Category Archives: Learning from mistakes

Too Eager to Get to Christmas

13 Sunday Dec 2015

Posted by in Events, Growing up, Learning from mistakes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

3 trees lighted in different colors

Like most families we had some Christmas morning rituals when I was a child. We arose early, full of excitement, but several steps preceded the first glimpse of the Christmas stockings and the gifts under the tree. We had to put on our clothes for the day, check to see if Santa had found the cookies and milk left on the kitchen table, and, of course, he had. Then we had to finish a full breakfast, which, for me, was probably my favorite—orange juice, and toast with mayonnaise—I wasn’t much of a breakfast eater in those days. If there were any chores that needed to be done before we gathered around the tree, they were done, like milking the cows or checking on the waterers, to make sure that they were open and not frozen. Finally, all together, my two brothers, Mom and Dad, and I got to go into the living room, and open the stockings first, the oldest going first, and then the wrapped presents under the tree, again starting with the oldest among us. We were naturally eager to get everything out of the way, and on with the business of opening the presents.

On one Christmas morning, when I was probably six or so, when my brothers and I were rushing down the narrow stairway that ran from the second floor bedrooms down to the kitchen, I tripped near the bottom step, fell, and ran my knee right into the metal grate at the base of the stairs. It was a nasty little gash that bled enough to need cleaning and bandaging, further delaying the goal of our hurried descent. I don’t know which hurt more, my knee or the delay.

I should have learned then not to hurry through the steps that approach the gifts of Christmas. I should have learned.

I dreamed a dream…

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by in Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, People

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

cropped-brandis-pumpkin-skull-inside-jack-o-lantern.png

The other night I dreamed a dream about a huge and elaborate wedding, so fantastic and so immense in the imagination of the couple, that only a giant could officiate. I did not know the couple, but still I was invited; they were inviting everyone. Not wanting to be a spoilsport or left out of the biggest social event of the year, I went. The caterers prepared huge hampers of food and barrels of beverages and loaded them onto decorated trucks. A troop of acrobats led the wedding procession in front of the drum major and a marching band, followed by the dozens of handsomely costumed people in the wedding party in open carriages, drawn by teams of Belgian and Clydesdale horses, until the bride and groom came in the grandest gold carriage of all, then the parents, and the decorated food trucks, collecting the cars and buses of the guests as they went, winding through the streets of the city into the countryside. We all arrived at the edge of the forest where the giant emerged from the trees and, to a hundred trumpet fanfare, the couple and members of the wedding party ascended the great platform, specially built and decorated with banners and bunting, to stand on a pedestal in front of the giant. The music stopped, and the crowd hushed, waiting for the giant to speak.

“Food first!” said the giant. “We eat first, then we have wedding ceremony.” By “we” the giant meant “I,” and the couple looked at each other, then stood aside and gestured to the Master of the Caterers, and they brought forth, immediately, as if by magic, plates full of food, to offer to the giant. The plates looked so pitifully small in the hands of the giant, like pennies or dimes in his hands, that he tossed them aside, and yelled “Real plates! Real food!” The servers scurried away and came back with huge caskets filled with sides of beef and ham and whole turkeys, troughs full of mashed potatoes and vegetables, each carried by teams of four to eight servers, up to the top of the platform , while the giant scooped up the food in his huge hands, all the time calling for “More! More!” until it was obvious that the giant was eating everything that had been prepared, and there would be nothing left for anyone else.

I couldn’t believe my eyes, but it was a dream, of course, and everyone looked in amazement and wonder as the giant ate the wedding banquet all by himself, and, when he had finished, he turned and walked grandly back into the forest, leaving the bride and groom, and the wedding party, and all of the guests, looking at his back, as he disappeared into the trees, leaving no one to lead the ceremony. I turned and said to the person next to me, “Didn’t the giant look a lot like Donald Trump?” but before he answered, I woke up or at least I think I did.

Beginning work as a pastor at Wapella

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by in Caring, Church, Learning from mistakes, Small town life

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Pentecostal banner

During my senior year in college I served my first appointment as supply minister for the sixty members of the Wapella Methodist Church. It started out as a summer job, and extended month by month as the District Superintendent said that he could not find a permanent replacement. Wapella had been part of a five point “larger parish,” but they grew tired of sharing a minister with so many other congregations. They wanted a minister of their own. They welcomed me enthusiastically, at least until I stated why I opposed the war in Vietnam, and they even tolerated that as long as they could keep me. At the end of seven months I had to end my service to them, giving the superintendent and the congregation a month’s notice. I had college work to complete, and I had trouble keeping my car running the eighty mile round trip two or three times a week. The superintendent said he would find someone else to serve them temporarily, but he didn’t for several weeks. They continued to meet for worship anyway.

Three months later a tornado tore through the town one late afternoon, and several college friends joined me in returning to what was left of Wapella. A friend drove, since my car was not working. We arrived after dark, and learned that the first task was to locate people across the countryside. Since I knew where people lived, and telephone lines were down, we drove out to see whether people were safe and sheltered. Heavy rains continued, and at one point we found ourselves driving on seemingly flat land with water above the floor boards of the car, so we didn’t get to all of the people we wanted to check. By the end of the night, one way or another, everyone was accounted for, and few injuries were reported.

Daylight showed the carnage of the disaster. We returned to be part of the clean-up crew and the job appeared to be insurmountable with the remains of houses and buildings scattered over a wide area. I saw few of my former parishioners, as those who lost their homes had sought refuge elsewhere and had little left to salvage. We put in a day’s work, but many more would be required before the town would be ready to start rebuilding.

At one point in the day we looked at the church. The large stained glass windows were gone. The tornado had lifted and moved the structure a few feet, and it sat at a crazy angle on the foundation. It was a total loss. Later I learned that the congregation had used their insurance money to buy a house as a meeting place. They were determined to continue as long as they could in spite of all the difficulties they faced. Neither my poor service nor an “act of God” would close them down.

All in all it was a revealing but not an encouraging beginning to my service as a pastor.

The Excitement and Fascination of Large Population Die-offs

12 Monday Oct 2015

Posted by in Death, Events, Learning from mistakes, Nature

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

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

As Granddaughter Willow has spent several summers in recent years working at The Mammoth Site in Hot Springs, South Dakota, we have joined for many weeks in exploring the fascinating deposit of bones left by scores of mammoths and hundreds of other animals of many species about twenty-six thousand years ago in a warm water sinkhole. Few other specimens of the giant short-face bear have been discovered, and the skeleton found here is impressive. New finds occur regularly, and the excitement that accompanies the discoveries grows with the potential new information about life in another era. The mammoths are almost entirely young adult males who have wandered away from the herd and sought the late winter, early spring abundance of plant food at the edge of the sinkhole, only to slide in the mud into the water and be unable to get a footing to climb out.

Another fascinating location, directed by a former member of The Mammoth Site staff and friend of Willow, is near Waco, Texas, which the President recently designated as Waco Mammoth National Monument. There a natural disaster, presumably a flash flood, destroyed a large herd of mammoths and several other animals, including a camel and a saber-tooth cat, all at one time, 65,000 years ago. As excavators remove tons of earth from that site, even more information comes to light about animals, plants, and climate during that era.

The Gray Fossil Site in East Tennessee, whose vertebrate curator also serves as the new director of The Mammoth Site, provides a deposit of animal and plant fossils in a marshy area, as-yet-undated millions of years ago. So much information lies buried there, along with unusual species, like an extinct red panda, giant tortoise, tapir, peccary, alligator, and rhinoceros, that excavation is expected to continue for over a hundred years.

As a graduate student Willow now works in the collections of the University of Nebraska, including thousands of specimens from the Ashfall Site in northeastern Nebraska, where a plume of volcanic ash from a mega-volcano in Idaho killed animals, birds, and plants at a watering hole twelve million years ago, and left populations of rhinoceros, horses, camels, and many other species in the region extinct, and the land became barren for hundreds of years. Other discoveries in Nebraska and Wyoming continue to add specimens to a collection that will help to identify a long pre-history of information on interactions of climate and conditions with plant and animal life.

These locations join with others popularly known, like the La Brea Tar Pits in Los Angeles or Dinosaur National Monument in Utah, in providing extraordinary locations for exciting discoveries that can change our perceptions of the world and its development through aeons.

The dark side of all of this excitement is the fact that each site is the remnant of the suffering and death of thousands of creatures. Without such tragic events we would know much less about the world around us. In the future, perhaps, we will care enough for our own human species to study and discover why tens of thousands of human beings kill each other with guns every year, with no personal or social benefits as a result. That should be of interest and fascinating, too, though it appears to be harder for us to get excited about understanding that tragic and unending story in our own era.

Jan identifies with her mother so much that…

01 Thursday Oct 2015

Posted by in Caring, Learning from mistakes, People, Travel

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

,

dock at sunset

Three and a half weeks after her mother fell and broke her neck, nose, and three other compression fractures in her back, as well as badly bruised her face, her mother continues in therapy and in the care of staff in a nursing home. Jan spent twelve nights in all with her mother, attempting to work out the challenges of pain-relief and sleeping medications, staff responses, and keeping her neck brace in position without her mother removing it. Finally, a tentative stability achieved, Jan returned to her own life and got some rest.

One night her mother had spent several hours preparing for her first grade class of school children, identifying their individual needs, and strategizing how to meet those needs. Of course she retired nearly twenty-five years ago, but she had taught for more years than that, and it is easy for her mind to return to those years, even as she also slips back into the early years of motherhood, or childhood with her own mother. Jan could easily identify with each stage of her mother’s concerns.

Jan was nearly caught up with her rest, as we travelled to Lincoln, Nebraska, for an enjoyable day with Granddaughter Willow, a trip that we had postponed because of Mother’s needs. On the way back, we stopped at one of Missouri’s remaining rest areas. Gary took the Nguy family beagle, Odette, into the pet walking area. Odette had stayed with Willow for six weeks but worn out her welcome with her persistent demand to be outside when Willow needed to study. We volunteered to take Odette back to O’Fallon. Jan sat in the car, finishing a phone conversation.

When Jan got out to walk to the rest station, her toe caught on a parking barrier, and she fell face-first onto a concrete curb. Her face was bloodied, scraped, and bruised, but her glasses somehow escaped with just a bend in an earpiece. Gary came running when he saw Jan lying flat, put Odette in the car, and checked Jan out. She was bleeding profusely, but the two small facial cuts were closing quickly with pressure. Her nose was pouring, so we used Jan’s tried and true method of a small compress under her upper lip, and it began to slow, and finally stopped after five minutes.

A rest area worker came quickly when she saw us on the ground. She was so focused on Jan’s visible injuries that she stepped on the glasses, but she was so eager to be helpful that we could not fault her. A pediatrician and his wife were next to help. The doctor admitted that Jan was older than his usual patients, but the injuries looked familiar. He checked her over, said that one stitch or a butterfly bandage might be useful, made sure that she was not feeling pain anywhere else that might indicate a break, and discussed what to watch for in concussion symptoms, which were not appearing—no headache, vision or dilation effects, or confusion. The rest area worker helped Jan into the restroom to get cleaned up.

We made stops at Walgreens and CVS forty minutes later to get bandages, antibiotic cream, and antiseptics. We passed four hospital signs during the rest of the trip, checking with each other about the advisability of stopping, but we arrived at O’Fallon six hours later.

Jan had copied her mother’s accident, in facial injuries, but not in broken bones, fortunately. She had two seriously black eyes and a nasty abrasion on her forehead to alarm and impress Alicia, Au, and Symphony. Alicia had fallen down her stairway a few years ago and seriously damaged her knee. Jan could easily identify with her mother and her daughter in an even more intimate respect.

“I know you believe in some kind of god.”

17 Thursday Sep 2015

Posted by in Faith, Growing up, Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, People

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

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

The boyfriend, about to become an ex-boyfriend, said it. He had not broached the topic before. It was clear that he did not want to now. His own faith was complete, as his minister told him so. He belonged to a true church, unlike so many around us in the world today. He liked his girlfriend, but she belonged to one of those other pseudo-churches, and one that was so liberal that it no longer preached The Bible, or at least that is what his church said.

He doesn’t know what made him say it. Maybe he could begin to change her step by step until finally she would be completely acceptable. Maybe he could win her over. You can do that sometimes, his minister had said. You can pave the way for an unbeliever by showing them the right way, but you must beware of being yoked to one who will draw you away.

The words clarified the situation for her. She had thought long and hard about her faith, and she knew she was not done thinking or believing. The God she would trust was not just “some kind of God” but one who encouraged such pondering and wondering, one who did not provide just a set of simple answers, and one who did not reside in a few authoritarian leaders or absolute positions.

He didn’t know how much he had blown it until he saw her face. She was hurt and disappointed that he thought so little of her, that she might be satisfied with just “some kind of god,” as if she were as pagan as the polytheists in the ancient world. As if she would settle for something less than he would, and he had to take her by the hand and lead her. As if he thought he knew something special but could not trust himself to share it. She would never be his equal, and she would defend herself and “her kind of god” against him. Her resistance showed in her stubborn, hardening expression.

He wished he hadn’t said it. He could have let things go on as they had been, going their own way, each to the church of their choice. They wouldn’t have to talk about it for a long time. He could have been comfortable with that, because they enjoyed each other when they were together, which was not all of the time.

Instead of going to the 1968 Democratic National Convention

27 Thursday Aug 2015

Posted by in Growing up, Learning from mistakes, People

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

cropped-chicago-skyline-1970.jpgI made a life-changing choice for the end of August, 1968. When I proposed to Jan in November, 1967, my proposal was not a romantic winner, even though we went to Bloomington’s Miller Park and sat at the edge of the lake. I had almost run into a tree driving through Miller Park, so Jan knew something was on my mind. (She said later she thought I might be breaking up with her.) I ruminated with Jan about the uncertainties of the future. I had just finished several months serving a small rural town congregation, but I had no other job prospects. My own anti-war choices that had placed me in some jeopardy with the Selective Service System and some administrators of Illinois Wesleyan University, but I still resolved to continue in my plan to go to seminary and pursue a career as a minister. At that point I had nothing to offer Jan except the impoverished life of a graduate student with the possibility of a study fellowship and stipend. If the fellowship materialized, we might have a small studio apartment near the University of Chicago, but she would have to find a job to support her own needs.

Whether I could stay out of trouble was not certain, having just had my first interview with an FBI agent, concerning my work with the Students for a Democratic Society, organizing an IWU Symposium on the Vietnam War, and inviting Staughton Lynd, a vigorous opponent of the war, to the campus to speak. At first I didn’t take the veiled threats of the agent and the Dean of Students seriously, but “the times…they were a’changin’.” Who knew what the future held? I just knew my own situation had begun to appear precarious after I had returned my draft card to my local draft office. (Nothing ever came of that action. The members of the local draft board knew me, my seminary plans, and my health disqualification already. ) Would Jan want to marry me when she really considered what she might face in the early days of our marriage, or the later days for that matter?

She said ‘yes.’ Would I want to marry her when she was able to make such a foolish decision? I said ‘yes, definitely.’ We proceeded to make plans to be married toward the end of the next summer, allowing time for Jan to finish her work at the Waterloo, Iowa, YWCA, and for me to make as much money as I could during the summer, painting barns, cribs, and other farm buildings, and working at Arby’s.

Many invitations arrived to come to Chicago to join in demonstrations against the war during the Democratic National Convention. The event promised to mark a momentous turning point in our nation’s history. Our own event promised to make a momentous turning point in our personal history, and who knew how much influence upon others might follow?

We arrived at our apartment in Chicago just a couple of days after the convention and the demonstrations concluded their tormented run.

You have to be “on the inside”

18 Tuesday Aug 2015

Posted by in Caring, Church, House, Learning from mistakes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Burlington house in fall

We moved into our old house in Burlington in August of 1988, twenty-seven years ago. Friends helped us to move from Minonk, Illinois, and we sat together on folding picnic chairs on the back porch and had lunch. They noticed that there was a doorbell on the back porch, just outside the kitchen. It worked well, making a “dong” sound, and when the front doorbell sounded it made a “ding-dong” sound.

The doorbell location presented a problem. You had to go through the rear door of the house to get to the doorbell. By the time you made it to the kitchen door, you were already inside the house, and since the kitchen was usually the center of activity in the house, most of the time you could just say hello to anyone who was working or sitting around the kitchen table. You wouldn’t need to use the doorbell.

Like many old farmhouses, most people who know us come to the back door anyway, but the fact is that, unlike when we lived in the country, we usually lock the back door, so getting to the doorbell presented a challenge. You would have to knock on the door in order to get us to let you in so that you could press the doorbell.

Many years ago the back porch was really an open porch. There was no door because there were no walls. The kitchen door was the back door. Sometime in the 1960’s, the Nelsons hired a young Jim Wilson to enclose the back porch, build walls, and put in a row of casement windows to make a three season unheated room. (We liked it so much that we added insulation and a heating vent and made it into an all-season room.) But no one bothered to move the doorbell.

Maybe the previous residents were so friendly that people could just open the door and walk in. Ideally we would like to live that way, but we tend to live a bit more privately, even though the large windows on all sides of the house make it a see-through first floor when the curtains are pulled to the side.

We don’t always make it easy for people to get inside. With the door locked, you had to raise a ruckus to get our attention. It would be a lot more welcoming to place a doorbell in a convenient location, so that is what I did, among one of the top items on my “to do” list.

We don’t always make it easy for people to get inside other things either, but hospitality means making the changes that make it easier to get in.

Loads in Need of Redistribution

17 Monday Aug 2015

Posted by in Caring, House, Learning from mistakes

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Burlington house in fall

My house in Burlington is now 115 years old, but I installed a new 200 amp circuit box several years ago, and the panel of circuit breakers was impressive—23 circuits with room for 28. Only one circuit kept blowing, and when it blew just about everything went with it. The television, the dishwasher, the electric heater, lights and outlets all over the place—all went out. Since something was amiss, I put on my electrician’s sleuthing hat.

The air conditioner, refrigerator, freezer, furnace, clothes dryer, electric range, hot tub, and the clothes washing machine each had its own own circuit. They were dedicated circuits serving major appliances and ones that had enough of a load to justify their single purpose and that was appropriate. They kept doing their own jobs even when the other circuit blew. That totaled eight dedicated workhouse circuits—four of which were double or 220 circuits, so those and the one that blew accounted for thirteen spaces in the box. What about the other ten?

One took care of the outlets and lights in three rooms upstairs. We didn’t use them a lot, but there were times when the whole family came to visit, and then they got put to use. They were there, ready to serve, even when the rest of the house shut down. Then there was one circuit serving one outlet in the half-bath downstairs, and one serving an outlet in the kitchen corner, and another serving another outlet behind the antique Hoosier in the kitchen, and another serving one outlet in a corner of the basement. They seldom served any purpose, so it was plain that they were far from being overloaded. They were seriously underloaded. There was one serving a small fluorescent light fixture above the kitchen sink, which explained why it continued to shine when everything else went dark, but in spite of its perpetual and faithful shining, it was definitely an underused circuit. There were two circuits available for the garage, which took a few years to put into service. Then there was one that went upstairs to the master bedroom where a window air conditioner used to sit. Every one of these circuits was added when someone wanted to add one more light or outlet or appliance to the house. The tenth one served the lights, ventilating fan, and outlets in a new addition that was added several years ago.

Yes, something was amiss when over half of the available circuits were completely idle most of the time, and when one—obviously the original house circuit—was trying to carry too much of the load. I had to spread the load around so that the underused circuits could carry their share, before the breakdown of the one circuit led to more disastrous results.

It made me wonder how much of the power distribution in the organizations and churches in which I have taken part resembled my old house. Perhaps some load redistribution has been in order in other places too?

Alone in the Dark

09 Sunday Aug 2015

Posted by in Events, Growing up, Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, Running

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

Chicago Old Town

In 1969, working for the Independent Precinct Organization [IPO]in Chicago’s north side Lincoln Park neighborhood, we canvassed door to door to build support for community-based initiatives instead of the urban renewal plans of the democratic machine and Mayor Richard J. Daley’s administration. The city plan called for bulldozing entire blocks of housing, displacing hundreds of poor and elderly families of many races and ethnic backgrounds, and building apartment buildings and condominiums that would cater to wealthy, upper class, largely white people. The area needed rehabilitation and preservation, from our perspective, not destruction and replacement. In canvassing , we met many wonderful people of various backgrounds who would be forced to move, priced out of the neighborhood.

We organized meetings, rallies, and took part in city-sponsored meetings that were supposed to give the people a voice, but largely consisted of city spokesmen telling the residents what was going to happen, whether they liked it or not. The city’s only authentic German beer garden became a center of attention, when the city planners decided it had to go the way of every other building of historical, ethnic, or cultural significance in the urban renewal area. What would the new neighborhood look like? An uninspired collection of modern boxes of uniform size, shape, and costliness, with little attention to amenities that existed in the previous community, because Lincoln Park would be considered a residential extension of the downtown. “Little boxes…full of [just more expensive] ticky-tacky,” anyone?

One night I had to park three blocks from the meeting –place at the edge of an already bull-dozed three-block strip, where the citizens were confronting city planners. Parking was scarce because we had generated a lot of interest in the meeting. The people present were angry and eloquent, expressing their grief at the prospect of losing homes and businesses and facing an uncertain future with below-replacement value appraisals and no help in relocation. The IPO presented alternative plans and proposals that had the backing of much of the resident community. When the meeting ended we felt that we had done well in getting both citizen-involvement and the important media attention.

I walked out of the building after a brief feedback session with my co-volunteers, needing to get back to my apartment on the south side and ready for seminary coursework the next day. The street was empty and dark; many of the street lights were removed with the destruction. I didn’t see anyone around, until I had walked a block, but then I heard from a distance when a gang of Spanish Disciples had spotted me. I didn’t understand all that they were saying, but I knew from a few words and phrases that they had recognized a lone target for their resentments and rage when they saw me. It didn’t matter that I thought I was serving their interests in being there. Their street sophistication did not extend to political disputes between the city and local white liberals.

They were coming at a run, and I decided that I needed to be faster, and so I was. I unlocked my car, jumped in, and sped off just as they were arriving. I didn’t wait to see whether I could persuade them that I was a good guy just trying to help out.

I returned to that neighborhood, continued to canvass, participated in other meetings and demonstrations, but I made sure that I was not alone in the dark after that.