Category Archives: Learning from mistakes

Responding to the Kerner Commission Report

27 Friday Jan 2017

Posted by in Caring, Citizenship, Events, Faith, Growing up, Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, Racial Prejudice, Small town life

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hot-owl-southern-white-faced-owl-in-botswana-trying-to-keep-coolAgain in the last semester of my senior year, the Illinois Wesleyan Political Science Department gave two other students and me another opportunity to represent the school at a special gathering, the annual Public Affairs Conference at Principia College. (By that time I was also taking the first political science course of my college career.) The conference theme was “Combatting Racism.”

 

The agenda of the conference included a variety of experts. The immediate background of the theme was the February 29,1968, release of the Kerner Commission Report, formally called the President’s National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, which branded racism as the primary cause of the surge of riots that had recently swept several major American cities. It was the conference objective to consider and design programs and laws that would reverse the separation of America into two racial cultures that were separate and unequal. It was an ambitious undertaking, especially considering that minority groups were barely represented among the participants.

 

With the division into working groups, I found that my group had one young eloquent black man. He dispensed with the group assignment with the observation that we could imagine many fine ideas for state and federal action that would go nowhere. Instead, we could design goals for ourselves working in the families and communities in which we lived, and these might have some chance of accomplishing something if we were courageous enough to follow through. I was hooked, and so were the other members of the group. Around the circle we considered the actions and processes that would disturb the racism that prevailed where we lived. It was not comfortable, but it was real.

 

I had grown up in a northern community that was thoroughly segregated, even though it was only a few miles from Chanute Air Force Base. Air Force families of many racial backgrounds lived off-base, but only white families lived in Paxton, where people still boasted a “sunset law” that threatened any darker-skinned person who might be caught there after sunset. I had spoken about racial justice in the few sermons I was invited to preach in my home church, but I had not approached the members of the Paxton City Council that I knew, who had it in their power to renounce the “sunset” idea and prepare the town to be open to all.

 

Black friends lived in neighboring towns, but they would not risk coming to Paxton, even to take part in such common activities as bowling, seeing a movie, swimming, or roller-skating. I was welcome in their homes to eat meals and enjoy their company, and they were welcome in my home, which was miles from town in the countryside. The town’s segregating attitude had to change. That would change, I was confident, as the months went by.

 

We resolved to implement the plans we made.  The other groups reported ambitious government programs that would take large scale political action. Our group’s report seemed pale and meager in comparison. In hindsight, few of the ambitious goals that were formulated there, or in the Kerner Report, came to be embodied in actions in the decades that followed.

 

I returned to my home town and approached the public officials that I knew. To a one, they thought it was “too soon” or “too radical” to do what I was suggesting. Furthermore, the time for me to do the organizing that was needed even to accomplish such a modest goal was short, as I was preparing to marry and begin my graduate education in Chicago. There, in Chicago, I would learn what life in an integrated community was like, and how deprived my own background had been.

 

Fifty years later, returning to Paxton, finding a mix of people in the school system, working in the businesses, and living in the town, I wonder why it took us so long, and why we still have so far to go. There is still a lot of room for both large-scale and meager goals and the courage to embody them.

 

Those Poor Dead Rabbits

17 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Caring, Farm, Growing up, Learning from mistakes

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Raising rabbits was the occupation and 4-H project that was handed down from brother to brother to brother in my family, like the outgrown clothes. I was the third in line, and around the age of nine or ten I inherited the population of twenty to thirty New Zealand white rabbits.  With them came the hutches that my oldest brother had made—a single hutch, a double hutch, and a dandy triple decker with three pens on each level. The triple decker not only had woven “wire cloth” floors like the others; underneath the wire, it also had a tin slanted floor that allowed rabbit feces to roll down the ramp and out the rear to form a nice pile behind the hutch, handy for carrying to the garden that was next to it.

Every couple of years we went down to the Okaw Valley Rabbitary and bought a couple more to keep our population from getting too inbred. We had two or three breeding seasons a year, and most of the rabbits became dinner for our neighbors, although once in while someone bought live rabbits for their own breeding programs or pets.

Taking care of rabbits was relatively simple. I fed them morning before school and after school with Purina Rabbit Chow and occasionally hay and green leafy vegetables, put water in their coffee can waterers, refreshed the salt block in each pen occasionally and some fresh wood to chew on, so they’d leave their bed boxes and the hutch itself alone, kept the hutch clean, and provided shelter, straw, heat lamps, and unfrozen water in winter. When the time was right I put a male into the hutch with a female and watched them go at it, putting one and one together to get more than two, as farm kids learned more than math in those days. Then when the female started to nest with her own fur, I prepared to count the babies, because there wasn’t much else to do but watch the mother care for her brood or not.

When the cute  little rabbits ate their way into being big rabbits, I learned to slit their throats quickly, skin them and hang their pelts to dry, and butcher those rabbits for the fine meat our neighbors and we enjoyed. I don’t remember what we sold them for—maybe a couple of bucks apiece, about as much as the rabbit chow cost to feed them probably. I kept records for the 4-H project book every year, and I don’t think we ever made a profit that would match the amount of work involved.

When the weather was good, of course I played with them, took them out one by one and played in the grass or the garden. As I enjoyed the stories of Peter Rabbit and all of his kin, I never considered that I was the mean old farmer who would mercilessly put them to death. It was just the expected cycle of things.

My most embarrassing rabbit moment came in the last 4-H Fair where I exhibited a pair of rabbits as usual. I had always gotten a first place blue ribbon. Only my pair in that last year was two females, because I had sold or butchered all my young males. I figured two sisters was as much a pair as a male and female, but the judge did not agree. I had to be satisfied with a red ribbon, and face my competitors who thought I could not tell the difference.

Why did the rabbits come back to haunt me in my dreams years later, after I had given up raising rabbits and moved on to theology and philosophy? I would dream that I had forgotten to feed and water them, neglected to put up the corrugated sheet shelter that protected them from ice and snow, starved them to death, let them freeze, and the dreams would not just come once; they recurred. Not night after night, but every few weeks the rabbit dream recurred. If I was not the irresponsible, neglectful person while I had the rabbits, I certainly was when I got rid of them. They came back to haunt me, and remind me that diligence and attentiveness were required if I was to care for living beings. I was about sixteen when I gave up rabbit culture. The last time I dreamed of rabbits was about fifty years later.

A Panegyric Upon Plymouth

24 Thursday Nov 2016

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The only time I have been invited to preach at a college chapel service was for Illinois Wesleyan University just before Thanksgiving in 1969. I chose the presumptuous title of “A Panegyric Upon Plymouth” as my sermon title, drawing from Soren Kierkegaard’s “A Panegyric Upon Abraham” and the historical fictions surrounding the founding of Thanksgiving as a national holiday.

A panegyric is supposed to be an oration or public address in praise of something or someone. By using the scripture of the Pharisee and the publican as the scripture text for the sermon, my praise was reserved for the publican who approached God humbly and with repentance, in contrast with the Pharisee who proudly thanked God that he was not like other people because he was so much better. With no small amount of sarcasm, I compared the Pharisee to the usual message of thanksgiving in America and expressed the hope that we would learn to use the publican as a model instead.

My delivery was not so good that evening. I recall that my wife compared it to a dirge, since it was slow and halting. I was nervous and had never preached to a college audience in such a formal setting. My mentor, Chaplain Bill White, gave me the benefit of the doubt and said that sometimes it takes a while for a message to sink in and later people come it understand it better. Probably they would understand it from someone else who spoke it more effectively.

Maybe no one else understands that message better, but I do. If the legend of Thanksgiving bears any truth, it is in the generosity and good will of the Wampanoag people in helping the pilgrims to survive, even though the Wampanoag themselves had suffered the worst decade of their own existence as a people. As a result of the pilgrims and the actions of later puritans, we can attest that “no good deed goes unpunished.”

When President Barack Obama addressed the Arab nations in Egypt early in his presidency, expressing regret for some of the actions and attitudes represented in United States’ interventions in the Middle East (never using the word ‘apology’ although that was later used by Obama’s critics), my thoughts returned to my earlier diagnosis of American pride. We have not learned to be humble supplicants to a gracious and merciful God. Our ideas of American greatness are distorted and deadly to the future of the earth. We need to appreciate the humanity that we share with people everywhere, and realize the failures that also come with that humanity. We need to learn humbly from each other. We can only be grateful that God has given much more, much more than we deserve, and perhaps we will have more chances to do some good with what we have received.    

Making Dreams Come True

12 Saturday Nov 2016

Posted by in Events, Faith, Learning from mistakes, Prayer, Suffering, Words

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hot-owl-southern-white-faced-owl-in-botswana-trying-to-keep-coolThe evening before the election, I heard Donald Trump say, “I will make all your dreams come true.”

I have a lot of dreams. Since the days of studying both Carl Jung and Gestalt Therapy, I have taken my own dreams and other people’s dreams seriously. These may not be the dreams Donald Trump had in mind, but sleeping dreams reveal much about us and the world we live in.

In the days before the election of George W. Bush, I dreamed repeatedly about going to war with Iraq again. A year before 9/11 and two years before the Second Iraq War, there had been enough talk about Saddam Hussein as a devil that the dreams were understandable. My dreams were chaotic and yet clear in their aversion to the prospect of war in Iraq. As Iraq fell into chaos after our “victory” had been declared, the news became a daily experience of déjà vu.

Before the election of Donald Trump, I had a series of automaton dreams, with people crawling out of a trunk that an orange-headed man had opened. The automatons were zombie-like and yet their faces were full of expression. Their smiles were broad and fixed and their eyes were bright, as they screamed and yelled obscenities and attacked other people, including my friends and family and me, because we were not like them. We did not “belong” to this order of Pandora. Sometimes they attacked people of color and foreigners, sometimes same sex friends and couples (“We’re just friends; we’re not married,” I heard them say, defending themselves.), sometimes crippled and helpless people who just melted under the assaults, as the attackers called them “freaks” and “losers.” They even attacked scrawny children, clothed in rags, who fell under their trampling feet. Once I had my hands around the neck of one of the attackers, and I squeezed her throat, until I stopped myself, and said, “I can’t do this. (I’m becoming like them.).” When I awoke, I’m glad to report, Jan was sleeping soundly at my side, undisturbed and unthreatened. The dream reoccurred with small changes, and I supposed they resulted from the frequent media footage of Donald Trump rallies.

I studied at Chicago Theological Seminary with Franklin Littell, historian of the rise of fascism in Europe, and Andre Lacocque, a biblical scholar who experienced the years of the Third Reich, and whose teaching of Daniel and Job were framed by those experiences. My dreams are often affected by memories of what I’ve learned and by the echoes of those years in the words and actions of extremist leaders and groups of all kinds. It doesn’t take much to reawaken the dreams-turned-nightmares—a straight-armed salute, a swastika or similar angular symbol, the waving of certain flags, especially the Confederate flag. Even our own Pledge of Allegiance, recited with too many flags, too many uniforms, too many people, gives me the creeps.

Mass deportations of millions , indiscriminate stop and frisk, silencing and demonizing dissent, shredding the social safety net for the underclass and the already impoverished and the desperately ill, expanded militarization of the police and search and seizure in our neighborhoods, climate and war refugees crowded into mass camps and prisons across the earth—all of these are nightmarish prospects that have been spoken aloud and celebrated. I pray these dreams are not the ones Donald Trump had in mind when he promised to make all our dreams come true.

Moving On from ‘A Fail’

28 Wednesday Sep 2016

Posted by in Disabilities, Faith, Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, Words

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Yesterday I got the news. I had failed. There was good news with the bad. I had averaged six and a half hours a night during the past six months with the blessed Bi-PAP machine. My number of apnea incidents per hour had reduced by… three. Whoopee! The resulting total made it three times the acceptable goal. My fifth mask had done pretty well. It usually let me sleep an hour before waking me. Unfortunately my face is evidently misshapen from what any of the existing masks fit. The neurologist’s verdict—a fail.

It is not easy to accept failure. I never failed a course. That ‘B’ in English the freshman year in high school, and in Biology in my sophomore year in college, were had to take, but in my defense I suffered with a kidney stone and infection during that college semester. I was never fired from a job, and when one job ended I always had another one to go to. I married one of the most helpful, loving, and gracious persons in the world, and we had two wonderful children who found terrific spouses, and we have three fantastic grandchildren who amaze us with their accomplishments, and they all still love me. At least they do everything to make me think they do. Somehow I have survived illnesses and close calls and the deaths of people close to me, and to faith goes the credit, but I made it through. I have made many mistakes and people have for the most part forgiven me and let me know that. I have enjoyed a long career that was, if not successful, at least fulfilling and rewarding in every way that I could expect. I consider myself to be one of the richest, most fortunate people who have ever lived, even without winning a lottery. Why buy a ticket? I can donate directly to the schools.

The money that my insurance companies have spent could have helped someone who really needed it. It could have bought a new car. (Not for me. I didn’t really need a new car.)

I am pretty tired of the Bi-Pap machine, but I will continue to use it until something else replaces it. I cannot remember sleeping so badly for months at a time, and feeling so exhausted because of it. I am cured of the sin of looking forward to bedtime. The initial hopes of reduced angina and arrhythmia have given way to just being glad I do not bother my wife with snoring as much as I did. That is probably enough, come to think of it.

One is supposed to learn from failure; it is respected as a great teacher. Next on the agenda is an “oral appliance.” I will make a call to the installer now. I have been delaying long enough.

And What About Your Wife?

03 Saturday Sep 2016

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

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In June of 1970 I asked to be considered for ordination as a deacon in the United Methodist Church. At that time ordination to the office of deacon was a step toward ordination as an elder for Methodists. I had completed two years of graduate theological and professional studies, and I had served as a “licensed local preacher” for seven years in a variety of church-related positions. The Conference to which I belonged was Central Illinois, where I had lived all of my life before moving to Chicago in 1968, but my two years in Chicago had stretched my ties to the Methodists in central Illinois. My original mentor in ministry, Glen Sims, had died suddenly with a brain tumor. Controversies surrounding racial justice, the War in Vietnam, and other social issues had alienated some ministers who had been part of my formation, and they had left the conference or found themselves in vocational jeopardy.

The times were changing, but I wanted to persist in a path toward ministry and knew that I had to submit my credentials and my ideas to the judgment of those who made the decisions regarding whom the church would ordain. There were two dozen men who were candidates for deacon that year, a large class. Women were just beginning to request consideration; I do not remember any that year, although I knew several excellent candidates who were coming in the years ahead. Just to help us feel more insecure, the leaders of our assembly made it clear that the church had a lot more candidates for ministry than they had congregations to employ us, so we should be ready to be disappointed.

The panel called us in one by one. Several ministers sat around the table with questions. Mentally I reviewed the theological and social controversies that wracked the church and challenged us all to deeper faith and extensive preparation. So the questions came. “Do you smoke or use tobacco?” No, I found that I am allergic to tobacco, I responded. “Do you drink alcoholic beverages?” Very little, I said. (I don’t have money to waste, I could have added, but didn’t.) “Do you expect to have an appointment to serve a local church?” No, I have secured an internship in a Methodist Church in Danville and Tilton, and afterwards I will return to seminary to complete my studies. “What about your wife?” I explained that she loved the church as I did, but she was raised a Lutheran and a Presbyterian, so she was just getting acquainted with Methodism, and where we lived in Chicago, we worshipped at a Disciples congregation near our home. This coming year would be her first opportunity to worship regularly with Methodists, since we had left Illinois Wesleyan and its ecumenical chapel services. Responding to me, there were some comments that wives could help or hinder one’s ministry, and I should resolve this situation before seeking an appointment. That was it. That was my ordination interview. My answers to their questions disappointed my interviewers. They appeared to be mostly relieved that I wasn’t seeking an appointment to a parish anytime soon.

Later I learned that the panel had approved my ordination as a deacon. Bishop Lance Webb appeared before our class before the service itself, letting us know that some of us were not likely to be ordained as elders unless several matters were resolved. He would not ordain anyone who accepted smoking and drinking. Our families had to be as committed to the Methodist ministry as we were. He was looking at me as he spoke, or he seemed to be. What about other issues? What about our faith formation and life in prayer and the extensive problems facing our society? They were not mentioned that day, except that he wanted us to read his books. I recognized that these were tests that I would not seek to pass when the time came, not because I couldn’t, but because there were other tests that were more important to me and to the church I wanted to serve.

 

‘Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread’

02 Friday Sep 2016

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I spent much of that May evening in 1971 walking in a park and praying about my wife and baby daughter and my future. My year as an intern pastor was coming to a close, and finding a job to support us and a place to live and enough money to return to seminary in Chicago were on my mind. So far I had no idea how these issues could be resolved. We had spent all of our savings, meager as they were, during the intern year, replacing a failing vehicle, and paying daily expenses. There was nothing left, even to pay for a small U-Haul truck to move our stuff. Every option I had investigated during the previous three months had gone nowhere. We would soon be out of time as well as money, as the internship ended in two weeks. My mood was bleak.

In the next afternoon, a knock on the door opened to a man who was active in one of the churches I had served. He said his wife and he had been praying together the evening before, and they thought of us, and they wanted to help. He handed me a check for $100. On the evening of the next day I met with a study group I had organized during the year. They wanted to thank me for the many evenings we had spent together; they had collected $150. The next day I finally got word that a small apartment would be available to us, and I had been awarded a fellowship that would pay for our housing, tuition, and living expenses at seminary; the seminary had received an unexpected donation to organize its archives, and the fellowship supported me to do that, with my experience working in the seminary library and prior graduate history studies. In the next few days more gifts came from several co-workers in the churches.

We had enough, just enough, within a week of my night of despair. It was a lesson that would be repeated in many circumstances in the following years, but none more dramatically for us.

Titration and Me

14 Thursday Jul 2016

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Six months ago I entered a sleep study. I thought I was sleeping well, getting my eight or nine hours a night of solid sleep, usually interrupted by a brief trip down the hall once a night. Jan encouraged the decision, asserting that she was tired of finding me taking time-outs from breathing. There was also the occasional early morning when I would awaken with severe chest pain and a pulse sub-30 bpm. The first night of the study was miserable—noisy, hard mattress, wires attached to nearly every part of my body, but the technician was glad to let me know that I had slept the required three hours, I did indeed have sleep apnea (which I have known for years), and I would need to return someday to have a titration study.

Titration is a laboratory method of quantitative chemical analysis that is used to determine the unknown concentration of an identified analyte. I expected that the only time this would become important in my life would be the study of concentrations of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere. It turned out that the study of oxygen saturation in my blood had become the issue, since 70% was probably not enough.

I didn’t hear anything back from anyone for two months, so I judged that I was in the clear, but Jan thought I should check with someone about the titration study schedule. Unfortunately I had just been overlooked, and they wanted me to have the study after all, so it was scheduled for two months later. Then a cancellation occurred, and they wanted me to come in and fill it six weeks early. When I reported for the study, the cancellation had been a mistake, the other person had shown up, and I was sent home again, but not for long. A few nights later they were ready for me again.

On the night of the titration study, in the same hard bed and with the same wiring attached, I tried out three different facial devices, attached to a “Continuous Positive Airway Pressure” pump to provide breathing assistance during sleep. If the hospital space was noisy or not, it did not matter, because the facial devices, from the “nose pillows” to the “nasal mask” to the “nose and mouth mask” made enough noise and leaked enough to keep me from sleeping and make the results ambiguous. Nonetheless, the physician in charge wrote a prescription for a Bi-PAP machine (with a two stage pressure setting) and the last mask that I tried, and soon I had one to use for a three month trial. The mask did not fit well, so after three weeks, I exchanged it for another. Although it fit better, the machine and mask still made getting to sleep difficult, and they still woke me a dozen or more times every night for the next three weeks.

At that point, only my wife’s faith and the encouragement of three people who had successfully adapted to the use of the devices kept me from dropping the whole project. I had to admit there were already two benefits—Jan was sleeping better, and I had not experienced chest pain or extra-slow heart rate for the last three weeks.

Three months after the original titration study, I am doing better. The supervising physician is happy that I have met the required “four plus” hours of BiPap use every night. At the time of my appointment, they had not seen the results of the continuous wi-fi monitoring system, because the medical equipment people had not bothered to connect me to my physician’s office (and the office had not requested it). A few hours later they adjusted the pressure on my machine upwards, so, presumably, my “titration” has finally occurred. At least the rough indicators of better oxygen saturation –fewer episodes of breathing interruptions—were not yet where they wanted them to be, at twenty per hour instead of five, so they have increased the pressure setting. There is yet hope. Having “qualified” for further attention, since I am “compliant,” I have another chance to get a better-fitting mask and possibly even more adjustments that increase the oxygen saturation in my blood. I am sleeping better, almost as well as when I started. Thank you to my medical insurers for their investment of fourteen thousand dollars, and counting.

This is not a problem. It is a learning experience. I am smiling. Maybe you will, too, if you ever have a sleep study.

The Garage at 708 1/2 North Sherman

22 Friday Apr 2016

Posted by in Church, Faith, Gullibility, House, Learning from mistakes, People, Volunteering

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I had sought a year-long pastoral internship in the middle of my seminary education, and in part to restore a relationship with the Methodist Church that had disappeared since I had been studying at a non-Methodist seminary. My prospective supervisor had flown to Chicago to interview me, and in that process he had offered two housing options for my little family of soon-to-be three. One option was a small house two doors from the church which was now occupied by a young family who would have to be given notice to vacate. The second option was a one bedroom cottage with a small kitchen a few blocks away from the church. The cottage was already vacant. Since we were already living in a furnished efficiency apartment and would return to similar circumstances after the internship, the latter option made the most sense to me, not making someone else move for our benefit. (This was forty years before the advent of the tiny house movement, although nomadic furniture was in style.)

When the owner, Don Freeman, showed me the “cottage,” I thought I had made a big mistake. It was a two-car garage that had been converted into an apartment many years before, situated on an alley with no yard of its own. Covered with gray faux-brick asphalt roll shingles, an oil tank was the other conspicuous feature on the outside. Entering the small living room, I smelled the oil heater that occupied a corner of the room. The kitchenette sat to the left with the only closet (or pantry) next to it, and the bedroom and a small bathroom occupied the second stall of the original garage. It was about the same size as our Chicago apartment, with just enough room for a crib and baby’s dressing table next to a double bed. In such a small confined space it could be a difficult year for Jan and our baby. I asked Don to provide a full closet in the bedroom and to make arrangements as soon as possible to replace the oil heater with a fully vented gas wall furnace. Don had already paneled and recarpeted the interior, but he took my suggestions in stride. Since he was donating the space for a year, and he had a wife and five young children living in the four-square house at the front half of the lot, he had already committed about as much as anyone could expect. I had to make plans for air-conditioning—a small window unit would work—and the needed furniture.

Living in trust that God would provide had been our mode for several years. How else could we explain getting married with no money in the bank, moving to Chicago, starting graduate studies with no jobs lined up, Jan taking a job in the heart of the south-side slums, and then having our first child? This would surely be a test of that resolve and our marriage.

What I had not taken into account was the character of the family we inherited with the cottage. As full of trials and challenges as any family, the Freemans—Don and Sonja and their children, Donnie, Kathy, Carol, David, and Alice—accommodated and taught us as much or more, living in close proximity and grace, as the internship would teach me. Their laundry, workshop, and lives opened to us, and their experiences, Don as a trusted banker and active layman, Sonja as an extraordinarily loving mother and talented church secretary, the children with their enthusiasms and growing pains, became a part of our extended family experience of love and self-giving.

We probably would have not have chosen to live in that house if we had seen it before making our decision. That would have been the mistake. We were blessed.

Playing with Dynamite

13 Wednesday Apr 2016

Posted by in Caring, Church, Death, Disabilities, Events, Growing up, Learning from mistakes, People, Small town life

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

Marty (not-his-real name) was one of my parishioners many years ago—memorable nonetheless. His life would have been a case study in oppositional defiance if anyone had chosen to examine it. His parents and siblings were “good church members”—steady, reliable, active in volunteering and supporting as well as anyone else, but Marty was a no-show in the church and in the community as long as I was acquainted with him.

His father was a World War II veteran and his brother had served in the army, but Marty first showed up looking for me when he learned that I had been a draft counselor, and Marty wanted to avoid the draft at all costs, not on any principled grounds, as this was during the Vietnam war, but just because he didn’t want to serve his country under any circumstances. His timing was right and he managed to slip between the cracks when the draft lottery was instituted.

Next came his girlfriend, seeking help in dealing with his bad moods and abuse, which, predictably when co-dependence is strong, escalated steadily. He lived with his under-age girlfriend in her mother’s home, which I naively assumed should make it easy for her and her mother to kick him out. No child was involved. Neither she nor her mother could carry out a resolution to make Marty behave or leave. It appeared that her mother was as emotionally tied to Marty as his girlfriend was. We talked about all of their options, legally and behaviorally and in seeking help, but they did not change anything. Marty continued to abuse them within their own house.

Marty had trouble keeping a job, mostly because he could not take orders or follow directions. He always knew better than anyone else how any job should be done, or he simply did not want to do the job in anyone’s time other than his own. In his favor, Marty was intelligent and curious enough to figure out many things, and well-meaning employers saw his potential, especially when they knew the rest of his family and attempted with their enabling persuasion to give Marty another chance. Marty went from job to job at a time when many young adults were having trouble finding a first job.

Marty’s record included any misdemeanor you can name—tickets for speeding, parking, noise, shoplifting, drunkenness, disorderly conduct. Someone was always bailing him out in one way or another, although I could not persuade people that this was not helping Marty accept responsibility. I tried to find him, to talk with him about the direction of his life, but he was more adept at avoiding me than I was in catching him. For a while I lost track of him and the newspaper carried no more news of his infractions. I had hope that he might be growing up. He and his girlfriend had a son. She had stopped calling me to ask for advice. Things might be working out, I thought. Certainly I knew that there were many people praying that they would.

The end came in an unusual way. Marty had worked for a man who cleared trees and prepared land for development, and he knew where the dynamite was stored. Marty broke into the building and stole some dynamite and decided to have some fun with it, blowing things up. He was successful. One of the first things he blew up was himself.

I officiated at Marty’s funeral. I said in passing that there were many ways that Marty played with dynamite. My words were not appreciated.