This Was Fun.

This year’s usual holiday party conversational gambit went something like this; "So Peter, what are you going to do now that you are off of city council?" "Did you enjoy it?" "Will you miss it?"

This was fun.

My sixteen years on the West Lafayette City Council, my eight years as President, were fun.

Admittedly, that's not what is usually said at the end of a political career; even a minor one. I am supposed to say something about the rewards of public service, salute my colleagues, and praise my constituents. Consider it done.

But this was fun. That’s a surprise.

Professionally, my “day job” was as a mainline Protestant minister. That is not a growth industry. It uses a language of contraction, of diminution, and tries to make that failure praiseworthy. When a group gets smaller, it gets more idiosyncratic.

These sixteen years in city government were all about expansion, achievement. New institutions, new people, new geography were drawn into a conversation about our public life. That’s energizing. That’s fun.

I sat through months of land use planning for New Chauncey (my council district) and for the Levee district next door. Along the way I could say “let’s not put an apartment there”.  Then, okay, we won’t. I could say “let’s put that road there”; and then we put it there.

 Amazing.

 

I spent four years pushing historic preservation forward in West Lafayette. For ten years now we have protected historic homes and civic places. We have preserved our architecture, but even better we have preserved the memory of a time when the university was not a business or an industry, but a mentoring community. Faculty and students once lived together for the betterment of each other and Indiana society.

This makes a better sermon on campus ministry than any I ever preached in church.

 

I moved the city environmental commission out of the mayor’s office and in to city ordinance. There are car chargers out front at city hall now, and a sustainability officer at the water reclamation plant. Huge, expensive underground reservoirs keep dung and muck out of the Wabash River.

 Huh. How about that?

I felt like I won an election myself this November when three women I helped recruit were elected to city council. I like this next generation. This feels like success.

 

All the while these past years people like Mayor John Dennis (Katy is still trying to figure out what he meant when he told me at his council send-off  “I love you man!”) and the Development Director of our “Eagleton”, Erik Carlson, were optimistic, affable; funny. Successful." Look what you did", I said. No, they said; “Look what we did.”

Nice.

This was fun. Emotionally, I needed this.

To our new Madam Mayor and this new, young council, I hope you have fun too.

 

 

Next Person Up

 

No, I’m not running for West Lafayette City Council this year.

There; I didn’t step on the lead!

I have been serving West Lafayette’s Second District for the last 16 years. For half of that time I have served as President of city council.

I have made the case, successfully I think, that a multi-class, multi-generational, near campus neighborhood is worth preserving in a college town. Older homes on smaller urban lots should allow first time home buyers, even those who come here without a pricey contract in a STEM field, a way into our housing market, and so a way into the services this special community provides. This in spite of the challenges we face from those who see houses not as homes but as commodities.

A near campus neighborhood also serves as a reminder that before the university was a corporation, it was a community. I am proud of the residential land use plan that was developed by the APC for New Chauncey. I am glad that the city’s story will be preserved because of the historic preservation ordinance I authored.

 It’s really been fun.

The city’s growth over these last four terms has been exciting. My professional career was lived as a mainline Protestant minister. That’s not a growth industry. Personally, it has been wonderful to be involved in projects filled with optimism, power, hope.

But John Dennis is leaving.

In a parking lot conversation this past year the mayor said, “You know why you and I have managed to get along all this time? We’re both irreverent.” I think he was right; though if “irreverent” were a race John would probably have lapped me. Even more colorful in private than he was in public, the mayor could look out his window in Margerum City Hall (a great name) and be honestly astonished at what this community has become. I liked his style. Also, John didn’t veto my most important stuff. Phew.

I think it’s a good place for me to stop too.

I don’t believe government should be a gerontocracy. (My apologies to Joe Biden and Mitch Daniels.)

I could serve the people of my district well for the next four years. But if I could find someone who could do this work energetically for the next 8, or 12, or 16 years, that would be better. I did this thing.

There should be someone who can do the next thing.

My wife and kids worry that I’ll be sad if I can’t feel important. Oh, probably a little. I also got our council salaries up; I think I’ll miss the extra cash.

But here’s a story. A few weeks ago my one year old grandson and I were bonding over a great game of “swap the pacifier”. I pulled his “paci” out of his mouth, he pulled my “paci” out of my mouth, laughed, and put it in his and I put his in mine. I pulled his “paci” out of his mouth, he pulled my “paci” out of my mouth, laughed, and put it in his and I put his in mine. Or sometimes he threw it over the back of the couch and laughed hysterically as I retrieved it.

 As I was going out the door he looked at me, and his eyes lit up, and he smiled, and he started, enthusiastically, out loud, to go over his list of important people names.“DADA”. . . . “MAMA”. . .   “NANA” (that’s his sister).  So, I think he was saying, “look gramps, I don’t quite have a name for you yet, but I am sure you belong in this tight little group of people who mean something good to me. Let’s do this again.” That made me feel very important. I wanted to slap him on the back and buy him a beer.

Katy and I don’t anticipate moving anywhere; not with one daughter in Indianapolis and the other in Chicago. We are still sure to have our opinions about how the place is being run. But as a retired couple, we won’t have to go to all those meetings. I’ll be interested to see what the folks half my age do.

Katy Retires !

On December 7th., after 14 years as the head of the Food Finder’s Food Bank, Katy O’Malley Bunder is retiring.

 

I’m sure somebody on her staff has put together a list of Katy’s accomplishments over these past years. Food Finders has moved from a warehouse on the edge of town convenient only for truckers, to three buildings in the center of town (including a grocery store!) convenient to the food bank’s clients. The food bank has moved from distributing two million pounds of food to distributing 13.8 million lbs. of food. It has grown from nine employees to thirty-three. Food Finders has increased its capital assets from 2 million to 8 million dollars. Katy even managed 30 members of the National Guard for seven months during the covid pandemic.

 

The profile of the food bank has risen in the community.

 

Katy has done all that while steering between the ideological left which would ice its cake with a focus on an ”equity lens” rather than on food distribution, and the ideological right which sees the poor as evil, an uncomfortable critique of their religious belief in self-reliance and in the infallibility of capitalism.

 

As she retires, I have three reflections to share on my bright, beautiful wife’s work both as head of New Chauncey Housing Incorporated for nine years and as the CEO and President of Food Finders.

 

First, “hurray”! Or some other yell of approbation. . . . I’m glad for her and us.

 

Second, I don’t think Katy has ever gotten the respect she deserves.

 

If a middle-aged white male had achieved the entrepreneurial successes that Katy has, state Republicans would be running him for office.

 

But there is the presumption that poor relief is a scam; something like the panhandlers at an intersection. There is no need. Doing good is seen as silly or naïve.

 

There is also a price to be paid for being a woman; all those microaggressions based on the assumption that a “little lady” can’t possibly know what she’s doing, in spite of her record. There is a price to be paid for being nice.

 

There is a price to be paid for proposing anything new. Imagination is not always seen as a virtue. It is better to just shoot at your feet rather than help. There is always something wrong or dangerous or expensive or judgmental about “new”.

 

Nevertheless, she persisted.¹

 

Nevertheless, she succeeded. Though the years of dealing with all the sadness that comes with a commitment to the poor have taken their toll.

 

Third, to all of you, just don’t break it.  At West Lafayette city hall, given the mayor’s illness, that’s become a mantra. Just don’t break it. Though I think John has put it more colorfully from time to time; “we’ve already done all the hard work, just don’t let them f--- it up.”

 

You have experienced a period of remarkable institutional achievement.

 

Just don’t break it.  Okay, Food Finder’s is quite a contraption. Things will fall off and then be glued back on.  Sections will be repaired or replaced. You will do new things. Just don’t stop caring about poor people. Look at that line. Just don’t stop forcing a conversation about why people are in that line; keep asking “why”. Shorten that line.

 

Finally, Feeding America recently sent Katy a framed poem by Marge Piercy entitled “To Be of Use” as a parting gift.

 

These are the final two lines:

 

“The pitcher cries for water to carry

And a person for work that is real”

 

Katy really found something to do.

 

Congratulations to her.

 

Do listen to Katy talk about her work at Food Finders in her own words. This is from the interview she did on the occasion of her “Salute to Women” Award.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACD62tEuZPI

 

 

¹ “She had appeared to violate the rule. She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted.”  - Senator Mitch McConnell silencing Senator Elizabeth Warren. 2/7/2017

 

Slow Fade - Retirement Year Three

 

The sign itself is more than a dozen years old. 

In 2006, the Episcopal Church, in a burst of energy, took over the old Church of Christ Scientist south of the West Lafayette high school. Dr. Jack Kelley decided we needed a presence at both ends of Good Shepherd's new street. So Jack went ahead and ordered two "Welcome" signs for the busy intersections of Meridian & Grant and Meridian & Northwestern. Today they look shabby.

The Lambeth Conference is taking place in England. A decennial assembly of bishops of the Anglican Communion, it was postponed by Covid from 2018. Lambeth started talking about sex in 1998. It is still talking about sex.

The Episcopal Church held its General Convention this summer in Baltimore. I have no idea what it did. I expect I would agree with whatever it did. But the news from the convention is that there is no news from the convention.

The Episcopal Diocese of Indianapolis left the Interchurch Center near Butler University to rent office space in downtown Indianapolis from Christ Church Cathedral. I am sure both parties benefited from the contraction. Our cathedral is next door to another iconic memorial, Monument Circle.

I wonder, three years out from my retirement (my last Sunday service at Good Shepherd was August 4, 2019) why this fade doesn't bother me more. It does bother me; it concerns me about as much as the Chicago White Sox's once promising team fading to .500 this season. Was it the injuries? Is Tony LaRussa too old to manage?

Part of the shrug is my being disappointed by the diocese at the end of my professional career. That ended any meaningful allegiance to the local institution. Another is the lack of political energy the church seems able to muster in the face of the rise of Christian nationalism. Without it, the church becomes a hobby, a therapy, a performance. Their righteous Jesus claims to save babies and runs for school board. Our non-binary Jesus is working on "they/them" pronouns and self-care. Which is nice; but then what? We leave 'tikkum olam", the repair of the world, to Jewish Democrats.

The Meridian St. signs are an embarrassment. They are public facing. They are faded. They are bent. They are metaphor. They point to a lack of energy or awareness in the church, as well as to a building down the street. Whatever.

 

 

Happy Fortieth Anniversary To Us !

"Whoever you are now, I place my hand upon you, that you be my poem. 

I whisper with my lips close to your ear . . . I love none better than you"

 

- To You

   Walt Whitman 

 

 

Randolph-Macon Woman's College-1980

Pretty cute, huh? 

 

Katy and I met because her sister Mary was a good Roman Catholic. That, and the Holy Cross Lynchburg rectory had a basement big enough to store student belongings over the summer. The rest is a really romantic story more than forty years long.

 

Bunder Home - June 26, 1982

 

If you'd like something salacious, something that could go between the glossy covers of romance fiction, I could tell it to you that way. If you prefer a lecture on cognitive restructuring, those are in print. 

 

" -Who wields a poem huger than the grave?

from only Whom shall time no refuge keep

though all the weird worlds must be opened?

)Love"

but if the living dance upon dead minds

ee cummings

Lexington, VA  Maury River 1983

But it's poetry really. All the intimacies of forty years. Magical. Silly. Remarkable. Desirable. Predictable. Unpleasant and unwelcome. Irretrievable. Comfortable. Spiritual. Kids. Grand-kids. If you put it out there like a history, it starts to seem a little common. Ordinary, with a few interesting and juicy bits, but still common. It feels better as a poem.

  

I sent this to Katy a long time ago and she said we should reread it on our 38th. anniversary.

 

 "Two lovers by a moss-frown spring:

They leaned soft cheeks together there,

Mingled the dark and sunny hair,

And heard the wooing thrushes sing.

O budding time !

O love's blest prime !

Two wedded from the portal stept:

The bells made happy carollings,

The air was soft as fanning wings,

White petals on the pathway slept.

O pure-eyed bride !

O tender pride !

Two faces o'er a cradle bent:

Two hands above the head were locked;

These pressed each other while they rocked,

Those watched a life that love had sent.

O solemn hour !

O hidden power !

Two parents by the evening fire:

The red light fell about their knees

On heads that rose by slow degrees

Like buds upon the lily spire.

O patient life !

O tender strife !

The two still sat together there,

The red shone about their knees;

But all the heads by slow degrees

Had gone and left that lonely pair.

O voyage fast !

O vanished past !

The red light shone upon the floor

And made the space between them wide:

They draw their chairs up side by side.

Their pale cheeks joined and said, "Once more !"

O memories !

O past that is !

Sweethearts Always 

George Eliot

Family Portrait 1988

I kept trying to work this song into my daughters wedding playlists. I don't think it ever made it. As an acknowledgment of the thought though, they took me to a "Florence and the Machine" concert on Northerly Island once on my birthday.

 

"This fantasy, this fallacy, this stumbling stone

Echoes in a city that's long overgrown

Your heart is the only place that I call home

Can I be returned? You can.

You can. We can. 

 

Just keep following 

The heartlines on your hand 

Just keep following 

The heartlines on your hand 

 

Keep it up. I know you can.  

Just keep following

The heartlines on your hand 

 

What a thing to do

What a thing to choose

But know, in some way, I'm there with you

Up against the wall on a Wednesday afternoon. 

Just keep following 

The heartlines on your hand 

Just keep following 

The heartlines on your hand 

Keep it up. I know you can.  

Just keep following

The heartlines on your hand 

'Cause I am."

 

Heartlines

- Florence Welch/Paul Epworth

Town & Gown - Mother's Day 2022

Pretty cute, huh?

Welcome Meredith !

 

 

My eldest daughter, Molly, has our newest grandchild, Meredith. Meredith Emily Palmer (5lbs 9oz) was born on March 16th. That was about a month early. Though as you can tell from the photo above, she's caught up! "Hey, did you know you can see EVERYTHING when you lift your head up?"

 

 She fits right in.

 

 

 

Rowan, Meredith, and Wilson

 

Poor Rowan never got her own blog post. I was still busy writing sermons when she was born.

 

But what I would say to Meredith applies to both my granddaughters. I have absolutely no anxiety about how your life will run. Only wonder. Your grandmother is beautiful and bright and talented; a woman of distinction ! Her daughters, your mothers, share those traits. So you will be well loved, well educated, and allowed a creativity that is increasingly sublimated in our culture to a desire for security and an expectation of production. That's lucky!

(Now, if you become accountants, that's okay too. Maybe you'll have cool hobbies :)

 

Molly apparently caught Andrew whispering to his baby daughter that she shouldn't worry about doing anything too practical with her life.

Amen.

Hi Wilson !

I have a grandson.

By now most of you know that Wilson Reid Gilhooly was born on November 15th. to my daughter Emily and her husband Matt. Here Wilson is figuring out how to use eyeballs.

This is the first male baby and family member I have ever known. I have two younger sisters. Katy and I have two daughters. Then came wonderful Rowan our granddaughter. 

Now Wilson. 

A boy child with 25% of my DNA. What to make of him? Changing boy diapers is more complicated than changing girl diapers, I've discovered.

But is there anything I can teach him, in a grandfatherly sort of way, about being a man?

At 70, I suspect I am not going to have much of an influence on his life. I can't take him fishing. I really don't know how to do the outdoors. I could take him to church; though I'm not sure how impressive that would be to, say, a seven year old.

George Bean at St. John's Lynchburg once advertised me to Episcopal bishops as a "man's man". That was the first and only time I have ever been called a "man's man." (I supposed he was speaking in code to his colleagues, suggesting I wasn't gay, and so improving my employability in the early 80's.)

A family friend has said I am  "a good father for daughters." I worked my way through graduate school as a night watchman in a woman's dormitory. I served at two women's colleges as a Roman Catholic priest. Those were important moments. As an Episcopal priest I worked at the then all male Virginia Military Institute and Washington and Lee University, but those didn't make as much of an impression.

Maybe since even Kroger lists "gender fluid/non-binary" as survey categories, this shouldn't be a question.

But around the time Wilson was born Robert Bly died. I own a copy of his Iron John - A Book About Men. I had parishoners who went off into the woods and banged on drums. "I want men to be better fathers than their own fathers were," Bly wrote. His second wife was a Jungian therapist, and Bly, the poet, anti-war activist, constructed a "mythopoetic"  world of initiation and imitation which borrowed from the Grimm brothers.

My copy was a Christmas gift from the Rev. Nancy Tiederman in 1990 and was inscribed "to a dear male friend and sensitive fellow".

The same month Wilson was born Jane Campion's "The Power of the Dog" came to Netflix. The title is biblical; from Psalm 22, 21: "rescue my soul from the sword, my loneliness from the grip of the dog." The anti-hero among the dysfunctional men in the tale is Phil, the obvious dog from the title. Yet he too is so lonely. By now you have probably seen the movie and have your own analysis. If only he and they had better fathers than their own.

Maybe I will leave Wilson something. I could bequeath him my copy of Walt Whitman's  "Leaves of Grass", with the hope he will see what it means to be a bright romantic. "Why should I wish to see God better than this day? I see something of God each hour of the twenty-four, and each moment then, In the faces of men and women I see God, and in my own face in the glass, I find letters from God dropt in the street, and every one is signed by God's name." (Song of Myself #48)

I could give him my copy of my candidate for the Great American Novel, Moby DIck.  There WIlson would learn the force and beauty and horror of Old Testament America, the dark romanticism of biblical kings and bastard slaves. We are, says Ishmael, " a crew chiefly made up of mongrel renegades, and castaways, and cannibals. . . reckless and mediocre". We will chase Job's whale, the white whale, with our godly technology in hand, and be led by mad men to death.   An unlikely man is resurrected to tell all.

Though, for his first Christmas this year, I'm giving Wilson a "Paw Patrol" t-shirt. He'll look good in it. (Rowan loves that series. She likes Skye, but always imitates Marshall, who, whenever he tumbles over something in Adventure Bay, gets up and says with a sigh, "I'm okay".) Remember Wilson, "No job's too big, no pup's too small - Paw Patrol".  I'll have Rowan remind you.

For this Christmas, Wilson has given me these memories and this meditation. 

Thanks Emily and Matt. Thanks Wilson.