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There’s Thanksgiving Day, with its turkey and candied sweet potatoes and parades on television.

There’s Christmas Eve, with its serene sense of anticipation, and hope.

Then there’s the Monday after The Great Frederick Fair ends.

* * * * *

54 years ago my grandparents, young and Amish and looking to start a new business, took ham and cheese sandwiches to the annual fair in Frederick, Maryland. They set up a little tent with two of their friends outside the grandstand, holding little in the way of expectations.  But in those days they occupied one of three food stands on the fairgrounds, and suddenly they were making sandwiches as fast as they could.  They’d go behind the tent, laughing so hard they couldn’t help customers, doubled over in disbelief at how busy they were, overwhelmed.  That week they were forced to buy ham in Frederick to meet the demand.  They bought out every grocery store in town.

My mom grew up attending the Great Frederick Fair every year, and, after she married my dad, the two of them would attend every year, taking us with them when we were old enough to stay out of the way.

* * * * *

29 years ago the colors and sounds of the fair represented all that was right about the world to this 5 year old boy. Grandpa slipped me $5 bills and I’d sneak across the midway, buy a pack of candy bars or a funnel cake.  Then I’d sit under one of the back tables out of the way of the workers. Eventually I’d lay down, feeling the rough gravel through the thin blanket, hearing the guy in the next tent bark out “the greatest deal of the century.” I’d fall asleep, dreaming of lollipops and stuffed animals the size of skyscrapers.

* * * * *

Around 20 years ago my grandfather died, and soon after that my parents took over.  As I grew older the week turned into an opportunity to make some money running the register, or rolling soft pretzels.  Now, 54 years after my grandparents couldn’t keep up with demand, I’m running it alongside them.

* * * * *

Three days ago my oldest two kids came down on Friday night, and spent all day Saturday helping at the fair. My son Cade ran pretzels from one side of the tent to the other, yelling out “special!” when someone sold a special order. My daughter Lucy fell asleep behind the trailer, just inside the tent. When I peeked back there and saw her sleeping, I was amazed and saddened at how fast 29 years can go.

* * * * *

But today I am home.  Including the time it takes to clean up and tear down, the Great Frederick Fair lasted 12 days this year.  12 long days working 8am to 11pm. 12 long days of food and customers and cleaning up. 12 nights in a small motel room.

Today, returning home from the Frederick Fair, is always a good day.

There seems to be so much anger in our country these days.

Some folks in the Midwest seem to think that a man whose primary message was “Love your enemies” would have walked around proclaiming “Death to _______” (fill in the blank there with anyone they disagree with). Then there was the misguided man in Florida ready to burn the Qu’ran, as if that would do anyone any good.

We’ve been torn over the rights of a religious group to build a place of worship, all in a country founded on freedom of religion.  It seems we’ve thrown out (every one of us) any hope of coming together, instead relying on the legal system to legislate our beliefs (or lack thereof) – “don’t pray in school,” “don’t teach evolution,” “don’t teach creation,” “don’t be gay,” “don’t put a building there.”

Don’t be Buddhist.

Don’t be Muslim.

Don’t be Christian.

Don’t be Atheist.

And for goodness sakes don’t be kind or attempt to understand those you vehemently disagree with.  They’re just idiots. All of them.

It reminds me of a story in Anne Lamott’s Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith:

“Since the United States went to war  in Iraq, I’ve been thinking about A.J. Muste, who during the Vietnam War stood in front of the White House night after night with a candle. One rainy night, a reporter asked him, “Mr. Muste, do you really think you are going to change the policies of this country by standing out here alone at night with a candle?”

“Oh,” Muste replied, “I don’t do it to change the country, I do it so the country won’t change me.”

* * * * *

Is our hatred and disdain for others accomplishing anything other than making us into lesser individuals? Can we find the way of kindness, now buried so far under the rubble of hurt and confusion and unforgiveness? There is a power in kindness – it may be the only thing powerful enough to heal our current brokenness. I think that Anne Lamott, in her obvious disdain for former President Bush, shows us one way of viewing our enemies:

“I am going to pray for our president to believe that all people deserve to be fed, and to try to make that a reality…If I were more spiritually evolved, I would mail him a friendly card, because if you want to change the way you feel about people, you have to change the way you treat them. I know that Bush is family, and that I am supposed to love him, but I hate this – he is a dangerous member of the family, like a Klansman, or Osama bin Laden.”

“Maybe I can’t exactly forgive him right now, in the sense of canceling my resentment and judgment. But maybe I can simply acknowledge what is true, spiritually-that he gets to come to the table and eat, too; that I would not let him starve. In heaven, I may have to sit next to him, and in heaven, I know, I will love him.”

Can you pray for the one who riles you the most?

Can you send them a friendly card?

Can you acknowledge their humanity, even when it is hidden under the mask of a monster?

I don’t know if I can. But I will light my candle.

Back when I was a runner (it seems a thousand years ago), I learned that the only to way to get faster was to, each day, do a little more than I thought I could do.

Life is no different.

“We are all asked to do more than we can do,” writes Madeleine L’Engle in Walking On Water.

Sometimes we are asked to forgive the unforgivable.

Sometimes we are asked to survive that which we thought would surely destroy us.

Sometimes we are asked to tell the un-tell-able story.

What is life requiring of you? What impossible action are you now contemplating?

“Several delusions weaken the writer’s resolve to throw away work. If he has read his pages too often, those pages will have a necessary quality, the ring of the inevitable, like poetry known by heart” – The Writing Life, Annie Dillard

Likewise, several things keep us from moving on in life.

Familiarity.

Comfort.

The effort it took for us to get where we are.

But sometimes things must be thrown out and we must begin again, no matter how familiar our current circumstances, no matter how comfortable the situation, no matter how hard we worked. We must look at our lives objectively, in a vacuum so to speak, and remove the years of toil spent.  Otherwise we will be like the young photographer in the following story:

“Every year the aspiring photographer brought a stack of his best prints to an old, honored photographer, seeking his judgment. Every year the old man studied the prints and painstakingly ordered them into two piles, bad and good. Ever year the old man moved a certain landscape print into the bad stack. At length he turned to the young man: “You submit this same landscape every year, and every year I put it on the bad stack. Why do you like it so much?” The young photographer said, ‘Because I had to climb a mountain to get it.'”

Sometimes things must be thrown out, no matter the hard work that went into them. Sometimes we must start over, no matter the circuitous route we took to get where we’ve gotten.

In no particular order:

– Joshua Tree, U2

– Birds of My Neighborhood, Innocence Mission

– Good Dog, Bad Dog, Over the Rhine

– August and Everything After, Counting Crows

– Garden State, Soundtrack

– Rock Spectacle (Live), Barenaked Ladies

– White Ladder, David Gray

– The Bends, Radiohead

– Into the Great Wide Open, Tom Petty

– Brand New Day, Sting

Honorable Mention (the Christmas album I can’t wait to break out each year): A Charlie Brown Christmas, Vince Guaraldi

Come on, now! Add to the list!

I wonder how far away I got from clean water today?

Since I didn’t leave the house, the answer is pretty easy – about 20 steps.  Any time I get thirsty I stand up, find a clean glass, and turn on the faucet. Easy peasy.  Even when I do leave the house, every building I drive past has clean water, and every gas station would be happy to sell it to me.  But not everyone has it this easy.

Did you know one billion people on this planet don’t have access to clean, safe drinking water?

That’s billion with a B, as in 1,000,000,000.

And, according to charity:water, “Unsafe water and lack of basic sanitation cause 80% of diseases and kill more people every year than all forms of violence, including war. Children are especially vulnerable, as their bodies aren’t strong enough to fight diarrhea, dysentery and other illnesses.”

This seems ridiculous to me, that I can be no more than 20 steps from drinking water, while 1,000,000,000 people  on this earth can’t get to it.  Don’t you think?

What if I told you that you could go HERE to track our progress and give whatever amount you’d like to help us reach our goal?  What if I told you that a $20 would provide one person with clean water for 20 years?  It would be ridiculous not to do that. Don’t you think?

* * * * *

Guess what?  There’s a bigger picture.

I bet you have thirty friends or acquaintances you could band together with to change someone’s world. You can do more today for people around the planet than you ever could before, probably in the history of the world.

Thirty of us, (thanks to Tyler), are taking 30 days in September and working together, trying to change the world for 1500 people in Africa.

You can join us, or you can find 30 other people and change a different part of the world – so what will you do this month?