits of ambition," and he couldn't be more right. The show is all about ambition -- Jack's amibition, Liz's ambition, even the skewed ambition of the Tracys and Jennas and Kenneths. It's ambition not necessarily to be the best, or to claim some great something, but rather to take that untouchable thing you've always chased. Money and fame (Tracy and Jenna), happiness by triumph (Jack), or the perfect job and perfect world (Liz) -- it's all each person's desperate heave to get that thing, only to find that life doesn't allow it, or that you can't keep the other things you've gained (like people) when you're chasing that ambition.
As the great Conor Oberst says: Ambition is a loaded line. But we've all got it deep within us, even though it manifests differently in everyone. In 30 Rock, it played out in every life in varied ways, and in those ways, it showed a true amalgamation of real life.
The show's final episode tonight summed up the characters' pursuit perfectly, but it also did it in a way that was very 30 Rock. That is, it mocked the face of regular TV writing, made fun of culture, turned the tables, and threw curveballs. Yet, also in true 30 Rock spirit, it did not do it in a mean way, or to give a sense of loss. Instead, 30 Rock gave its supporters one final nod of the head to its true theme, that even amid the crap and everything not working out the way it should, good still happens.
That's the lesson of life, and the lesson of ambition if handled properly. Ambition is a demon if you can never tame it, but it's a joy when you can chase it and then settle for less, not feeling any loss in doing so. Liz long lamented that she couldn't actually "have it all," but when left with less than having it all, she discovered she had gained what she really wanted. Jack couldn't ever fulfill his ambition or find true happiness, but he discovered enough of himself that he finally found peace, which is what he was really looking for all along.
30 Rock fulfilled the John Lennon-bred cliche that life is what happens to while you're busy making other plans, but it did it in a way that affirmed that, if you pay attention to life as it's happening, even when you're chasing those other plans, you can have both the life and the hope for the future plans. You really can have it all.
Liz chased her dreams of a good show, and of having a family, and she never ended up with utopia. But she was able to discover richness in the pursuit, and to find at the end that she had what she was hoping for -- not a perfect family and a stress-free life, but a family, and a life. During her long, tiring road, she hated all the struggles with Tracy and battles to get things to just go right once. But she also loved her night cheese, and that funky middle-of-life area she got to live in for so long. When she finally reached her dreams, she knew she had to move on and take them, because that was what she had been aiming for all that time. But it didn't diminish that she knew she loved what she left behind, which is something that many people never pause to realize. They're too busy hoping to get to the next stage that the good parts of the struggle never show through.
The 30 Rock ending comes at a point where I'm transitioning from that blur of a life where everything is unbalanced and wrong to something that's starting to resemble the life I've imagined. Of course, it could all go up in smoke easily, but it looks as if I've left my 3 a.m. nights eating fat food in front of 30 Rock behind for good. I hated those nights so much, getting home all alone and knowing I wouldn't be able to see people the next day because they'd be working while I was free, and they'd be free while I was working. But I also loved those days, because there was a certain adventure to living that desperado life where I just had to make it happen all the time -- and then I got to go home, and be alone, and eat night cheese.
You hate it so much when you're going through it, and you know you want to -- and have to -- aspire to something more. But you also love it, because it's an excuse to not have everything perfect for a while, and to know that every crappy moment is preparing you for the time when things really will start to fall into place. Better yet, you're learning what you really do want, and ambition becomes less a tormenter and more of an impetus, a place to funnel ideas and then pick the one you decide you like after the hard slog, rather than being chained to wanting them all.
I'm going to look back on my Liz Lemon years knowing they clarified a lot of what I really wanted, and that they were fun in themselves even while adding up to what my future ended up being. But above that, I'm going to always love this time, and 30 Rock, for teaching me that ambition is not a foe. It's a tool -- a great, big, Jack Donaghy-acronymed tool whereby we strive and fall and slip and hold on and then see what matters.
Liz Lemon may be off the air, or teaching improv to senior citizens on cruise ships. But she's spawned more than that bespectacled granddaughter.
Her little children are running around Boston, further enthused and prepared to struggle for balance but loving it when it fails. Yes, Lemon: Blerg. We really can have it all.
30 Rock has been with me my entire adult life. I discovered the show when I was looking to kill some time the summer before I started graduate school in Boston, and I quickly became addicted while catching up in Season 2, watching a half-dozen episodes a night. It stayed with me through graduate school, where I struggled to unite my goals and hopes with the possibilities and prejudices before me, and it continued on until I entered the job world, which was even more depressing.
When 30 Rock really got into my soul, though, was when I began my time as a young professional. You could only smile every time you heard Liz Lemon say, "You really can have it all!" because that was the battle we all were fighting. Home, work, school, friends -- Liz showed me how to balance, how to fail, and how to really not let it bother you that you can't balance and that you fail, even when you still really care.
The amount of similarities between Liz and I is astounding -- as it is, I'm sure, for any 20-something girl. Liz and I both have a distinct German heritage, which made me especially enjoy those bits in the show, and we both have the same personality, meaning we both tend to have to work with people of another type of personality (the freaking Tracy Jordans of the world). Her family structure, workplace decisions, and hapless love life were also familiar. The only thing I always lacked was a Jack Donaghy, but now that I think of it, I think I do have a Jack in my life. It's either a blend of my brothers or that ambition demon that sits on my shoulder.
Ah, ambition. That's what it was all about, wasn't it? Wesley Morris wrote a great piece for Grantland on 30 Rock, and while he had many fine points about the overall show, and especially its implications on race and the larger TV culture, my favorite parts were when he revealed how the show so truly reinforced that it was a mockery of itself. Tina Fey is a great writer, and a great actor, and Alec Baldwin, the other stars of the show, and the writers behind it are all excellent. But in their excellence, they chose to glory not in what we could do if we could create our own perfect world, but rather to glory in how we create just something in a world that is never perfect.
Morris calls 30 Rock "a farce about the pragmatic limits of ambition," and he couldn't be more right. The show is all about ambition -- Jack's amibition, Liz's ambition, even the skewed ambition of the Tracys and Jennas and Kenneths. It's ambition not necessarily to be the best, or to claim some great something, but rather to take that untouchable thing you've always chased. Money and fame (Tracy and Jenna), happiness by triumph (Jack), or the perfect job and perfect world (Liz) -- it's all each person's desperate heave to get that thing, only to find that life doesn't allow it, or that you can't keep the other things you've gained (like people) when you're chasing that ambition.
As the great Conor Oberst says: Ambition is a loaded line. But we've all got it deep within us, even though it manifests differently in everyone. In 30 Rock, it played out in every life in varied ways, and in those ways, it showed a true amalgamation of real life.
The show's final episode tonight summed up the characters' pursuit perfectly, but it also did it in a way that was very 30 Rock. That is, it mocked the face of regular TV writing, made fun of culture, turned the tables, and threw curveballs. Yet, also in true 30 Rock spirit, it did not do it in a mean way, or to give a sense of loss. Instead, 30 Rock gave its supporters one final nod of the head to its true theme, that even amid the crap and everything not working out the way it should, good still happens.
That's the lesson of life, and the lesson of ambition if handled properly. Ambition is a demon if you can never tame it, but it's a joy when you can chase it and then settle for less, not feeling any loss in doing so. Liz long lamented that she couldn't actually "have it all," but when left with less than having it all, she discovered she had gained what she really wanted. Jack couldn't ever fulfill his ambition or find true happiness, but he discovered enough of himself that he finally found peace, which is what he was really looking for all along.
30 Rock fulfilled the John Lennon-bred cliche that life is what happens to while you're busy making other plans, but it did it in a way that affirmed that, if you pay attention to life as it's happening, even when you're chasing those other plans, you can have both the life and the hope for the future plans. You really can have it all.
Liz chased her dreams of a good show, and of having a family, and she never ended up with utopia. But she was able to discover richness in the pursuit, and to find at the end that she had what she was hoping for -- not a perfect family and a stress-free life, but a family, and a life. During her long, tiring road, she hated all the struggles with Tracy and battles to get things to just go right once. But she also loved her night cheese, and that funky middle-of-life area she got to live in for so long. When she finally reached her dreams, she knew she had to move on and take them, because that was what she had been aiming for all that time. But it didn't diminish that she knew she loved what she left behind, which is something that many people never pause to realize. They're too busy hoping to get to the next stage that the good parts of the struggle never show through.
The 30 Rock ending comes at a point where I'm transitioning from that blur of a life where everything is unbalanced and wrong to something that's starting to resemble the life I've imagined. Of course, it could all go up in smoke easily, but it looks as if I've left my 3 a.m. nights eating fat food in front of 30 Rock behind for good. I hated those nights so much, getting home all alone and knowing I wouldn't be able to see people the next day because they'd be working while I was free, and they'd be free while I was working. But I also loved those days, because there was a certain adventure to living that desperado life where I just had to make it happen all the time -- and then I got to go home, and be alone, and eat night cheese.
You hate it so much when you're going through it, and you know you want to -- and have to -- aspire to something more. But you also love it, because it's an excuse to not have everything perfect for a while, and to know that every crappy moment is preparing you for the time when things really will start to fall into place. Better yet, you're learning what you really do want, and ambition becomes less a tormenter and more of an impetus, a place to funnel ideas and then pick the one you decide you like after the hard slog, rather than being chained to wanting them all.
I'm going to look back on my Liz Lemon years knowing they clarified a lot of what I really wanted, and that they were fun in themselves even while adding up to what my future ended up being. But above that, I'm going to always love this time, and 30 Rock, for teaching me that ambition is not a foe. It's a tool -- a great, big, Jack Donaghy-acronymed tool whereby we strive and fall and slip and hold on and then see what matters.
Liz Lemon may be off the air, or teaching improv to senior citizens on cruise ships. But she's spawned more than that bespectacled granddaughter.
Her little children are running around Boston, further enthused and prepared to struggle for balance but loving it when it fails. Yes, Lemon: Blerg. We really can have it all.
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