**This is the second in a series of posts about our decision to leave our “Forever Home.” You can read Chapter 1 here.**

This afternoon, Grandma Pitney was called into action by our grandson, maybe for the 100th time  today, to play his favorite game, “Where’s Jackson?”  As she covered him in mountains of pillows, again and again, we were both caught up in the unmitigated joy of being found.  It seems we’ve been playing “Where’s Jackson?” for some time now.  Yearning to be found, I guess.  It’s infinitely better than being unfounded, right?  I don’t know that he really needs us in proximity.  He’s certainly proven himself worthy of his own swashbuckler river hat.  He’s a premiere stump jumper and stalking the wiley crawdad in the clear cold water of the Deschutes River is sure to become a favorite vocation.  And if you need a big desert grin from the Juniper underbush, all you have to do is call out: “Where’s Jackson?” And out he pops!  I’m sure he’ll have secret places to show us one day soon.

So yes.  We’ve moved from the 928 NW Cedar Street house in McMinnville which was to be our “forever home.”  It has gone beyond us much sooner than planned.  And no, we didn’t employ a ghost writer to blog for us, although we have one of those in the family.  We are not dead.  But in this crazy COVID reality, the lives of so many have come to a rude conclusion. And much earlier than if we’d been paying closer attention. 180,000 more of us (and 1,000 more each day) have perished since just March.  As we move from 97128 to 97702, we as white people are being called to acknowledge, once again, that where we live matters, that our neighbors in zip codes of color are more likely to die, just as they are more likely to be compromised by poverty, lack of access to food and health care and the affects of climate catastrophe.  In fact, the age-adjusted COVID-19 death rate for Black people is 3.6 times that for whites. For Hispanic/Latinx people, 2.5 times that for whites.  In New Mexico, 58% of those who have died of COVID-19 are Native American Navajo, Hopi and Zuni people who make up 9% of the population. (Here’s a great article on the subject if you’re interested).

As we vacate one neighborhood grid for another, the streets of our nation are alive with mostly peaceful protest again, as the best of young and old generations are making “good trouble,” in the John Lewis tradition again, because the ugliness of centuries of white domination is on the move again, as wild fires choke our skies with the smudge of conscience again.  As another hottest summer is upon us again and the worst-hurricanes-ever are pounding the gulf coast again, we are leaving again.  No time is a time to be separated from those who love us most, so this time certainly is not.  We won’t be distant from family when we could be in proximity.   We talked this over together with all our kids.  We can’t live near both children and their families, one in Portland and the other in Bend.  But as the COVID phenomenon has changed so many things, it is changing our focus on what matters most.  While we are given a fresh new chance to see how Black Lives Matter and stand ready to do everything we can to make it true in our structures and institutions, it has also become clear that we want to live in the same neighborhood as at least one of our children.  We must somehow be part of making the “good trouble” along with our families.  We needn’t be so alone in that endeavor as we continue the hard work of love and justice.  When we retired and moved to McMinnville, Joel and his wife Laura lived in Brooklyn, NY.  Then they moved to Oregon, and then had a child.  Need we say more?

So for this chapter of Leaving 928, let’s just say forever is a relative thing.  What will we be doing in our new zip code?  Well, hanging out at the pool, in the buff, of course!  And participating in the Sacred Order of Dirt!  We will do everything we can to support his parents to provide the most udder-ly delicious two-fisted nutrition known to humankind, the only antidote to all things unsweet!  We will certainly give him space for the solitude he needs to commune in the painted desert places of his life and contemplate wonder and discern our future.

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If he chooses to spend his days like Jean Baptiste, completely alone and pitch his tent down by the slough to exist only on locusts and honey (honey-nut cheerios), it will be hard for his grandparents (because they love cheerios too)! But so be it.

Friends, let’s be clear.  I am a white man.  We are white grandparents.  Jackson and his people, all are white.  The ability to socially distance is a privilege many don’t have.  And we’re well aware that selling a house, having a house to sell, being able to traverse zip codes just by putting up a for sale sign and renting a u-haul is a privilege supported by centuries of white superiority.  And we need help to not take this for granted, help to use our wealth for change somehow.  We need the support of our family to figure it out. 

So what are we doing in our new zip code? Well, as we begin to get settled it’s time to vote.  It’s really the first task of proximity.  It’s a first step to do all we can to make sure the world Jackson and his generation inherit is more just, more kind and inhabitable than what we have today.  We vote so everyone has the opportunity to be found as a Child of God and prove that our President’s allegations of fraud in vote-by-mail are unfounded.  On this anniversary of the first women in our country getting the right to vote, we will do all we can to make sure everyone who has the right is able to vote and able to actually vote.  As the political conventions have now run their courses, we trust Jackson’s mother and father will teach him the difference between elephants and donkeys in the realm.

Where it comes to the catastrophe and injustice of climate chaos and the disproportionately negative impact on communities of color and first nation peoples, we are discovering an important truth.  In 2016, 50% of those who identified the environment as their first priority did not vote.  Why?  Because a majority of these are people of color whose access to voting is now, more than ever, under attack.  So as I share this moving blog with you, I also make it easy for you to take bold action between now and November 3.  These three projects will welcome you electronically and provide everything you need to help get out the vote:

1. Interfaith Power & Light: Faith Climate Justice Voter Campaign. Reach out to environmental voters! Click here to volunteer.
2. Indivisible: You, your church, or community organization can send postcards to voters in swing states to get out the vote. Click here to learn more.
3. Radicalize The Vote:  Encourage voters from our tribes to vote. Click here to get out the vote across Indian country.

Jackson has some wonderful friends.  He gets to spend a lot of time with one of them.  They play and sing together.  They fight sometimes.  They cry and laugh.  One of their favorite vocations is making sure there are enough rocks in the river.  They can play, seemingly for hours, finding all the rocks they can find, running back and forth to the water, throwing them in, one-at-a-time to watch them splash.  There’s a magic in throwing rocks.  It’s impossible for this adult to grasp what this must mean for them.  I mean it’s possible they may see the ripples of each splash growing in ever-widening circles across the the water like some cosmic promise. I don’t think I know. Yet.

What I do know is everyone deserves companions.  Friends, moms and dads, uncles, aunts, co-conspirators…yes, and grandparents to stand with them at the water’s edge, to throw and splash and learn what really matters.  To be profoundly found planted by the water together.  Yes, we’ve moved and we’re just starting to really learn why.  It’s hard to move further away from one child and closer to the other without feeling some guilt, but we can deal with that.   We’d really rather be in the same neighborhood…loving Jackson, caring for each other…all of us together. 

Jackson is at a profound place with pronouns.  If he wants me to cover him with pillows, he will likely say, “I want me to do it!”  And that means he wants me to pile him with pillows.  We were sitting outside at the dinner table the other day, Joel, Laura, Jackson, Debbie and I.  We are generally known a Dadda, Mama, Gramma and Grampa.  I don’t know how we got started on this, but we asked Jackson if he knew Dadda’s name.  He said, “Joel.” We asked if he knew Mama’s.  He said, “Laura.”  “Gramma?” He said, “Debbie.” “Grampa?” “John.” Wow! We were all smiling…geez he’s two years old.  Then (thinking of his adventure with pronouns) without prompt from any of us he started back around the circle.  Pointing at each of us in turn, he said, “I am Joel. I am Laura. I am Debbie. I am John.” 

Pronouns aside, all I could think was “We are we.” Each of us is each of us.  This is our wish for Jackson and his generation.  It’s our wish for all zip codes.  That one day we will all truly live at the same address enjoying the same privilege, exercising the same rights, cherishing the same Earth.  I think we’re gonna like it here.