Nigerian Leaper

Carter lies in state in the U.S. Capitol rotunda. By Aaron Troutman/U.S. Army. Wikipedia.

President Jimmy Carter’s funeral in Washington and the fires devouring Los Angeles where my son, his wife and their son have made their home for many years causes me grief and anxiety: grief for President Carter, whose like we may never know again, grief for the ongoing destruction of a great city, and anxiety for three people I love whose house is not immediately threatened but who will live with the long desolation of the fire’s aftermath. It’s not only about losing their house, which may yet escape destruction, but losing the birds, the trees, the buildings,  and the houses of friends that have made Los Angeles home.

For me, the hope in desolating times comes with art and with prayer. President Carter warned in the 1970’s that the United States was descending into moral chaos as memberships in all forms of community—religious, political, social—continued to decline. We are living now in the disastrous results of our faith in “getting”—money, things, status—that has gripped us all, most conspicuous, for me, is the enormous amount of packaging and shipping that has come to define Christmas: an adjective spellcheck does not recognize.

My thin hope is that Mr. Trump, who was in the cathedral for President Carter’s funeral, may draw some wisdom from the tributes paid to President Carter by men who loved him, praising him as a peace keeper, a civil rights leader, a public servant who said that the issue of women’s rights would define the future.

My other hope, which has sustained me for many years, comes from my daily writing, of which this post is an example. During a disturbed night, a vivid image came to me of a long-legged black man, dressed in flowing white trousers, flying through the air, his legs stretched out parallel to the ground far beneath him. He had sailed over ponds, expanses of ice, forests; his name, I was told, is the Nigerian Leaper.

Wherever you are as you read this, however disturbed and disheartened by the condition of our country, remember the Nigerian Leaper: the transcendent figure, buoyed up rather than dragged down by misfortune, who flies over many obstacles.

And do remember your daily writing. We do not write primarily for publication—although I have been extremely fortunate in this—certainly not for money (writers and artists are not paid a living wage here), not for praise and recognition, but to nurture that still small spark that burns on quietly even when the winds are blowing fires all over the world.

And say a prayer for all those, like my son and is family, facing desolation in Los Angeles.

In My Family, Politics Jimmy Carter