Category: Soapbox

Dignity Dies Last.

Posted on by Pete Schloss

I came across some reflections I wrote while bicycling across the country in 2010 as a part of “Cycling for Change”. The memory of this one remains fresh in my mind:

Many of us have heard this speech a hundred times, “In the unlikely event that there is a loss of cabin pressure, a mask will fall from a compartment above you, and provide you with oxygen…”.

We take for granted that on a journey we will be provided with our basic necessities. Air, water, food, safety. Most of us never consider a couple of the other “necessities” that we also take for granted… hope and dignity.

Wednesday (June 2, 2010), the Cycling for Change Team was provided lunch at St. Leo’s Church soup kitchen in Seattle, Washington. St. Leo’s provides breakfast and lunch meals for between 800 and 1,100 people every day, 5 days a week! As one of the staff people explained, the numbers tend to go up at the end of the month when people find that they have run out of money.

Our visit was at the start of the month, but the lunchroom, in a large former school built in the early 20th century, appeared filled to capacity. As I walked through the door I was not prepared for the sight or the sudden emotional impact. It was as if I had experienced a “sudden loss of cabin pressure”. However, there was no mask within my reach. Before me was the “3-D” version of a post-apocalypse vision that we have all seen so many times in science fiction movies. A crush of vacant eyed people, soiled and many wearing what amounted to tatters. I was to dine shoulder to shoulder with the people that Seattle had forgotten.

I proceeded to the food line and was handed a brightly colored compartmented tray, the kind that you would expect to see in a grade school. There was a bowl for the soup, but no plates. My meal consisted of a slice of lunchmeat between two pieces of white bread, a bowl of chili-like soup, and a single chocolate chip cookie. A soup kitchen that serves a thousand people a day from donations does its best by making do with what it gets. The same applies to those who are served. There was coffee, hot and excellent by any standard.

I moved to one of the long cafeteria tables and found a vacant folding chair between two of the center’s customers. I ate and visited with my “companions”. I was beginning to feel a sense of accomplishment in embracing the experience when my eye was drawn to a man seated across from me a few seats to my left. I was wrenched back into the reality that for everyone but me this was not a diversion, not just “an experience”… this was reality and this was life. Again, there was a loss of “cabin pressure”.

The “oxygen” that was rarified in the atmosphere of the room was the loss of hope. Most of us have experienced a momentary loss of hope, but few who read this know what it means to be without hope, and without prospect of finding hope… true hopelessness. In the soup kitchen I could scan the tables and see a face here and there that bore the signs of a life yet with hope. A father with his young son, the boy looking up to dad with the hero worship that any father lives for. A man and a woman looking deeply into each other’s eyes, sharing grimy gap-toothed smiles between words and bites of their meals. But the man who had caught my attention was not one of these, there was no visible sign of hope with him.

What caught my attention was that he visited with no one. He sat solitary, ramrod straight, eyes forward. His hair was as neatly combed as hair could be that had not seen shampoo for many days. His stained and worn clothing would not have been suitable for donation to a second-hand store but was arranged with care. From his leather-like and wrinkled complexion, he looked to be in his 50’s, but I suspect the ravages of a life without shelter had aged him prematurely. He might have been 40. He ate slowly, with deliberation… with dignity. Everything about him screamed his dignity. He wore dignity like it was armor. The man grew in my sight and became larger than life. Whatever the cause of his condition, whatever the story behind a life rendered hopeless, he taught me that dignity may be given, and it may be cast aside, but it is never taken from one who chooses to keep it. Dignity dies last.

Peace Everyone. Pete

But is it Safe?

Posted on by Pete Schloss

dscn1199

We are nearing 3 weeks from departure for an “epic” (even by our standards) adventure to Europe. I will be posting more details soon, however a “highlight” is another walk on the Camino de Santiago Compostela. This time it will be the 150-mile-long Portuguese route from Porto to Santiago Spain.

I have been asked more than once, “Is it safe… aren’t you afraid of crime?”
Spain is a county with a population of nearly 47 million souls. In 2016 there were fewer than 300 homicides in the entire country. Metro Kansas City has a population of approximately 1 million people (2010 census). In 2017 there were 208 area homicides.

Sadly, compared to where we live, we feel pretty safe walking in Spain.

Peace Everyone. Pete

Hey Siri! Where Am I?

Posted on by Pete Schloss

This last weekend Christine and I were walking through the neighborhood, taking advantage of the Spring-like weather. This is an area of stately 100-year-old homes with towering oak trees. Periodically one encounters sections of sidewalk thrust out of level by massive subterranean tree roots. Ahead of us we saw a young mother with her 3 “little people” in tow. One of the children, perhaps 5, pushed an empty stroller that was likely intended for the 3-year-old who waddled along. The three children appeared to be stair steps in age. I estimated the middle child to be 4. Suddenly, the youngest stopped and squatted. Giving full attention to the bare black earth at the side of the walkway. He reached out and pointing, calling “Look!”. We were in time to see that the child had spied the earliest signs of sprouting flowers beginning to emerge from their Winter sleep. The siblings and mom were quickly engaged in the examination of Nature’s wonder.

The child lived in the moment. He saw, examined, marveled, and smiled. In turn, he caused his Mother and siblings to bring their focus to that moment, also examining, marveling and finally smiling. We stopped and smiled. Perhaps you are now smiling.

As children make their passage into adulthood they lose the gift of living in the moment… the skill of just being present. We who were once children spend most of our time distracted by our work, bills, goals, successes, and failures. We are slaves to the electronic devices that tear us from where we are, casting our minds into “the cloud”, the land of Google, and other far flung places. It is ironic that “smart-phone apps” obsessively want to know our location as they distract us from being there.

Being in the moment provides the kind of rich satisfying happiness that young children experience… happiness that is infectious. The distractions of adulthood are barriers that prevent us from seeing, examining, marveling, and smiling at the simple things that exist all around us. I have come to believe that everyday miracles exist. They just go unnoticed by all except the children.

Peace Everyone! Pete

Symbols of Marriage

Posted on by Pete Schloss

It comes as no surprise that I am a fan of the institution of marriage. Yet much of the first half of my professional life was spent helping people to end their marriages in litigation. The last 10 years of my career was largely dedicated to helping people end their marriages with dignity, preserving their joint roles as parents through Mediation. My motivation was the belief that children have only one opportunity to experience the joy of childhood. This opportunity can too easily be infected by the fallout of an angry and dysfunctional divorce. Through experience I have come to believe the following:

  1.  Marriage is permanent or impermanent as a matter of choice.
  2. Some marriages are toxic, notwithstanding the best efforts of one or both spouses.
  3. Some marriages fail because of a failure of effort on the part of the spouses.
  4. A child raised by divorced parents who have a well thought out and well executed parenting plan is better off than a child raised by parents fettered to one another in a bad marriage.
  5. Children learn the tools of parenting by the example of their parents. Bad relationship habits are trans-generational. An abused or abusive parent usually raises a child destined to be abused or abusive.
  6. Marriages most often fail along the fault lines of finance. The second most likely cause of failure is one partner’s belief that the other partner has the responsibility for happiness in the marriage. Failures in either or both of these two primary areas leads to the casting of blame upon the partner, disgust for the partner, and a sense of suffocating incarceration in the relationship.

There is more that 35+ years in the practice of law has revealed, but you get the point.

Early in my career I came to disagree with the most common symbol of marriage, that being two permanently interlocked circles. I found the symbolism flawed because marriage is not permanent. Also, marriage (good or bad) changes people. The symbolic circles retain their pre-joined shapes in spite of the reality that people flex and shape to accommodate the other person and the demands of their partnership.

I believe that a more appropriate symbol is that of two flexible intertwined loops that create a strong yet severable bond. The loops are not broken in order to be joined and need not be broken in order to be separated. They retain their basic nature but must change their shape in order to be joined and accommodate the shared connection. In addition to our wedding rings, my wife and I wear rings that I designed over 30 years ago. On the face of these rings, against the background of a Templar Cross, is this well-worn symbol that I believe more accurately reflects the cooperation, respect, and continuing commitment to the work of marriage.

Peace Everyone. Pete

God By Any Name

Posted on by Pete Schloss

God, Gott, Dieu, Yhwh… and Allah.

God by any other name is still Creator. To borrow further from Shakespeare, “Tis but thy name that is my enemy; Thou art thyself,…”

According to Genesis mythology God created the heavens and the earth, light and dark, the plants and animals, and then humanity in God’s image and likeness. God toiled for 6 days and then “rested” the 7th day. Perhaps a more accurate description is that God either retired or took a sabbatical because from that point forward humanity took up the task of creating. We created nations, language, and religions… religions that define god in our image and likeness. In my country most call the Creator “God”. My German paternal grandparents named the Creator Gott, and my Lebanese/Syrian maternal grandparents (who were Christians) prayed to Allah. “Allah” is not a word unique to a theology, it is merely the Arabic word for God and the Arabic language predates Islam by centuries.

Humanity created all that divides us and in our division we imagine that the Creator takes sides in wars, politics, and sporting events. We created rituals that we imagine are necessary to communicate and entreat with the gods that we created. If God is universal, all powerful, and all-knowing then I doubt that God is confused by the names that we choose or the manner by which we address or invoke God. I doubt that God favors one archaic ritual over another, one nation over another, one political party over another, or one baseball team over another.

If there is a Universal Creator (a topic for another time), then I pray that God comes out of retirement and begins work on the 8th day to create peace, love, understanding and respect among those God created on the 6th day.

Peace Everyone. Pete