Category Archives: Caring

The Dove that Would Not Fly Away

03 Sunday Dec 2017

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dove   As a participant in church youth activities and outings, he 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 young man 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 he did not really want to leave us and needed to find a way to let us know.

Attractive Nuisances, January 2002

12 Sunday Nov 2017

Posted by in Caring, Church, Faith, House, Learning from mistakes, People, Seasons

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cropped-bell-route.jpgThermostats are attractive nuisances. They are dangerous instruments and touching one can put you in serious jeopardy. Therefore we have tried in public institutions, like churches, to surround them with fences in the form of plastic lockable boxes, so that people will leave them alone. To no avail. We misplaced the keys long ago, and it’s easier just to take that silly lid off and reset the dial where we want it. Now that we have thermostats that can be preset for both summer and winter, the feud between the hot-blooded and the cold-blooded can go on in all seasons. (I will not admit to being cold-blooded.)
Whoever is first to set the thermostat never has the final word. In a building that is big and complicated, like Zion Church, there is no available science that can indicate a comfort zone that fits everyone. One must also consider the delay factor. Since it takes about thirty minutes to reach the indicated temperature, those who are chilly may reset the thermostat a dozen times while waiting for it to reach their goal, not knowing that they may have passed their own target temperature several times. When the temperature finally reaches the last setting, and the room fills with people and the body heat they bring into it, those who enjoy the climate a little cool have baked to a crisp.
The problem in these days is aggravated by the need to save energy and not add more carbon to the atmosphere. One side pretends to be more righteous when they want to turn the heat down. The other responds with “Insulate! Insulate! Insulate!” as they turn the heat up.
It is not an easy compromise in a building as small as my house, where two people do not agree on a satisfactory setting. One likes the stat set at 62, the other 72. Guess who? “Put on more clothing.” “Wrap up in a blanket.” And that’s for mid-summer. “It’s easier to put clothing on than to take it off.” “Who says so?” This is conversation?
Do you snowbirds in the Sunbelt have this problem? I reckon you do.
How many other opinionated preference issues are like this? Don’t even get started trying to make a list.
Who knew that the thermostat would be the most divisive issue that a couple would face in their long and enjoyable marriage? Who knew that a church, of all places, would find that a temperature setting would be the best indicator of their spiritual capacity for mutual love and understanding?
“Turn up the heat” faces off with “Let’s be cool!” Lord Jesus, will you help us figure out what energy setting keeps us from being lukewarm in our faith?

Finding Philip

10 Friday Nov 2017

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organ console   In 1985, while Jan and I were living at Minonk, Illinois, I read an article in the Bloomington Pantagraph about a skilled organist who drove himself in an adapted van back and forth thirty miles to Illinois Wesleyan University. There he played the organ and instructed students, which was remarkable because he was partially paralyzed due to ALS, and he had been dealing with this progressive disease for sixteen years after his diagnosis. To my surprise the subject was my friend Philip, whom I had not seen or talked to since 1968. I had no idea what had happened to him, but I had a clue to why he had seemed to disappear.

I called the only listed number bearing his last name and it belonged to his sister Mary, with whom he was living. She was cordial as I explained my connection to her brother from years ago. She said she would tell him I called, and I left my number. Soon Philip returned my call and enthusiastically invited me to come to their home.

Their home as well as his van was well-equipped to accommodate Philip and his wheel-chair. A ramp circled the back room entrance, which was centered around a large electronic organ console. After we spent an hour catching up on how we had both spent the last seventeen years, Philip demonstrated his project of recording music and adapting organ consoles for people who needed a manual pedal and recording arrangement like himself. He was in touch with several disabled organists, and he was convinced that instruments could be adapted so that their skills would not be lost. His ministry had been redirected, but he had not lost his desire to serve.

Over the three years that followed, we visited every two or three months. He continually tried to accept and adapt to the limits that his disease imposed. He had been able to slow the progress of the disease and work with the disabling effects, much like Stephen Hawking, and he was not quitting. He chafed at having his choices increasingly limited. He sought ways to have new choices, and in that search he proposed that he come to Minonk and investigate the possibility of living there independently.  I would have to drive his van, since he knew that the miles were more than he could drive, along with the regular daily tasks of self-care he had to manage. He had to return to his home with Mary by evening. He had already made arrangements to see an apartment in the local subsidized housing.

We made the trip, introduced Philip to my family and church, heard Philip play the church organ beautifully, visited the apartment, and got him safely home. He would think about what such a move would mean, although sister Mary was clearly not convinced that it would be wise. Nor was I, since no one I knew could provide the assistance that he would need in the future as well as his sister, but I was not ready to close that option if he chose it.  I was not able to persuade the congregation to share the duties of church organist, if Philip decided to come, although the faithful eighty-year-old organist, who had served the congregation for over forty years, was reaching the limits of his abilities as well.  At the end we all decided the move wasn’t a good choice, but I was glad that I had not simply rejected the option at the outset.  

Philip and Mary both expressed disappointment when I left Minonk for Burlington, Iowa, but I promised to keep them aware of our progress there. Our visits were fewer, but we stayed in contact. Philip suffered a heart attack and other disabilities as the years passed, and ALS paralysis took its toll. He died in 2002, after a few months in a nursing home. Mary, who had retired as a public school music educator in order to care for her brother, died in 2008. Few people have opened so many doors to understanding for me as these.

 

Points of Pastoral Privilege

09 Thursday Nov 2017

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Pentecostal banner   When I was fifteen, my pastor, Glen Sims, introduced me to one of the potentially high and holy moments that ministers get to experience. He took me to visit an elderly woman near death. “If you are thinking about becoming a minister, you must be able to be with people in their most difficult times.” The woman was herself the wife of a minister who had died several years before. She observed my youth, naivete, and shyness with her own years of experience, wisdom, and serenity. “You have a wonderful life ahead of you. I enjoyed almost all of it myself. But I have a wonderful life ahead of me, too.” Such was her faith.
Up to that point, the privilege of being with people at very special and terrifying times was an aspect of ministry that was hidden to me. I had observed the work of worship, even helping to serve communion at the kneeling rail around the altar, as was the Methodist custom of those days. Pastor Sims had invited me on a few occasions to lead a pastoral prayer in front of the congregation, and he loaned me Harry Emerson Fosdick’s Prayers, so I had a model to use. I knew about the activities of meetings and Church School classes, and youth events. I had no idea about being with people who were sick, or dying, or in crisis, or grieving. I could not imagine trying to moderate disputes between angry spouses or alienated family members, or aggrieved church members, or offended community people. The thought of being an advocate for people who were poor or needy or in trouble had not crossed my mind. Eventually he and other mentors introduced me to these challenges of ministry.
These are privileges that the people of the church make possible for their ministers and to some extent for each other. The door opens to the hardest challenges that people face. The embrace is extended. The chair is offered. The mutual tears are shed. The horrible fears are faced together and with the halting words of fervent prayer.
I told my pastor that I didn’t think I had the strength for this. I asked him how he was able to do it. I can still hear him admit that he wasn’t able, not on his own. He talked about a power greater than he was, greater than anyone on their own, that lets people come together in such times and struggle together. God’s Spirit comes and helps people face the hardest trials and get through them.
In thousands of episodes that followed—hospital visits, counseling sessions, emergency calls, and everything else—some moments remained terrifying enough to send me back to some quiet corner where I might enjoy being a gardener, a scholar, a writer, or anything other than a pastor. My own pastor’s words became flesh many times over. There are holy moments when our God of compassion and wisdom comes near enough to be tangible in the air we breathe and the light we see. Blood, sweat, and tears all yield their power and make room for the mysterious presence of the Living God.

Maintaining the Bridges

06 Monday Nov 2017

Posted by in Caring, Faith, Farm, Growing up, Learning from mistakes, Life along the River

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old iron bridge 1   The Middlefork of the Vermilion River bisected the 320 acres that my father farmed during most of my childhood. It was originally a natural river, lined with old growth forest, meandering through highland marshes a few miles downstream from its source, until it was dredged to drain those wetlands and provide rich tillable soil. Many trees were chopped away to clear that land. The outlines of indigenous people’s lodges and hogans still showed near some of the springs that lined the river.
The river would have been a barrier to travel from one high riverbank to the other, but a fifty feet long bridge with steel girders and a wooden deck had been built soon after the dredging. The bridge made crossing the river possible with our farm equipment.
The river flooded regularly in the spring, filling the old floodplain and carrying off many of the boards from the bridge deck each time. We carefully replaced the deck and kept the bridge painted and in good repair. We drove the truck, tractors, implements, and heavy wagon-loads of hay, straw, and grain across that bridge. It had just one lane, but that was all that was needed. The cattle used it. We often walked to it to observe the Great Blue Herons and the small river mammals from a distance. As a small child I watched my brother and our next-door neighbor swing from its girders like monkeys, until I was old enough to test my own courage and strength.
We learned to drive tractors and trucks early in those days, and one of the most important lessons was learning how to drive across the bridge. Emphatically we learned to drive across it slowly and carefully. Not to catch a protruding iron harrow tooth or disk on the iron railing. Not to shake or damage the bridge.
Leaving that farm when I was sixteen was leaving my childhood behind. The man who took over the lease was known as a go-getter, a fast mover and shaker. True to his reputation, a couple of months after he took over the property, rushing across the bridge with his tractor and plow, the bridge collapsed with him and his tractor on it. He narrowly escaped serious injury. From then on he had to take the long route around the county road to get from one side of the farm to the other.
We have to be respectful of our bridges. They have the capacity to carry us where we need to go, to provide a route that is direct and useful. They require care and maintenance and some consideration of their appropriate use. They make possible a short-cut through the shared experiences of many generations.

One of the Seven Sisters

04 Saturday Nov 2017

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the Pleiades    I was a little boy when I met my Great Aunt Junia from San Antonio at Uncle Lon’s house. She was past ninety. Her angular features and voice of ancient authority made a lasting impression. She spoke to me about her love of creation, especially the beauty and mystery of the heavens, so that, whenever I read Psalm 8, I think of her.

She knew the constellations and their legends, and in that early winter evening when she was visiting from her home far away, she spun stories about Orion the Hunter, the Great Dog, Sagittarius the Archer, and the Seven Sisters. When we stepped outside the house she pointed to them in their positions in the heavens, and she told me to remember them. I was sure that she was one of those Seven Sisters incarnate, and when I learned of her death a few years later, I imagined that she simply ascended to reclaim her rightful place among them.

On many evenings since then, in every season, I have looked at the stars and studied their patterns and thought of her and her wisdom and her stories. How can one chance meeting make such an impact? Matching an impressionable child with a nonagenarian brings part of the answer. The rest lies in the mystery of meeting and the amazing possibilities of the moment.

Sometimes we are discouraged that our hours of worship, or study, or work together seem to mean so little. A year of confirmation classes can leave some young adults seemingly unaffected. Then again, one brief moment can bring to life an insight and a relationship that will make all the difference between faith and despair. Treasure the moment and its possibilities.

  

My Friend Philip

28 Saturday Oct 2017

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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.

Confessions of a Gullible Cler-G-man

30 Sunday Apr 2017

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psspectacledowl1

I grew up as the youngest of three brothers by ten and five years, so at an early age I developed the unfortunate habit of believing everything my brothers told me, only to have to unlearn some of it later. For example, my brother told me that it was all right to hunt for Christmas presents before Christmas and to peek at them before they were wrapped. That was not right. My brother showed me (without telling me) that it was all right to hide certain magazines under my bed. Whether right or not, it was a mistake. As a result, the challenge for me, whether due to my position in the family or not, has been to know whom to believe, when the story is convincingly, seemingly sincerely, told. I have wanted to believe what is revealed to me.

My middle brother provided the context for the most glaring family truths while I was in seminary and shortly thereafter. His wife—a charming, attractive, and voluble woman—found that every time she had a serious issue with her husband was an opportunity to involve me and my young wife on her side, representing her point of view and history of events. She was always a convincing storyteller and, I learned to my sorrow, she had a proclivity for invention and misdirection. Not that my brother was an angel in their relationship, far from it, but neither was he the intractable villain she consistently portrayed. The best result of this time of third party mis-interventions was the time we got to spend with our niece and nephew, but that came to an abrupt end. After she had run through a series of jobs and made a reputation for dishonesty, she decided to empty the house of their possessions and as much of their bank account as she had access to, while he was away at work, and moved the three of them five hours away, without a forwarding address. You might conclude that he was physically and emotionally abusive, but that was not the case, at least not in any flagrant way.

I have lost track of the times when, as a clergyman and counselor, I have been tempted to replay this scenario, recruited to side with one partner in a relationship, only to learn that the truth was not so easy to find.  

A husband came with complaints about his wife’s domineering and excessive expectations, presumably seeking to bring his wife into counseling with him.  She would not come. He replayed the drama for his parents and siblings that he wanted to reconcile, but his wife was unwilling. We met twice, while I followed the principle that I could only help the one who comes for help, and the same story unfolded in several variations about her stubbornness and unreasonableness. When I finally succeeded in visiting with her, the problem that she identified was not only his absence from home and family duties, but his serial adultery that kept him away from home with an abundance of excuses. She believed that his effort to seek counseling was aimed at persuading other people that he had tried, but she was unwilling, therefore his divorce was justified. When he knew that I was aware of this background, he dropped the idea of counseling and proceeded with the divorce and remarriage.

A wife came with grievances against her husband’s time-consuming involvements in a volunteer fire and rescue service, while she was pursuing an advanced college degree. He never made time for her and her needs. It was difficult to find a time to meet with both of them, and at first he seemed oblivious to the idea that they were having any problems. When we met together, he claimed that he got so heavily involved in emergency response because she was never at home, and he wanted to stay busy at the same time that he supported the wife that he was so proud of. When they talked to each other, it became obvious that they had married a short time after high school graduation when they had no sense of their different life interests. The wife had become aware of her intellectual superiority, and that attitude showed in every verbal exchange. She wanted affirmation that it was all right for her to move to a new person in her life, after her husband had financed her education, and her excuse was his inattention.  

It is necessary to understand that the people whom we care for as members of our parishes, or the family members that we love, may not be presenting the real reasons for their actions, their confusions, or their emotional states. We want to believe them when they sound sincere. We must often do some investigating of the deeper holes that people dig for themselves and the empty spaces in their hearts that they need to fill with something or someone.

The Play Preacher

28 Friday Apr 2017

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hot-owl-southern-white-faced-owl-in-botswana-trying-to-keep-cool

Scott and Tammy were a couple of twenty-year-olds living together in a small apartment near Lincoln United Methodist Church when I came there to serve as their first Intern Pastor in 1970. They were a local version of the “flower children” of the Sixties, smoking weed, sitting on pillows on the floor since they had no chairs, and working for just enough to get by. They were also expecting their first child, so their lives were about to change, and they were giving some thought to getting married when I knocked on their door and introduced myself as a neighbor, working at the church.

“Strange you should come,” they said, “We were just thinking we might go knock on your door, and see if someone at your church could help us get married.”

“I’m your guy,” I said, explaining that I was there for a year to serve as an intern. To their follow-up questions I answered that, as an intern, I would be visiting people, helping with the church school and adult study groups, filling in for the regular pastor from time to time, working with students at the community college, and helping a church in Tilton get reorganized. (I didn’t say that I would also be writing verbatims of many counseling sessions and visits, providing copies and recordings of sermons and worship services, meeting agendas and notes, evaluations of projects, and meeting with my seminary supervisor.) “And I can marry and bury or get you in touch with the regular pastor to do it.”

“So there’s a regular preacher and you’re the play preacher,” Scott said.

I admitted that I hadn’t heard that job title yet, but it fit. So began my first wedding counseling session on my own, since the regular pastor, my on-site supervisor, didn’t like to spend much time doing jobs that wouldn’t “build the church.” He was on a fast track to becoming one of the youngest bishops in the history of the church, or so it seemed in his own mind. In reality, he was on track to burn out before he made it to forty-five.

Scott and Tammy offered me a cup of some odd tasting herbal concoction, and we proceeded to talk about their thoughts on getting married and having a baby and life in general. As the plans progressed in the next few weeks, they were simple and easy, but they also wanted to talk about faith and God and finding meaning in life, so our get-togethers continued through the year past the date of their simple wedding ceremony by the lake with a few friends and family attending.

At the end of the year they both thanked me for coming to see them regularly, and told me they would miss our get-togethers. I told them I enjoyed our talks, too, and wished them well for a long life together with their beautiful baby and each other. I don’t know what became of them later, but I am confident that they had as many or more chances for that wish being fulfilled as any of the over five hundred couples that I have counseled since.

“You’re not just a play preacher,” Scott said. “You’re the first real preacher that I’ve ever known.”

“Thanks, but don’t rush me,” I said. “I’ve got a lot more to learn and I’m beginning to feel like ‘play preacher’ will suit me just fine.”

A Church Embraces People with AIDS

23 Thursday Feb 2017

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spiral aurura

In the 1980’s and early 90’s, when AIDS was still a scandal to many people, a modern leprosy, popularly associated with promiscuous homosexual activity, although we knew it was acquired by other means as well, a church invited AIDS Burlington to use their facilities without charge for their regular and special meetings. AIDS Burlington consisted of people with AIDS, their friends, partners, and families, public health workers, and other interested and compassionate people who wanted to work together to learn how to respond personally, medically, educationally, and politically. They needed to meet regularly and have safe space to talk confidentially as well as space to present information to the public as it became available. They had no funds for these purposes, especially when medical bills were already overwhelming.

 

The church consistory discussed the possibilities. Outsiders might consider this church a sponsor of the activities associated with AIDS, instead of a giver of hospitality to people in need. We might receive threats from extremists. People might avoid our building, thinking it was contaminated. AIDS sufferers and their families might want to come to worship or take part in other activities, which could be a benefit to them, or it could drive other people away, who were afraid of contact with them. Not much helpful information was available for the first few years and misinformation was rampant. It was such a small thing to give space and to be present with the people who were trying to confront the medical and social problems that came with AIDS. Should we hide from those who needed our help?

 

The church offered space and the offer was accepted. For a few years, when several members of the community and their families were dealing with the AIDS crisis, before there was any systematic treatment or undisputed public information, AIDS Burlington were our guests, and they were both appreciative and respectful guests, who, as usual, gave at least as much to us as we gave to them. Some of those who able to survive and those who had to say farewell to their loved ones became a part of ‘us.’

We faced some of the unwelcome responses we feared, but never enough to make us regret the decision that we had made.