Category Archives: Prayer

Making Dreams Come True

12 Saturday Nov 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

 

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.

The Call and the Calls

23 Friday Sep 2016

Posted by in Church, Faith, Growing up, Innocence, Prayer

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Pentecostal banner

Methodist Bishop Edwin Voight sponsored a Convocation on the Ministry at First Methodist Church in Springfield, Illinois, in 1961. The aim was to inform and recruit young men for the ministry; no women attended. My pastor, Glen Sims, aware that I had completed the God and Country Award in Scouting and was serving as a de facto chaplain for the local Boy Scout troop on our monthly outings, thought that I might be interested and shared the invitation to attend. Families of the Springfield churches generously provided accommodations and hospitality.

Fifteen years old, I was the youngest in attendance. Most were older high school or college students. I knew I was out of my league. The program consisted of young adults and older ministers recounting their calls to ministry and their formative years in ministry, as well as prayers and worship around the theme of vocation. Their stories were impressive and elaborate, though fifty-five years later I cannot remember a single one of them.

What I do remember was my inadequacy and youth in the face of the experiences shared. The personal experience that I had to share, when in small groups we were asked to share our own stories, was the fact that I walked regularly four blocks to my home church, after school when I had to stay for some extra-curricular activity, in order to use the church telephone to call home. Then, while waiting for my mother or father to pick me up, I would stand in front of the impressive stained glass window or the great Last Supper carving and pray, while I waited twenty to thirty minutes for a ride (Our home was five miles away.). During those times I came to think of the church as my second home. I prayed about my future and how I could use the talents that people around me told me that I had, though I wasn’t at all sure.

When I had finished recounting ‘my calling’ in this way, the group leader noted appropriately that not everyone had a call to the ministry, which I took as a direct response to my story. That stung a little. Later in the gathering, the call of Moses, who was not an effective speaker at the time, and Jeremiah, who was just a boy at the time, gave me a little courage to think that I might yet be in the right place. I was not convinced, but the thought was effectively planted.

‘Give Us This Day Our Daily Bread’

02 Friday Sep 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Chicago Old Town

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.

The Family in Worship Together

18 Friday Sep 2015

Posted by in Church, Faith, Growing up, Prayer

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

,

Pentecostal banner

I usually sat next to my father in worship. After my early years my mother worked two out of three Sundays as the head cook at the Ford County Nursing Home. “Families that pray together stay together” was too simple a slogan but it applied to us. There were drawbacks to sitting next to my father. He was tone deaf when he sang the hymns, or at least I thought he was. It seemed like we sang “Holy, Holy, Holy,” page 1 of the Methodist Hymnal, almost every Sunday, and it did not sound good in a drone. In front of us sat Rev. John Killip, a retired minister, who was sometimes called upon to pray in the service, and who, I was certain, could easily pray aloud for many hours straight. (But such a tall, affable, white-haired gentleman he was, teaching me to do a proper ‘Methodist handshake.) My father, who worked regularly sixteen hour days on the farm, would often succumb to the warm, quiet, restful atmosphere, and I would have to be alert to nudge him before “The Snore” began. We always stayed until the last people left the building as we talked with friends. I do not recall ever wanting to be anywhere else on Sunday mornings.

I was amazed in my father’s last years, when I again had the occasional privilege of sitting next to him in worship, how much his singing had improved, how beautifully tonal it was, and how alert he had become. He was always an intelligent man, so I wasn’t surprised by how intelligent he became after I left home, but I was moved by how his potential for embarrassing conduct had diminished.

God blessed me with children who were not only independent thinkers, who often resented the constant pressures of churchery , but who also respected my wishes that they take part in worship, even though they often had to sit by themselves. Alicia gave me fair warning when, as an infant, she burped some milk down the back of my suit coat just before I walked down the aisle, though I didn’t know it at the time. Nathan found that the pulpit made a good hiding place and pews provided a good racetrack for imaginary race cars, complete with quiet sound effects. As they grew they showed me that the presence of the Ineffable had taken root in their lives, the same One who was present for the dunkards, quakers, methodists, various anabaptists and separatists, Lutherans, Catholics, and Jews who were our family 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 seems much different from the prevailing values today that I began to wonder how many opportunities I lost along the way to nurture that mutually accepting family environment. Why did I not contribute more to an enriching spiritual life for other families? Some parents and young people accept the challenge of worshipping together, but they are a minority. They will find a center for their lives that will hold them steadily and graciously.

As I listen to other ministers, active or retired as I am, I realize that I am not alone in this sense of missing many chances to nurture varied families and their young people in the worship of God. There is no comfort in this commiseration. There is only comfort in the prospect of communities of faith doing better, and the awareness that some are.

Check the Supporting Structure

07 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by in House, Learning from mistakes, Prayer

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Burlington house in fall

Our Burlington house is a late Victorian eclectic built in 1899, originally a farmhouse on the railroad magnate Charles Perkins’ estate. For most of its life three families by the name of Nelson had owned it, although two of them were not related to the third. The family that sold it to us in 1988 had begun to restore it after several attempts at remodeling. Jan said, when she first entered the front hall, seeing the old varnished woodwork, that it wrapped its arms around her and said, “Welcome home.” That made me happy, since the other seven houses in our price range that I had previewed all had serious problems that would need a lot of attention right away. This one was almost “move-in ready.”

Walls were newly papered with tasteful period patterns. Ceilings were newly coated to cover the cracks and holes. New curtains were hung just about everywhere. Floors were sanded smooth and refinished. Only a few issues remained that would need resolution sooner or later.

The six basement windows provided the first challenge that I tackled. The casings had deteriorated past the point of repair, reglazing, or repainting. I tore them all out, stabilized the surrounding limestone rocks with mortar, and installed new windows that resolved some of the leaks and drafts in the cellar.

All the while I looked at that solid wide-board wooden wall that ran down the center of the cellar, lengthwise of the house, separating the cellar essentially into two large narrow rooms. Above that wall in the center of the house, the floors were noticeably uneven, and a wall crack had broken through the new wallpaper on the second floor. Something was going on behind that wall, I decided, exercising my powers of deduction.

The wall seemed so solid until I started to take it down. A little pushing on the heavy boards and they gave way at the bottom, so I proceeded to remove every board. At the top the boards attached to the main support beam of the house. At the bottom, everything seemed increasingly loose and mobile. The upright posts supporting the beam had obviously rotted at the bottom, so that the entire wall, about a ton of wood, was hanging from the main beam. When I finally reached the center of the wall, I found that the beam itself, was not one large hewn timber, but two butted end to end, with nothing supporting the center. The center was hanging from the rafters of the house. No wonder it had settled! The whole support system was hanging from the house, rather than holding up the house. It made no sense, but the house seemed to be lifting its support.

I quickly put several jacks in place under the two main beams, and dug footings under the concrete floor, that the owners had obviously poured years after the original rock footings had been put in place. Then new pressure-treated six by sixes were wedged into position, firmly attached at top and bottom. This house was not going to collapse or going flying off into the great beyond if I could help it.

The Mundane Icons on My Desk

17 Friday Jul 2015

Posted by in Faith, House, Prayer

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Pentecostal bannerSometimes, in order to meditate, one needs a focal point, something to concentrate the attention that would otherwise wander. Such objects should not get in the way of the object or Subject one really needs to think upon. They should be a kind of window, like the icons of the Orthodox.

The Pieta serves that purpose on my desk. It is a miniature copy of the Michelangelo sculpture that a thoughtful person brought to us from Rome many years ago. The Mother of Jesus cradles in her lap the still and broken body of her son. Her lap is huge. Her body with its flowing robes dwarfs the lifeless body of her son. The sculpture focuses the pathos of the progress of our human journeys. Both the human and divine possibilities and limits are present in that grief and love poured out.

Due to the continual clutter of my desk, as I work at home as I used to work at a church office, with several ongoing projects at the same time, one focal point does not hold my attention for as long as I would like. As long as my eyes are open, they will wander as much as my mind, as long as it is open too. Two other objects flank the Pieta—a bottle of all-purpose glue and a cartridge of correction tape. In the clutter of my life they provide appropriate accompaniments to the Pieta. They are as much windows into human and divine purposes as the Pieta, even if they are more mundane. The glue of divine love, passionately involved in human suffering, and the correction tape, covering absolutely the errors of human accident or willfulness, along with the Pieta, provide a useful Triptych. They make an altar that concentrates insight.