Category Archives: Volunteering

Rescue Call #6

05 Tuesday May 2020

Posted by in Church, People, Small town life, Uncategorized, Volunteering

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Opal Alwashousky* was an abundant lady, not morbidly but pleasantly obese. Some condition had eliminated most of her hair, leaving a few strands on top that went wherever they wanted to go. But these were merely first impressions, put aside when one got to know her exuberant affable personality

I recognized her address at the edge of town when the call came late morning. I ran the two blocks to the ambulance garage, glad to see Steve arriving. At that hour few volunteers were around, most working daytime shifts. A neighbor had heard Opal yelling from her bathroom, where she had fallen in her tub and couldn’t move without torment. Opal had called for a long time; her voice was hoarse. She said later that she thought she’d probably die there, and a part of her wanted to.

When Steve and I arrived a few minutes after the call, the neighbor met us and sent us inside. We brought a neck brace, stretcher and backboard, a couple of blankets and lifting straps. Opal was naked and—for the time being—beyond embarrassment. She had managed to empty the water and toweled herself mostly dry. Bruises were beginning to show in large patches.

Slowly and carefully we put on the neck brace, maneuvered a blanket and straps under her body and lifted her out, apologizing all the way for the hurt we were causing, and encouraging her to yell all she wanted. Somehow we got her out, onto a stretcher, covered with blankets, into the ambulance, and on the way to the hospital. It was a miracle. She asked Steve and me to promise not to tell anyone the condition in which we found her. We promised, as was our duty anyway.

I had served Opal communion in regular pastoral visits, so it was natural to visit her in the hospital afterward. She had broken a hip, but everything else was intact, including her sense of humor. She recovered and lived a few more years. I had the privilege of returning to her home, accompanied by a deacon, to share communion. She would always ask, in front of the deacon, with a wink, if I had told her secret.

“Definitely not,” I would answer.

To which the deacon would ask, “What secret?”

“If you only knew,” she would say.

Now, nearly fifty years later, and Opal long gone to a larger bathroom in the sky, I’m telling.

*Names changed for obvious reasons.

Walls Go Up and Walls Come Down

21 Tuesday Nov 2017

Posted by in Church, Faith, Life along the River, Nature, Volunteering, Yard

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

trump's wall   “Something there is that doesn’t love a wall, that wants it down.”
Robert Frost penned those lines in his meditation on neighboring titled “Mending Wall.” The poem seems to contradict itself with its other famous line, “Good fences make good neighbors.”
Burlington is busily building a new wall out of steel and concrete, a floodwall protecting us from our source as a community and a periodic threat to our central downtown as well, the Mississippi River. We may wonder how long this new wall will serve its purpose. Will it be high enough, strong enough, good enough? The designers promise that it will not hide us from the beauty of the river, and we are waiting to see.
Many of the old walls have fallen in the last thirty years. They were mostly walls of limestone, placed carefully without mortar in many cases, and gravity has gradually taken its toll. The limestone, so prevalent and so full of Burlington’s famous crinoid fossils, has been an abundant resource for wall construction. Walls served the purpose of confining the chickens, horses, and hogs, or they simply helped to clean up lots that were covered with limestone.
In June, 1992, Zion’s High School youth tackled the project of removing one such wall. The old limestone wall fronting Zion’s parking lot had shown a determination to change its position. Zion’s section was moving to the west, an inch or two a year, while next door Victoria Apartments’ section was moving to the east. Two major cracks exposed the conflict. The young people speeded up the process, adding their brawn. We fantasized the possibility of circling the wall seven times and blowing a trumpet, especially when considering the four 300-pound stones that topped the eight-foot high wall. In the end a more direct and tiring approach pulled those heavy stones down with ropes from a safe distance. It was tug of war with us on one side, the wall on the other, putting up a good fight.
After that Mathew Johnson sat atop the middle section attacking with a heavy hammer and chisel. Most of the stones needed just a nudge, for a hundred years reduced the original mortar to powder. He soon found another force at work as a million angry ants made his seat untenable. They were not happy with any of us who were destroying their dry and happy home. We further meditated on upsetting the biosystem that the wall represented, pausing often to shake the tiny defenders off our clothing, but we continued our assault. One by one we carted the stones away, loading a pickup truck several times, leaving only the foundation for another day, and leaving the northern section on our neighbor’s property to go its own way.
We admit that we did not like that wall. It had stopped serving whatever purpose it originally had. Over decades people had made many efforts to keep it intact and oppose its own desire to obey the laws of gravity. A layer of concrete smoothed over the outside of the rock, so it did not have the charm of the rear wall of the parking lot with its vines and decrepitude.
After we thought about that day of practicing our faith, we named and recognized other walls that remain in our lives. Walls without purpose are leftover from earlier ages, without honor or beauty, with defenders aplenty, but they too will succumb to the laws of nature and spirit. We have seen some of those walls fall as easily as Jericho’s, but we cannot expect to walk around all of those walls and find the same result. Some require more concerted and strenuous efforts. Sledgehammer anyone?

Farm Worker Ministry

05 Thursday Jan 2017

Posted by in Caring, Church, Citizenship, Farm, People, Small town life, Suffering, Volunteering

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

Circledance

I was elected to represent the Illinois Conference of the United Church of Christ (UCC) at the Illinois Conference of Churches (ICOC) in 1976. I considered it an honor and an opportunity to work on the ecumenical relationships that I hoped would deepen as the years progressed. As it turned out, the ICOC Forum where we served was mostly an opportunity to be informed about what the leaders of the denominations in Illinois were doing, not to exercise any influence or activity ourselves. I stayed on, learning what I could. At the end of my four-year term, I had decided that the place of real ministry, where I might contribute, was an arm of the ICOC, called the Illinois Farm Worker Ministry (IFWM). There the denominations, including the Roman Catholic Church, were cooperating in providing a ministry to people who needed and deserved it—the mostly seasonal farm workers in Illinois, although many who formerly followed seasonal crop needs had “settled out” and adapted to work opportunities in various locales in the state. I asked for a place on the Illinois Farm Worker board and received it for the next two terms until 1988.

The Farm Worker Ministry gave support to organizing efforts of farm workers on the national level and in the state, provided resource people for several locations where workers had found more or less permanent work and homes, served both spiritual and material needs as we discovered them, and, after the Immigration Reform and Control Act was finally signed by President Ronald Reagan in 1986, supported the educational and citizenship qualification efforts of thousands of Illinois residents. The capable leader of IFWM was Olgha Sandman, the wife of my mentor in the UCC, Robert Sandman, and soon an equally important mentor to me as well. We worked alongside farm workers to improve conditions in their work and for their families. That included such matters as documenting the use and abuse of pesticides and the exposure of people to chemicals that would harm them.

Olgha made every possible effort to bring her board members into close contact with farm worker leaders and people. We visited sites in Onarga, Princeton, and elsewhere, where farm workers were gathering, organizing, and needing services. We met and worked with scores of wonderful, hard-working, non-citizens and new and would-be citizens. The dedication of so many people who had come to work, make a living, and settle down, was evident as those who had come or been brought into the country without papers or permanent papers before 1982, and had stayed here for at least five years without any legal problems, took advantage of the classes to learn English and familiarity with US history and government. There were many who could not provide the necessary proof of their work history or long-term residency who were just as qualified by character as those who succeeded at that time, but those were the limits of the 1986 legislation, and no efforts since then have made such an opportunity possible again.

As communities of farm workers have continued to mature, most of their leadership has emerged from among their own ranks, and many of the various regional groups that used to provide a ministry have declined, including the IFWM after Olgha’s retirement. The need for people to advocate with them and on their behalf has not declined. Various industries and employers have continued to bring people into the country without papers and to employ those who are here, without the legal support or rights of citizenship, therefore taking advantage of their status to provide low wages, no benefits, and poor working conditions. In the end that has not been an advantage to either the immigrants who have come for a better life or to the rest of the workers in the country already, whether they were recent immigrants or not.

We could do much better and much more for hard-working people who come for a better life. The willingness to welcome such people has been a tradition of this country for centuries, before and after “legal papers” became an issue, receiving the vast majority of our ancestors. We have also seen the persistent practice of getting other people “to do our work for us,” and “to do what we are not willing to do,” and “to do what we have not enough skilled and knowledgeable people to do.”  

The fraction of people who have come in recent decades is much smaller than most of our history, and the people who come have proven to be less dangerous than those who already live here. A variety of paths to new citizenship are appropriate, and the church always has a duty to provide hospitality to the stranger and sojourner. Having an opportunity to know and work with farm workers leads most of us to the same conclusions.

The Problem Pregnancy Counseling Service

04 Wednesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Caring, Church, Citizenship, Faith, Health, People, Suffering, Volunteering

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, ,

dock at sunset

My move to my first full-time parish at Tilton coincided with an important national decision—the Supreme Court ruling in Roe vs. Wade. Legal abortion, formerly restricted to a few states and people of wealth, was then available through qualified medical facilities to every first and second trimester pregnant woman at relatively low cost. Two local obstetrician-gynecologists and workers in the county health department realized that they had a challenge on their hands. Who would provide counseling to the many women who now had a choice that they did not have previously?

The doctors and health workers did not feel ready or able to counsel at length with women who were facing new and legal options for which they had not prepared. The two OB-GYNE doctors disagreed between themselves about the morality of the new option. The health workers had mixed feelings. They turned to local ministers, asking for ministers and other counselors who were concerned to join in providing free, confidential, and non-directive counseling to women who desired it. Eight ministers and counselors responded.

The sticking point was the need to be non-directive, not to tell women what to do, not to impose a religious position, but to be willing to listen to different circumstances and needs and religious positions, explore feelings, provide information that was as objective as possible, and let women make their own final decisions. We all faced a steep learning curve, gathering information on all options that were available, including the medical facilities that provided abortions, procedures used, and costs involved, as well as the ethical and psychological considerations that women and their partners and families might face, whichever decision they made. Available resources for supporting a new child or adoption were necessary as well. Before we began, we developed a standard list of themes that would be a part of each session, and we revised it regularly.

The Problem Pregnancy Counseling Service continued for the next seven years. The counselors met together regularly to compare and enhance what we were learning, to recruit and replace counselors, and to support one another in emotional struggles. Not everyone of the original group could maintain the standards that we had imposed on ourselves, nor did new volunteers find them easy. At the end of that time, the polarization of abortion as an issue had grown to make non-directive counseling sound like ‘permissive’ or ‘encouraging’ to outsiders, so the counseling pool had shrunk and recruitment of new counselors became politicized. Women and doctors were more familiar with their own options as people had made their separate decisions and shared them with others. Fewer women were asking for counseling. We disbanded.

What had we learned as counselors? There was no standard case of a woman coming for counseling. Women’s motivations and circumstances varied enormously, and our awareness of heart-wrenching circumstances and difficult decisions expanded. Male partners were seldom available for support. We varied among ourselves in our ability to empathize or offer emotional support to those who came to us. We also had to deal with our own grief and depend on others for support. The politics of the issue made abortion more accessible to some and more difficult for many. What had long been an illegal underground activity remained part of an emotionally charged secret, as ‘underground’ as ever, although usually without the dire medical consequences of local illegal abortions.

None of us were immune to the personal threats that were directed at us from abortion absolutists. Yet all of us had people come to us later thanking us for help in their difficult times.  We would face the same issues again wherever we were, but not with the frequency or intensity of those seven years.

A Church Finds Ways to Reach Out to Others

03 Tuesday Jan 2017

Posted by in Caring, Church, Citizenship, Faith, Small town life, Volunteering

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Pentecostal banner

St. Paul’s Church in Minonk supposedly had six hundred members when they called me to be their pastor. About fifty of that number turned out to have no names, but they were still a substantial congregation. Many were related to each other after four generations of German family intermarriage. The town of Minonk was 2400 in population and rapidly shrinking, due both to the elderly imbalance of its citizens and to the loss of industrial jobs in its area. Clearly St. Paul’s dominated the five congregations in the town in size, but that had not resulted in taking more responsibility for community life.

They did take part in the one social service project of the town, sponsored by the Ministerial Association (the four ministers—the fifth coming a distance only on Sunday), and that was home-delivered meals prepared by the nursing home and delivered by church volunteers. That was a beginning, anyway. Otherwise the town had only the local community services that were provided by town government, namely the police, fire and rescue services. Lions Club, Scouts, and 4-H did occasional helpful projects. As poor people moved into Minonk to take advantage of low-cost housing, there was not much more to serve their needs.

St. Paul’s had mostly looked after its own needs, caring for one another in family duty. When a 4-H club, led by congregation members, asked to use the church facilities for regular meetings, it was the first such request that any of the current leaders could remember. They hesitated, but the argument that they should serve more people in the community won the vote. There was not much sacrifice in providing a free location for a 4-H club.

The next steps were harder. It was clear that more people were having a difficult time making ends meet. Food banks were beginning to make an appearance in the larger communities in the region, and access to surplus and donated food was simple, given pick-up vehicles, a few volunteers, and a place to distribute. A few church members saw the need, provided some volunteers, two of whom loaned the use of their trucks. The city provided space in an  old city hall, if another organization took responsibility for staffing and liability insurance, which St. Paul’s insurance provider was willing to do. The Ministerial Association recruited a few more volunteers. With St. Paul’s members in the lead, the church gave its approval of the project. Food and money donations came in and the pantry was underway. (Several years later, outgrowing the old city hall, the church provided space in underused accessible rooms.)

After a few months, a local restauranteur volunteered to provide a Christmas party to needy children of the area, and she asked the food pantry to gather a list of children to be invited, along with gift requests. The food pantry clients happily cooperated. St. Paul’s and another congregation sought volunteer sponsors, and there were enough to cover the fifty children who were the anonymous recipients. St. Paul’s Youth agreed to wrap and identify the gifts with the number tags that maintained the anonymity. So, Santa’s Helpers was born, and continued year after year.

The people who had for several years gathered clothing to take to Goodwill and other groups in larger communities found that they could distribute coats and shoes and other items in town at the food pantry before they took the surplus to other places.

Requests for counseling increased as the newer residents found that they had a home in Minonk and people who cared about them. The four ministers reported that their counseling loads were increasing with people outside their congregations. We investigated the resources available in the area and places to refer people in need for those situations that exceeded our abilities.

Eventually St. Paul’s would hire an associate pastor who provided a children and family program for several years, although the funding for that effort became too great a burden to bear.

St. Paul’s Church always had plenty to do to take care of their own members, but a shrinking town population and the diminishing power of extended family ties did not keep them from growing in their care for others.

The Group Called ‘Us’

22 Tuesday Nov 2016

Posted by in Caring, Events, Growing up, People, Racial Prejudice, Small town life, Volunteering

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , , ,

cropped-circledance.jpg

I didn’t learn how the group got started. When I joined them in the fall of my senior year in college, in 1967, they included a mixed racial group from Bloomington and Normal, several men and women, working a variety of jobs, laborers and professionals, a few Illinois State University professors, never more than a dozen people at any meeting. They met to talk about the issues of race and class in those Twin Cities and to identify and participate in actions that might improve those relationships. The era of street demonstrations seemed to be ending, and some of these people clearly had been involved in that kind of action, but they were looking for other things to do.

I had first met some of them when we demonstrated against a dentist at the edge of campus, who would not serve an African-American client. At the edge of campus yet! The obvious place for students to go if they were having a toothache! She invited me to come to a meeting of ‘us.’

They never had a name. They didn’t seem to have or be an organization. As usual some people were more vocal than others, and they spoke respectfully to each other, even when they disagreed about what they should do. When they decided to do something, they went ahead with those who were ready, even though not everyone ever took part in everything they did. They were simply ‘us.’

They talked about education and they placed books and articles in accessible places and took part in forums. They talked about legal actions and involved some lawyers. They talked about electoral politics and recruited a candidate for alderman. That’s where I found a place, canvassing neighborhoods for the candidate for alderman. Bloomington had never had a black alderman. They didn’t succeed in that campaign, but it set the stage for another try, which was successful.

I remember going house to house, having the door slammed in my face by some white folks, given a respectful but distant hearing by some, and welcomed by a few. (It was good experience for ‘cold calling’ on behalf of a church and its message.) Mostly I remember the houses of black and Hispanic folks. In those days, when we came to their doors, my fellow-canvasser and I were welcomed. So much so, that often we were invited inside to sit at table, and our hosts offered us something to eat. At noontime, instead of a reprimand for interrupting their meal, we were offered a dinner, and such a dinner it was! Stereotypical as it may sound, fried chicken, greens, home-baked bread, applesauce, and hominy were on the menu that day, and I didn’t mind any stereotypes at all as I enjoyed it.

When I think of Thanksgiving, a number of such events come to mind, but none more gracious than that one, nor as promising of a better future.

The Garage at 708 1/2 North Sherman

22 Friday Apr 2016

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

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

, ,

3 Owls

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

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

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

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

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

The Gift of Carrot Cake

09 Wednesday Mar 2016

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

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

, , ,

Shannondale Community Center

We were at Shannondale Community Center for a summer week of service and recreation in the Current River NSRP. Jim Wilson was our guide with his many years of experience in construction as we repaired and applied vinyl siding to a house that had seen many additions with sidings in various degrees of disrepair. The elderly widow who resided there was very grateful for our crew of adults and youths who were helping her achieve a long-held dream.

The lady of the house helped in various ways. She gave us access to her inside toilet (which was not always available in the project houses we tackled). She provided water and iced tea for our refreshment. She pointed out the nest of copperheads in the patch of weeds at the east side of the house, and warned us that baby copperheads were as dangerous as adult ones, so we were very careful when we removed them to work there (They were very cute.). On the second day, when we were eating the sack lunches we had prepared as usual at breakfast in the Shannondale kitchen, she came out of the house with a beautiful carrot cake in a sheet cake pan—enough for all sixteen of us, though some of our group declined the gift. Several of us felt the obligation to have a piece of the cake, whether we liked carrot cake or not, because she had gone to the trouble of preparing it for us in gratitude for the work we were giving to her. I thought the cake was delicious. Danielle ate the cake but not the frosting. We finished the siding project soon after lunch and went on to other things.

That evening one of our group began to feel unwell and turned in early, skipping the campfire at the end of the day. I heard her vomiting as I went to bed. Not long after that someone else was headed to a noisy stomach-emptying in the common bathroom where we stayed. An hour later another one succumbed. The bathroom was becoming very busy, and no one had the luxury of being able to wait. Fortunately, the group shower house and toilet facility was not far away, and part of the group stayed at the community center building with its two bathrooms. About 2 A.M. yours truly of the iron stomach began to take my turn. It was a long miserable night, but as we compared notes, we came to the unavoidable conclusion that it was not an intestinal virus. Everyone who had eaten the cake with the cream cheese frosting had gotten ill. Everyone who had turned down the cake, and Danielle who had eaten the cake but not the frosting, had remained well. No one got a lot of sleep that night.

The morning dawned beautifully, and some of our group enjoyed breakfast. I had some toast and a little coke. We had promised to tackle another task, which was to help an area resident move her household furnishings into storage until another place became available. Enough of us were in good shape to do the job, and most of the rest of us tagged along, getting stronger as the hours passed.

As miserable as the night was, I would not have changed it. From that point on “carrot cake” became our humorous code phrase for anything that was a well-intentioned but questionable gift. Sometimes we learned to say “thanks” but “no thanks,” but it is always a challenge to be gracious when refusing a gift.