Category Archives: Faith

Tone Deaf

03 Friday Nov 2017

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psspectacledowl1In early years we sat behind Rev. John Killip, a retired minister who was sometimes called to pray in the service, and who, I was certain, could easily pray aloud for many hours straight. Such a tall, wonderful white-haired gentleman he was, and he taught me to do a proper “Methodist hand-shake.” Later his seat was usually filled by Dr. Wilbur Sauer, an optometrist and minister’s son, who filled those roles and many other serving roles admirably.
My father, who regularly worked sixteen-hour days on the farm, would succumb to the warm, quiet, restful atmosphere of worship, and I would have to be alert to nudge him before “The Snore” began. I do not recall ever wanting to be anywhere else on those Sunday mornings.
After I turned fifty, and had those rare occasions of the privilege of sitting next to my father in worship, I was amazed to hear how much his singing had improved, how beautifully tonal it was, and how alert he was. He was always very smart, so I wasn’t surprised by how smart he had become after I left home, but I was moved by how his potential for embarrassing conduct in worship had diminished to zero.
God blessed me also with children who were not only independent thinkers, who sometimes resented the pressures of other people’s expectations, but who also respected their parents’ wishes that they take part in worship, even though they often had to sit by themselves, that is, with friends and older friends while their parents were involved in leading the services. They have shown me that they have some sense of the Ineffable One in their lives, the same One who was there for the Dunkards, the Methodists, the Reformed Swiss, the Lutherans, the Catholics, and the Jews who were our ancestors.
Parents learn most of their parenting skills from their parents, for better or worse. Teachers learn most of their teaching skills from their teachers. Where do preachers learn? I learned in an environment that now seems much different from the prevailing values, so much different that a sense of lost opportunities has descended like a fog. Why was I not able to contribute more to an environment of growth for worshipping families that was as fulfilling as my own? Some parents and children enjoy the opportunity to worship together, even though they are a minority in most communities. They will still find a center for their lives that will hold.
I realize I am not alone in this sense of missing too many opportunities to nurture young people in the life of faith and worship. There is no comfort in commiseration. There is only comfort in the hope and prospect of churches doing better, and the awareness that some are.

Like Catnip

02 Thursday Nov 2017

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catnip-plant  Catnip is one of those weeds that I enjoy having around. I planted some in the herb garden that I established in my yard. When I lived in Minonk and on the farm catnip grew abundantly all over the place. Once before when I lived at Tilton, I started an herb garden and tried to grow catnip. The same thing happened.
It got a good start and was growing beautifully. Then one morning I looked out and the catnip had totally disappeared. In its place was a well-satisfied tabby, new to the neighborhood. She had eaten every particle of the catnip.
Some things are just too good to pass up. Some things attract would-be connoisseurs from quite a distance. Sometimes I dreamed about being the kind of preacher and leading the kind of congregation that would be one of those things. Some characteristic would simply attract without people having to reach out and do the work of listening to other people and interpreting the living power of the Gospel. Like catnip.
The fact is that we must sow seeds with such abandon that there will be plenty of love shared and plenty of the knowledge of God available to people. We cannot hope to grow it in one small space and have it flourish.
I could grow catnip if I fenced it in, protected it, and really tried to preserve it from the cats who seem to need it. I have decided that catnip does better as a weed growing all over the place than as a protected herb, confined to one small garden spot. Even so, the Christian way of life.

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.

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”

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.

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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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.”