Life is full of pleasant surprises. I saw two of my granddaughters this week. I was in Tucson on a working vacation, finishing the proposal for my next book. I stayed at a resort and was sitting in the lobby reading a novel on Friday morning when I saw someone who looked a lot like the father of two of my grandchildren. He walked past and a few seconds later his twins, my granddaughters, walked by. Ava saw me and they all ran over.

They had come to Tucson with their dad for spring break, four weeks after we’d flown home with them from California, where we had gone for winter break (pictured above.) They were on their way to the airport to head home, but we had a few minutes of unexpected delight. The bellhops enjoyed watching our little reunion. Such moments must be celebrated. As I sat in the lobby, grateful, I thought of all of the times in my life when moments of joy have come unexpectedly.

It was almost midnight on a delayed flight to LaGuardia last year and I was the first passenger off the plane. An off-duty pilot who had been in the cockpit jump seat was walking behind me. He caught up with me as we left security. “I think I know who you are. My wife might have strongly recommended that I watch your TED talk yesterday.”

I said, “Yep – that’s me. I’m assuming your wife thought you had been a little insensitive to women?” Sheepishly he said, “Uh, yeah, that might have been the case.” We had a delightful little chat out to the curb where he caught his shuttle and I had a chuckle. He was quite good-natured about it all.

Then there was the time I was in Oregon, along the Columbia River, stopping in my rental car to look at one dramatic waterfall after another. At Multnomah Falls, the fourth stop I had unintentionally shared with folks in their rented Volvo station wagon, the husband said, “We’re going to have to stop meeting like this.” I laughed and we began to chat. I asked them where they were from and they said Cincinnati. I asked what part and they said Delhi. I asked what part of Delhi and they said, “Paradise Lane.”

I said, “Huh. Let me ask you a question. Did you just buy a road bike built for two, and you were out on it for the first time, riding a little wobbly, and you almost ran into a runner you passed?” They looked at me with great surprise and said, “Yeah, a few weeks ago that happened.” I said, “I know. I was the runner.” I had been teaching at a seminary in Cincinnati, staying with my brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and went for an evening run at the same time this couple tried out their new bike. It was now two months later and here we were in Oregon. We talked for a while. They knew the seminary. Their pastor had attended there.

I was getting ready to speak for TED Women in 2018 when I heard one of the other speakers doing her dress rehearsal. I said to my son, “She’s from Appalachia, like, my neck of the woods in Appalachia.” TED speakers are from all over the world, so hearing a familiar accent is unusual. I went up to her when she finished and found out she was the fire chief in Huntington, West Virginia, my hometown. We were born in the same hospital. We were both doing TED Talks the next day. We’ve been friends ever since. I ran into her wife at the Charlotte airport Admiral’s Club a couple of months ago.

Back when I was in television I would frequently have people come up to me and tell me they had watched me on in the middle of the night. Their stories were always similar. “My wife was in the hospital and we were up during the night and we watched your show. It brought us a lot of peace.” Or, “My baby was colicky, and I couldn’t get any sleep and I watched you while I tried to calm her down.”

I was the on-air host of a quasi-religious nature show focused on those who were up in the middle of the night. We showed scenes of nature, told uplifting stories, and generally tried to encourage folks. You could tell it was Christian but you had no idea whether it was Catholic or Protestant, which was a good thing. I was the head writer. My favorite shoot was eighteen shows in Vienna, Austria on the church fathers and another eighteen on Brahms, Beethoven, Mozart, and Mahler. We shot at a thirteenth century Cistercian monastery and the Vienna Opera House, among other stunning locations.

For me, those people coming up and telling me about watching our show in the middle of the night were precious encounters. I believe when I come to the end of my days, that will have been some of the most important work I ever did, soothing people who were struggling in the middle of the night.

I have had a lot of people come up to me in airports or on streets and thank me for my TED Talks too. They tell me the talk made them laugh, and cry. I love that. It means the talk made them feel something.  I remember an orthopedic surgeon at a conference at UCLA who said, “I always thought I was crazy until one of my female colleagues showed me your TED Talk.” I told her I had heard from a lot of women in male dominated fields (like orthopedic surgery) telling me the same thing.

Still, none of those match up to seeing my granddaughters unexpectedly in a resort in Tucson. After they left I cried, grateful for all of the blessings that come our way in this holy life, our short pause between two great mysteries.

I cast my ballot for mayor on Monday, the day I received the ballot in the mail. Three weeks from now we’ll find out the results of our town’s election.

Along with trust, collaboration, and good governance, the other word I have been featuring in my campaign for mayor of Lyons, Colorado is civility. Its loss in American discourse is profoundly disconcerting.

When I was in college, my vocal band booked a gig at a large men’s conference in the heart of the Ozark mountains. I had read a monthly newsletter from the conference that included alarming lines about starving children in Biafra. I could not believe what I had read. At the conference there was an abundance of workshops about the dangers of Communism, references to the John Birch Society, and other subjects I found alarming.

These might have been well-meaning people, but you could have powered a small city with the negative energy of their misplaced confidence. It was McCarthyism kept alive in the guise of Christian fundamentalism. I was very grateful that most environments in which I lived at the time were not inhabited by such toxic certainty.

When the conference ended and I returned home, I remember going to the radio station where I worked and telling our chief engineer what I had heard. The engineer, Bill, had grown up on Staten Island and traveled the world before settling in Appalachia. He said, “Ninety-nine percent of the evil in the world is done by people who are 100 percent convinced they are right.”

His words stuck with me. I later heard M. Scott Peck say the same thing. In the years since that time, I have come to realize that the beginnings of incivility are when lack of curiosity is combined with confident certainty. The result is toxicity.

There is nothing new about today’s incivility. A cursory look at American history will find it in every decade of our 250 year existence. But it is worse today than it has been at any time since the McCarthy era. What I saw in the Ozark mountains has now permeated much of the nation, and it saddens me greatly.

That is why I am so encouraged with the civility I’ve seen in the race for mayor of Lyons, Colorado. I was talking with the other candidate after our town board meeting on Monday evening. We both have had to remind a person or two that there will be no attacks in this race, but for the most part no one has even suggested writing pejorative things about the other candidate. Most people in this town want to be civil toward one another. Mark, my opponent, and I are both campaigning on what we believe to be our unique strengths, not the weaknesses of the other. That is as it should be.

The same is true for the nine people running for six open board of trustee seats. There has been no name-calling, just civility and respect. Each of our candidate forums have been great examples of civility, sticking to issues, not personalities. Even social media has been pretty civil.

No matter who wins a seat on the Board of Trustees or the race for Mayor of Lyons, I believe the Town of Lyons will be the winner of this race. It makes me proud to live here, and to serve as Mayor Pro Tem.

Lack of curiosity and confident certainty leads to arrogance, incivility, and toxicity. Curiosity, coupled with humility, leads to good government. I am proud to live in a town committed to good government.

Running for office is a bit weird. When you grow up as an evangelical you are told that self-promotion is wrong – always. Ambition is anathema. Never mind the ambition of Abraham Lincoln or George Washington. Apparently they had a special dispensation from the gods to be ambitious. The message to me was clear, I did not have a special dispensation from the gods. I was to be self-effacing, never even whispering to others what my abilities might be.

I’m not sure how you can run for office without promoting yourself. I made a video for my current run for mayor this week. It’s about 90 seconds long and I talked about what I’d like to accomplish as mayor. I also talked about my credentials. I noted that I’ve chaired a lot of boards, including the board of a television network. (Can’t say I enjoyed that one, though I did really like both CEOs I worked with.)

I think I joined my first board, a small Christian college in upstate New York, when I was 29. I remember two elderly gentlemen, probably around 65, took me under their wings and guided my development. I remember thinking they were so, so old. Now I’m ten years older than they were!

I am a big believer in Carver Policy Governance. We utilized Carver Policy Governance back when I was a CEO. The board determined the big rocks to be moved. The staff figured out how to move the rocks and then proceeded to move them. The CEO (me) was held accountable for moving the rocks. The board was responsible for keeping itself in line. It worked well for 35 years.

Back in 2018 we did not start Left Hand Church that way. I was in a new gender, sensitive to criticisms of the patriarchy and willing to try new approaches. They didn’t work. Good to know. I’m back to believing in Carver Policy Governance.

My opponent is a good guy – a person of character, though he can be a bit gruff occasionally. We sit next to each other in board meetings. He’s a board member, I’m Mayor Pro Tem. We usually agree on what the big issues are and vote together probably 80 percent of the time. The difference is in governance style. He likes to get down in the weeds. I don’t think getting in the weeds is our job. That’s the staff’s job.

In our candidate forums I talk about governance. He talks about preferred approaches to specific tasks. I talk about civility, trust, collaboration, and good governance because, well, I think those are really important, particularly in today’s world.

There’s been no mud-slinging in our campaign. There won’t be. First, there hasn’t been enough moisture around here to even make mud this winter. We’d be slinging dust, not mud. Second, neither of us is particularly adept at slinging dust or mud.

We agreed not to use yard signs. They are not recyclable and anyway, both of us feel they are a little ostentatious. I’ll be okay if he wins. He’s a good guy and he’d do a decent job. I’m pretty sure he feels the same way about me. It feels to me like the election could go either way.

So many political contests lack basic civility. One of my friends won her race for mayor this past year, but oh my, what she had to put up with from her opponent!

A couple of folks from out of town made a presentation to our town board last Monday. Afterwards they said, “You guys are punching above your weight.” We hear that a lot in Lyons. We are a small town, but everybody in the state knows Lyons, and a lot of people would love to live here, if they could afford it. (That’s a whole different conversation.) We also have a good board and staff, decent folk who respect one another and disagree often and sometimes loudly, but then go for dinner afterwards. I’m pretty sure that’s what a democracy is supposed to look like.

This is the third time I’ve run for office. It’s always uncomfortable. Anybody who says their ego isn’t bruised when they lose is lying. Being mayor is a lot of work and it pays almost nothing, $700 a month in our town. That’s what I earned when I graduated from college and got my first full-time job in 1973. But you don’t do the job for the money, or for the accolades. There aren’t many. You do it because you feel called. The election is April 7. I’ll let you know what happens.

And so it goes.