Monthly Archives: October 2017

My Friend Philip

28 Saturday Oct 2017

Posted by in Caring, Church, Faith, Growing up, Learning from mistakes, Words

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3 Owls  Was it an accident or part of a larger plan that gave me Philip as my first “college roommate?” The college was Local Preacher’s Licensing School at Illinois Wesleyan University in the summer of 1963. At the ripe old age of 29, Philip was among the older students. I was the youngest, perhaps in the history of the program, at age 16.
Philip was a musician, an organist, who had completed a fine arts degree at Illinois Wesleyan nine years earlier. As a prodigy he had played the organ for his hometown skating rink and theater from the age of 8, and his home church soon after that. After years of playing for other people’s worship services, he had the justified impression that he could lead worship as well or better than many of those whom he had served.
I had read all of the recommended texts for the school, which gave me an advantage over some of the students who hadn’t yet cracked a book. Philip had probably devoured the whole reading list in a couple of hours. He could have been arrogant and condescending. In reality he was encouraging and solicitous. He read my assignment papers and offered good advice, respecting my motives and ambitions at face value, and seeming to value my participation in the school as the equal of the older and more experienced men (There were no women in the clergy licensing schools in those years.).
One of the professors, Dr. Richard Stegner, recommended my theological position paper to the class, saying it was the best of the lot, but I knew that it was the product of many of the conversations between Philip and me, and his helpful editing. We talked at length during those days and began a correspondence that lasted for several years.
While I went on to college, Philip began to serve congregations as both pastor and musician. I visited his parishes at Humboldt and Greenup during the five years that followed the Local Preacher’s School. I admired his skill in leading congregations, in youth programs, adult studies, choirs, counseling, pastoral visiting, and administrative boards.
In the many hours that we spent alone together, sharing personal experiences and private thoughts, I never had a feeling of jeopardy or improper approach from him. He had many opportunities to take advantage of my innocence and vulnerability. It never crossed my mind to question his status as an unmarried man who seemed to take no romantic interest in the opposite sex.
I was not prepared for his reaction when I used the word ‘perverse’ to describe the homosexuality of another friend of mine. He said that I was wrong to judge a loving homosexual relationship with such a word, as if the love that people shared was false or their attraction to each other was not real. I realized that he was personally offended. We shared a deep friendship and caring for each other, although it was not sexual in any overt way, and I had demeaned a part of his identity with my disparagement of another person, just because of their sexual orientation.
As I examined my own words and feelings I found that I had uncritically accepted common prejudices. My own affection and respect for both Phillip and the other friend were violated by my careless language about perversity.
Philip was not able to accept my request to play at Jan’s and my wedding a few years later, just before I went on to graduate school. We lost track of each other in the busy years that followed. I often thought of him though and wondered how he was doing, hoping someday to find him again.

July 13, 2017, Tornado Warning!

27 Friday Oct 2017

Posted by in Events, Faith, Farm, Miracles, Nature, Prayer

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funnel cloud photo
Two previous storms did significant damage to our Chapman farm near Paxton. The first came from the southwest, around 2000, and ripped a roof off a lean-to shed on the west side of the corn crib, and laid that roof on the ground next to the then-new machine shed. That wind also toppled half of the concrete block south wall of the three-car garage. Brother David and I spent a week dismantling the rest of that lean-to, learning how our father had built it with heavy timbers and 7-inch nails, and making ourselves more tired than we could remember. We hired the repair of the garage.
The second storm, five years later, brought a straight-line wind from the north, that blew a window out of the master bedroom, irreparably damaged the vinyl siding on the north side of the house, blew down the large hackberry tree between the house and the old shed, which our father had built out of full-dimension lumber from the original 1860 farmhouse. That shed stood undamaged, but the power lines supplying it came down with the tree. The wind also toppled half of the north wall of the three-car garage. I cut up the tree, except for the massive four-foot diameter trunk. For the rest of the work I hired the Sutton brothers.
Since last October Jan and I have worked regularly to clean, fix, rehabilitate, and refurnish the 1915 foursquare house. It’s been a lot of work, and much remains to be done before we call it finished. This July we looked across the broad river valley west of the house and saw a dark wall cloud coming ten miles away that the weather radio warned us about—a tornado was coming, located between Elliot and Melvin, headed our way. We saw it at a distance as it formed a perfect funnel and began to raise a debris cloud from the ground. The next twenty minutes passed like lava, as the storm clouds seemed to stand still. Jan and I headed for the basement, taking our warning radio and cell phones with us. While Jan took a seat in a camp chair in the inside corner of one basement room, I watched the storm approach through a ground-level window in another basement room. I watched the tornado coming and a second funnel forming alongside the first.
Of course I prayed, thanking God for the relative safety of a full basement with thick brick walls that had withstood storms on this “hilltop” for a hundred and two years. If the rest of the house would be removed, and Jan and I could survive, then I would be even more thankful! In the face of that tornado, we could willingly say goodbye to the house even with the precious memories it contained. There was nothing between us and the two funnels, as they appeared to be missing our neighbor’s farmstead by a few hundred yards, still heading straight toward us.
Wall clouds and funnels are extremely interesting to watch, as well as terrifying. My heart was pounding and my excitement level jumping as I watched the bases of the two funnels dance, away from each other and toward each other, in a powerful tango. When they were about a quarter mile away, still coming slowly, and I was ready to abandon my post by the window for the safety of the other room with Jan, I saw the two tornado funnels move into each other and lift off the ground. As if one funnel canceled the other, within seconds they lifted from the ground and disappeared into the black cloud above. The house was peppered with dime-sized hail, small branches, dirt, and light field debris.
A few minutes later, as the rain continued but the winds began to subside, we moved upstairs and watched the darkest clouds move farther to the east. The tornado warning continued over the radio, but, to my knowledge, no significant damage was done. We looked around the house and the yard, and there was still work to be done, but it was not the work of picking up the pieces.

Plenty to Preach About

26 Thursday Oct 2017

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God and Country   Two Paxton, Illinois, Boy Scouts received the God and Country Award during the summer of 1960. Charlie Newman had initiated the work toward the award. Gary Chapman observed his work and joined the effort. After several months they satisfied the minister and committee in charge of the award.
Having two God and Country award recipients in Troop 32 gave the troop’s adult leaders an option that they did not have before. The troop regularly went on weekend outings, far from a church where they could visit, smelling like campfires and sweat. Taking the whole troop to a church near their campsite took valuable time away from activities that they wanted to complete, like twenty-mile hikes, camp skill competitions between patrols or troops, canoe trips, and traveling to and fro. Perhaps their G&C scouts could lead worship services in camp.
The town ministerial association gave the idea mixed reviews. The Catholic priest understandably asked that “his boys” continue to be taken to Mass while the Protestant boys had their service. The Scoutmaster agreed to continue that practice. Masses were available more often and conveniently as a rule. The Protestant clergy disagreed with one another, but they found that there were no participating Scouts at the time from the congregations of the ministers who disapproved, so the rest of the ministers gave tentative permission. Newman’s and Chapman’s pastor, Rev. Glen Sims, agreed to offer guidance if the boys were willing.
Charlie did not see himself in the role of chaplain. Chapman on the other hand was nervously willing to try. He already was leading the Troop’s Indian Dancers, so he was overcoming his fear of public performance. What remained was to put together the materials needed for a service—songsheets, prayers, scripture readings, sermons, responsive readings—the usual elements of group worship. It was an experimental effort. Would the boys, given their rowdy behavior when in charge of each other, cooperate in being “reverent’ according to their “Scout Law?” Would Chapman, an inexperienced speaker, be able to hold their attention? Would the group be able to sing sacred songs together, when they were only used to singing fun camp songs.
The standards and the expectations for the services were low, appropriate to the juveniles who were in charge. Boys took turns filling various leadership roles, and the services were usually “short and sweet.” The service themes focused on what the troop was doing at the time and the natural world around them. As in most things, the boys learned by doing, but all of them cooperated remarkably and tolerated the halting efforts of their 13…14…15…16-year-old chaplain, and he learned the most in the process.
After three years the Paxton Record editor, Herb Stevens, heard about the Scout services and interviewed Chapman. When he said that he learned more from leading the troop services than he had in Sunday School, he probably validated the opinions of the ministers who originally opposed the idea. But Rev. Sims was still supportive. When the editor asked whether he ever ran out of material to preach about, Chapman said, “No. There’s always plenty.”

“Here I Stand”

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Luther at Worms   “Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise.” So spoke Martin Luther in 1521 at his fateful trial in Worms (pronounce that ‘Voorms’). His words during that formative period of the German Evangelical (Lutheran) Church signaled an emphasis on individual conscience that has remained a part of our identity to this day.
We visited Worms in 1987. My family indulged my appetite for places and events that heretofore had meant little to them. We found a clean little pension house (cheap family rooms) underneath the great tower of the Dom of Worms (the cathedral). All night long the deep reverberating tones of the huge bells awakened us marking each hour. Allied bombs had demolished the immense cathedral during World War II. The painstaking reconstruction was displayed in many photographs along the walls of the nave, like stations of the cross.
The same thing happened to Luther Memorial Church two blocks away. It also was rebuilt in detail from the ruins. Significant words from Luther are inscribed on the walls of that church, and in the small chapel a crucifix depicts Jesus reaching down from the cross to embrace both a German civilian and a German soldier prostrate on the ground. The bulletin boards of both churches stressed Catholic-Protestant cooperative activities ongoing in their current lives.
A few blocks away on the Judenstrasse (Jewish Street) is the ancient synagogue of Worms, home of one of the first Hebrew congregations in Northern Europe, where Rashi, one of the greatest interpreters of the Hebrew scriptures of all time, studied as a child. Nazi thugs burned the synagogue on Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938. Members salvaged what they could and sent sacred articles as far away as California to preserve them against the Holocaust that was coming. Now the synagogue building is fully restored, although it serves mostly as a memorial to the hundreds of its members killed in the Holocaust.
Still a few more blocks away is the church of Martin of Tours, on the site where, according to local belief, the fourth century saint was imprisoned for a time after his conversion to Christianity and his leaving his youthful occupation as a Roman soldier.
We visited and meditated on these landmarks of human conscience. We sat in the town square by the fountain with its fanciful sculpture in honor of another local product—the smooth German wine called Liebfraumilch, “Mother’s Milk.” Indeed as we rested, a woman strolled past, nursing her baby.
The best and the worst of human behavior is represented there. Intolerance and steadfast conscience exist side by side. Can we tolerate the differences of opinion and attitude that make life difficult? Like mother’s milk, may the wine of tolerance, kindness, mutual acceptance, assent, and dissent flow.

Sunday Evening on the Road Home, October 22, 2017

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

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sunset 2
We were driving through rain, rain that had filled two hours of the afternoon, on I-74 toward Galesburg, when we began to see the bright band of open sky on the western horizon. The contrast with the blue and gray bands of the sky above was stark. We welcomed the prospect of turning west toward Burlington. As sunset was approaching and the sun would soon be edging into that bright space, the open sky brightened into solid yellow, then startling gold. Soon the sun spread its blinding light under the blue clouds, sending golden rays shimmering across the whole landscape, highlighting the deeply scalloped row of clouds above the horizon, and fanning the bands of light in angles against the varying blue and gray tones of the clouds above.
I thought, “God’s grandeur…while all other arguments for God fail or come up short, the beauty of the earth still makes the case.”
The intensity of the gold light against the blue bands of sky increased, far surpassing any goldsmith’s skill, on a scale of magnitude infinitely greater in the whole gold bowl of the firmament. Then it grew even brighter. Our eyes had been fully occupied with the drama in the west. We were turning east into the cloverleaf onto US 34 when we saw the full rainbow spread across the eastern sky against a dark blue background. Before a moment’s thought I heard myself ask, “Who needs a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow when we have a sky full of it?”
It had been years since I had remembered that favorite poem of Gerard Manley Hopkins, “The world is charged with the grandeur of God. It will flame out, like shining from shook foil; It gathers to a greatness….”

We faced the western sunset, as the top edge of the sun slipped below the horizon, and the fan of colors shining across the clouds out of that white blue band of open sky on the horizon began to soften gradually from blinding gold into yellow, pink, mauve, red, and burgundy against the cloud ridges of blues, purples and grays. A bright reflection of the sun’s orb appeared on the western sky above the point where the sun itself had disappeared, and remained for several minutes mirrored on the distant clouds. While the ceiling of clouds darkened overhead, the silhouettes of trees and land stood black against the western brightness.
As the colors in that band of light shaded into intensely deep yellow and red, the sky appeared to flame behind the sharp silhouettes, as if the fires on the Californian coast had finally reached and filled our midwestern skies, yet they did not alarm. They impressed with overpowering awe.
Gradually, as we approached Gladstone and Burlington, the lights above dimmed into the blackness of clouds. The clouds were still overhead, no stars could shine through, and the bright band of light blue still appeared distant, although it stretched across the whole length of the western horizon as we took in the steepled lights of Burlington’s downtown.
“And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs —
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast with ah! bright wings”

Curt Gave Me a Round Tuit

17 Tuesday Oct 2017

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TRFBWcover

Curt Williams was one of the peculiar elder saints of the United Church of Tilton. In 1973, a few months after I arrived there, he gave me a wooden coin with the letters “TUIT” on one side, when I admitted, “I didn’t get around to doing that.” “You’ll never have to say that again,” he responded with a smile.
Over the years the need for that round TUIT has returned many times, especially when a stack of unread material and unfinished projects has piled up. The only advantage of procrastination has been that some items are so outdated they can be filed quickly in File 13.
One such set of files was marked “Selective Service 1964 to 1972.” That file used to seem so significant. I was a volunteer draft counselor with the American Friends Service Committee, talking to dozens of peers who were looking at their options. I was the potential holder of four deferments—student, medical, conscientious objector, and theological student. There had been many letters, reclassifications, and everyone on my draft board knew me. Even when I stopped responding to their letters, they ignored my non-cooperation. The whole extended episode was a time to be forgotten, and I succeeded in forgetting most of it. Twenty years later I discarded the file.
The letters from friends serving in Vietnam was another matter, still on file. I proposed to my wife just before Thanksgiving of 1967, confessing to her that I didn’t know what the war would do to us. We married during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, so I did not join my fellow members of the Students for a Democratic Society in Grant Park. Our daughter was born immediately after the Kent State killings when University of Chicago students had dug trenches into the empty lot a block from our apartment building. Our son was born in 1973, just after the Paris Accords were signed and America’s soldiers were being withdrawn. When I got around to it, I told myself, I should write something about those times. In 2007 I did, although it took shape around the experiences of my son-in-law and his brother and became the book The River Flows Both Ways.
President George H.W. Bush said in 1988, “No great nation can long be sundered by a memory.” More than fifty years after those days, “The Vietnam War,” the documentary film from Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, finally puts a comprehensive review of that war before the world.
Some psychologists say that we forget things for reasons that are unconsciously hostile. We also postpone forgetting things, remembering certain things with hostility. Is there not a time peacefully to remember, releasing hostility in the creative act of beating swords into plowshares and spears into pruning hooks? Sometimes it takes a while to get around to it. We wait until the lessons we should have learned earlier are repeated before our eyes.

Never-Ending Corn Rows

15 Sunday Oct 2017

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cornfields  From the middle of the cornfield the tall rows seemed to go on forever. Walking down the rows, reaching up to pluck and shuck the corn by hand, hearing the endless rustling of the dried leaves and stalks in the chill breeze, perhaps an eight-year-old boy could be forgiven for thinking the task would go on forever. The John Deere Model ‘A’ pulled a green wooden wagon, into which we boys pitched the ears of corn. I sometimes undershot or overshot, earning the ridicule of the older boys. Would this job never end?
I was enthusiastic in the beginning, not knowing what I was getting myself into. Reaching the row’s end I had the momentary hope that now we could stop. But we had many more rows to cover, and soon we were lost in the middle of the field again. We were just opening the fields, so that the combine could have the room to be pulled into the fields and along fence rows, but to a little boy the half-mile rows seemed endless.
Only a few years earlier no combine was available, and teams of horses pulled the wagons through the fields. That was as unimaginable as having to do the whole field by hand. Someone else with a longer view might say that this was an easy job now. We should appreciate the new machines that made the task so easy, but all I could feel was the sense of being lost in the middle of cornfields and having to walk for miles, stripping one stalk at a time, throwing at least a million ears of corn into a wagon, believing that I would never again sit at a supper table.
Sometimes the feeling returns. I am a little child, trying to do tasks of faithfulness one stalk at a time in the middle of an endless sea of corn, thinking that an end and a reward are beyond belief. Someone else must see a larger picture, someone who has been around awhile, who knows what corn is good for, how much each bushel is worth in the scheme of things.
Are we all small children in a huge field, finding the job is well beyond us at times? Then at last we come to the end of the row, and the sun is getting low, and Dad says it is time to head for the house and supper.

Remembering Shirley

11 Wednesday Oct 2017

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Shirley Kleinlein, nurse (2)   We remember the gift of the life of Shirley Ann Kleinlein among us, we comfort and support one another as we recognize her absence, and we hope, as we absorb the good news of Christ’s resurrection, to live together in the communion of saints. “For everything there is a season, a time for every matter under heaven: a time to be born, and to die. . . . to weep and to laugh . . . . to mourn and to dance.” [Eccles 3:1ff] This is a time for both mourning and celebrating, because of Shirley and God’s gifts to us.

“O Lord, you have searched [us] and known [us].…You formed [us]; you knit [us] together…. [We] praise you, for [we are] … wonderfully made.” [Psalm 139:1-14]

God knows all about Shirley. For Shirley, this is where it all began, in First United Methodist Church, and in Mt. Sterling, Illinois—the forming of a family, a baptism, a confession of faith and a membership in a church, a wedding, and funerals of father and mother…

Here young Shirley was well-trained in many arts and skills. She excelled in school. She played in the school band. Had lessons in twirling a baton and became the “Golden Girl,” the head majorette. The most important training though was in hospitality and accommodating others, and a perpetually positive attitude, taught by an expert, Dovie Bemis. Her father, OL, modeled a commitment to civic service and motivation to improve self and community. There was the motel, in which they all worked, and OL’s other businesses;  OL became Mt Sterling mayor and enlisted the help of everyone who cared, reviving and renewing Mt. Sterling’s downtown and community pride.

 “What do people get from all the toil and strain with which [we] toil under the sun?” [Ecclesiastes asks,]. “Is this just vanity?” [Eccles 2:22-23] . . . What gain have workers from their toil? …. [In] the business that God has given to everyone to be busy with. . . there is nothing better for [us] than to be happy and enjoy [our]selves as long as [we] live;  …it is God’s gift that all should eat and drink and take pleasure in all that [we] do. . . .” [Eccles 3:1-13]. So how did Shirley live and enjoy her life?

Shirley Bemis was already virtually a member of the Kleinlein family when I first entered…1967, Shirley had just graduated from Brown County High School before my first visit that summer. She was going to St John School of Nursing in Springfield to become a nurse. Though they were both born in December, 1949, a few days apart, Shirley had gotten a year head start in school; Bruce’s senior year still lay ahead. She and Bruce had dated in high school and then not dated, and then dated again. They were sweethearts, and sweethearts they remained these fifty years since.

I soon learned from Bruce that Shirley was not just a proper noun, but also a single word affirmation, and an adverbial answer to most questions, and sometimes all three at once. For example—do we honor someone today who is exceptionally capable, gracious, intelligent, determined, and beautiful? Surely we do. Surely Shirley qualifies in all of these qualities. Are we confident that Shirley’s faith and love find a “home prepared for her” in heaven? Surely. Surely we can treasure that promise for Shirley if we can for anyone.

 We were walking along the streets of Mt Sterling on a lovely summer evening in 1968, planning our futures…plans that would be fulfilled. What lay ahead? Bruce was entering college at ISU in the fall; Shirley expected to graduate from St. John’s in two more years, in 1970. They would marry then, in 1970 (here at this church, I would assist in the service). Shirley would qualify as an RN and go to work. They would find an apartment at Towanda, and conceive their first son, Bryan. In 1972, Bruce would finish college at ISU with a degree in business and accounting, and then Bruce would find a full-time job.

There at Towanda Jan and I brought our sickly little baby, Alicia, among many times to follow, when Shirley would be our family advisor on matters of health. Years later, we would often stop at Bruce and Shirley’s place at the beginning of our vacations, only to find that one or another of us was coming down with something—stomach ailment, ear infection, sore throat. We credit Shirley with saving several vacations.

Bruce’s first employer after college was Arthur Anderson Accounting in Chicago, and they found a place to live in Bolingbrook, a new house in a new subdivision. Shirley found a nursing job quickly as usual. And there they continued for several years, bringing their second son, Brannon, into the world. They made new friends and kept old ones.

Being an accountant with Arthur Anderson was consuming and frustrating for Bruce, juggling numbers and little time to make music. They looked for a new job for Bruce, away from the city and long commutes, and a new place to live to go with it. It took a while to sell the house; Shirley laughed at the idea of burying a St Joseph statue upside down in the back yard at Bolingbrook [which was the advice from several neighbors]. But finally one night they slipped out and did just that, and then the house sold right away—one of the stranger exercises of faith we have witnessed. The job that had opened for Bruce was at an accounting firm in LaSalle.

They found a new house at LaSalle with another family room to finish as they also did at their first house, and they added much more to their house through the years they lived there. Shirley continued to work as a nurse at a pediatrician’s office for many years then another doctor. Meanwhile Bruce became Controller at Illinois Fruit and Produce at Streator, later becoming Manager during mergers and buy-outs by Sarah Lee, Monarch, and other companies.

Dropping in on Shirley and Bruce, we always found that she was ready to offer hospitality. She brought out food for a meal together. And she fixed slushies! (She was preparing slushies at Mother’s little house on North Capitol when she forgot to secure the lid on the blender—we got to hear a rare outburst of frustration from Shirley, “Well, _hit the bed, Fred” [Not exactly that, but something close.].

All of the other slushies were more successful. We were frequent visitors at their house between 1980 and 1988 when we lived just 30 miles away, dropping in on Sunday afternoons. Often Bruce and Shirley had just entertained, or were preparing to entertain other friends or business associates. While working, and organizing and supporting all the family operations for husband and those two pre-teen sons, Shirley completed her full bachelor’s degree in nursing at Bradley University in 1984. Four years later she took on an important public health role as Director of Nursing for the LaSalle County Health Department, which she served for twelve years.

“A capable wife who can find? She is far more precious than jewels, the heart of her husband trusts in her, and he will have no lack of gain. She does him good and not harm, all the days of her life. . . . she works with willing hands. . . . she provides food for her household. . . .  [she sees to it] that her business is prosperous. . . . Her children rise up and call her blessed; her husband, too, as he praises her….”        [Proverbs 31:10-28]

Magnificence is a virtue according to Aristotle—a concept that I found hard to grasp until I thought of Shirley. She expanded the space in which she lived—so that she made room for other people as well as herself, making people comfortable. She was generous always and she took care in her personal appearance, to look good (helped by a natural beauty that could make old work clothes look fine…). She approached Aristotle’s golden mean of magnificence— not too little by penny-pinching and not too much as a spendthrift; not too little by being petty and not too much, which would be self-important; not too little being meager and not too much, which would be grandiose—approaching the goal of virtue which is somewhere between too little and too much, which is called magnificence, according to Aristotle. Shirley was surely magnificent.

“Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is in me, bless God’s holy name. Bless the Lord, and forget not all God’s benefits.” [Psalm 103:1-2] We do not forget all of the benefits that Shirley brought to people around her.

Tired of constant mergers, Bruce opened their own business—Klein Specialty Foods. It was a store and a restaurant, and Shirley had a hand in all of it. We can still see her, filling and decorating the scores of holiday food baskets for every special season that were sold at the store. At the same time, remember, she continued her full-time work at the County Health Department.

 As Brannon had gone to college and made his home at Phoenix in Arizona, Bruce and Shirley decided to leave cold weather behind, and join him, and Bryan soon followed, keeping the family together. Bruce and Shirley made their home in The Islands at Gilbert, next to Phoenix, where they’ve continued to live and make many friends.

This opened a special new opportunity for Shirley, to complete a Master’s degree in nursing, and to work as Clinical Assistant Professor of Nursing at Arizona State University, a position she held from 2001 until last year, over fifteen years. All of her nursing experience became available to her students, and she was able to guide many students through hands-on, practical experiences that tested their readiness and practiced their skills. She trained her students to serve the needs of the poor, the homeless, the immigrant, the elderly, everyone in need. We cannot imagine a better-suited role for her nor a better opportunity for those nursing candidates, and the tributes of many students and co-workers confirm this, as well as last week’s “Outstanding Nurse Educator Award,” for which Shirley was nominated in April and awarded to her by the Arizona Nurses Association.

During these years in Gilbert, Shirley got to care for and enjoy her mother, and especially enjoyed her two delightful grand-daughters, Anya and Phoebe, compensating quite well for the quite different task of raising two boys. She passed along some Dovie-ness to her grand-daughters.

The quality of a life is not measured in a certain number of years, but by its fullness and its accomplishments. “All our days pass away under your [will], O Lord. . . . The days of our life are seventy years, or perhaps eighty, if we are strong; even then . . . they are soon gone. . . . So teach us to [fill our days well] that we may gain a wise heart.” [Psalm 90:9-10]  We expected that Shirley would enjoy a long life like her mother’s. Instead it was more like her father’s.  O.L.’s suffering and dying at age 62 were brief and catastrophic, and Shirley’s experience with declining health stretched out nearly four years with reasons to hope for a different outcome.

So we prayed for her, something like Psalm 109 prays, “O Lord, my Lord, act on [our] behalf for your name’s sake; because your steadfast love is good, deliver [Shirley] . For [we are afraid to be] poor and needy [without her], and [our] heart[s are]  pierced within [us]. [We are] gone like a shadow at evening . . . . [Our] knees are weak…; [our Shirley’s] body has become gaunt….Help [us], O Lord, [our] God! Save[us] according to your steadfast love. Let [people] know that this is your hand [doing the healing], that you, O Lord, have [healed her].” [Psalm 109:21-27]  So we prayed, as much for ourselves as for Shirley.

We remember, as Jesus said, that God “makes the sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” [Matthew 5:45].”  We recall that it is not because a person sins or because the parents sin, that one is born blind [or another has some other defect or sickness], but in order to reveal the works of God. “We must do the work of God while it is day, because night is coming [as John 9:3-4]. The work of God is surely healing, and Shirley was involved in healing her whole adult life. The glory of God is a person fully alive, St Irenaeus said, and, if anyone has been fully alive among us, it is surely Shirley.

Everything about Shirley was beautiful, except perhaps her voice, which often sounded like she had come from a high school pep rally. Still it was a beautiful because it was Shirley’s, and because of what she said with it. Her voice was so unique that we can still hear her, as she might sing with Psalm 139, “In your book [O God] were written all the days that were formed for me, when none of them as yet existed. . . .I come to the end—I am still with you, [O Lord, my God].” [Psalm 139:16-18]`

 And we can hear Psalm 116 speak on behalf of Shirley: “The snares of death encompassed me. . . I suffered distress and anguish. Then I called on the name of the Lord: ‘O Lord, I pray, save my life!’ Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; our God is merciful. . . . Return, O my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has dealt bountifully with you. For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling. I walk before the Lord in the land of the living” [Psalms 116:3-9]. Shirley surely walks in the land of the living, the land of resurrected life.

“If there is no resurrection [Paul wrote] … our proclamation has been in vain and your faith has been in vain. . . .If for this life only we have hoped in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  . . . But in fact Christ has been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have died.  . . .Thanks be to God who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. . .  in the Lord your labor has not been in vain” [1 Corinthians 15:13ff].

So we say with Hosea,  “Come, let us return to the Lord; for it is he who has torn, and he will heal us; he has struck down, and he will bind us up. After two days he will revive us; on the third day he will raise us up, that we may live before him. Let us know, let us press on to know the Lord; whose appearing is as sure as the dawn….” [Hosea 6:1-3]