Incredible...

With the Coronavirus dominating this space for the past couple of weeks I haven’t talked about how my friend is doing. I still talk with her every morning, still tell her stupid jokes, still try to keep her spirits up. Imagine for a moment how you would be handling this Coronavirus thing if you were weakened by cancer, recovering from a painful and invasive surgery, and worried sick about your hundreds of clients losing money in the stock market? Yeah...I can’t even...

So, a few days ago, she was understandably distraught. She has good days and bad ones like the rest of us, but her bad days are made so much worse by her weakened condition both physically and emotionally. She was telling me how she was feeling and she used a certain phrase that I had never heard from her. It’s sentiment startled me, alarming me like nothing she had ever said. So, as is my unfortunate tendency, I unleashed a stern rebuke:

“Listen to me carefully...YOU WILL NOT GET SICK AGAIN. I mean it. This may slow down your recovery, but you are not going backward over one stupid bear market caused by one lousy virus. I will not stand for it. Do you understand me? You have endured too much, conquered too much ground to turn back. I have had quite enough of cancer and so have you...so I don’t want to hear you say that ever again. Ok?? I don’t mean to be ugly about it...but I don’t want to hear that type of negativity from you. If you speak that way you open the door for it. You need to speak positive thoughts into your life. That’s what I have been doing for you for nine months now and for the most part you have been amazingly positive. Negative words and thoughts lead to negative outcomes.”

I immediately felt guilty for the tone of the remarks and apologized. She thanked me for my honesty and said she needed to hear it.

Fast forward to yesterday after the end of another brutal week of losses on Wall Street. It was around 5:00 in the afternoon and I was really down. This time it was my turn to let loose with a string of negative comments. Throughout this past month I have stayed relentlessly positive, not to offer false confidence to my clients but because its how I actually feel, what I actually believe in my heart—that this is a temporary setback and we will all recover and that recovery will be both swift and eventually—complete. But I’m also a human being and as such I am susceptible to despair. Yesterday was a low point and I couldn’t hide it from my perceptive friend. Her response to my negativity was breathtaking:

“I think sometimes someone needs to cheer the cheerleaders. You’ve been strong through all of this and I know the Lord will see us through. Our Lord knows what we are going through and for me its my third storm in 2 and a half years. Do you know what the Bible says to do when we face trials?...PRAISE him in ALL circumstances! Start praising God that he’s working all things out for good! I know its hard to do but I have to tell you I did it when I thought I was going to lose my daughter, I did it on days when the chemo was peeling the skin off my hands, I did it on the days when I was so sick and humiliated by the cancer I couldn’t even move. But, the Lord needs to know that you trust him no matter what. You and I and your clients know that we have no control over what has happened. So, put on some praise music and praise God through the storm! PS...I’m not fussing at you, I’m just telling you like it is. You can do this Doug! I’m an old fashioned woman and I believe the Bible. The mountaintop experiences are for our joy, but the valleys are for our maturing.”

That this woman who has endured such a grueling ordeal could say such things to me was astonishing. But her words steadied me. After all, if she can keep the faith, if she can find joy amidst this nightmare...we all can.

Ready For A Fight?

I’ve come a long way in a month.

There are a whole host of factors that contribute to the establishment of a world view. Education, training and experience are certainly three of them. Then there are the more subtle factors like personality, family, religion, how much and what you read etc..For me, all of these influences have produced a deeply ingrained suspicion of not only government but authority in general. To my parent’s eternal frustration I was the kid who questioned everything. I refused to accept their word for things, very seldom gave anyone in authority over me the benefit of the doubt. Gatekeepers of information were especially suspect. For me, Journalists weren’t people who reported on events but rather ideologues who pushed an agenda. Government officials weren’t civic minded public servants, but feather-bedding bureaucrats interested in nothing quite so much as self preservation and power. Enter the Coronavirus.

My initial reaction to COVID-19 news was annoyance. Here we go again, another media created frenzy...we’re all gonna die unless we revoke the Bill of Rights and give the federal government more power!! Then my instinctive biases took over...what the hell, it’s the stinkin’ FLU for crying out loud. where’s the fire??

My world view has benefited me in ways great and small. A healthy mistrust of government has proven throughout human history to be a quite rational and justified suspicion. Questioning authority has produced many of the most beneficial advances in human history. However, at times it can be an impediment to receiving and processing the truth. Since the early days of this crisis, I have voraciously consumed a wide variety of news from every source imaginable. As time has passed I have forsaken most news organizations entirely in favor of scientific and medical organizations. What I read there is much more boring, far less sensationalized, free from grandstanding and the competition for eyeballs and ratings. By doing so, my understanding of events, while not foolproof or by any means complete, has changed dramatically. I no longer dismiss the reality of what we are facing. The Coronavirus is a substantial threat to our country. The deaths that it will bring will be significant, the damage it will do to our economy and our own personal fortunes is considerable. 

But, there is a reason why I have not given myself over to despair. It’s another result of that world view thing. Here’s what I know about the world in general and America specifically. Human beings are a resilient bunch, and Americans are the most energetically inventive and creative people in the world. We have thousands of brilliant people working heroic amounts of hours trying to beat this thing back. Scientists, doctors, researchers and entrepreneurs are grinding away trying to get a grasp on it, figure it out and find a way to overcome it. They will. That’s what I’ve learned about my country in 62 years. We are an unholy mess during peace time, a nation of feuding tribes who spend most of the time at each other’s throats. But when existential threats appear, the ranks close quickly. Our collective attention gets focused on the threat and not on each other. And that’s when magical things start happening.

When the histories of the Coronavirus are written it’s going to be about that woman in the lab in Maryland who figured out X, and that guy from Detroit who did that amazing and gutsy thing that turned the tide. It’s going to be about the nurses and teachers, the garbage men and cops, the truck drivers, the pharmacists, the shelf-stockers. We will look back and marvel at the work done by churches and food banks, and the thousands of community organizations who held life together.  We will be amazed at the thousand kindnesses that passed between strangers. What the doomsayers predicted would destroy us is going to be remembered as perhaps one of our finest hours.

So, yes. I’m still suspicious of authority. I still distrust government. But I have chosen to put some of that aside in favor of being part of the solution...and part of the solution is using this blog to remind all of you of who we are. We are Americans...stubborn, self-obsessed and petty most of the time...but ferocious and heroic when cornered. We will beat this thing. We will win this fight. 

Count on it.

Counting Our Blessings

The Coronavirus has swiftly and dramatically altered daily life in America. An awful lot of wealth has been, at least temporarily, wiped out. People are growing more fearful by the day. However, not everything associated with this crisis is...bad. The answer to the eternal question, is the glass half empty or half full, depends on one’s perspective. To that end, I have compiled a short list of positives associated with this mess. Let’s all count our blessings for a moment:

- We have gone weeks now with practically no news about the Presidential campaigns.

- The U.S. Senate took a vote yesterday on a huge Coronavirus relief package and it passed 90-8. We haven’t seen this level of bi-partisan cooperation since the 100-0 vote to make Mother’s Day a thing.

- Traffic on West Broad Street in Short Pump is finally manageable. But in fairness, that’s because most of the cars are in the drive thru at Chick-fil-A.

- Bernie Sanders can shut down his campaign secure in the knowledge that there are far fewer billionaires in America now than when he started.

- If we get to the point where everyone 70 and older must shelter in place, would the last one leaving the Capital building turn out the lights?

- Sports gambling losses in America have plummeted.

- Hot Yoga classes have been cancelled throughout the Country, raising the cumulative IQ of the nation by ten points.

- The Meme business is booming.

- Gasoline has gotten cheap.

- Peloton owners have become even more smug and obnoxious than normal, proving that literally anything is possible.

- We are all about to discover the truth of our Lord and Savior’s words from the Gospel of Luke that, “A man’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”

- This will be remembered as the Golden Age of Dogs.

This Ain’t The Blitz...

Apparently there is something called Google Hangout which allows you to have a video conference call with multiple parties. I’m sure there are other similar services out there in the amazing world of technology. But leave it to my wife to find one that not only works like a glitch-free charm, but is FREE. Anyway, there we were last night, Pam downstairs on the sofa, me upstairs in my recliner, with all four of my kids and both of my Grandpups appearing like magic on my iPad screen. We talked and laughed and shared our concerns about this stupid virus for over an hour. Occasionally one of the pups would do something adorable on screen and we would all laugh. We each shared our concerns about working from home and potentially being locked down. We talked about food supply, money issues, etc. Pam and I got to see their faces, a huge relief for both of us. And it costs us nothing.

Listen folks, as disturbing as all of this is, lets be clear...this ain’t the Blitz, people. This isn’t London in 1940. We’re not hunkered down in bomb shelters praying that our number doesn’t come up. This isn’t Europe in the Middle Ages when the Black Death swept thru and killed 50 million people, six out every ten people. Heck, this isn’t even the Spanish Flu of 1918 which not only killed untold millions but diabolically targeted the young. I am not minimizing anything. This COVID-19 thing is a deadly serious public health crisis. But we have tools to help us get through the inconvenience and isolation of the remedy in ways that our ancestors couldn’t possibly have imagined. It is, despite the current evidence, a marvelous time to be alive.

Speaking of things that are marvelous...

Apparently in Germany panic buying of sausage and cheese has broke out...

It's the Wurst Käse scenario.

COVID spelled backwards is DIVOC.

Which is appropriate since I have no idea what DIVOC is going on.

Everywhere I look on the internet there are memes with word play about the Coronavirus.

It’s a global pundemic.

I just landed a small part in a new movie about the Coronavirus.

I’m a Corona extra.

Did you guys here about the Mosque here in Richmond that got hit with the Coronavirus?

The entire congregation has been placed in a Qurantine...

What’s Your Story Going To Be?

In his famous book, Leviathan, Thomas Hobbes observed that life for men in the state of nature was “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” Perhaps no writer in the English language has ever penned a more accurate description of what life was like for the typical person for the vast majority of human history. “No arts; no letters; no society; and worst of all, the continual fear of violent death.”

In our time, life has taken on a much calmer aspect, at least for most of us in the West. We live longer, fuller, happier lives than our ancestors could ever have dreamed possible. But, just when we are at the peak of our opulent and arrogant leisure, along comes a hurricane or a line of tornados as a reminder of how powerless we are against the forces of nature. And now the Coronavirus arrives on the scene of our brave new sheltered life and we are momentarily disoriented. It knocks us off of our high horse. In time, and I believe soon, we will once again find our bearings and be on our way. But, just for a minute, while we are down on the ground, let’s take a good look at ourselves and take inventory.

My dad observed that hard times don’t build character, they reveal it. At crunch time, what’s down in the well, always comes up in the bucket, he would insist. My dad was a wise man.

It would do us all well to consider that our kids are watching us right now. Younger generations are looking to the grownups for cues on how to react to the unprecedented. One day, our grandchildren will want to know what it was like to live through the great pandemic, or whatever name the historians will assign to COVID-19. They will ask us what we did. What will we tell them?

Will we tell them that we spent our time mocking those who took it seriously enough to take precautions? Will we have to admit that we were too busy going on vacations and publishing pictures of our carefree frolicking in an attempt to shame our more cautious friends? Or will we have to tell the embarrassing story of the trips to the grocery store where we bought a pickup truck full of toilet paper and hand sanitizer? Will we be one of those who have to admit that we gave in to our greed and jacked up the price of some scarce commodity to make a fast buck? Will we have to tell our grandchildren that at the time we were so addled by partisan politics that all we cared about was how the crisis was affecting our side, rendering us useless to our neighbors.

But, make no mistake...history will judge us. What I hope I am able to tell my grandchildren (whenever I finally have some!) is that I kept my wits about me. I showed up for work, did my job under difficult conditions with vigor and confidence. I looked out for my neighbor, took special care of the vulnerable. I helped people stay focused on what was important, not be terrified into mistakes great and small. I kept my sense of humor about me, refused to lose heart, refused to give myself over to undue pessimism and despair. I kept the jokes coming.

The kids are watching us. Let’s create a great story to tell.

Thoughts That Came at 3:30 in the Morning

“We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed.”

2 Corinthians 4:8-9

Move forward. Keep your head up. Work with diligence the task set before you. Look out for the needs of others, not just yourself. Attack this day with the steadfast confidence that comes from faith in God and faith in each other. Banish inordinate fear from your heart. Today...this day...is what we have all been given. Let’s make the best of it.

The Assembly

My church, along with many others, made the decision to cancel services today. Instead of four separate meetings with over 700 people crammed into one auditorium, they will have one service at 9:30 which will be live-streamed with only essential personnel in the building. I believe this was wise and proper, and I will be watching, but...I will miss the assembly, the gathering, being together.

The early Christians warned us not to forsake the assembly. There have been times in my life when practically any excuse to skip church was sufficient. But as I have gotten older, and especially since Pam and I found Hope Church, it has become the highlight of our week. There is something reassuring about being together under one roof and for one purpose at a vibrant church. It’s unique in that every other meeting I attend is comprised of largely similar constituencies; investors, businessmen, brokers, advisors. But when I gather together with 700 people at the eleven o’clock service at my church, its a smorgasbord of diverse people from every background, socio-economic class, and life experience you can imagine. Honestly, the vast majority of them I don’t even know, couldn’t tell you their names if my life depended on it. In a church the size of Hope this is unavoidable. On any given Sunday Pam and I will know maybe forty people. But as I glance around the room there are flickers of recognition and camaraderie. I recognize that face. We smile at each other. Something warm is exchanged from across the room. 

When we all stand for worship and the music begins, we are all asked to leave behind the cares of the week—and this week there would have been much to leave behind—and give over our attention to prayer and the worship of God. Of the 700 people in the room many would prefer different music from what is provided. Others love the music just the way it is. But once it begins and we hear each other’s voices ringing out as one it doesn’t matter so much any more. We are reassured by the lyrics, uplifted by the melodies, reminded that all over the world at this hour hundreds of millions of voices are being raised for the same purpose. It grounds you in the moment and suddenly the burdens you entered the room with begin to lighten. We are in this together. Some lift their hands, some sway back and forth, others are solemn and still, heads bowed eyes closed, but there is freedom in this moment.

Then, the pastor shares the message, long planned, tenderly prepared, and we all hear the same words and we all respond differently. To some of us the message will be soothing. Others might take offense, still others will feel that they are the only ones in the room and the pastor’s words are meant just for them. Some will feel the discomfort of conviction, others will find hope and reassurance. Such is the complex group dynamics at play when we come together in the assembly. I will miss it. I will tune in to the live-stream and be thankful that we have the technology to do so, but I will miss the gathering together, the smiles from across the room, the delightfully discordant mixture of the corporate voice raised. Maybe next week or the week after that we will be back together. I hope so.