Category Archives: Seasons

Make Way for Another Generation…X?

15 Friday May 2015

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Who is not stirred by the steady processional beat of “Pomp and Circumstance?” Even caps bearing strange painted messages, and some graduates acting casual and nonchalant do not conceal the serious sentiment of the exercise.

Like molten lava moving down the mountainside, sometimes rushing and crushing everything in its path, sometimes slowly and inexorably dominating the landscape, so every generation coming to adulthood takes its place.

3 Owls

I, for one, would trade my status as a “baby boomer” (such a lovely name!) for an “X,” even if the Generation X has technically now given way to yet another moniker. “X” represents an unknown quantity, and who can predict what will emerge from any arbitrary set of years defining the experience of a generation?

I would not have predicted that any modern generation would have been subjected to the crude tastelessness of Beavis and Butthead, the Simpsons, or Rush Limbaugh. I had not foreseen a modern world marred by catastrophic religious and ethnic conflicts in Nigeria and Syria. I had expected that attempts to dismantle national entities in other countries by either manipulation or force would not spread into the United States. Even dreamers of medical miracles shudder in the face of resistant strains of bacteria, or fatal viruses like Ebola.

Even by their pathos in the face of poverty, war, or disease former generations have made their mark, turning an “X” into transformative art, music, literature, and religion. We wait to see what marks will be made, what commitments, what achievements, what regrets.

Meanwhile the graduates process, and celebrate in the ways they have learned.  We who made such moves years ago congratulate them on completing the stages and demands of childhood, not easy in any age– even a modern one. We look to see whether God is implanted in the souls and genetic material of these who now seek their place in an adult world. If so, the world will change again, but not get worse. They will make their mark, and somehow it will take the shape of a familiar cross.

Summer teenager tanager

17 Friday Apr 2015

Posted by in Forest, Nature, Seasons

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park bench in springA colorful bird, a little smaller than a cardinal, landed in the oak tree near the bee’s nest. Bright red and round-headed, shading to orange then to yellow on its back and underside, its wings were definitely green mixed with gray. His bill was light colored, almost white, concave underneath, and he used it effectively to snag bees. If not for the standard bird shape, I would have thought he was a parrot escaped from the tropics.

He ate his fill before he left, and I proceeded to consult the books. A juvenile summer tanager, they said. When he will reach his full growth, his coat will be bright red with black wings. That I would have recognized, though I would have had to look carefully to distinguish him from his scarlet tanager cousin.

I thought I had seen the last of him, but he made several more visits. Later that day, when I had backed the car from the garage, he flew down in all of his glory and sat on the ground next to the car. I rolled my window down and heard him say, Pik-i-tuk, very quietly, so I tried to say the same thing back to him. Pik-i-tuk-i-tuk, he said, and so did I. Then, quite a bit louder, as if freed by having an audience, he said, Pik-i-tuk-i-tuk-i-tuk-i-tuk-i-tuk-i-tuk-i-tuk-i-tuk. He didn’t seem to mind that I lost track of how many i-tuks he spoke, so we continued talking for a while. He and I had reached an understanding. Day by day he continued to visit, though our conversations dwindled; they never had quite the spark of the first one. Still he seemed to be glad for the contact and the meal.

Perching on a branch near the hive, he practiced his craft, measuring the flight of bees, their speeds and trajectories. First he would dive and miss, or sit with his beak bobbing back and forth in time with the passing bees. Soon his fluttering wings would create “Z” and “W” patterns in the air as he managed to outfly the bees and catch up with them. You could see him learning to strategize his approaches.

I appreciate any friendly contact with an adolescent, and it seemed that having a readiness to listen and try to stay abreast–  so to speak–  with his willingness to talk, or not, was something he appreciated too.

Day by day his color seemed to change, more red, less orange and yellow and green, and darker wings. We watch respectfully the maturation and experience and, we hope, the gaining of appropriate confidence to match the needs of the day. At points we can remember when we’ve been in the same place; at others we understand that they have been where we never have been, and we learn as children from them.

This was more than a bright spot in these days, when other moments were not soright or encouraging. Thank you, God, that you find ways to refresh the spirit! Such grace that a visit from a young summer tanager can fill a person up.

Life in a tidal pool

08 Wednesday Apr 2015

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lakeshoreWhat kind of metaphor matches the extraordinary event of resurrection? Eggs, rabbits, butterflies, the springtime renewal of bulbs and flowers and plants long dormant– all become metaphors for new life. They are fresh metaphors as long as there are children around, but for jaded adults their freshness wanes.

When Jan, Nathan and I went with friends to Acadia National Park several years ago, along the Atlantic coastline of Maine, we took a ranger-led tour along the rocky coast.  We saw the small tidal pools teeming with brightly colored life amid the granite boulders. Tiny neon red starfish, translucent sea anemones, orange sea horses, dark burgundy kelp, rainbow-sided minnows just started the long list of creatures found in pools no larger than a tub, left behind when the tide receded. Their lives seemed self-contained and secure, but reality always brings another tide and connection to the ocean, where their destiny is to grow beyond their small size into larger creatures within an infinitely larger sea.

Life in the tidal pool is interesting, but one is always aware that it is a microcosm of something vast and powerful. Life in the pool is fragile and temporary. The tide both renews the pool and destroys it, trading one set of inhabitants for another, retrieving its occupants for another life.

The pool could be any human organization. Nothing we belong to, from family to nation to humanity itself, lasts forever without changing. We get so involved in the small picture we do not see the larger. The forest for the trees. But if there are tides of change that we foresee, we live differently. Sometimes we live with more appreciation for the precious time we have in this space, and sometimes with more anxiety for fear of the coming changes.

The pool could be life itself, mortal and finite, existing in the endless mysteries of the universe. Science portrays many such tides in past aeons, bringing changes that involve destruction and renewal. What we experience in four dimensions, string theory in physics now tells us must exist in ten, well beyond what we perceive, in series of explanations that grow more bizarre and esoteric year by year.

Resurrection reveals our reality. Our regular reminders and celebrations of this bringa fresh tide of life-changing awareness. There is more to life than we can see, but how can we possibly describe it or talk about it sensibly with so little experience of it? We have to see beyond the confines of our pool, our little group, our short time. We begin to see a long trajectory of forgiveness and mercy, infinite patience, and steadfast purpose to bring something larger into being.

Collecting eggs

06 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Farm, Growing up, Seasons

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Yes, we have pleasant memories of Grandpa and Grandma (Carl and Bessie Warfel) coloring eggs, hiding them around the yard, and watching twenty to thirty of their youngest grandchildren and neighborhood children scatter around the yard, filling their baskets with those eggs. That was Easter and it was special.

Every other day of the year collecting eggs was a chore. Between the ages of eight and sixteen, it was my morning and late afternoon chore. Later in the evening Mother (and sometimes I) would wash, weigh, size, and candle those eggs, preparing most of them for the egg man, who came regularly to pick up the surplus eggs, and provide the egg-money that purchased a good share of our needs beyond what we raised ourselves. (Of course there also was the creamery, too, that collected the cream and butter that we did not need for our own needs, and contributed to those grocery funds.)

The chicken house was a dusty place, lined with three walls of double and triple-decker metal egg-laying roosts, designed so that the egg, once laid, would roll down a slight incline into a holding tray, and the chicken could not reach it, though some chickens still managed to peck at the hand of the collector when he was trying to pick up their eggs. Old brown cotton gloves were a necessary protection. The chickens were supposed to lay their eggs in those contraptions, but there was always a dissident chicken or four, who made their own nest somewhere in the chicken house, or, in the pleasant weather, they would find some other private spot in the chicken yard. That required that the egg collector do a systematic search and rescue of the whole space that the two hundred or so chickens occupied.

Chickens are nervous creatures, and the slightest unexpected movement or sound sent all of them fluttering and crowding, cackling and squawking in one direction of another, raising new clouds of dust. This was before the era of face masks. It wasn’t always the most pleasant of tasks, but it had its rewards, especially when we came to breakfast, to the baked goods that amply filled our bellies, and to the other edible coatings, devilings, and sauces that made the table so irresistible.

I never developed a proper respect for the chicken brain, but as I reflect upon it, they were understandably possessive of their bodily output, understandably wary of the clunky, awkward robber who stole their most valuable possessions, and remarkably cooperative in their roosting and laying their eggs over ninety percent of the time in those metal contraptions.

Someday I think I’ll raise chickens again. Right here in the middle of town, perhaps, if the city changes its rules in that regard. Or out at the farm. Yes, most likely there, out on the farm.

The communion wafer, the substitute piano, and the not-quite-empty tomb

05 Sunday Apr 2015

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Jan should tell this story, as she often has, but it’s my turn to tell it here in this space.

Jan was arriving at church on Easter morning, planning to enjoy the egg casserole at the youth-sponsored Easter breakfast, but at the same hour that the first Easter service was beginning. Meeting her at the door was a nervous Elder who let her know that “You have to save your husband (the minister), who is having to lead worship a cappella, since the pianist who promised to play for the first service did not show up.” True to her ready-for-just-about-anything role, Jan went into the sanctuary, picked up a hymnal and proceeded to provide piano accompaniment for the service. Very nicely.

Then came the communion service at the end of worship, when her husband placed the wafer and cup on the piano so that she could participate in communion, after she finished the piano accompaniment. Jan tried to pick up the bread—one of those very thin, whole grain, unleavened wafers—but it slipped out of her hand and fell between two center keys, and got stuck. The keys immediately ceased to play. It was at the end of the service so people had few chances to miss those missing notes.

Jan tried to get that wafer out but could not. Other people tried without success. The only remedy was to bring the rehearsal piano from the choir room behind the sanctuary into the sanctuary, after the choir had finished its warm-up for the second service. Jan recruited a few helpers to move that piano through the small vestibule between the two rooms.

The vestibule had been decorated as the empty tomb for a children’s activity which was to take place at the opening of the second worship service, within a few minutes, but the drapings and hangings of that “empty tomb,” had to be removed temporarily, to move the piano through that space. Jan proceeded to take the drapings down and she was in the process of putting them back in place, holding the last drapery up with her hand, when the children arrived to peer into the tomb.

There she was, caught in the empty tomb in her choir robe, with a score of children peering into the tomb and asking, “Who is that, and what is she doing?” Whereupon, Jan spoke the first thing that came to her mind, which was, “You come seeking Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified, but he is not here. He is risen!”

The children returned to the sanctuary telling about the angel who had announced the resurrection to them, much to the surprise of the children’s worship leader who expected them to say that they had found an empty tomb.

Ad libbing, improvising, and extemporizing all the way through the drama of the resurrection story—a comedy of sorts—does it sound familiar? The original actors did not have their act together, did they? It wasn’t exactly planned out to the last detail, nor are our lives. We just have to remember a few key lines.

The Long Walk Home… April 1, 1925

02 Thursday Apr 2015

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Spring was on the way again, and we were busy with the preparations. Grandma supervised the planting of the seed trays again, but she did not come out to watch the garden being plowed.

Our neighbor Elza Warfel lived a mile north of us. He came to the house on Thursday, March 19, saying he had been hearing some news and wanted to make sure we knew about it. A horrible tornado had ripped through southern Illinois just sixty miles south of us. The tornado had been worse than any storm on record.

“Even worse than the tornado that hit Mattoon and Charleston in 1917?” Grandma asked. She marveled that any storm could be worse. Nearly a hundred people had died and hundreds of homes and businesses had been lost back then. Grandma had known some of the people affected. It had been so close to home, and familiar places had disappeared.

“This is so much worse than that, people are wondering if it is a sign of the end,” Mr. Warfel said. The tornado had traveled nearly three hundred miles from Missouri through Illinois into Indiana. It hit Murphysboro, West Frankfort, and dozens of smaller towns, farms, and schools. It traveled fast, during the afternoon when everyone was busy and going about their regular jobs. A thousand people may have died, more thousands injured. Thousands of homes were gone. No one had ever seen such a storm.

“It strikes the just and the unjust,” Grandma said quietly. “In an hour when no one expects it.” And she closed her eyes and I think she may have been praying.

Why wasn’t there any warning?” Grandpa wanted to know. “They have telegraphs, and telephones along the railroad tracks, and people can see what’s happening. Why don’t they tell the people ahead that something’s coming, so they can find shelter?”

“I don’t know,” Elza said. “The government says they don’t want to alarm and frighten people, but people do need a warning. It seems that times are getting worse and worse. Things are changing.”

Grandma shed tears for the suffering she continued to hear about. The death toll reached seven hundred people, with fifteen thousand homes destroyed. We were only a few miles away, but we did not know what to do to help. She was small enough to start with. She seemed to shrink before our eyes, except for the enlargement of her legs and feet. Grandpa and Chlora wrapped her legs and feet with white gauze as the doctor had told them to do, but it didn’t seem to help much.

A week and a half later, in the evening, Grandma announced softly that it was time for her long walk. We looked at each other, puzzled, but no one asked her what she meant. She asked Mary to read to her from her old bible, the Twenty-third Psalm, which Mary did, stumbling over some of the words and needing Pearl’s help. Grandpa needed to help her move from her easy chair in the parlor into the downstairs bedroom. She didn’t wake up the next morning. Grandma died on April 1, 1925. We thought it odd that she died on the day everybody called “April Fools Day.” She could never tolerate fools.

“Grandma enjoyed these last few months, didn’t she?” Mary said.

I pictured her at the Christmas tree. “I guess she did,” I said to Mary.

The undertaker came from Hidalgo, bringing a casket, and set up the casket on a stand in the parlor. Family and neighbors came from all over the neighborhood , bringing food, and visiting through the evening, and some stayed up through the night, as we prepared for the funeral the next day.

Brother Hutson and Brother Ward and other elders of the church came and prayed with us during the evening, and they returned in the morning when we closed the casket. They walked with us as my two uncles, three cousins and I carried Grandma’s  casket to the black funeral carriage pulled by two black Belgian horses. We followed the carriage in Grandpa’s Model T. Other cars and horse-drawn buggies followed us as we drove the three and a half miles toward Aten Cemetery It was a slow ride through Hidalgo, and then we turned right on the dirt road that led to the woods northwest of Hidalgo. Her father, Solomon Cooper, had been buried back in 1899– after the service we found his old  tombstone. Grandpa Lon said he would be buried there, too, right next to Grandma. Aunt Allie and Uncle Bill said they had a plot right next to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s. It seemed strange that my Mom and Dad, and Grandma and Grandpa Hunsaker, would be in different places, but I guess it didn’t matter.

Bruce and Cathy Larson opened the door.

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Bruce and Cathy Larson opened their door… to their neighbors who were trying to maintain their homes in Chicago’s Lincoln Park neighborhood in the face of a major urban renewal project that would wipe out many blocks of moderate income housing and replace them with high income condominiums. They volunteered to work for the Independent Precinct Organization’s efforts to stand with these neighbors and protect their homes and investments in their neighborhood.

Bruce and Cathy opened their door… to me as I went door-to-door canvassing for support for the IPO’s project and resistance to the city plans. They served me herbal tea each time I stopped to talk with them. They loved their multi-cultural neighborhood, interesting people, old houses, and Chicago’s only authentic beer garden. They found the city plans to be disappointing and discriminatory, destroying a a rich culture and replacing it with a moneyed elite.

Bruce and Cathy opened their door…  to the Lutheran congregation they served by choice at the same time that they opened their congregation to  commitments to service with their Latin and African American neighbors, young and old, their old union-organizer, artistic,  political dissident, and nonconformist folks of all stripes.

Many people came in and out of their doors. I was privileged to be among them for several months.

One night, after they put their two small children to bed,  they opened their door…  to someone they probably knew, or whom they believed they should know, as Jesus would have opened the door, or as Jesus came to them in the form of someone in need. That night Bruce and Cathy were stabbed to death in their living room.

As far as I know, their murders, back in 1969, remain unsolved. Holy Week seems a good time to remember such a fine couple in Christian ministry, who opened the door of my heart to the needs of people I had not met before,  and to the sacrifices that sometimes are required in the attempts to  serve.

April 17, 1865, at the New Salem Universalist Church

01 Wednesday Apr 2015

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Cherokee Star

Following the Easter worship service, Rev. William Gamage greeted people at the front door beneath the bell tower that stood in the southwest corner of the white frame building. He thanked people for inviting him to come from Barry to lead their service in the absence of a regular minister, and he said repeatedly that, “Yes,” he agreed that it was a terrible thing that President Lincoln was assassinated on Friday, and “We must pray for our nation in this time of testing.”  The news of the assassination had spread everywhere on Saturday, and the church was full of mourners, in addition to the regular Easter crowd.

Thomas Gray held the arm of his wife Catherine, to help her walk, since she was finding that arthritis affected her more every day. Their newest grandchild, Bennett Foster Bell, a month old, had been baptized that morning, and then his father, John Bell, had to carry the colicky baby in and out of the service, when he cried out of his discomfort. Willie Ann corralled the other children—Tommy, Irene, Art, and Jimmy—while they sat quietly. The Bells were among the last to leave the church building, following Willie Ann’s parents.

“Thank you for your comforting words,” Thomas said to Rev. Gamage. “We would be happy if you saw fit to come here regularly to lead us, Brother Gamage.”

“I appreciate your saying that,” Rev. Gamage replied. “The congregation does need someone, especially in times like these.”

“Yes, we do. We were just beginning to breathe freely again, with the war finally coming to an end. Now the future is cloudy again, with more storms ahead, without our dear President to lead us. I wasn’t for him at first, when he ran for the office, but he won my heart with his wisdom.”

Rev. Gamage turned to John Bell, and asked, “Are those your feelings also, Brother Bell? You come from a different part of our country.”

“Much the same, yes, sir. In my experience the wisest and bravest of my people are among the first to be killed, when their enemies finally have the chance to do it. We have lost many of our best leaders, in the same cowardly way that President Lincoln was taken. Somehow the God of All helps us through the troubles anyway. It takes a lot of trust to keep going, and keep believing, but God provides a way.”

“Well said, Brother Bell. You could have given the message for us all today, in just those words,” Rev. Gamage replied.

In that month John transferred the last of his land holdings south of New Salem to his father-in-law, and concentrated his attention on the land he held north and northwest of New Salem.[i] He owned more than enough land to support his family, and the prospect of having men home from the war and eager for work gave him and Willie hope. Maybe they could expand some of the fields and pastures, reduce the wooded areas, and hire workers to help with the farming. John might not have so much work to do on his own, and keep sickness at bay.

[i] The Pike County Clerk land records show several parcels changing hands among neighbors with John Bell releasing southern township ownership from 1857 to 1865.

The unnatural event of resurrection

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

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“The first fruits of those who have died” (1 Corinthians 15:20). Even the metaphors of resurrection connect us to nature. In our area the serviceberry, also called the shadblow, is among the first bloomers and the first fruits of spring. We rejoice in the renewal of natural life that spring provides. Easter fits right into nature’s course. Even the name Easter brings to mind the ancient religions of natural renewal. Every Christian festival makes a connection to some phase of the agricultural cycle, just as the Jewish festivals that preceded them made those connections between God’s great historical actions and the natural cycles of life.

But resurrection is not nature in any typical observation. We do not ordinarily see resurrections. We see metaphors for rebirth in butterflies and seemingly dead plants and seeds springing to life. We see deserts blossom in the rare showers that fall. We see the persistence of life in extremely frigid and extraordinarily super-heated conditions, and the superabundance of life in most places on earth. But we also see extinctions, endangered species, the alarming die-offs of chunks of this interdependent environment of the earth, which we know will never be duplicated or replaced. We see deaths without visible resurrections.

Thanks to Jesus and his early followers we have our imaginations inspired by events with a claim to history, if not to nature. It was not a natural phenomenon that they proclaimed, although before them many had dreamed of resurrections of the dead. There was no divorce from the body in their thoughts, though other peoples had dreamed of a soul separating from the body at death. This was not the Hebrew dream; they were people tied to the goodness of the earth and physical life. They dreamed of a bodily resurrection, where the goodness of the body could provide a vessel for the spirit that God shared with people, and to an invisible extent God shared that spirit with all the rest of creation, as it “groaned in travail.”

Jesus was no resuscitated corpse, no ghost, nothing like anything imagined, a surprise when he came. But he and they gave us a hope that takes us beyond nature as we know it and beyond history as we know it most of the time, and we are thankful for that hope every time we say farewell to someone or something we have loved. We want more life, and not just any life, life in this specific form of this person, this animal, this place. Our faith anchors that hope in Jesus, in heaven, in God’s infinitely loving and seemingly impossible promises.

Nature takes us to near-death experiences, but no farther. Nature revives hearts that are not beating and lungs that have stopped inflating, but not if too much time has passed, and not without help. Does God have another nature in store for us, rearranged atoms, other dimensions, realms of spirit with a different nature than we have yet imagined? These are tantalizing questions for those of us who want explanations and hard evidence.

For now we must settle for the reality of first fruits, in various degrees of deliciousness. Metaphors feed our stomachs, while our eyes try to see beneath and behind, what Jesus would have us see.

Making it to the hairdresser in a spring blizzard

31 Tuesday Mar 2015

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The snowstorm was one of those late season avalanches, in March of 1976, interrupting everyone’s expectations of what should be coming. The blooms of daffodils and forsythia  should be just around the corner, and everyone should be getting ready for spring garden parties and Easter egg hunts. Instead, two feet of wet snow clogged the streets and brought school schedules, traffic, factory production, business and everything else to a halt.

The siren of the local volunteer fire department and rescue squad alerted me to the mid-day need, when ministers and third shift workers were usually the only ones available to respond. Who knew who could show up today? Driving the car three blocks to the station was out of the question. Running would have to do. Fortunately the high carriage of the rescue truck would plow through the snow-filled streets better than most other vehicles. I met Mike and Bill at the station, we jumped into our gear, and headed  a mile east of the station, to a beauty salon from which the emergency call had come.

A block and a half short of the salon we came to a halt in a snow bank in the middle of the street. We bailed out of the truck, hauled our emergency gear cases, and trudged as fast as we could to the salon. The hairdresser-beauty operator met us at the door, frantic and near hysterical.

In the middle of the salon floor, flat on her back, lay a lovely woman, in her mid-thirties, neatly dressed in a spring dress, her skin shading to gray and blue, not breathing.  She had rushed several blocks through the snow to make her weekly hair appointment, arrived on time, and, after removing her light coat, but before she had a chance to sit in the salon chair, she had collapsed. How long had it been? To my mind it had been at least ten minutes from the time that the siren had blown, but who had kept track? When had she stopped breathing?

Bill was the old hand among us, but he had a cold, so giving advice and communicating by radio and telephone was his appropriate role. We had to proceed with checking her clear airway, beginning artificial respiration, and chest compressions, as we were trained to do in those days. Mike took the first turn in mouth to mouth, and I alternated with him, both of us losing the contents of our stomachs sometime during the next hour of intimate contact, with no response.

Bill tried valiantly to arrange for a snowplow and another ambulance to come in tandem, but in the end the best that he could get was the funeral director’s station wagon following the snowplow, after we had given up on the principle that “having started CPR, one did not stop.”

She had a husband and two young children. She was about the same age as Mike and I. What could possibly have been so important about her beauty appointment that she pushed herself through the snow for events that would most certainly be cancelled during the days to come, except for her own funeral? Neither Mike nor I were feeling particularly healthy at that point, not that we regretted trying to revive her, but everything we had done certainly proved futile.

That was how we prepared for spring, and Easter, that year. In the face of such futility and pointless death, we had to insist that sometime, somewhere, there had to be a point to our foolish living. We would look for it. Maybe we would find it.