The Walk: New Year’s Eve, 2022

It is overcast and misty as we crest the dunes to catch our first vision of Mother Ocean. Year endings/beginnings are often like that here in Central Florida. The way back is closed off to us. The way ahead is obscured in mystery…

 The storm coming out of the Gulf had fallen apart by Saturday noon. The way was cleared for us to head east to our favorite beach place at Cape Canaveral to engage in our annual New Year’s tradition. As always, we parked by Lori Wilson Park, crossed over the dunes to the beach and the ocean beyond.

I was half expecting the beach to be eroded after the two hurricanes that pummelled our state earlier this year. To my surprise, the sand stretched out as far as it ever has since the replenishment project a few years ago. Apparently the worst of Nicole rounded the Cape and pounded longshore to the north.

In some ways, these storms reflect the year that has just passed. Our state sustained major damage from the winds and the flooding that both Ian and Nicole brought. Places dear to my childhood like Ft. Myer’s Beach and Sanibel are devastated. Expensive ocean front homes in Daytona are washed out to sea. Our parish in Winter Park is midway through replacing flooring, walling and ceiling tiles damaged by flood waters that invaded retirement homes and apartment complexes in our area.

But, like the beach at Canaveral, we are here, battered but still standing.

Much like America.

The beach is fairly crowded for a New Year’s Eve. We have the entire run of the beach to ourselves all the way down to Jetty Park. The range of humanity present here reflected by languages other than English and saris from the Indus Valley suggest an assemblage of the world’s peoples with their children. I smile as I pass. I always tell myself how fortunate I am to live in a place with such colorful diversity. But I realize the very thing I find so enriching is what terrifies so many of my fellow citizens.

It is our custom to walk north up the beach to Jetty Park and then back to our car. On the way up the beach we talk about the year that has just passed, our joys, our losses, lessons learned in the process. On the way back, we talk about the year to come, our hopes, our fears, our openness to whatever may come.

This year we had much to talk about.

Not Bad for Nearly 70

Both of us will turn 70 next year. While some people find their increasing years a source of sorrow and consternation, as I have aged I increasingly find myself grateful that I have lived this long. That was never a given.

We are both in pretty good health. Andy keeps an eye on his heart while I have to watch my blood pressure and the Barrett Syndrome in my esophagus. None of these conditions are worrisome at this point. And we try to make sure that continues with active lives, healthy diet and a wide range of supplements we both take as preventative medicine. Andy makes us both a vegetable slushy each day that provides nutrients that keep our blood sugar and blood pressure normal and our systems functioning.

Even so, we both require appointments with doctors for everything from vision to GI tracts on a regular basis. When I begin to feel like this is burdensome, I remind myself that I am fortunate enough to have access to medical care and the capacity to pay for it. That is not a given for the majority of the world’s peoples including a large chunk of our fellow citizens here. If I had no other reason to continue living, it would be to continue in the struggle for justice to end that disparity.

 

I never tire of being at the beach. This stretch of Cape Canaveral is far enough removed from the hotels and bars just down the coast at Cocoa Beach that it’s possible to enjoy a little peace and quiet here at the ocean’s gate. I feel my body relaxing and my lungs filling and expanding to take in the cool salty air. I cannot imagine living anywhere that was more than a couple of hours from the ocean.

Andy has largely finished the work on his family home in Augusta getting it ready for sale. His long drives to Georgia are largely a thing of the past now. He spends his time these days working on projects from replacing our back yard deck to making sure our trust assets are ready for my nephew when it’s time for him to handle our estate. 

That was one of our accomplishments this year, getting our wills made and trusts established. It is a load off our minds to have all these details nailed down. Not that we think we’ll need them anytime soon. But one never knows.

Losing a Life Anchor

That lesson was driven home in a big way this year with the unexpected death of our dear friend Bill Fite. I had spent a couple of weeks in Boston filling in at a parish there and capped off my trip with a ride on Amtrak across the countryside on Independence Day. What a great day that was. 

But the news upon my arrival in Syracuse was not good. Bill had been taken to Rochester and admitted to the university hospital there. At first the prognosis for his liver cancer was grim – a few months to four years, depending upon his response to treatment. But within the days I was there, things went downhill quickly. And within a week after arriving home that weekend, Bill was gone.

I was the natural choice to create and lead the memorial service. I included all the clergy who had been part of his life in the Episcopal and independent catholic traditions where he had become a bishop at one time. His husband, Fu, struggled to hold it together through this time and I have to hand it to him for how well he managed. I am not sure I would have done nearly as well in that situation.

Bill’s loss has intensified some of the questions with which I had already been struggling. What was my purpose in coming to this life? What was I called to do, to learn, to become? Have I accomplished the things I needed to do? And how much time do I have left to finish that business?

There is something so calming, so appealing about the ocean. The water is fairly warm for this time of year and swirls around my toes as the tide comes in. I swear I can feel my blood pressure dropping as I clamber over the dune line to get my first view of the waves coming in. I am grounded here, my bare feet sinking into the wet sand, the tail end of once mighty waves sweeping in and inundating my legs up to the ankles. This is where I am most at home. In a life where I have rarely felt I belonged anywhere I lived, I know in my soul that I belong here.

Happier Than I Have Ever Been

I find myself saying repeatedly that despite all the aches and pains in places I never knew could even hurt, I am happier right now than at any other point in my life. I answer to no one. I am able to say what I think without worrying about repercussions. One of the things I have learned to say is No. That makes life a lot easier, I find, albeit a lesson hard learned over time. I’m not very good at it yet. But I’m getting there.

I also find myself saying how much I love living in Orlando these days. It is a safe blue island in a sea of maniacal red in this state that has changed beyond all recognition during my life long romance with it. I love engaging the diverse peoples who work in the coffee shops, grocery stores and restaurants where I shop. I come outside to a beautiful city that fits like an old shoe after these 27 years of living here.

But that comes at a cost. I detest the childishness and vitriolic prejudice that has come to dominate Florida politics starting with the frat boy we just reelected to its top office. And I brace myself for the moral panics that are currently intensifying around LBGTQ people and the abortion issue. Florida politics have become the respite of the mean-spirited and the shallow thinkers. Most of the time I find myself embarrassed by the latest stunt that “Florida Man” has pulled, starting with our Florida Man in Chief at the top.

One of the ways I cope with that fiasco is my work with the Alliance for Truth and Justice. It is an affiliate of the Equal Justice Initiative in Montgomery which has just opened a museum and memorial to lynching victims across our country. Our work initially focused on the lynching of July Perry and the victims of the Ocoee Massacre on Election Day 1920. Our efforts paid off in the dedication of a memorial in our downtown square, in the civic plaza in Ocoee and in a month long exhibit at the Orange County Regional History Museum on the 100^th anniversary of the massacre.

Since then, my life energies have been poured into the commemoration of a black man lynched on Thanksgiving Night, 1925, here in Orlando. Arthur Henry was taken from his home after a shootout with Orlando Police who came into his home at night in Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood at the end of an afternoon in which they had endured white men shooting up the neighborhood. When he was taken to the Orlando General Hospital for treatment, he was abducted from his hospital bed by “unknown parties” – Jim Crow code for the klansmen everyone knows committed the crimes but have agreed not to identify or prosecute - and killed. It would be two weeks before his body was “discovered.” 

I have become deeply attached to this figure whose image I have never seen and whose life is documented only by census reports and his papers from the military where he served in WWI. I keep telling myself, “No one deserves to simply disappear into the night.” That includes being erased from history. I have lived in Orlando longer than anywhere else in my life and grew up in Central Florida. I only have learned this awful story within the last six years. I believe Arthur deserves to have his story told. And I am intent on telling it.

As I have researched this story, I have found that it’s a lot more complex than simply assembling dates, names and events. Arthur came out of Lake City, a small town north of here about three hours. As a part of my research, I spent a week there. I discovered a horrendous history of racism that dated back to a slaughter of black Union soldier prisoners of war following a Civil War battle there in 1864. That history continues to dominate the imagination of this town which holds annual reenactments complete with Southern Belles in hoopskirts. 

But this was never a reality I could reduce to dualistic us and them terms. My great uncle lived in Lake City in the early 1920s when some of the most virulent lynchings were occurring there, lynchings that I believe drove Arthur Henry to seek safety in the small city of Orlando only to find the evil he fled waiting for him there. The question I wrestled with the whole time I was there was whether my uncle might have been in the lynch mob. Given how virulently opposed to the Klan my grandfather, his brother was, I am hopeful the answer is no. But it is impossible to know at this point. The evil that has been racism in our state has long been an equal opportunity employer when it came to white Southern families.

As we neared the Jetty Inlet pier, the top of our yearly walk, the last of the four cruise ships headed out for New Year’s Eve on the sea was nearing entry into Mother Ocean. The foghorn began to play “When you wish upon a star.” Both of us former Disney workers broke into a grin. Disney was an important chapter in our lives. For that I am grateful this day.  

The other activity that keeps me busy is my work within the Episcopal Church. I am privileged to preach and celebrate at a vibrant parish which is a refuge for progressives in this toxic diocese with a long history of homophobia. I am a part of a contemplative prayer group that meets weekly, a dream workshop that meets biweekly, and I lead the contemplative Taizé service that meets monthly. I am very grateful for this community of warm hearts and deep souls that I have come to be welcomed by. And I am very clear that preserving this community will require vigilance and ongoing hard work. Healthy parishes are NEVER a given. And we face a major challenge with the election of a new bishop for the Diocese of Central Florida the middle of January. 

I also am part of two online communities largely populated by Episcopalians that provide me a touchstone with a deeper reality than that which ordinarily surrounds me. The Reading Between the Lines group discusses the weekly lectionary used for preaching in most pulpits each week. The group operates out of the Jungian framework devised by Elizabeth Boyden Howes at the Four Springs center north of the Bay Area and requires its members to look at the archetypes presented in the readings, where we see them in the world and where we see them in our lives.

While I had studied Jungian depth psychology a bit in seminary, I felt I had more to learn and so engaged in a study of Jung’s Collected Works with a group assembled on Zoom by the Washington, D.C. Jungian Society. It was intense to say the least (about 600-700 pages of difficult reading for each monthly session). I came away from that knowing that I was NOT called to be a psychiatrist of any kind but also that the psychological depths of all religion were fascinating and worth further study.

The last group I am part of roughly applies Jungian concepts to examining what is going on in our world. I have taken turns with two others in leading the Texts of Our Times group over the past two years. It has been a breath of fresh air amidst the craziness of our politics at home and the wars and floods of refugees abroad.

New Coverleigh: A Family Once Again Whole

 

When I talk about my family, I begin with New Coverleigh, our beloved home in the midst of Orlando. Our two dogs, Saidy the Beagle and Oscar the Dachshund are doing well and keep us both well protected from everything from squirrels in the birdfeeders to neighbor walking our streets. With the addition of Shiloh, my little black former feral, our family is now once again whole at five fur babies. He has become best buds with Willow, the little orange tabby rescue  we adopted last year. And, to her credit, Magdalena, the queen of the house (and don’t you forget it!) has done well with the new arrivals. These babies are my heart and my joy.

The Jungle is doing well for the most part. The Christmas freeze did some damage to the most sensitive plants but for the most part the dips on Christmas Eve and Day down to 31F did little serious harm. This vibrant Jungle will spring back to life very shortly. It is where I begin each morning, barefoot, touching the good Earth, honoring the four directions, giving thanks to the Creator for another day. 

My work to maintain this Jungle often leaves me exhausted and bleeding. Jungles require blood sacrifices, it seems. But it is all worth it when I look out my window as I type these words to a green wall that shields me from the world around me and provides a refuge for the many non-human animals displaced by our self-focused anthropocentric behaviors we rationalize with the term “development.”

 

The clouds on the eastern horizon have broken enough to allow a bit of gold from the setting sun to appear. Tomorrow morning, a new year will emerge from these waters. It is time to let this tired year go with our gratitude….

My family of birth is also well. My Sister and her husband Jim are able to do a good bit of traveling. She continues to lead a center for girls in Ocala that ensures they may get through school when they have run into difficulties at home and in their local schools. Her husband, Jim, continues to work at his computer firm in Gainesville. My Brother continues to work online from his new home in Deltona and his wife, Ruthie, is now producing some fine art work there.

I now have four nephews, two nieces and one grand-niece. David’s son, John David, and his husband, Ryan, live in San Francisco. John works at a self-insuring company making sure their policies are sound and spends his spare time digging into ancestry.com records to track our family lineage. His grandfather would be so proud. Ryan is now driving MUNI buses in the city. Grace, our niece, graduated from UCF this spring and moved out to join them.

David’s middle child, Joe, is working on a doctorate in engineering and his wife, Annie, just completed her masters in forensics, both at Penn State. Their little girl, Ellie, is my first grand-niece and they are expecting a second little girl in February.

Carole’s older boy, Scott, is now a graduate of UF and is working on getting into a law school for the next academic year. Cary, the youngest of the nephews and nieces, graduated from UCF this December and has just begun a job in sales of medical equipment. He is the last of the nephews and nieces

It is unclear what the new year will bring, as is always the case. I suspect that at some point this year I will have to break down and have my first knee replacement surgery. I am not looking forward to that but the alternative is increasingly becoming untenable. We are hoping to do some traveling this year. We shall see. I am hoping to get my book written about Arthur Henry and get all the photos out of boxes off my floor in my office and scanned into my computer. If I can get just those two things done, I’ll consider it a successful year. Then I can turn my attention to weeding out the thousands of books in my library and getting them into hands of people who might actually benefit from them.

 

The sun is setting, our walk is ending. This year of difficulty and unexpected delights is coming to an end. It is time to let it go with our gratitude.

Where things will go in our state, our country and our world, who knows. I am encouraged that the red tide of authoritarianism did not sweep our country in last year’s elections, our state excluded, sadly. I am hopeful that perhaps my fellow citizens are finally realizing the dangers we face if we don’t step up and confront this creeping fascist tendency. At this point, I am not optimistic but I am finding myself willing to be hopeful. That, in itself, is a major change from last year.

The truth is, our world is changing, radically, hopefully for the better. We are faced with the difficult task of discerning what no longer is working for us, what we value and must carry forward and how to act in the face of potential crisis that all major change always brings. I suspect that next New Year’s Eve we will be having some of the same conversations that we are holding this year. But that in itself might prove to be an accomplishment worth noting.

So, Happy New Year, everyone. May this year be your best yet. Know that I have always been grateful for your company along my life journey. And I hope that our paths will cross before the next New Year’s walk.

 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Harry Scott Coverston

Orlando, Florida

frharry@cfl.rr.com

hcoverston.orlando@gmail.com

If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do not come in sound bites.

Those who believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma Gandhi

For what does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your G-d?  - Micah 6:8, Hebrew Scriptures

Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom of the Jewish Sages (1993)

  © Harry Coverston, 2022

 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++