The first time either of us ever had sex she became pregnant. It was the late 1960’s and policy forbade a pregnant girl from attending high school. There was no such policy for the boy (me, in this instance) who made the girl pregnant.

Her parents were devout Christians; mine were devout alcoholics. As teenagers, we had kept secrets from the world, each other, and even from ourselves; but a growing belly was one secret we could not keep. It felt like there was a bomb in my girlfriend’s belly that was about to explode. We were pregnant with fear, shame and regret. We decided to figure this out by ourselves, keeping all options open.

One option we quickly ruled out was marriage. We were high school students. We had no money or jobs; and no one would rent us an apartment. We called the county “welfare office” but couldn’t navigate the system or the shame.

We considered abortion. We lived in a midwestern city with a large university during the “Sexual Revolution.” We walked around campus asking young women for information about abortion. We saw posters about ending “coat hanger abortions” but we found no one willing to talk to us two baby-faced teenagers. We ruled-out abortion, admitting it was not our first choice, but we had agreed to consider all options ~ and we were deeply relieved that options existed.

The last option was to tell our parents. Her parents were sad and turned to prayer and scripture for guidance. My parents were angry and turned to liquor and lawyers to prepare for a likely paternity suit.  

We decided she would go to a “home for unwed mothers” and offer the child for adoption. Her mother and father were in the front seat, and we were in the back, as we drove to the home. I was alone in the back seat when we returned. My girlfriend’s mother had a seizure in the front passenger seat as her father drove. They never blamed me for the seizure. They didn’t have to. I blamed myself. We drove endlessly home in empty silence.

After giving birth, my girlfriend held our child once before the adoption. I was not allowed to be there. We were treated kindly all through the pregnancy, but another message was equally clear: abortion was illegal and sinful ~ but offering our own child for adoption the right thing to do after doing the wrong thing. Everything was secretive, anonymous and transactional.

My girlfriend returned home with dripping breasts, a flabby tummy and no baby. There was nothing about what happened that I could understand. She knew what had happened to her body but was as stunned and empty as I was, and we had no idea how to process what had happened to us. We loved each other very much and tried to be a couple again but drifted apart, forever.  

Years later, both of us married and had more children. One night, while putting my daughter to bed, I said, “You’re my favorite little girl!” She said, “That’s because I’m your only little girl.” I said nothing. The secret remained sealed.

Twenty-one years to the day after our daughter’s birth, I located my long-lost girlfriend and got her permission for me to hire a search investigator. A couple of months later I learned from the investigator that my daughter’s name was Linda. I wrote a letter to Linda that began, “My name is Dwight Lee Wolter and I vow to never try to contact you again without your approval, but I believe I am your biological father.”

Our daughter wrote back immediately, saying she was living in San Diego. Coincidentally, I was to deliver a speech there on a book I had written about forgiveness. We met and the next day she sat next to me at a banquet table. I was introduced and as I walked to the stage, a woman at the table said to my daughter, “You must be very proud of your father.” My daughter said, “I am.” The woman then asked, “Has your father been doing this for long?” My daughter answered, “I don’t know, I just met him.”

As I departed for home the next day, she hugged me and softly and tearfully said in my ear, “Thank you for not choosing an abortion.” She never knew, she told me, that I even knew I had a daughter. I could have been a rapist or a drunken sailor on a one-night stand. Her birth mother may have been desperate to get an abortion. She never knew. She also never knew I had carried her in my heart every day for twenty-one years.

We now know much about each other from the past couple of decades that have passed. Her adoptive mother is deceased. Her birth mother has also passed, but not before they were reunited. Her adoptive father was a guest in my home, along with our mutual daughter, Linda, and her husband and children. Her adoptive father, whom she adores, has also passed, but not before he and I ~ alone together ~ worked it out that he would call himself her dad and I would call myself her father. I thanked him and his wife for doing a wonderful job, raising Linda.

Linda and I have very different beliefs about abortion. The choice my girlfriend and I once made is obvious. But it was a choice. And like any choice ever made by anyone, it was made in part out of conviction and also of circumstance. It would have been disastrous, for many reasons, if we had chosen to try to raise Linda and we knew it. We did not grow horns on our heads for choosing abortion; but we did not received haloes for choosing adoption either. Everybody was eager to tell my girlfriend what to do with her body and to tell us what to do with our lives. Shame, stigma, pain, and regret resulted for having “given her away” just as it would if we had chosen abortion. But we did not give her away. We released her from deep inadequacy into loving arms better able to do, we hoped and prayed, what we knew we could not.

I am now an ordained pastor in the United Church of Christ, and leader of an historic church on Long Island. I have an opinion about virtually everything. And yet, I remain deeply convinced that it is not my right to violate the sanctity of a woman’s body, and to force her to carry her pregnancy to birth or to force her to abort, for that matter. I may have an opinion as a citizen and a father, and I hope to have an opportunity to express it. But a woman’s choice concerning her own body and pregnancy is not my choice to make.

Dwight Lee Wolter is pastor of the Congregational Church of Patchogue on Long Island, New York, father of four, and the author of several books.

We learned how the highly contagious virus called COVID is spread. But how is Spirit spread? By accidental encounter, or do you have to intentionally get exposed? We hunt down the source of sickness and obsess on cure; but often seem indifferent to the mysterious transmission of the Spirit that enables love, hope, health and healing. This service is titled: “The Advocate Burst into Flames.” Here is a link to this service:

Love is a Verb,

Dwight Lee Wolter

The first time either of us ever had sex she became pregnant. It was the late 1960’s and policy forbade a pregnant girl from attending high school. There was no such policy for the boy (me, in this instance) who made the girl pregnant.

Her parents were devout Christians; mine were devout alcoholics. As teenagers, we had kept secrets from the world, each other, and even from ourselves; but a growing belly was one secret we could not keep. It felt like there was a bomb in my girlfriend’s belly that was about to explode. We were pregnant with fear, shame and regret. We decided to figure this out by ourselves, keeping all options open.

One option we quickly ruled out was marriage. We were high school students. We had no money or jobs; and no one would rent us an apartment. We called the county “welfare office” but couldn’t navigate the system or the shame.

We considered abortion. We lived in a midwestern city with a large university during the “Sexual Revolution.” We decided that it was I who should be the one to walk around campus, asking young women for information about abortion. We saw posters about ending “coat hanger abortions” but we found no one willing to talk about options to us two baby-faced teenagers. We ruled-out abortion, admitting it would never be our choice, but we had agreed to consider all options ~ and we were relieved that options existed.

The last option was to tell our parents. Her parents were sad and turned to prayer and scripture for guidance. My parents were angry and turned to liquor and lawyers to prepare for a likely paternity suit.  

We decided she would go to a “home for unwed mothers” and offer the child for adoption. Her mother and father were in the front seat, and we were in the back, as we drove to the home. I was alone in the back seat when we returned. My girlfriend’s mother had a seizure in the front passenger seat as her father drove. They never blamed me for the seizure. They didn’t have to. I blamed myself. We drove endlessly home in empty silence.

After giving birth, my girlfriend held our child once before the adoption. I was not allowed to be there. We were treated kindly all through the pregnancy, but another message was equally clear: abortion was illegal and sinful but offering our own child for adoption the right thing to do after doing the wrong thing. Everything was secretive, anonymous and transactional.

My girlfriend returned home with dripping breasts, a flabby tummy and no baby. There was nothing about what happened that I could understand. She knew what had happened to her body but was as stunned and empty as I was, and we had no idea how to process what had happened to us. We loved each other very much and tried to be a couple again but drifted apart, forever.  

Years later, both of us married and had more children. One night, while putting my daughter to bed, I said, “You’re my favorite little girl!” She said, “That’s because I’m your only little girl.” I said nothing. The secret and the shame remained sealed.

Twenty-one years after our daughter’s birth, I located my long-lost girlfriend and got her permission for me to hire a search investigator. A couple of months later I learned from the investigator that my daughter’s name was Linda. I wrote a letter to Linda that began, “My name is Dwight Lee Wolter and I vow to never try to contact you again without your approval, but I believe I am your biological father.”

Our daughter wrote back immediately. At one point, she was living in San Diego. Coincidentally and ironically, I was to deliver a speech there on a book I had written about forgiveness. We met and the next day she sat next to me at a banquet table. I was introduced and as I walked to the stage, a woman at the table said to my daughter, “You must be very proud of your father.” My daughter said, “I am.” The woman then asked, “Has your father been doing this for long?” My daughter answered, “I don’t know, I just met him.”

As I departed for home the next day, she hugged me and softly and tearfully said in my ear, “Thank you for not choosing an abortion.” She never knew, she told me, that I even knew I had a daughter. I was shocked. When I thought about it, I could have been a rapist or a drunken sailor on a one-night stand. I might not have known that I has a daughter. Her mother, however, would certainly know she was pregnant. Her birth mother, for all our daughter knew, may have been desperate to get an abortion. She was not, but our daughter never knew. She also never knew I had carried her in my heart every day for twenty-one years.

My daughter and I now know much about each other from the past three decades that have passed. Her adoptive mother is deceased. Her birth mother has also passed, but not before they were reunited. Her adoptive father was a guest in my home, along with our mutual daughter, Linda, and her husband and children. Her adoptive father, whom she still adores, has also passed, but not before he and I ~ alone together ~ worked it out that he would call himself her dad and I would call myself her father. I thanked him and his wife for doing a wonderful job, raising Linda. And I remain immensely grateful that he welcomed my sudden appearance in his life.

Linda and I have very different experiences, feelings and beliefs about several things, including abortion. The choice my girlfriend and I once made is obvious. But it was a choice. And like any choice ever made by anyone, it was made in part out of conviction and also of circumstance. It would have been disastrous, for many reasons, if we had chosen to try to raise Linda and we knew it. We did not grow horns on our heads for choosing abortion; but we did not received haloes for choosing adoption either. Everybody was eager to tell my girlfriend what to do with her body and to tell us what to do with our lives. Shame, stigma, pain, and regret resulted for having “given her away” just as it would if we had chosen abortion. But we did not give her away. We released her from deep inadequacy into loving arms better able to do, we hoped and prayed, what we knew we could not.

I am now an ordained pastor. I have an opinion about virtually everything. And yet, I remain deeply convinced that it is not my right to violate the sanctity of a woman’s body, and to force her to carry her pregnancy to birth or to force her to abort, for that matter. I may have an opinion as a citizen and a father, and I hope to have an opportunity to express it. But a woman’s choice concerning her own body and pregnancy is not my choice to make. No matter what you believe and what choices you have made or would make in our situation. But I want to remind you that the people, especially the women, in situations like the one I describe here ~ are not fodder for arguments in churches or the Supreme Court. They are very real people trying to navigate their way through very difficult situations. They deserve compassion, mercy, and freedom to choose.

Dwight Lee Wolter

A young, Chinese, woman tennis player, Peng Shuai, had the audacity to name the man, 40 years her elder and a powerful political leader in China, as the one who, she alleges, sexually assaulted her. Since her public accusation, she “disappeared” and, under global pressure, has since been seen “in public” only once ~ on a video showing her doing just fine; happy as a lark; healthy as the world class athlete that she is. Peng Shuai is a Grand Slam Doubles Champ and three-time Olympian. Many people and organizations, eager not to disrupt the money and fame generated by the upcoming Beijing Winter Olympics, accepted the video at face value and said we should all just move on. Others said not so fast!

China might be thinking that all it needs is to stall a little longer and global apathy about a solitary, woman, sexual assault victim will prevail. All the victim needs, they might be waging a bet, is just a little more rehab, a bit more education and indoctrination that will culminate in ~ who knows ~ her meeting with her alleged perp to ask his forgiveness for her false accusations. All of this will be just in time for the Beijing Winter Olympics.

The Women’s Tennis Association (WTA), however, is pulling out of China until Peng Shuai reappears and is free to interview, pursue her claims, and other things. This action will cost the WTA hundreds of millions of dollars generated by doing business in China. No other athletic association, so far, has followed the WTA’s lead.

I wrote to a young, adult man who called this action by the WTA “Very honorable, but it won’t happen. Look what the Chinese are getting away with in creating internment camps to “reeducate” over one million, Muslim Uyghurs ~ China’s largest minority. Many call it a genocide. Unfortunately, a tennis player is way down the list.”

“I implore you” I wrote back, “to not give up hope! All it takes for the world to go to hell is five good people to do nothing. You have a great, creative spirit and a fine mind. The world loves to turn people like you into cynics who bleed power and motivation. The world does so by feeding you the myth of futility. The WTA showed the world that they are willing to sacrifice deeply rather than tolerate this injustice to an alleged victim of sexual abuse. China is very angry at this continued public outing.”

I happen to believe in God ~ a God that cleans house. A God that needs our help. I believe in God, a God who blesses small people doing small acts to effect seemingly impossible change. The Hebrew and Christian Biblical stories (some of which are shared in the Qur’an) of water coming out of a rock; of finding a way out of no way out; of walking on water; of raising people from the dead ~ are still being told simple because there is truth in them and because they offer people hope that “We shall overcome… someday.”

Until then, we speak truth to power. We brush our teeth, wash our face, and carry on. We pray, contemplate, meditate, advocate, protest, detest, confess ~ or any combination of these and others that keep us trudging along on the road to justice. May God, Higher Power, Allah, Yahweh, Mother Nature, Tao, Karma, Jesus, Jehovah, Universal Human Rights, our ancestors, mercy, destiny, and desire for rightfulness be our guides. And may the God of my understanding bless the Women’s Tennis Association.

Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter

12.2.21  

IN THE BEGINNING, God created heaven and earth and on earth God also created mosquitoes and laundry. Adam and Eve went naked to avoid laundry, but then encountered mosquitoes. This is God’s way of telling us to accept life on life’s terms; and that nothing is perfect; and not to change clothes too often. Amen. Rev. Dwight Lee Wolter

1Dwight Lee Wolter

On the day when this man, and many others, staged an insurrection at the United States capitol ~ it was officially announced that a Jew and a black, Baptist preacher had been elected by the people of Georgia to be their next United States Senators.

Jon Ossoff is 33 and will be the only United States senator too young to be President of the United States. Rafael Warnock (with whom I attended Union Theological Seminary in New York City) is the pastor of Ebenezer Baptist church in Atlanta; the church at which the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was once pastor. Neither Ossoff nor Warnock have previously held political office.

The insurrectionist with the horns was screaming “Freedom” when this photo was taken in the United States Senate Chamber. The insurrectionist has also not held political office.

Two of these three men chose to seek freedom by running for the United States Senate. One of them sought freedom by becoming part of a mob that stormed the United States Senate, leaving four people dead and many wounded.

January 6, 2021 is also a sad “day that will live in infamy” as President Roosevelt said after American was attacked ~ but that time at Pearl Harbor, not the United States Senate.  But January 6^th was not a completely “bad” day. It was also a day of peaceful transition, change, freedom, justice, and democracy-in-action. The will of the people was certified.

As we approach Martin Luther King Day in about ten days ~ let us consider another man, a man dedicated to non-violence, who also spoke of freedom as he looked forward to the day, as we do, when we are finally, “Free at last. Free at last.  Thank God almighty, we are free at last.”

Peace, Justice, Mercy & Freedom Be Upon You Now and Always,

Pastor Dwight

Ellen Hald I spoke today with the offending pharmacist, and the store manager, as I transferred my account and prescriptions from the East Patchogue CVS. Both of these people had the audacity to say that the pastor did not speak factually. So not only is he a cancer victim, but also a liar. This can’t be tolerated. Instead of denying their culpability, they should be trying to rectify the situation, and assuring the community that they are helping to protect their health. If I had any trust or confidence in this place, it no longer exists.

I went to CVS store #5372 in Patchogue, Long Island, at 503 East Main St. (631-758-6137), to pick-up medicine prescribed by my oncologist in preparation for two surgical procedures at Memorial Sloan Kettering (MSK) Cancer Center in Manhattan, to ready my body for multiple cancer treatments in Commack, New York. All treatments are contingent on me remaining Covid-free. I have been in virtual seclusion for about five months. I was stunned to discover the pharmacist, a store clerk re-stocking shelves four feet from me, and two customers were not wearing masks. I asked why. “Too hot!” the clerk said. The pharmacist ignored me. The clerk eventually put on a mask, but not covering her mouth or nose.

Stuck there, between two mask-less employees, four feet away from the clerk and ten feet away from the pharmacist. I shouted, “I have cancer. Look! I can’t leave this line! I am buying pre-op stuff for my first surgery. You can see my RX from my oncologist. Please wear a mask! If I am Covid19-positive, they won’t treat me!” The pharmacist said, “The mask is hot. Can’t you see I am very busy!” She never put on a mask and kept filling prescriptions. She was also not socially distanced from her colleagues: the drive-up window attendant, the assistants handing her numerous bottles of medications to place into the RX bottles; and others.

I left the pharmacy, horrified and fearful that I had been exposed to Covid19 by a pharmacist filling my medications for cancer. I hope to God I am Covid19 negative when I get tested on Saturday for my Monday surgery. My son, age 25, is getting a Covid19 test so he can drive me back to Long Island after the surgery.

I spoke to the pharmacist and the store manager today, the day after the incident. I received defensive, excuse-laden comments from each of them, independently, that showed no acceptance of culpability. I have notified my Suffolk County legislator and his Chief of Staff. I contacted the New York State hotline. I called CVS headquarters without success.

I am letting you know this now because I fear that more persons, daily, are being exposed and perhaps infected with a virus for which there is no cure, while I wait for a response from NY State and their inundated hotline. Everyone in that pharmacy line is there because they are sick. The last thing I imagined was risking further sickness or death from the pharmacist preparing my medications. Upon leaving, a sign on the door of the pharmacy said that flu shots were available and strongly urged as a health precaution.

Countless people have fought for our freedoms: freedom to speak, freedom to assemble; freedom to worship or not… I profoundly thank them. As a person over 65, with a preexisting condition; I also want to thank you for your patriotic and generous act of wearing a mask. Your mask is anything but selfish. Your mask will not protect you from me. But your mask may protect me from you, if you are an unknowing Covid carrier. The mask is not 100% effective, but every bit helps as our country battles a killer virus together.

And so, when I see you on the street, in a park, and even in a socially-distanced restaurant while you are not eating or drinking ~ pardon my interruption when I ~ just as I do with soldiers in uniform ~ thank you for your service to our country.

God bless America. And God bless you.