Speaker 1: I got to spend last week in California, seeing people
doing things from Irvine up to Sacramento, and people kept
trying to get me to go with them to vineyards.
Though I no longer drink, I used to. And then
I had a two year old daughter, and I decided
I didn't want her to see me drunk. She and
I love silliness, but that's a whole other matter. I'm
capable of foolishness without adding intoxication to it. I went
to Modesto, the home of Ernest and Julia Gallo wine,
the wine that I drank in my college days, the
cheap wine and the gallon glass jug. You poured it
into an ordinary drinking glass, and you drank it with dinner.
And either you liked it or you didn't drink it,
but you didn't sit and discuss it. And now I
have friends, bless their hearts, who are connoisseurs of wine,
and who employ terms like well structured buttery, complex, nicely
restrained autumnal jam, flavored rangey. What strikes me is complex,
well structured hogwash. I am an alien in the midst
of these people. The only wine I taste now is
from the Sunday Morning communion cup. And maybe it's complex,
but I just think of it as the blood of salvation. Well,
we live in a big, democratic country where people speak freely,
so you don't have to go far to be an alien,
and I am an alien among Generation Z people when
they talk digitalese. I tune in sports talk shows on
TV to enjoy watching grown men shouting at each other
about a game. Meanwhile, the planet is heating up and
Los Angeles is burning, and a party has taken power
whose members are forbidden to speak the words climate change.
From Modesto, I went to Lubbock, Texas by way of
Southwest Airlines, which encourages its flight attendants to do stand
up comedy. Landed in Lubbock, one of them said, be
careful opening the overheads. Luggage can shift. Shift happens. I
went to Lubbock to do a stand up show myself
at the Cactus Theater, and standing in the lobby, it
seemed to me that I was drawing a Baptist crowd.
I asked an usher and she agreed with me. So
I worked some hymns into the show, not hard for
an old evangelical like me. And when I started into
it is well with my soul, and they joined in
full voice, four part harmony. Suddenly I wasn't an alien anymore.
I was among brethren and sistern. I was instantly at home.
And then how great thou art? It was powerful. Lubbock
is Buddy Holly's hometown. And they also knew every day
it's a getting closer, going faster than a roller coaster.
And they knew, you know, my love will not fade away,
and it won't. I love Lubbock always will. I don't
care who they voted for last November. Those people are family.
Their singing was not a tumnaul or rangey. It was
heartfelt and it was harmonious. Life is good even when
we're alienated. We democrats got skunked, and so for the
next four years were free to savor life itself. The
victor has proudly proclaimed his contempt for our traditions and
institutions which are alien to him. His faith is in himself,
and I say good luck with that. I intend to
enjoy defeat and go back and read Shakespeare, whom I
wrote C minus term papers about in college, using terms
like well structured and complex. And I'm going to travel
to Dublin in Stockholm, go to Rome, where a person
can become absorbed in the immediate surroundings, be engrossed in
the moment. I want to hear the marriage of Figure
again and the Foray Requiem. I want to walk in
the park with my sweetheart and look at people and
their dogs, and the jazz musicians who congregate to jam together.
I want to pay attention to joyful outbursts of little kids,
a stone by ordinary things to which I say whatever
I love, the old hymns, face to face, friendliness, good manners,
a limerick, a walk in the park. Some day I
hope to shake hands with the bishop who dared ask
the President to show mercy in her prayer at the
cathedral the day he was sworn into office. I knew
it could happen some way. A bowl rules the whole usay,
but life is riskable, and I'll stay episcopal and live
happily day to day.