Monthly Archives: May 2015

Missed Signals and What They Meant

21 Thursday May 2015

Posted by in Caring, Events, Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, Small town life

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red footbrigde over lily pads

Many years ago a couple came seeking a wedding at the church I was serving. I had worked with the young man as his occupation crossed paths with mine. The young woman did not know me, except by reputation. They had grown up in nearby villages to the one where I lived and served.

When a couple had no experience in the church which they wanted to host their wedding, I usually asked, “Why do you want to hold your wedding here?” In this case I knew the church where she and her family had participated. It was a recent merger of two friendly congregations, who had built a beautiful new building with convenient facilities, all on accessible ground level, instead of “my” traditional Gothic  two-story building with its many steps. So I asked my question.

The bride-to-be paused momentarily, as if uncomfortable, dropping her eyes. The groom came to the rescue, saying that they planned to move to this community and expected to take part in this church, where they would make their home. She seemed to recover her composure quickly, and the rest of our conversations moved smoothly over many appropriate thoughts about marriage and the wedding service itself.

Still I puzzled about that moment and what it meant.

I knew her minister; in fact, he and I gathered with other ministers of our affiliated denominations monthly in conversation. He was popular due to the successful growth of his congregation during and after their reorganization and building program and also due to his outgoing and attractive personality. When we next met, I let him know that the couple had come to me to prepare for their wedding, and that they had shared their plans to move. He did not respond visibly. To my mind, he seemed unusually uninterested in what they were doing or planned to do.

A year later, several of the young women of his church, several of them being juveniles, accused him of sexual misconduct. He was arrested and held in jail for a few days, much to the embarrassment of his wife and children. He submitted his resignation, surrendered his credentials as a minister, and eventually moved to a distant community and took up another occupation, selling insurance. The case against him fell apart as the women, one by one, decided not to go through the visible public process of a trial.

Old Man Hide and Seek

20 Wednesday May 2015

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Bridge in AutumnWhere, but in the ministry, would you find a 50-something old man sitting in the dark under a table in the anteroom behind the chancel, playing a game of hide and seek with young teens at midnight? Yet there I was at a youth lock-in, listening to the amusing echoes of youngsters and adults at play in a cavernous church.  

The room was pitch black, and I found my way into a space whose form I had memorized from previous visits. It was true and remained so—no one would find me there. I was safe. I could even take a nap if I wanted. 

As I sat there, holding knees folded to chest, a single thread of light found its way from the sanctuary through the doorway, and spread its thin light in a cruciform shape along the tile floor, and shot its way unfailingly to my eye. My place in the utter darkness was illuminated with a steady and incredibly bright light, considering that it came from a dim emergency exit lamp a hundred feet away. I was astonished. 

God does not usually find anyone at youth lock-ins. Things that are sublime and ineffable flee from such events. The most that one hopes for are fun and good fellowship, and these often come in full measure. But not revelation. 

There I was, discovered by a cross-shaped light in my utter darkness, with the young people who were “it” not far off breaking the silence with their name-game, “Who are you? Tell us who you are, and we won’t catch you… this time. I don’t know who this is, but I know someone is there. Is it the red-haired girl? What’s her name? Who is it? Tell us and we won’t give you away.” (It was in actuality another fifty-something minister who remained anonymous until he could no longer restrain his laughter.) 

It was a revelation. Not communicable on that night when minds glass over with sheets of youthful energy impenetrable by thought. Barely expressible even now, when I still wonder at the mystery of that moment. We can try, but we never can hide from the mystery.

Labor-saving devices

19 Tuesday May 2015

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.com

When I came to Zion twenty-seven years ago I observed our secretary folding newsletters and bulletins. I thought that this was an inefficient process and could be improved by the use of a machine. We purchased a paper-folding machine similar to one I had used previously. Our secretary used this fine piece of machinery. In my enthusiasm I had forgotten how often it had to be adjusted, how the trial and error process wasted so much paper, how humidity and quality of paper affected how well it slipped through the machine and how often it jammed. It worked as well or better than my earlier experience, but it took longer than our efficient secretary to get the job done. She covered the machine with its dust cover and it occupied a place of honor in the corner of her office. Later it was sold.

Machines may do many things well for us, but they are not the answer to every need and every situation. They are not always efficient nor the final answer. They can be exasperating. They do not always meet the needs of each of us as personally as our own handy efforts. Not paper-folding machines, not computers, not I-pads, not televisions nor DVD players, not voting machines.

A flesh and blood human being, an incarnation, talented and dedicated, serves our purposes better than any mechanical and unfeeling substitute. No automaton and no robot could make a personal and loving demonstration of God’s love the way that a human being did or does.

Something prepared by hand, baked, composed, collected, artfully or even innocently manu-factured often expresses our affection and respect better than something bought from a store or a “manufacturer.”

We may well enjoy many labor-saving devices, many entertaining examples of human ingenuity and art, many elaborate contrivances that can prolong life and sometimes assist healing. They help us… sometimes, but they do not save us. Saving some time, maybe, but not saving us.

Let no machine get in the way of counting each person and each person’s life special, valuable and cared for. Let your hands become the hands of a Master.

The Guidance Counselor

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in Growing up, People

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3 OwlsDo students still have guidance counselors? Some students talk about having help from advisors in planning course schedules and completing requirements for graduation, but I seldom hear about guidance on choosing careers and making long-range plans. Jim Smith was my counselor when I entered High School. He had lengthy conversations with each student and used a variety of interest and skill inventories to identify what students might be interested in pursuing in their careers. He was also my Sunday School teacher and there were a dozen of us in his class, and we knew that he took an interest in us as persons.

Mr. Smith predicted that I would not have a problem with any subject that I chose to study in terms of academic achievement. The inventories indicated that I had high interest in such areas as teaching and social work and low interest in such areas as sales and marketing or mechanical skills or entertainment. He laid out a variety of career paths that might tap abilities and skills in a satisfying way. Among other possibilities he pointed out that clergy seem to require a high level of interest in sales and marketing and entertainment because of their involvement in leading and developing volunteer organizations. As generalists they also depended on having a variety of interests and skills in many areas, so he didn’t want to discourage me from thinking about ministry, just to be aware of some components that would be more challenging.

I suppose I always carried that piece of advice in the back of my mind. It was present in the first years of my considering ministry as a career because I knew that I would have to study and do some things that I was not fond of doing, in order to get to those that were more rewarding. Speaking before groups became less threatening, but making the sermon and the service interesting and captivating remained a challenge. I decided that I would try for a “conversational” style and leave the captivation to someone else. Still I have seen other preachers become successful because they truly made an effort to sell their product, knowing it is the greatest product anyone could ever sell, if they didn’t diminish the product by the way they sold it.

Even phrasing it that way still disturbs me. Is faith a product that requires a sales strategy? The farmer in me immediately translates faith into the field that requires planting, watchfulness, waiting, and harvesting. The teacher in me makes faith into scores of lessons to be planned, taught, demonstrated, and tested in some way. The social worker in me sees faith as a mutual service to be exercised in assisting people along the way to empowerment. There are scores of ways to describe our product, and all of our skills and interests need to be tapped, and no one can have them all and do it all. So we can all look forward many different incarnations of ministry as the years go by.

Still I am sold on the Gospel and the church and Christ-shaped humanity. If I neglected to do all that I could to promote these “products,” it is not because they do not deserve everything we can do together to promote them in all the ways that prove to suit them, if the Spirit is indeed still present to serve as a guidance counselor.

Make Way for Another Generation…X?

15 Friday May 2015

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Who is not stirred by the steady processional beat of “Pomp and Circumstance?” Even caps bearing strange painted messages, and some graduates acting casual and nonchalant do not conceal the serious sentiment of the exercise.

Like molten lava moving down the mountainside, sometimes rushing and crushing everything in its path, sometimes slowly and inexorably dominating the landscape, so every generation coming to adulthood takes its place.

3 Owls

I, for one, would trade my status as a “baby boomer” (such a lovely name!) for an “X,” even if the Generation X has technically now given way to yet another moniker. “X” represents an unknown quantity, and who can predict what will emerge from any arbitrary set of years defining the experience of a generation?

I would not have predicted that any modern generation would have been subjected to the crude tastelessness of Beavis and Butthead, the Simpsons, or Rush Limbaugh. I had not foreseen a modern world marred by catastrophic religious and ethnic conflicts in Nigeria and Syria. I had expected that attempts to dismantle national entities in other countries by either manipulation or force would not spread into the United States. Even dreamers of medical miracles shudder in the face of resistant strains of bacteria, or fatal viruses like Ebola.

Even by their pathos in the face of poverty, war, or disease former generations have made their mark, turning an “X” into transformative art, music, literature, and religion. We wait to see what marks will be made, what commitments, what achievements, what regrets.

Meanwhile the graduates process, and celebrate in the ways they have learned.  We who made such moves years ago congratulate them on completing the stages and demands of childhood, not easy in any age– even a modern one. We look to see whether God is implanted in the souls and genetic material of these who now seek their place in an adult world. If so, the world will change again, but not get worse. They will make their mark, and somehow it will take the shape of a familiar cross.

Odd Things @ Death: The Happy Birthday Rotating Cake Plate

14 Thursday May 2015

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Luna moth

Alice Haskell was quite a lady—vocal, dignified, competent, self-possessed. I met her when the senior pastor assigned her Senior Women’s Sunday School classroom to serve as my office, a dual purpose. She was indignant that her space had to be shared; whether she was totally serious or not, which I never knew, we made our accommodations with each other, which included several lunches and suppers together over the months to come, and much sharing of experiences. She extorted a promise that was against my better judgment, that I would not leave her town until I had firmly planted her underground. That promise was sealed with an exchange of tokens, like any sincere covenant. She gave me a metal cake plate that one wound up and it rotated and played ‘Happy Birthday.’ Of course, it had a chocolate cake on it to seal the deal. I planted bedding flowers in her garden by her house. In due course, Alice died. I officiated at her funeral. Within a year I moved on.

We arrived in our new house, ready to unpack boxes upon boxes, on my birthday. Sitting on the couch we were looking at the job we hated to begin when one of the boxes, that was sitting on the kitchen counter around the corner, began to play “Happy Birthday.” We got up, went into the kitchen, opened the box and, of course, it was the cake plate, but how it managed to rotate and play its tune, packed as it was, inside the box, left us puzzled. “Thank you, Alice,” was the only response that seemed appropriate.

Odd Things @ Death: The Dove that Didn’t Know Where to Go, or Did It?

14 Thursday May 2015

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Luna mothAs a participant in church youth activities and outings, Cary was one of those young men who was always athletic, good-natured, cooperative, and congenial. When he graduated from high school and enlisted in the Army, following in the military footsteps of his relatives, we sent him off with every expectation that he would succeed and serve admirably. Toward the end of his basic training we received the terrible news that he had killed himself, alone in his barracks, when everyone else was away on leave.  Family and friends were devastated. As his pastor officiating at his funeral I also was at a loss to speak much more than our affection and appreciation for the Cary we knew and to pray that God heal his and our broken hearts.

People took part in the funeral with the open emotions and incredulity that come with a largely young adult crowd. Even those of us who were much older could only register our questions and grief. Tears and comforting hugs passed abundantly. The crowd moved to the cemetery in old Aspen Grove, where the trees provided graveside shade on a sunny afternoon, on the edge of a slope into a sheltered valley.

The family had chosen a symbol that seemed fitting of the idea of the spirit’s release into the heavens—a white dove, actually a homing pigeon, freed at the end of the graveside committal service to fly away. Only the bird, once freed, made a circle and came right back to the casket to perch. A little polite waving had no effect on the bird. We proceeded, of course, to complete the actions at the cemetery, accommodating the presence of the white dove.

Family and friends returned to the grave in the following days, only to find the dove nearby or at the marker. “What does this mean?” they asked each other, until presumably the owner of the pigeon came to claim his bird and take him home. Not believing that everything necessarily has a meaning, I deferred to others’ answers. Still, I heard people say often enough that Cary did not really want to leave us and needed to find a way to let us know.

The Mystery Buttons Behind the Pulpit Chair at Zion Church

13 Wednesday May 2015

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self-portrait

At Zion Church, along the wooden reredos behind the pulpit chair are four ivory push buttons. They are aligned so that the pastor can reach down and press them when wanting something to be done. Probably most people do not pay close enough attention to notice them. When I was pastor there, during worship, when I wanted something to be done, I toyed with the idea of pushing them just to see what might happen. Maybe a bell or a buzzer or a small shock for someone who just fell asleep? 

Maybe someone from Zion who is still alive might remember when these buttons were still being used and what they were used for. I inquired of two other former pastors but they didn’t know what those buttons did either. Sometime they fell into disuse. Today I do not know what legions of helpers or angels might be called if Pastor Brice pressed those buttons when in need 

I have stolen into the sanctuary when no one was around, and pressed them, one at a time, and two or three together, but nothing happened that I could see. But no worship service was happening at the time. Could they have been disconnected, I wonder? Perhaps they fell into disuse when the first pagers and later cell phones became available. Perhaps pastors or worship leaders pressed them and nothing happened. That would indeed be discouraging if they were truly in need. 

What could occur in worship that would require such emergency intervention, you ask? When Jeanne Tyler, former pastor at Keokuk, was preaching several years ago, she evoked the image of dancing the tango with God. If suddenly many of our worshipers started to dance the tango, we might not be able to handle it. I would have wanted some help. The tango, as an image of holy covenant, is indeed “too close for comfort.” I would have known that I had entirely lost control and everything was up for grabs. Buttons to the rescue!  

There are lesser catastrophic expectations that might summon our desire to press for help. I lost count of the times when I realized that everything that I had prepared for a Sunday service had missed the mark. Rather than make fumbling efforts to change and adapt as I went, it would be wonderful if I could just press the button. When all of the other events of worship had reduced the time that I used to hope I could preach something that I was convinced was needed, the button might have gotten someone else to stop talking and let me have the floor or the pulpit. It could tell the ushers to stand with the offering plates at the door instead of passing them down the pews. It could tell Janice to play a hymn four times faster than normal. It could bring the Holy Spirit in the nick of time. 

Or are those buttons just among the many things that worked for a while and then were abandoned? Things that were tried instead of prayer and preparation? Things like we still try, “to make worship more meaningful?” So we won’t be able to let our fingers do the walking? Maybe we’ll just have to pray after all? Guess so.

The El in My Name may be Divine

13 Wednesday May 2015

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self-portraitA lot of people do not like the names they have been given.

My middle name is Lynn. For a long time I admitted that with the same resignation and regret that a person felt when beginning an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting–  “I am an alcoholic.” For whatever reason some of us grow up not liking the names our parents gave us. In my case it is because the name is sexually ambiguous. Boys often find that a challenge. Gary is not; it comes from the Germanic word for a spearman. Chapman is as manly as they come. But a lynn is a woodland valley, and more women than men carry it as their name.

I have known several men whose first name was Lynn, who used it with no more obvious self-consciousness than a Ralph or a Horace. That is, they got used to it. They knew who they were, and there was no ambiguity to that, at least no more or less than anyone else felt. And if orientation were the issue, those friends of mine who were named Rick, Doug, Bob, Peg, Mark, Carol had to wrestle with that more, and their names had nothing to do with it. They came out finally and knew who they were, a realization that their names neither helped nor hindered.

Through the years I have used my middle initial “L” to differentiate me from the other Gary Chapmans who pop up, as a draft resister in Toronto, on the FBI’s wanted list; as a singer-composer of Christian music, married to a more famous partner; as a lecturer and writer on marriage and the family. Then someone always asks, what does the “L” stand for?

As a youth I hesitated to say, so my Scout friends made up an answer. So I had the nickname “Lindsey” for a while– they didn’t know how close they came– but I might as well have said “Lynn” proudly. Jewish friends called me “Gershon Levi” because “Gary” is often the nickname for the Hebrew name Gershon, which means “convert” after all, and they knew I was a minister from a Coen family, hence “Levi.” Levi sounded good to me; after all I often wore a pair of them.

The Women’s Movement developed and with it the recognition of androgyny– men and women have more in common than in difference, including essential human rights. An androgynous name, like, say,  “Lynn,” made more sense. My parents were simply ahead of their time, as they named their sons with ambiguous middle names. Still I knew the reality was that they were hoping for girls, more each time they had a baby, until they gave up. After all, I had to admit that I was happier with Lynn than with the names Laverle or Carrol, that my brothers had, or the Connie or Jan or Joyce that other guys have had.

Lately I have been thinking about willows and meadows and woodland valleys, and summer ahead, thinking Lynn is not so bad, a lovely place really, a good name for a sensitive man who enjoys children and the natural world, who identifies with women as well as men in their aspirations for freedom.

My middle name is Lynn. It is a little part of who I am. Other things I hope stand out more. If anyone needs to know you can tell them. But you can call me Gary…or Mister…or Doctor…first…if you don’t mind.

My Start at Chicago Theological Seminary

12 Tuesday May 2015

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.com

I was moving to Chicago’s Hyde Park near the University of Chicago campus, driving a small rental truck with our apartment’s furnishings. The direct route from the Stevenson Expressway to Woodlawn Avenue was Garfield Boulevard, and I had been driving on that boulevard for about three blocks when I saw the flashing lights of a police car behind me. I pulled over to the curb right away.

“Where are you going?” the officer asked.

“Woodlawn Avenue south of 57th on the UC campus,” I answered, with trepidation. What I did not need at this time was a traffic ticket that I had no money to pay.  “Did I do something wrong, officer?”

“It’s illegal to drive a truck on a Chicago boulevard,” he answered. “May I see your license?” As I pulled my license out of my pocket, he asked me, “Are you a student or a teacher?”

“I’m a student in seminary and a pastor,” I answered, as I showed him my driver’s license.”

“Excuse me, Father,” he answered as he crossed himself. “If you’ll just follow me, I’ll show you how to get there.” He handed my license back to me, walked back to his car, turned off the lights, and pulled in front of me, waiting for me to drive the truck into the traffic lane and follow. At the next corner we took a right turn, and then a left, following a street that ran parallel to Garfield until we reached the Midway. He waved me forward, and I pulled up beside him. He yelled, “God bless you in your studies, and remember not to drive your truck on a boulevard.”

“Thank you,” I yelled back, but I did not add, “God bless you, too, my son,” although I wanted to.