November 2, 2004

As I travel around the country visiting and consulting with congregations and clergy, I find that many are caught in vicious cycles. The vicious cycles seem more common than the virtuous ones. They are easily recognized by a chilly climate of anxiety, which these days seems to be more common than the common cold. Such anxiety, what Reinhold Niebuhr described as “the precondition of sin,” is heightened by the mainline’s awareness of its institutional decline and vulnerability.

You’ve referred to Americans as "lazy democrats." How does this assessment describe America’s relationship with Haiti?

Like David Fisher in the award-winning HBO series Six Feet Under, when my father died, I embalmed him. My brother Pat assisted. We dressed him, put him in a box and soon thereafter buried him. Tim did the obits and drove the hearse. Eddie called the priest and did the printing. Mary handled the florals and finances. Julie organized the luncheon that would follow. Brigid got the pipers and the soloist. Christopher called the sexton and stonecutter. Colonel Dan, the eldest of us, flew in from his army post in Seattle and assumed command. We all were pallbearers.

Road movies provide screenwriters with a built-in structure. It allows them, in the immortal words of the Queen of Hearts, to “begin at the beginning, go on until you reach the end, and then stop!” But what happens when an ending isn’t really the end? Or when the “real” end sends us down a different road altogether?