Monthly Archives: July 2015

Drinking from the Common Cup

30 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in Farm, Growing up

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farm windmill

On a hot summer day, when farm work left us dirty, tired, and thirsty, nothing was more refreshing than a drink at the old well pump. A hand pump brought up cold water from a hundred feet deep where an underground river ran sixty degrees cold and seemingly inexhaustible. The tall windmill that stood above the well had served for many years, but it was disconnected in the twelve years of my childhood and youth there. There was still plenty of water available for a water fight or filling the tank nearby where we kept the turtles for a time, and sometimes took a dip ourselves.

One tin cup hung from a hook on the steel windmill frame, and it served as our common cup, in the years when we did not fear each other’s germs, but gladly took our turns for several full to overflowing cups. It was a fitting symbol of everything we shared in those days, including the work that put most of the food on our table from the garden, fields, and feedlots. No bottled water or soda pop or even fresh-squeezed country fair lemonade tasted as good or quenched thirsts as well as the water from that well.

Later a deeper well and a pressure tank was needed to sustain a constant supply for the growing herds of cows and pigs. That well was connected to a hydrant at the same location, and its lever was easy enough to open and didn’t require any pumping by hand. And that water, just as laden with iron as the first, and just as cold, served us well also, but there was a magic to that old hand pump that the new system lacked. The water splashed out of that old pump in flagrant gushes that responded to the force of our muscles, and always filled the cup in one big splash, washing our feet as well. The new well nearly knocked the cup out of our hands, but never filled it to the brim. The uncontrollable pressure gave us a shower as well, much higher than the feet. No matter, I suppose. The shower was often as welcome as thirst quenched. And the same battered tin cup still served.

 

Best Laid Plans

19 Sunday Jul 2015

Posted by in Church, Learning from mistakes, People

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

Few things end as we expect. This is the lesson of the huge cost overruns that have become a way of life in our Department of Defense. Sophisticated and ambitious plans are drafted, limited numbers of production experts make bids on the plans, bids are awarded to one of the few competitors, greater than expected difficulties in production are encountered, additional intricate specifications are added to the original design, and cost overruns escalate. No end is in sight for such costly miscalculations, and the tendencies remain in human character as well.

Too many factors must be considered in most of our decision-making. We want to stop thinking about it and just make a decision. Consider the choice of a mate. A million qualifications could be appropriate. The chances for error are large. Success in marriage becomes a daunting prospect, and people are generally waiting longer to decide.

I worked for a church that spent sixty years trying to eliminate pigeons from nesting on top of the belfry. The flat belfry roof provided an excellent roosting place. Pigeon guano piled up and had to be removed every six months. Church attenders had to duck the droppings of pigeons as they flew in for a landing. Rainwater leaching through the manure digested the roof shingles and corroded the drain pipes. They tried many solutions. Many solutions! Finally they built a steeply sloped pyramid roof on top of the belfry. Pyramid power. No more pigeons.

The same church had an embossed metal ceiling in its sanctuary which had been painted a dozen times in eighty years, until paint would no longer adhere to the metal, but kept peeling off and falling on the congregation in large patches. Talk about the roof falling in when someone comes to church! Ideas were abundant. Cover it with acoustical tile? That would ruin the acoustics of the room and look drab in due time. Sandblast the paint off the metal? That would condemn the building to sandy surfaces and paint fragments for generations. Finally they checked to see what was underneath the metal. A beautiful carved wooden ceiling, dirty but paintable,  hid under the metal. Removing the metal left a result that was both cheaper and more attractive than any of the alternatives considered. We cannot always be so fortunate.

When making plans or watching other people’s plans unfold, what do we need to do? Take as many facts into consideration as we can.  Test as many assumptions as we can. Be prepared to change course when either facts or assumptions prove inadequate. One way or another they will be.

The Mundane Icons on My Desk

17 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Faith, House, Prayer

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Pentecostal bannerSometimes, in order to meditate, one needs a focal point, something to concentrate the attention that would otherwise wander. Such objects should not get in the way of the object or Subject one really needs to think upon. They should be a kind of window, like the icons of the Orthodox.

The Pieta serves that purpose on my desk. It is a miniature copy of the Michelangelo sculpture that a thoughtful person brought to us from Rome many years ago. The Mother of Jesus cradles in her lap the still and broken body of her son. Her lap is huge. Her body with its flowing robes dwarfs the lifeless body of her son. The sculpture focuses the pathos of the progress of our human journeys. Both the human and divine possibilities and limits are present in that grief and love poured out.

Due to the continual clutter of my desk, as I work at home as I used to work at a church office, with several ongoing projects at the same time, one focal point does not hold my attention for as long as I would like. As long as my eyes are open, they will wander as much as my mind, as long as it is open too. Two other objects flank the Pieta—a bottle of all-purpose glue and a cartridge of correction tape. In the clutter of my life they provide appropriate accompaniments to the Pieta. They are as much windows into human and divine purposes as the Pieta, even if they are more mundane. The glue of divine love, passionately involved in human suffering, and the correction tape, covering absolutely the errors of human accident or willfulness, along with the Pieta, provide a useful Triptych. They make an altar that concentrates insight.

Dealing with Bird Brains

16 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in Nature, People

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3 Owls

After all that I do for them, there is little evidence that they appreciate me. I feed them. I provide shelter for them in summer and winter. I invite them to my home, not into my house, but into my garden. Then I get into my car and their thanks is splattered all over my windshield.

Birds just fail to appreciate what I do for them. I refrain from spraying my lawn so that plenty of insects, worms, and untainted seeds and nectars provide meals without poisons to invade their little systems. I grow the plants that produce the flowers, berries, and shelter that they are supposed to enjoy. I leave a brush pile or two for their protection in winter. And this is the thanks that I get? That bird had to be aiming for my window to do such an expansive job.

Birds are supposedly descended from dinosaurs. That oversimplified claim is probably about as true as saying human beings are descended from apes. Maybe they are getting their revenge on us mammals for replacing so many of their large ancient relatives with our own kind. Maybe they remember more recent extinctions, like the dodo and the passenger pigeon. Apart from a few species regarded as nuisances, most people appreciate birds. We admire their plumage, enjoy their songs, and marvel at their acrobatic flying. Along with Jesus we learn from them not to worry about tomorrow.

Birds do resemble people enough that we frequently compare ourselves to them. Stool pigeons. Night owls. rockin’ robins. Lawyers like vultures. Singers like larks. Renewing our strength like the eagles.  Maybe they resent such pretentious comparisons.

The mess on my windshield reminds me of many messes each of us faces every day, left by birds of a different feather. Not all of them appreciate what we do. That is a fact of nature and of life, but our motivation to enjoy others and continue trying to help or please is not diminished by this fact. We keep putting the food out, developing the habitat, and cleaning up messes so that all of these species can learn to live together and encourage each other.

Appreciating others comes from an inner commitment to the community and commonality that we share. Neither born nor bred into us, generous attitudes come from the giving of others and their teaching by example and word. As we have been fed, so we feed. We learn from making messes what it takes to clean them up. Thanks, birds. You’re not so dumb.

Time Stands Still

15 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Church, People, Small town life, Words

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Self-potrait 1988

But not in very many places. The longest pastorate in one of the congregations that I served was thirty-seven years. In the succession of those who came after him, I was third and each of us served eight years. Someone had placed a sundial in a small circular patio on the church front lawn as a memorial to their long term pastor. The sundial sat in the shade and the gnomon was missing. The “gnomon” for those who do not know is “one who knows,” and that is the name of the device that casts a shadow across the sundial to indicate the hour. In the shade the dial is perpetually in shadows anyway.

One member claimed to have the gnomon in his garage, and he intended to put it back in place some day. He was the same person who told me that there was only one pastor that he ever liked (guess who?), and he did not intend to like me. He died a couple of years later, and I got to officiate at his funeral, whether he liked me or not. I must admit to feeling some affection for the codger.

The gnomon never turned up. It was not found in his garage, which would have required an EPA Superfund cleanup to do it justice. For some people time had stopped in that parish. They were geographically and emotionally isolated from the rest of the world, and they held on to things of significance from the past. Other folks were just as quick to let go as the first group was firm in hanging on, so there was no end to possibilities for controversy. I tried to serve as a gnomon for my term in office, and I cast a few shadows that still remain. Now there are probably a few people hanging on stubbornly because of my efforts as well as my predecessors.’

Of course time does not stand still even if we remove the gnomon or dwell in the shadows. We must make some kind of peace with the movement of time even when we refuse to be clock-watchers. It is going somewhere with or without us. Even without a gnomon, without knowing where time is going, we still hope to cast some kind of shadow across the places in which we will stand.

I will not hold on too tightly to the past, and I will appreciate the present, and the future? I will let it be exciting. I will yield to it. It will belong to Another, as all time truly does. Therefore it will be better that I imagine it can be.

In Hebrew, Who is at Third Base…or at least Third Person Singular

13 Monday Jul 2015

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3 Owls hcihw egaugnal werbeH eht tcepser tsum elbib eht fo srevoL

tcepser tahT  .ti fo sdriht owt rof esab citsiugnil eht smrof

fo daetsni tfel ot thgir morf daer ot ssenidaer eht sedulcni

.thgir ot tfel

Lovers of the  bible must respect the Hebrew language which forms the linguistic base for two thirds of it. That respect includes the readiness to read from right to left instead of left to right. That corresponds to the majority of us who are right-handed anyway. Somewhere along the line, probably among Greek-writing left-handers, more people got accustomed to starting on the left margin. Hebrew writing got a head start on Greek by a few hundred years, although that may be historically debatable, but there is no question that Hebrew moved from right to left a few thousand years before English took written form. The problem with duplicating this in English is that all the English letters are backwards.

Other distinctive differences can be confusing, especially if one simply depends on the phonetic characteristics of the languages. “Who” in Hebrew means “he” in English, while “he” in Hebrew means “she” in English. The English word for “who” must be translated “ma” in Hebrew, but you know what “ma” means in English, and she would need to be called “Ema” in Hebrew. Be careful not to pronounce it “emu” which is another bird entirely. “Me” in Hebrew means “who” in English. “Why” in Hebrew would be nothing at all since it is unpronounceable, but the word for “why” in Hebrew, the interrogative,  is “lama,” which sounds more like an South American camel.  Who needs two “els” anyway? Hebrew doesn’t even spell llama with two “els.”

Two “Els” has been theologically unacceptable in Hebrew for over three thousand years, except during the reigns of some of the kings “who did not do right in the sight of the Lord.” “El” is the generic word for a “god” in Hebrew and other Semitic languages, while the alphabetic letter “el” is “lamed.” Since only one God exists for the Hebrews, El came to be used for God’s name, which in its self-pronounced form, YHWH, cannot be pronounced by people. For speakers of English it is hard to pronounce words without vowels anyway, but Hebrew has no vowel symbols at all, although aleph, vav, and yud sometimes serve as space-holders for many vowel sounds.

Phonetics aside, Hebrew and English speakers have some difficulty deciphering each others’ meanings. The phrase “lo rah” in Hebrew sounds like “Behold the Egyptian god Ra,” but it literally means “not bad,” which can be translated “pretty good.” “Lo tov” on the other hand, sounding like a low bridge warning on a highway, means “not good,” which can be translated “pretty bad.”

Where the languages come together is in words from the modern era. Hebrew remained a language reserved for religious use until late in the Nineteenth Century, when people began to revive Hebrew for common everyday use. Since then you have been able to order a “hamburger” or drive an “automobile” or use a “computer” in Hebrew as well as English, with almost the same pronunciation. It’s good to know, with all the confusing differences that do exist, you already do know a lot of modern Hebrew.

Steering from the Front of a Canoe

11 Saturday Jul 2015

Posted by in Church, Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, Life along the River, People, Vehicles

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

David was a cheerful, gregarious, easy-going young man who came to the congregation as a pastoral intern one summer after his four years of undergraduate work and one year of seminary. Three other ministerial students had interned in the congregations I served, and because of his temperament David was the easiest to tease.

Showing a willingness to tackle any task, it was no surprise that he wanted to go with the youth group on a camping and canoeing adventure, even though he did not have canoeing experience. He was a swimmer, his family had a cabin on a lake some distance away, and he was familiar with rowboats and motorboats.

Everyone partnered with someone who had experience, and most of the young people on that trip had been canoeing on a river before, so little training was necessary for that trip. I chose David as my partner. I had no intention of losing him, but had every expectation of getting him wet on a sultry summer day. Since he was young and strong, and I was old and tried, I explained to him, I would put him in the bow of the canoe to provide both forward motion and guidance. You guide a canoe from the front, I said, testing to see if he caught my misdirection, but catching no indication of it. We must, of course, keep up with the rest of the group to make sure that everyone was proceeding safely down the river, through its rapids and many boulders. Meanwhile I rested in the stern, barely putting my paddle in the water. Soon we were zigzagging our way from one bank to the other, and we were lagging behind. David was beginning to show his frustration and asked what he was doing wrong.

“Not a thing,” I said. “You just need help.” I admitted that I had given him the wrong instruction. You can indeed propel a canoe forward from the bow, but it is difficult to guide from there. The stern provides the guidance. This is one example where leadership comes, not from the one in front, but from the one in back. When I did my part, we soon caught up with the rest, and managed to get as wet as we wanted to be.

That was a theme we pondered on other occasions during that summer, as we worked with would-be and effective leaders, and tried to practice leadership ourselves, not always from in front of other people. David just celebrated thirty years of effective leadership in several congregations. He has somehow maintained his sense of humor and eagerness for his work, which is still exercised from the front sometimes, and sometimes from the rear.

Firehouse Camaraderie

10 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Church, fighting fires, Learning from mistakes, Small town life

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Yellowstone PoolEvery week, Wednesday evening was devoted to training and work at the firehouse. As a minister, I found it difficult to give up Wednesday nights, which I had reserved for many years as “church night,” but my congregation no longer had any regular events planned for Wednesday nights, and several members of my congregation were involved in the volunteer fire and rescue services, so it made sense for me to join in their Wednesday evening activities. Besides, I desperately needed training, and I needed to do my share of the work.

As far as any definition of fellowship, mutual support, and service to others could be concerned, the crew at the firehouse measured up. They regularly responded to calls for aid, protected each other in threatening circumstances, and, for the most part, enjoyed their work and each other while doing it. Many times we could sense the exhaustion of one or more of the crew, and the difficulty of continuing to work into the evening after a full day’s work elsewhere, or an already hectic week of emergency calls. Still, our situation called for as much training as we could fit in, whether it was actual practice with our equipment, videos and accounts of events elsewhere, review of successes and failures in recent calls, or formal hours for certification.

Every fire engine and emergency vehicle had its idiosyncrasies, every new piece of equipment had its peculiar instructions for use and maintenance, and every individual had strengths and weaknesses that needed to be learned. Sometimes maintenance tasks consumed so much time that we had little time for instruction. We always had “on the job training,” but the citizens of our community took little comfort from earning that some of us were unprepared for the unique tasks we were facing in any particular call. Who had not used the “jaws of life?” Who had not performed CPR? Who had not operated the new engine #4? Who had not fought a chemical fire? Who could not drive the old manual transmission water tanker that required double shifting? That person would probably be called upon to do that very thing sometime during the next few weeks. We regularly received lessons in humility provided by difficult circumstances.

The few officers of that volunteer team proved their rank by the experience and leadership they provided. The rest of us knew each other by the work that we did and our performances under pressure. Our vocabularies, educational attainments, bank accounts, wardrobes, and possessions did not matter at all when the time for duty arrived. Only the capacity to respond counted for value.

Once in a while someone planned an event that was supposed to be a party or a recognition of our service. No one could imagine a more awkward or useless event. We partied when we gathered to work.

In some ways the volunteer fire and rescue service provided a model of what a church could be.

Quirky Fuel Gauges

09 Thursday Jul 2015

Posted by in Learning from mistakes, Vehicles

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cropped-img_38291.jpg

The fuel gauges on my vehicles behave oddly. I did hear recently, however, that my observations about fuel gauges compare well with many other peoples.’ With the tanks starting at full, they remain full for a long time, and then move gradually down the gauge until the half-way point. Then they drop precipitously. The last half tank goes twice as fast as the first half, and the gauges speed up as they approach empty. When the needles reach the empty mark, two or three gallons remain in the tank, but I do not feel secure in depending on them. My riders, feeling even less secure, insist that I refill instead of driving on empty. One of my riders (who can remain unnamed), aware of the odd behavior of the gauges, always insists that our gas tank should be filled just before we drive into a city, because that person believes that at some point in our trip I will always get lost in the worst slums of that city. To be fair, she also gets nervous when we are driving across the vast expanses of the Great Plains.

The ornery behavior of my gauges parallels my soul. If a spiritual supply gauge could be affixed to my body, it would probably behave in a similar way. Filled up with an awareness of abundance and grace, well-rested in mind and body, I would register full for a long time, probably long past the time that my resources begin to diminish. Gradually I would indicate the ebbing of my awareness of grace until I reach the point at which I notice that I am only half-full. Then in a frenzy of activity I would use up my reserves and register empty before I actually am. The challenge comes to refill before I run out of gas completely.

Maybe I need such a gauge, but with or without it, the use of my time, talents, and energies depends on my awareness that the gifts I contain are limited, while the source of the supply is unlimited. Filling up is a regular undertaking, and I must allow time for the rest, worship, meditation, and recreation that fill me and others around me. Running in empty may be possible for longer than anyone has a right to expect, but it really is not worth the risk of getting stranded where we do not want to be.

When Notes are Unsigned and the Preacher Still Has a Pulpit

08 Wednesday Jul 2015

Posted by in Caring, Church, Learning from mistakes, Small town life

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Self-potrait 1988

I had spent a few days in the hospital with some significant heart symptoms. When I returned to the pulpit after my release, I thanked the people for the many get-well cards, encouraging words, and generous offers of help that came to my wife and me, but I told them that there was also one card that had come with the others. Unsigned, it had asked, “What are we supposed to do, if our pastor is ill? We can’t get the help that we need when we have a sick pastor.”

In my notes for that Sunday in winter, 1984, I said that I must try to answer this question, as much for myself as for whoever wrote it. First, my physicians assured me that I could expect to get control of this issue if I took certain steps and continued doing so the rest of my life. I could return to work and have the heart to do it. Second, ministers are human and will get sick, some more often than others. The church will survive, and sometimes it will prosper, as people share more of the load and cooperate with one another in getting things done that the minister cannot do. Third, we are in this church together in all circumstances, good and bad, much like a marriage, and God’s power is most visible when we are at our weakest.  I had certainly felt that power, during the previous two weeks, when so many had taken time to provide what was needed, and I had gained in understanding of what I faced and what I needed to do about it.

I never learned who had expressed those fears in the “get well card,” and I don’t know whether the writer was embarrassed or not about my reference to those words from the pulpit, but the sentiment probably did everyone a favor.