Category Archives: People

A Conspiracy to Cover with water and oil?

29 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by in Cherokee history, People, Travel

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Red Wolf2

I was hunting for the places where John Bell, the son and father, grandfather and great-grandfather of other John Bells, and the husband of Charlotte Adair (and the 4th great grandfather of Janet Chapman) had lived and worked. He was born in South Carolina, the son of a Scot trader and a Cherokee woman of the Deer Clan, in Greenville County, but the exact location is unknown. The Greenville records of land transactions and other legal matters before 1840 were destroyed in the 1990’s. They mostly dealt with Native Americans and African slaves, and so they were considered unnecessary and too expensive to maintain.

The journey took me to Coosawattee Town in Georgia, an ancient city that made documented history when DeSoto temporarily occupied it. John Bell and his son John Adair Bell centered their trading activity there before 1839.The strategic location between two mountains (Bell and Martin) made it too attractive to engineers, who built a dam and flooded the site, so all that I could see was Carter Lake.

Next I went to the Coosa River Plantation that John Bell developed in his middle years, when he devoted his work to blacksmithing and farming. That location near the foot of Lookout Mountain provided an easy place to locate a dam, so all I could see of the Bell plantation was the surface of Weiss Lake, about fifty feet above the old river bank.

The Bell family left Georgia and Alabama in the Cherokee Removal in a detachment directed by John Adair Bell (an uncle to Jan’s 2nd great-grandfather), and old John Bell relocated in what became Delaware County in Oklahoma along the Grand River. The Grand River plantation, where David Bell (Jan’s 3rd G-G) and Sarah Caroline Bell Waite (aunt) were buried, where members of the family continued to live for fifty years, became a casualty of the plans to build the Grand Lake of the Cherokee, so all of the original site as well as the cemetery is under water.

You can imagine what I expected when I planned to visit the cemetery in Rusk County, Texas, where John Bell and John Adair Bell moved in 1850 to escape continuing death threats. Nevertheless, the cemetery and the land that they farmed is not under water. An oil company in the 1950’s purchased the land, destroyed the Indian cemetery, and drilled for oil there. Nothing remains but photos of one tombstone in an otherwise empty oil drum, the tombstone of John Bell.

I began to think there was a conspiracy. There was, of course—a conspiracy to ignore and forget the Native American history of much of our country and the people who lived and worked here long before the current generations.

We Thought You Were Just Kidding

14 Sunday Jun 2015

Posted by in Forest, Learning from mistakes, Nature, People, Travel

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3 Owls

For forty-some years I took church youth groups on trips, accompanied by several adults, of course, on short trips, long trips, and in-between trips, for service, for learning, for recreation, for fellowship. The trip that took us to the Great Smoky Mountains National Park included some of all of these purposes. We devoted four days to work on houses that needed help—painting, repairing, building a wheelchair ramp. Then we had one full day and two nights in the Smokies.

We stayed in the national park campground. I gave the usual warnings, that included not keeping food of any kind in your tent. We would even keep the food we prepared together locked in the cars, out of reach of the bears, we hoped, though we had heard stories of bears breaking into cars. I repeated those instructions several times ahead of the trip, put them in writing, repeated them before we entered the park, and in the campground before we set up tents.

Shortly after we had our tents and equipment set up, sure enough, a bear came ambling through the campground. Everyone scurried out of the way, into the cars or behind them, giving the bear plenty of room. That bear seemed intent on a mission, heading straight toward one tent, which he circled for several minutes, stopped at the front tent flap, and poked his nose through the flap into the tent. He seemed to be pondering whether he should enter it or not, whether he dared to get into trouble with the park ranger or not, whether it would be worth it or not. Finally, he withdrew from the tent and continued on his way toward the deeper woods on the other side of the campground.

I gathered the group together at that point and asked the girls, whose tent it was, what food  they had hidden inside their tent. They shyly admitted that they had candy bars stored in their knapsacks.

“Didn’t I tell you that there were bears here, they had a keen sense of smell, and they enjoyed candy best of all?”

“We thought you were just kidding,” one of them answered.

Everywhere people make fun of someone

13 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by in Gullibility, People, Small town life, Travel

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

In the summer of 1987 my family and I were traveling in Germany, and we made an obligatory visit to Worms and Heidelberg. I exercised my pitiful German and most of the people I talked to wanted to exercise their English abilities, which were usually better than my German. Likewise people wanted to know where we came from in America, and I would explain that we came from farming country in Central Illinois, that had been settled mostly by Germans and Italians.

Pressed further about where in Germany the settlers had come from, twice I answered that they were mostly from Ostfriesland, in northwest Germany, which elicited a response of laughter both times. The second time this happened I asked why they were amused, and they responded that they knew that in America people made jokes about the foolishness of people in American southern states, or about Polish people.  There in southern Germany they made fun of people from Ostfriesland as the fools. After that I changed the answer to say that our own people had come from the Frankfurt region or from die Schweiz, and the response was polite interest.

The discussion about Italian settlers followed a similar course. There were mostly farmers and restauranteurs in our area, known for their pastas and pizzas, like Mona’s and Capponi’s at Toluca Illinois. But Illinois meant “Chicago” to three people that I talked to, and one of them pantomimed a machine gun, when I answered ‘yes,’ that I knew some of the Capponi family, and they prepared fabulous food. It hadn’t crossed my mind until his pantomime that he was thinking all the while about Al Capone.

At Worms we visited the reconstructed Cathedral, retraced Luther’s steps, and enjoyed some Liebfraumilch, but I’ll never forget the look on the face of one of the local citizens when I answered that I was most interested in worshipping in the restored synagogue where Rashi had studied. “Why on earth would you want to do that?” the man responded.

You learn a lot when traveling, and sometimes you can’t help but become the butt of jokes yourself.

To Pass or Not to Pass… the Peace

12 Friday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church, Events, Learning from mistakes, People, Small town life

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

In the mid-1980’s “Passing the Peace” had been re-incorporated into Roman Catholic worship, but few Protestant congregations were engaged in the practice. I had taken a confirmation class to a Catholic service, noting commonalities with our liturgy, and they had appreciated the Passing of the Peace, asking why we did not do it, too, if it was an ancient tradition of the church. I took the idea to our worship committee, and the consensus was to begin to include Passing the Peace at different points in the service, with brief explanations of its purpose and history. This was done for the next three months before the congregation held its annual meeting.

Preparing for the congregational meeting in this place was always a challenge. The elected leaders knew that some members always made a controversy out of something, but could usually not predict what would be the issue at any given time. That year it turned out to be Passing the Peace. Some members demanded that any changes in the order or content of the worship service should always be presented to the whole congregation first, seemingly not aware of how cumbersome a requirement that would be.  Several comments veered from the issue of Passing the Peace into other elements that should or should not be included in a worship service. Clearly no consensus was present, and it was, as usual, hard to stick to one topic of discussion.

Pro and con statements about Passing the Peace showed the usual divisions in the congregation. Those who advocated for the practice made statements about its celebration of forgiveness, acceptance, and mutual care, but some admitted that it seemed disruptive in the middle of the service, and less disruptive at the beginning or end of the service.

The climax of the discussion came when one of those who objected to Passing the Peace said that it would be a cold day in Hell before he would pass the peace with some of the people in this congregation. He chose to sit where he did to avoid sitting near certain other people, but he didn’t want to shake hands or greet anybody else that just happened to sit nearby. The fact that the six hundred members of this congregation were mostly related to each other could not hide the divisions in the extended family. They would not be healed by a ritual of Passing the Peace or by pulpit teaching about forgiveness.

The vote to exclude Passing the Peace failed, as did the vote for the congregation to pre-approve changes in the service. No one voiced objections to the president’s idea that the next months should include some exploration of the different parts of the ritual and their meanings, including Passing the Peace, so that became the temporary resolution. A fuller resolution would require passing through many more controversies and much more time before a real peace could be shared.

Driving from the Rear View Mirror

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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3 OwlsA few days ago, I again drove my car, leading another driver and her car through a long road trip. I used to do that a lot, guiding groups of vehicles packed with young people, on trips hither and yon. I thought I had a talent for it. Only once in fifty years did I lose a carload of passengers at the tail of a caravan, and that was due to a vehicle breakdown out of sight, and the loss of radio communication with the driver, but I knew he was resourceful and dependable, he knew our point of rendezvous, and he caught up with us at the end of the day.

Driving ahead of another car or cars requires frequent and observant glances in the rear view mirror. It does not matter if one tries to maintain a speed at or five miles per hour above the posted speed limit, someone will always want to go faster, getting between the lead car and the followers. Sometimes it is a truck, large enough to hide the view of cars from front or rear. The leader must find a way quickly to restore the connection, before the next turn or stop, or an additional intruder adds to the distance between the tandem drivers. Changing lanes and preparing for turns needs to be signaled well in advance if possible, but obscured vision may require the use of another lane just to keep each other in view. The process becomes nerve-wracking in heavy, fast traffic.

Often the lead driver spends as much time looking in the rear-view mirror as looking forward. That may sometimes be true in normal driving, when trying to keep a safe stopping distance between oneself and the cars ahead and behind, but with a caravan behind, as part of one’s responsibility, it becomes even truer.

What seems to be required for the lead driver is to know well the destinations and the directions for the trip, to set a reasonable and steady pace forward, and to keep the changing needs of everyone who follows in constant view.  It also helps to have a back-up plan that everyone is aware of, for all the times when the unexpected happens, and contact is,  we hope temporarily, interrupted. That sounds like an ambitious goal for leadership in many contexts, not just tandem  driving.

The Deeper Magic

02 Tuesday Jun 2015

Posted by in Church, Gullibility, People

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Monkeys see, hear, speak no evil, Bangra.comHarry Potter’s summer assignments included writing an essay on “why witch burning in the Fourteenth Century was completely pointless.” Not a bad topic, I thought, although author J.K. Rowling’s reasons amounted to a flight of fantasy, not the down to earth responses I had been thinking of. 

For a while I was on the mailing list for the Wiccan Newsletter at the University of Iowa, as I was investigating the religious diversity of our area. My eyes were opened to the creative efforts poured into constructing a new faith in magic and witchcraft as an alternative to creedal and group religion. Their fellowship events and calendar of celebrations, promoted by the newsletter, looked like a bland reflection of many traditional congregations.  

Muggles (for non-Harry Potter-readers, if there are any, those are people with no magical abilities or heritage) can also come up with good reasons not to join in efforts to eradicate witchcraft. Chief among them is the sordid history of persecution and depravity that includes witch-burnings, demonstrating how people delude themselves, act on prejudices, and harm others. We hope we are beyond that. 

Witchcraft and magic have returned to the realm of religious options. And I thought the New Millennium would be a face-off of liberal Christianity and secular humanism. Talk about a bland and unimaginative confrontation! Instead we see a resurgent fundamentalism around the globe, spiced with reconstructed native, animistic, and Old Earth religions. What will people try next? Or revert to? 

In ancient Israel witchcraft was a subversive activity punishable, according to the Levitical Holiness Code, with death, hence the medieval efforts to burn witches. It didn’t do any good. Intent on becoming pure and clean, communities became soiled with their efforts to eliminate alternative faiths. According to most of the New Testament we should leave the purification standards behind. We recognize our communities as impure and our own efforts to clean them up as tainted, unless we let mercy and compassion rule. 

Instead we rely on a Deeper Magic, as C.S. Lewis called it, from before the memories of time, rooted in a loving God who places God’s own self-offering into creation. And we enjoy the fantasies of Harry Potter anyway.

Grandma Tien Reflects on the Plight of Her Children

24 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Books by Gary Chapman, Caring, People

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If I had known what they would be facing I could never have let them go. How could I have a moment’s peace when my youngest son and oldest grandson faced such dangers?  Not that I expected their journey to be easy. I just didn’t expect them to be at the mercy of men so cruel.

When you and Hue named your boy “Long” I did not know he would have to live up to his dragon name so early in his life. He had to be brave and hold onto his life with stubbornness and patience. You must have been proud to watch him, even as your heart was in your throat. Dragons had been so much a part of our Chinese heritage, and when we came to Vietnam we saw how the people drew strength from this symbol for their land. Even the shape of the country reminded people of a dragon. Yet politics had cleaved the land in two. We yearned for it to be whole, and despaired when we remained a broken and wounded people even after the “reunification.”

Through those days when I did not know what had happened to Phuong and Long, I felt such sadness that they could become dragon people only by leaving their home and struggling to find a way out. I looked into the waters of the river nearby, meditating on the flowing Great Mekong itself, always flowing one way and then another, spreading out into the Cu’u Long, the nine dragons of its delta. Though people have lived long by these waters, along which my children were now treading, they have never stood still. They have always been moving, spreading out, and finding new paths to follow.

One day I heard an old folksong carried on the breeze, sung in the pleasant, tired voice of an old woman like me, my neighbor who had lost several people to the war:      “We will go on living,   Though Mother Mekong     Flows out to sea,   Or turns     back to the setting sun.   We will go on loving,   Though thieves and    aiders   Descend from hills,  Or rains flood down from dark’ning skies.   We will go on working,   Though raging fires   Burn roofs from homes,   Or drought dries the rice paddies.   We will go on singing,   Though endless tears   Fall down our cheeks,      Or strong hands try to shut our mouths.   We will go on. We will go on.   We will go on. We will go on.”

I heard her words as if they were sung on my behalf. I realized that all I had left to do was to look out with longing and with love for the children of my heart. All anyone has to do is to love and cherish the people given to her, if only for the little while that she has them and has sense enough to pray for them.

Old Man Hide and Seek

20 Wednesday May 2015

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Bridge in AutumnWhere, but in the ministry, would you find a 50-something old man sitting in the dark under a table in the anteroom behind the chancel, playing a game of hide and seek with young teens at midnight? Yet there I was at a youth lock-in, listening to the amusing echoes of youngsters and adults at play in a cavernous church.  

The room was pitch black, and I found my way into a space whose form I had memorized from previous visits. It was true and remained so—no one would find me there. I was safe. I could even take a nap if I wanted. 

As I sat there, holding knees folded to chest, a single thread of light found its way from the sanctuary through the doorway, and spread its thin light in a cruciform shape along the tile floor, and shot its way unfailingly to my eye. My place in the utter darkness was illuminated with a steady and incredibly bright light, considering that it came from a dim emergency exit lamp a hundred feet away. I was astonished. 

God does not usually find anyone at youth lock-ins. Things that are sublime and ineffable flee from such events. The most that one hopes for are fun and good fellowship, and these often come in full measure. But not revelation. 

There I was, discovered by a cross-shaped light in my utter darkness, with the young people who were “it” not far off breaking the silence with their name-game, “Who are you? Tell us who you are, and we won’t catch you… this time. I don’t know who this is, but I know someone is there. Is it the red-haired girl? What’s her name? Who is it? Tell us and we won’t give you away.” (It was in actuality another fifty-something minister who remained anonymous until he could no longer restrain his laughter.) 

It was a revelation. Not communicable on that night when minds glass over with sheets of youthful energy impenetrable by thought. Barely expressible even now, when I still wonder at the mystery of that moment. We can try, but we never can hide from the mystery.

Labor-saving devices

19 Tuesday May 2015

Posted by in Caring, Learning from mistakes, People

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

When I came to Zion twenty-seven years ago I observed our secretary folding newsletters and bulletins. I thought that this was an inefficient process and could be improved by the use of a machine. We purchased a paper-folding machine similar to one I had used previously. Our secretary used this fine piece of machinery. In my enthusiasm I had forgotten how often it had to be adjusted, how the trial and error process wasted so much paper, how humidity and quality of paper affected how well it slipped through the machine and how often it jammed. It worked as well or better than my earlier experience, but it took longer than our efficient secretary to get the job done. She covered the machine with its dust cover and it occupied a place of honor in the corner of her office. Later it was sold.

Machines may do many things well for us, but they are not the answer to every need and every situation. They are not always efficient nor the final answer. They can be exasperating. They do not always meet the needs of each of us as personally as our own handy efforts. Not paper-folding machines, not computers, not I-pads, not televisions nor DVD players, not voting machines.

A flesh and blood human being, an incarnation, talented and dedicated, serves our purposes better than any mechanical and unfeeling substitute. No automaton and no robot could make a personal and loving demonstration of God’s love the way that a human being did or does.

Something prepared by hand, baked, composed, collected, artfully or even innocently manu-factured often expresses our affection and respect better than something bought from a store or a “manufacturer.”

We may well enjoy many labor-saving devices, many entertaining examples of human ingenuity and art, many elaborate contrivances that can prolong life and sometimes assist healing. They help us… sometimes, but they do not save us. Saving some time, maybe, but not saving us.

Let no machine get in the way of counting each person and each person’s life special, valuable and cared for. Let your hands become the hands of a Master.

The Guidance Counselor

16 Saturday May 2015

Posted by in Growing up, People

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3 OwlsDo students still have guidance counselors? Some students talk about having help from advisors in planning course schedules and completing requirements for graduation, but I seldom hear about guidance on choosing careers and making long-range plans. Jim Smith was my counselor when I entered High School. He had lengthy conversations with each student and used a variety of interest and skill inventories to identify what students might be interested in pursuing in their careers. He was also my Sunday School teacher and there were a dozen of us in his class, and we knew that he took an interest in us as persons.

Mr. Smith predicted that I would not have a problem with any subject that I chose to study in terms of academic achievement. The inventories indicated that I had high interest in such areas as teaching and social work and low interest in such areas as sales and marketing or mechanical skills or entertainment. He laid out a variety of career paths that might tap abilities and skills in a satisfying way. Among other possibilities he pointed out that clergy seem to require a high level of interest in sales and marketing and entertainment because of their involvement in leading and developing volunteer organizations. As generalists they also depended on having a variety of interests and skills in many areas, so he didn’t want to discourage me from thinking about ministry, just to be aware of some components that would be more challenging.

I suppose I always carried that piece of advice in the back of my mind. It was present in the first years of my considering ministry as a career because I knew that I would have to study and do some things that I was not fond of doing, in order to get to those that were more rewarding. Speaking before groups became less threatening, but making the sermon and the service interesting and captivating remained a challenge. I decided that I would try for a “conversational” style and leave the captivation to someone else. Still I have seen other preachers become successful because they truly made an effort to sell their product, knowing it is the greatest product anyone could ever sell, if they didn’t diminish the product by the way they sold it.

Even phrasing it that way still disturbs me. Is faith a product that requires a sales strategy? The farmer in me immediately translates faith into the field that requires planting, watchfulness, waiting, and harvesting. The teacher in me makes faith into scores of lessons to be planned, taught, demonstrated, and tested in some way. The social worker in me sees faith as a mutual service to be exercised in assisting people along the way to empowerment. There are scores of ways to describe our product, and all of our skills and interests need to be tapped, and no one can have them all and do it all. So we can all look forward many different incarnations of ministry as the years go by.

Still I am sold on the Gospel and the church and Christ-shaped humanity. If I neglected to do all that I could to promote these “products,” it is not because they do not deserve everything we can do together to promote them in all the ways that prove to suit them, if the Spirit is indeed still present to serve as a guidance counselor.