This weekend, my wife will celebrate a major birthday. I had planned on various things to help celebrate the day. After the past few weeks, some celebratory rejoicing really seems to be needed. Every week seems to have included the death of at least one friend or colleague. Each week has been met with news of a friend starting chemo or another moving into hospice.

Both my wife and my youngest daughter suffer from chronic illnesses and, as is often the case, plans have needed to be altered. Having been brought up in the context of American masculinity enabled by a busy and demanding work schedule and compounded by my personal family history, I’ve powered through keeping a calm exterior.

Likewise, on the national political front, I’ve restrained my commentary. The divisiveness and nastiness online is something I do not want to take part in. Instead, I’ve focused on my poetry, hoping it could be an antidote to some of the broken politics we’re seeing. My wife has posted pretty pictures of animals with the phrases Choose Love or Wage Peace.

How do we choose love and wage peace in these turbulent times? I’ve tracked the course of typhoons Lionrock and Namtheun as they hit Japan. I believe that Lionrock passed far enough to the north to avoid issues for my eldest daughter in Japan, but Namtheun is passing to the south and may bring her flooding at the around the same time as Hurricane Hermine hits parts of the United States.

I also thought of her when a band that I follow on Facebook posted their cover of Michael Jackson’s “Will You Be There?” The tune caught my attention. Where had I heard it before? It finally dawned on me. It was in the movie Free Willy which I watched with my older daughters when they were younger. I believe my eldest skated one of her figure skating routines to it.

Hold me
Like the River Jordan
And I will then say to thee
You are my friend

Free Willy came out the year my second daughter was born and I watched it repeatedly with my daughters. It had the tagline, “A 12 year old street kid. A 3 ton orca whale. A friendship you could never imagine. An adventure you'll never forget.” The storyline description is “When a boy learns that a beloved killer whale is to be killed by the aquarium owners, the boy risks everything to free the whale.”

Yesterday, my middle daughter posted one of her latest paintings. She used a knitted canvas made out of yarn my late mother had left. It is beautiful, on many levels.

While my wife and daughter were at the hospital, I contacted various people letting them know what was going on. I sent a long description to the school my daughter attends and while my wife was sitting in the emergency room, she received this message:

“I just wanted to remind you to get a medical note for [your daughters]’s absences. We have a strict attendance policy at the high school and I don’t want [your daughter] to have any attendance issues.”

It must be difficult to work in a job where you encounter great suffering and you are obliged to not show compassion or sympathy, but instead to make sure that policies that are ineffective at best, send the wrong message, and limit opportunities to show compassion are properly followed. It must be difficult to work in a job that precludes choosing love and waging peace.

Our priest stopped by the hospital to visit with my wife and daughter. For those brought up in churches where priests only visit to administer last rights, let me assure you that the latest bout was not life threatening and everyone is on the mend. We go to a church where priests visit the sick regularly, a church where priests, and members of the church actively choose love and wage peace.

When I cancelled the event to celebrate my wife’s birthday last night, we received many kind words. One friend even stopped by to drop off flowers that she and her husband and gotten my wife for her birthday.

It is early I the morning now, a time when I get up to read, study, pray, and write. My wife and daughter are both sleeping quietly and for part of my morning routine today, I am contemplating what it means to look for compassion around us, to see the beauty of God’s creation on a dark rainy day, and how to practice choosing love and waging peace in a culture that discourages it.