Monthly Archives: June 2015

Everywhere people make fun of someone

13 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by in Gullibility, People, Small town life, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

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

In the summer of 1987 my family and I were traveling in Germany, and we made an obligatory visit to Worms and Heidelberg. I exercised my pitiful German and most of the people I talked to wanted to exercise their English abilities, which were usually better than my German. Likewise people wanted to know where we came from in America, and I would explain that we came from farming country in Central Illinois, that had been settled mostly by Germans and Italians.

Pressed further about where in Germany the settlers had come from, twice I answered that they were mostly from Ostfriesland, in northwest Germany, which elicited a response of laughter both times. The second time this happened I asked why they were amused, and they responded that they knew that in America people made jokes about the foolishness of people in American southern states, or about Polish people.  There in southern Germany they made fun of people from Ostfriesland as the fools. After that I changed the answer to say that our own people had come from the Frankfurt region or from die Schweiz, and the response was polite interest.

The discussion about Italian settlers followed a similar course. There were mostly farmers and restauranteurs in our area, known for their pastas and pizzas, like Mona’s and Capponi’s at Toluca Illinois. But Illinois meant “Chicago” to three people that I talked to, and one of them pantomimed a machine gun, when I answered ‘yes,’ that I knew some of the Capponi family, and they prepared fabulous food. It hadn’t crossed my mind until his pantomime that he was thinking all the while about Al Capone.

At Worms we visited the reconstructed Cathedral, retraced Luther’s steps, and enjoyed some Liebfraumilch, but I’ll never forget the look on the face of one of the local citizens when I answered that I was most interested in worshipping in the restored synagogue where Rashi had studied. “Why on earth would you want to do that?” the man responded.

You learn a lot when traveling, and sometimes you can’t help but become the butt of jokes yourself.

To Pass or Not to Pass… the Peace

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church, Events, Learning from mistakes, People, Small town life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

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

In the mid-1980’s “Passing the Peace” had been re-incorporated into Roman Catholic worship, but few Protestant congregations were engaged in the practice. I had taken a confirmation class to a Catholic service, noting commonalities with our liturgy, and they had appreciated the Passing of the Peace, asking why we did not do it, too, if it was an ancient tradition of the church. I took the idea to our worship committee, and the consensus was to begin to include Passing the Peace at different points in the service, with brief explanations of its purpose and history. This was done for the next three months before the congregation held its annual meeting.

Preparing for the congregational meeting in this place was always a challenge. The elected leaders knew that some members always made a controversy out of something, but could usually not predict what would be the issue at any given time. That year it turned out to be Passing the Peace. Some members demanded that any changes in the order or content of the worship service should always be presented to the whole congregation first, seemingly not aware of how cumbersome a requirement that would be.  Several comments veered from the issue of Passing the Peace into other elements that should or should not be included in a worship service. Clearly no consensus was present, and it was, as usual, hard to stick to one topic of discussion.

Pro and con statements about Passing the Peace showed the usual divisions in the congregation. Those who advocated for the practice made statements about its celebration of forgiveness, acceptance, and mutual care, but some admitted that it seemed disruptive in the middle of the service, and less disruptive at the beginning or end of the service.

The climax of the discussion came when one of those who objected to Passing the Peace said that it would be a cold day in Hell before he would pass the peace with some of the people in this congregation. He chose to sit where he did to avoid sitting near certain other people, but he didn’t want to shake hands or greet anybody else that just happened to sit nearby. The fact that the six hundred members of this congregation were mostly related to each other could not hide the divisions in the extended family. They would not be healed by a ritual of Passing the Peace or by pulpit teaching about forgiveness.

The vote to exclude Passing the Peace failed, as did the vote for the congregation to pre-approve changes in the service. No one voiced objections to the president’s idea that the next months should include some exploration of the different parts of the ritual and their meanings, including Passing the Peace, so that became the temporary resolution. A fuller resolution would require passing through many more controversies and much more time before a real peace could be shared.

Accepting calls…and divine signs?

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church, Events

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

self-portrait

Soon after accepting a call to serve Zion United Church of Christ in Burlington, Iowa, I looked at the church’s address—412 North Fifth Street. At the time I was serving St. Paul’s UCC at 236 West Fifth Street in Minonk, Illinois, after serving the United Church of Tilton, Illinois, at 520 West Fifth Street. Excluding all of my short-term and temporary church-related jobs, every full-time church I served had a Fifth Street address. Purely a coincidence, I’m sure.

A first parish surely always makes a deep impression on a minister, for good or ill, but often in deep and tender impressions. The morning  I announced my resignation from the United Church of Tilton, I tearfully expressed my gratitude to the congregation for its loving support over the ten years I had  known them. I spoke of the major changes we had gone through and predicted the obvious—that more changes would come. At that moment lightning struck the church, creating an impressive flash in the air above the area where the congregation sat. It didn’t do any damage, but it sure emphasized my point.

Over a career I have interviewed with many congregations and organizations for different positions, especially in those years when I was just getting started and had little experience. For a while I thought I was getting enough background with interviews that I was learning how to do it, but then came three interviews in which I fell one vote short of having the unanimous vote that those committees required. The most disappointing decision came from South Haven, Michigan. The whole situation seemed too good to be true. The congregation’s program and its needs appeared to be a perfect fit, the church building and its parsonage were in good condition, the committee was responsive and cordial, and South Haven sat on the shore of our beloved Lake Michigan, not far from where we vacationed for many years. It was perfect. The one vote against me came from the woman who provided our overnight accommodations in her home. I never was a morning person, but I was on my best behavior. I was severely disappointed when I learned the outcome.

When I accepted the call to go to St. Paul’s in Minonk a short time later, and we looked at the parsonage once again, I looked across the street and saw the new senior citizen apartment complex. Its name was South Haven. Sometimes God’s sense of humor is just too much.

Driving from the Rear View Mirror

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church, People, Travel

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

3 OwlsA few days ago, I again drove my car, leading another driver and her car through a long road trip. I used to do that a lot, guiding groups of vehicles packed with young people, on trips hither and yon. I thought I had a talent for it. Only once in fifty years did I lose a carload of passengers at the tail of a caravan, and that was due to a vehicle breakdown out of sight, and the loss of radio communication with the driver, but I knew he was resourceful and dependable, he knew our point of rendezvous, and he caught up with us at the end of the day.

Driving ahead of another car or cars requires frequent and observant glances in the rear view mirror. It does not matter if one tries to maintain a speed at or five miles per hour above the posted speed limit, someone will always want to go faster, getting between the lead car and the followers. Sometimes it is a truck, large enough to hide the view of cars from front or rear. The leader must find a way quickly to restore the connection, before the next turn or stop, or an additional intruder adds to the distance between the tandem drivers. Changing lanes and preparing for turns needs to be signaled well in advance if possible, but obscured vision may require the use of another lane just to keep each other in view. The process becomes nerve-wracking in heavy, fast traffic.

Often the lead driver spends as much time looking in the rear-view mirror as looking forward. That may sometimes be true in normal driving, when trying to keep a safe stopping distance between oneself and the cars ahead and behind, but with a caravan behind, as part of one’s responsibility, it becomes even truer.

What seems to be required for the lead driver is to know well the destinations and the directions for the trip, to set a reasonable and steady pace forward, and to keep the changing needs of everyone who follows in constant view.  It also helps to have a back-up plan that everyone is aware of, for all the times when the unexpected happens, and contact is,  we hope temporarily, interrupted. That sounds like an ambitious goal for leadership in many contexts, not just tandem  driving.

The Deeper Magic

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church, Gullibility, People

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.comHarry Potter’s summer assignments included writing an essay on “why witch burning in the Fourteenth Century was completely pointless.” Not a bad topic, I thought, although author J.K. Rowling’s reasons amounted to a flight of fantasy, not the down to earth responses I had been thinking of. 

For a while I was on the mailing list for the Wiccan Newsletter at the University of Iowa, as I was investigating the religious diversity of our area. My eyes were opened to the creative efforts poured into constructing a new faith in magic and witchcraft as an alternative to creedal and group religion. Their fellowship events and calendar of celebrations, promoted by the newsletter, looked like a bland reflection of many traditional congregations.  

Muggles (for non-Harry Potter-readers, if there are any, those are people with no magical abilities or heritage) can also come up with good reasons not to join in efforts to eradicate witchcraft. Chief among them is the sordid history of persecution and depravity that includes witch-burnings, demonstrating how people delude themselves, act on prejudices, and harm others. We hope we are beyond that. 

Witchcraft and magic have returned to the realm of religious options. And I thought the New Millennium would be a face-off of liberal Christianity and secular humanism. Talk about a bland and unimaginative confrontation! Instead we see a resurgent fundamentalism around the globe, spiced with reconstructed native, animistic, and Old Earth religions. What will people try next? Or revert to? 

In ancient Israel witchcraft was a subversive activity punishable, according to the Levitical Holiness Code, with death, hence the medieval efforts to burn witches. It didn’t do any good. Intent on becoming pure and clean, communities became soiled with their efforts to eliminate alternative faiths. According to most of the New Testament we should leave the purification standards behind. We recognize our communities as impure and our own efforts to clean them up as tainted, unless we let mercy and compassion rule. 

Instead we rely on a Deeper Magic, as C.S. Lewis called it, from before the memories of time, rooted in a loving God who places God’s own self-offering into creation. And we enjoy the fantasies of Harry Potter anyway.