Call Me a Sap

Call me a sap, but I have to admit that on this morning’s drive from the polling place to grab a free cup of coffee at Starbucks, I got teary. Who would have thought that the simple act of voting could result in a free cup of joe?

Okay, so some of the tears were coffee anticipation, but most of the rest had to do with the act of voting. I’ve done it many times before, of course, but something about this time got to me.

I reflected on the conversations I've had with family, friends, and coworkers over the last six years – uh, I mean, year and a half – of this historic presidential campaign. Some people, including me, are actually pinning hopes on the outcome of this thing. Waiting in line for hours has heretofore been reserved for rock concert tickets or those wild day-after-Thanksgiving electronics sales. When people are willing to spend two, three, five hours waiting in line to vote, something is up. Perhaps they believe that change really is possible.

I thought about folks in Chile and Indonesia whom I count among my friends thanks to church-to-church relationships. When I visited Chile in early November 2002, four years ago next week, the first question asked by people I met, even those I was meeting for the first time, was, “Who did you vote for?” Church leaders in Indonesia pay close attention to how we talk about Muslims and the ways in which our nation relates to nations like theirs. Our sisters and brothers around the globe care deeply about what happens in our elections. Their daily lives will be changed by the results of our vote.

I rehearsed the promise and poop of the seemingly endless campaign process we endured to get here: The accusations, the mudslinging, the half-truths told about others, the cavalier crimping of truth in service to self-interest…and the hope, the vision of a world (local and global) in peace, hands joined to address poverty, feed children, care for the earth and for one another. In the midst of it all, the stark truth stands that by tomorrow morning, however this election turns out, standing on the shoulders of so many who gave so much before us, together and despite ourselves we will have whacked cracks in all sorts of ceilings, glass and otherwise.

And I thought about what lies ahead. I was teary-eyed, not starry-eyed. There is still so much work to do and so much to overcome. As the hobbit Frodo (and others before him) sang, “The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began.” Some other theologian somewhere some time said something about the call to rise from our knees to become the answer to our prayers. The mist in my eyes between the polling place and the Starbucks this morning also twinkled with the realization that the vote I cast today wasn’t the end of the campaign after all. The work is just beginning and the question is, “For the sake of the world in which I live, how am I going to be what I voted?”

The Reign of God is Like a Cat that Went Missing

My family and I recently returned home from four days away to discover no food eaten, water dishes full, and our home eerily bereft of the warm orange presence of our beloved feline, Nacho. We quickly looked through every room, every closet, every corner, flung open every door, calling her name and clucking. All we found was a growing communal collection of self-recrimination, fear, and despair. “She must have escaped when we were packing the car,” we finally concluded. She had already been gone, outside, on her own, exposed to the elements, for four days.

The search quickly moved outside. We called into the night, flickered light through thickets, and listened for that familiar meow on the wind. Each of us made our way around the house, scanning the bushes, calling her name. And then we did it again. We walked around the neighborhood, calling, searching, desperately hoping. And then we did it again. At one point, I heard rustling in the bushes along a pond when I clucked and cooed, “Nacho." I ran home for a flashlight, but whatever had rustled was gone, silent, unfound.

No Nacho.

We left the outside lights on that night. My wife held vigil downstairs, near the door to our deck where Nacho loves to lay in the sun and watch birds at our feeders. None of us slept well. And Nacho didn't come home.

Day after day, the search continued from inside the house and around the neighborhood. We wandered the streets again and again, day after day, looking, hoping. Every time one of us passed the front door or the back from inside the house our gaze lingered at a window in hope of seeing the familiar eyes begging for admission. We left the door lights on every night and, each in unspoken turn, rose in the middle of the night in hope of spotting those cat eyes in the night. Even our dogs, Koda and Karley, wandered through the house, scanning under sofas and sniffing open doors in hope of finding their oft harassed chasee.

But no Nacho appeared.

At dinner we told stories about the cute stuff Nacho did, recounting the more than nine years she had been a constant presence for us. Our daughter began to carry a crumpled photo of Nacho in her school backpack. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the photos of that beloved feline scrolling though the digital frame on my office desk. We even dragged some coworkers and friends into our grief. They listened empathetically, offered to pray (even to St. Anthony), and sat with us in sad silence. They shared our emotional burden, felt the loss, kept proclaiming hope. “You know cats! I just bet she’s going to show up soon.” There was comfort and not a little hope in the arms of this community, but I couldn’t keep my mind off coyotes and cold and pelting rain and the deep darkness of night.

Finally, on the eighth day of Nacho’s absence, a trip to the humane society, that great gatherer of lost pets and strays, did us in. So many cats looked like Nacho, but were not Nacho. Heavy finality wafted the silent car toward home.

That same eighth evening the telephone rang, an unknown caller interrupted a tearful dinner. “Are you missing an orange tabby cat named Nacho?” Stunned disbelief and wavering hope quivered from my wife: “Is she okay?” We stared at Janet's eyes, listened for some betraying tone in her voice. “She’s thin, but looks quite good,” she repeated for us. “They found her in their driveway when they opened their garage door just now. They live around the corner and are bringing her to us.”

Good news! Wild welcome! What was lost coming home in the loving arms of a stranger! Even the dogs seemed excited to have Nacho home, sniffing and looking at Nacho, nuzzling each other as if to say, "Do you see? Can you believe it?"

Of course, Nacho is a cat. Already, days after her unexpected return, she reminds us that her presence in our midst is on her terms, not ours. But we’re keeping a close eye on her. When she’s absent from the room, we go looking for her. Inevitably, we find her in favorite spots, resting, purring, greeting with a meow. And I, for my part, can’t keep my hands off her. In the evening I stretch my legs from a comfy chair to its ottoman in hope that Nacho will sense a welcome. Most of the time she obliges and settles in lengthwise like she used to, before she went missing. But now, I kid you not, her fur seems softer, her purr deeper, and those big orange eyes glimmer like gold.

The reign of God is, indeed, like a cat that went missing.