Category Archives: Growing up

The Luck of a Clown

20 Monday Nov 2017

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Self-potrait 1988  A six-year old boy put his name in the box for a drawing at the Grab-It-Here grocery store in Paxton. The prize he was hoping for was the shiny new Schwinn bicycle in the store window. Other prizes were on display, but the bike was the one that had his full attention. A couple of weeks later he learned that his name was drawn. He was a lucky winner, but not the winner of a bicycle. He won a stuffed clown, about half as big as he was. His mother brought it home, and he kept it for many years, since it was and remained the only thing he was lucky enough to win. Some luck, he thought.
Probably many objects attracted his attention and his hopes that he might be lucky enough to gain, but most were insubstantial, and their unimportance made them forgettable. The important things, he realized somewhere along the way, exceeded the realm of luck. To go to college and graduate school and get the scholarships, grants and fellowships to pay for them, to find a loving mate and to have her willing to marry him, even with the poverty and insecurity of the times in which they lived, to study for the ministry and find three churches that would accept him as their pastor, to have children and raise them to be responsible and successful adults—these were beyond the luck of the draw. In applying for a doctoral program, he was asked what he expected to be doing in ten, twenty, thirty years, and he answered that he expected to be a pastor doing his work well, and part of the time he wanted to teach philosophy, ethics, or bible, his academic interests, possibly at a community college, where a variety of ages and interests would be present. He was admitted to the doctoral program, and he completed it.
Ten years later he found himself in emergency rooms, successively on several occasions, until enough information accumulated to provide a diagnosis of the heart problems involved, stemming from childhood infections. The cardiologist told him that if he was lucky, without changing his lifestyle, he would probably live about seven years until he required at least an open-heart surgery. Not believing in luck, he chose to change his lifestyle—eating, drinking, exercising, and dealing with stress.
In all of these matters he was more than lucky, although not one of these was something that he could have completed by himself. If he had been confident enough to call this his life plan, then he also would have to be exceedingly happy to realize that the plan had been fulfilled even beyond his dreams. Now that boy is a seventy-one-year old man, still marveling that he has been, not so lucky, but so blessed to have had his dreams realized, and then some.
The future is still open and unknown, and his aims seem to be transforming the earlier goals into forms that are more limited and manageable in the years to come, according to the strength and breath that remain—still exercising, more slowly, and writing, teaching, finding ways to be helpful to family, friends, and the world beyond.

An Answer to Prayer

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Forest, Growing up, Hiking, Nature, Prayer

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deer & fawn
I rolled out my sleeping bag on the wooden planks of the log cabin porch at Morgan-Monroe State Forest in Indiana. Nestled in a wooded valley next to a loudly gurgling brook, the cabin was a century old, but I was barely thirteen. I felt much older because the other Boy Scouts and I had hiked twenty-five miles that day. The back-country sheds and shacks we had passed, with roaming cows, pigs, chickens, and assorted other creatures, must have been like the little farmsteads my people had come from many decades before in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Virginia, unlike the treeless prairie in central Illinois where I was born. The autumn splendor of the trees and hills surpassed anything I had yet seen.
The night was cool and star-studded, and the porch was more inviting to me than the dark interior of the cabin. Wherever we chose, we lay down to sleep. The attempts to whisper inside the cabin were just audible. They thought I couldn’t hear, and they were talking about me. They were telling a lie about something I had done, poking fun at it. It was something important to me, one of the first things in my life that I was really proud of doing. I was angry and ready to go in and set them straight. But the plank floor was too comfortable, and the stars were shining brightly, and I asked God how I should defend myself, and all I heard was the music of the stars and the distant whippoorwill.
The next morning I awoke before anyone else to a misty sunrise filtering through the trees. To my surprise there was a doe and fawn drinking from the brook barely twenty feet from the porch where I was lying. I had never before seen deer in the wild. They finished drinking and the doe wandered toward me and stopped at the railing and looked at me, our eyes meeting. Then she slowly turned and nudged the fawn and bounded away.
Life was good, and life has remained so. Some things are so beautiful that they erase all thoughts of the ugly. I no longer felt the need to correct the misinformation that the boys had spoken about me. Nor did I tell them about the deer. I just proceeded to fix the best breakfast outdoors that those fellows had ever eaten, and I said the blessing.

Showers of Blessing? September 1998

15 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Church, Faith, Growing up, Nature, Prayer, rafting, Seasons, Travel

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Milford 2  The church youth group was on its way from Burlington, Iowa, to Colorado for some camping, rafting, horseback riding, and other mountain-loving activities cherished by flatlanders. We stopped to camp on our first night at Milford State Park in central Kansas and set up on a gentle slope overlooking the lake. During the night a five-inch deluge left our campground looking like stacks of cast-off clothing after a flood. One of our teenage campers was heard saying, “If I had a bus ticket I’d be on my way home now.” Old hands at camping, of which we had only a few, said, “There, there, now, in a day or two, when we’ve had a chance to dry out, everything will look brighter.”
We had rain every day except one. Mostly we got used to it and adapted, using coin-operated laundries when necessary, and learning how to set up tents so the contents would stay dry…mostly. Every major activity that we planned, including the rafting, we got to enjoy without the rain’s interference. When rafting, the first thing we learn anyway is that we get wet. We read Psalms each morning and evening, and several passages claimed that God was in charge of the clouds and the rain. That made us wonder a bit about the messages we were getting.
We also read Ezekiel 34:26 about the “showers of blessing” God brings. The Gospel song of course came to mind. The trip proceeded as smoothly as any we had planned, either for service or for fellowship. No vehicles broke down. Everyone cooperated with few moments of tension. We kept the schedule of reservations and plans for each day. We covered 2500 miles in nine days. The showers kept us on our toes, depending on God to provide, which God did, as far as we were concerned. Getting wet unintentionally and getting wet purposely didn’t make much difference after a while.
When we got home to Iowa we found that Iowa was dry as a bone. Until the end of August it remained so. Somehow the field crops continued to grow, with just enough moisture to keep going. One of the congregation’s farmers, Don Thie, came dripping wet into the first fall choir rehearsal, and he said, “Since I prayed for rain, I guess I should learn to carry an umbrella.”
We also found that, while we were on the road, one of the church members, Chuck Murray, had installed a shower in our basement restroom, so that our overnighters, drop-in-travelers, service project workers, runners, and any other sweaty folks would have a convenient place to clean up.
So we began the fall season that year with dozens of plans that we hoped would recharge and enhance the life of our community, and we sang the old song with renewed hope, “Showers of blessing; showers of blessings we need; mercy drops ‘round us are falling, but for the showers we plead.”

Finding Philip

10 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Caring, Church, Faith, Growing up, Health, People, Suffering

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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

Posted by in Caring, Church, Death, Faith, Growing up, People, Prayer

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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.

  

Tone Deaf

03 Friday Nov 2017

Posted by in Church, Faith, Growing up, People, Small town life, Uncategorized

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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.

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.

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.”