A Christmas Letter

26 Saturday Dec 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Seasons

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We have been receiving Christmas and holiday letters from friends and family, and we appreciate every single one and the memories and hopes that go with them of treasured experiences together that the letters and cards represent. Often they bring tears of joy for the special times we have shared. Sometimes they bring tears of sadness, for we have reached the years when the frequent departure of friends and loved ones places them out of reach of everything but our prayers of gratitude for having known them. We want you to know that we send not only our greetings but our thanks and prayers for your lives, and our continuing praise to God for all of you wonderful people we have known and for the saving grace of Jesus Christ, who assures us that there is always more in store for our lives than what we have yet seen.

While this holiday time carries so much meaning in so many ways, for us it is still at its core an incarnation of the love of God in the Messiah who came, is yet to come, and is coming soon. In awe and mystery we see that loving person in the humblest of places, akin to the places where we have found ourselves and met you. Humbly we bow to adore Jesus, through whom we find that the ineffable Ruler of this universe (and all possible universes) does care for each of us.

Most of what we might report to you about our events and thoughts during this year has been on the “Gary Chapman” Facebook page or on chaplinesblog.com. We have lived in Burlington, Iowa, for twenty seven years, and part-time in Bella Vista, Arkansas, for fifteen years. Au and Alicia just celebrated their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, Brandi and Nathan recently celebrated their eighteenth, all continuing in their jobs and locales, with the addition of Alicia going to work as a receptionist at an O’Fallon assisted living center and nursing home, in addition to her contracts as a theatrical costumer. Grandchildren Willow graduated from the University of Illinois and began graduate studies in paleontology at the University of Nebraska- Lincoln, where she is deep into the Barstovian Era (into whose isotopes few researchers have gone before); Meadow just played seven characters in Sweet Charity as well as a lead in her first movie while a junior at Indiana University; and sweet Symphony turned purple as Ursula the Sea Witch in Little Mermaid, after being white as an Addams Family ancestor (and being green as Oz’s wicked witch two years ago)—she will graduate from O’Fallon High School with her Associate of Arts and Associate of Science degrees from Southwestern Illinois College, at the same time, in the coming May, then on to either Purdue University or Indiana University. Why do we feel that the pace of time is accelerating?

Jan’s mother fell and broke her neck C2 vertebra in August. She survived the fall, but now she contends with a brace that holds her head in place and protects her spinal cord. She had to leave her home and take up residence at the local nursing home, where our step-father of eighteen years, Glenn Edwards, visits daily. In order to identify with her mother (not intentionally!) Jan fell at the end of September, not breaking anything, but injuring herself severely anyway—we are thankful it wasn’t worse and she has been recovering well.

Gary enjoyed the responses of many people to the publishing of Out of My Hands and The River Flows Both Ways, and he is still editing Our Land! Our People!, a much longer narrative about the child John Bell on the Trail of Tears and his interesting life afterwards. During the year Jan and five distant cousins descended from her Great-great Grandfather John Bell had DNA testing to support or disprove his Native American ancestry, since the documentary evidence to corroborate the family tradition about John Bell was thin. Jan learned that she and her cousins have ancient Far East Asian and Yakutian (Siberian) DNA, common to Native Americans in the DNA records, which is as much supporting evidence as we can gain at the present time. It was nice to learn that we had Asians in our family before our beloved Au joined us, and that she had ancestors in America before her Puritan New England and seafaring ancestors arrived (or the Germans, Irish, or English Quakers who came later to the Middle Colonies and Illinois). DNA can only give us a little glimpse into the recesses of our past. Eventually it must show that we are all related anyway—one family in one world, all deeply in need of reconciliation.

It has not been an easy year, but we have enjoyed it anyway. More heart issues developed for Gary, but he runs regularly anyway. He has also continued teaching philosophy and ethics at Southeastern Community College, but this year it was all online, making travel easier during the courses. We made the usual travel circuit of Burlington, Bella Vista, O’Fallon, Champaign, Paxton, Mt. Sterling; Lincoln, Nebraska; and Bloomington, Indiana, adding another trip to the Black Hills and Mammoth Site, and a journey with Gary’s two brothers and sisters-in-law to Sevierville, Tennessee, at the height of the marvelous fall color, to celebrate all of our milestone birthdays—seventy, seventy-five, and eighty (a few months ahead of time for some of us).

We have plenty of cause for thanksgiving, and our prayers for the coming year include you and our hopes to be with you. May the peace of God bless you abundantly.

The Tale of the Peddlin’ Parson

21 Monday Dec 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Caring, Faith, People, Seasons, Small town life, Vehicles

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A License to Preach, Serendipity

It’s not much of a tale, but it’s about one Christmas that stood out for this preacher. I had lived in Tilton only a few months, serving my first “called’’ and full-time pastorate at the United Church of Tilton. The start of work was not auspicious. The new church building had been completed the year before, with a lot of volunteer work from the congregation. There were only thirty-some members, and the Sunday School participation continued to be much larger than the worship attendance, as it had been for years, for worship began at 8 A.M., when families wanted to sleep in, and the people were accustomed to having a part-time pastor who served a larger church somewhere else, so the early hour was the only time that their pastor had been available. The new parsonage had finally been finished so my family—my wife and two small children—could move in. Our second car, “Sam,” had burned up with an engine fire, so we were back to having one car to share between my wife and myself. The youth group, built around the sports enthusiasms of the previous part-time youth worker, had fallen apart.

The leaders of the congregation were eager to encourage me, and they somehow had faith that we could make this new organization self-sustaining with a truly community-serving and Christ-centered purpose. There were few traditions, although we built on some that had begun in each of the fore-runner congregations that merged and began anew with their thirty combined members. We observed Advent with the lighting of Advent candles, collected gifts for the Delmo Community Organization, went caroling at nursing facilities and the homes of shut-ins, and prepared a children’s musical program for the Sunday School. In worship, the Sunday before Christmas, when all the singing, preaching, and praying was over, the congregation presented me with a gift.

Don Dunavan was one of the sturdy deacons, chief at the fire department, busy creating equipment at one of the local machine shops, raising four children, caring for his elderly mother, always available at church for jobs that needed doing. He came riding down the aisle on a bright red Schwinn bicycle. “We understood that you needed some transportation to do your visiting around town, so we bought you this bicycle. From now on, you will be known in Tilton as the peddlin’ parson.”

Visiting with people in the town, finding needs and filling them, had become my primary occupation. The bicycle became my main mode of transportation. I did a lot of cold calling, getting to know people and what they were interested in, talking about the church’s new start and hopes to serve the needs of the community. For the most part people were receptive. When I heard of someone wanting to talk, or a problem that had arisen for anyone, I made a contact and arranged a visit.

One man, Albert Cox, lived by himself, had no family, and had never had a relationship with any church. He didn’t have any interest in taking part in any group either, but he did like the idea of a church that would respond to people’s needs and try to serve the town. He hadn’t known any preachers before, he said, but he welcomed me into his home, and we talked about ways things could be improved for people’s lives. He was concerned about the town cemetery, which had fallen into disuse and decay, without a supervisory board to take care of it, and about the youth not having Scouting or recreational organizations to channel their energies. He had a lot of good ideas, though he wasn’t ever comfortable joining with other people in trying to implement them. Still we were able to find ways to work on them.

Years later, when Albert died and I was long gone from the community, his will designated his estate (a half-million dollars) in equal parts to a historical museum for the town and to the United Church of Tilton to be used for a community fellowship hall and gym. When I returned to the church thirty-five years later, I learned that I was remembered for three things—being a peddlin’ parson who visited people in the community, running a school-outside -the-walls activity program for youth, and visiting Albert Cox.

Sneaking into the Christmas Gifts

16 Wednesday Dec 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Events, Growing up, Learning from mistakes, Seasons

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Memories

Happy Holidays.

My brother and I never had a reason to be in my parents’ bedroom when they were not there. The room was upstairs in a ‘newer’ wing of the hundred-some year-old farmhouse where we grew up. We gained access to the bedroom by going through the bathroom that replaced one of the three tiny bedrooms of the original story-and-a-half cabin. (You might say that it became the ‘Master Suite’ except that there was only one ‘inside’ bathroom in that house, and everyone used it when it worked, which was only part of the time.) Obviously my parents were not at home when we went into their bedroom. My older brother, David, must have been about thirteen, and me, eight, when this event occurred. We felt safe in sneaking in.

David thought he knew where the Christmas gifts must be kept—in the little closet at the far end of the bedroom. He opened the door and rummaged through the clothing and shoes to get to the hidden part of the closet, and he said that—sure enough—there were packages back there. Did I want to see what I was getting?

Of course, I wanted to see. What was I doing in that room with him if I didn’t want to see what I was getting for Christmas? What eight year old boy wouldn’t want to know ahead of time? At that moment something told me not to look and not to ask and not to let him tell me. I shrank from knowing ahead of the time how my parents wanted to surprise me.

My brother became a generous man. Perhaps it was an early manifestation of his generosity that he was sharing with me this escapade into sneakerdom. He certainly didn’t have to include his bothersome little brother in this opportunity. He didn’t need me as an accomplice either. It is not clear in my memory that my mother discovered this intrusion into the back corners of her closet, but she was observant and she probably did, and my brother probably paid for the infraction of unwritten Christmas rules with the humiliating insight that he could not be trusted in that day’s responsibility.

Among the many gifts coming from my parents that I do remember from those childhood years, I do not remember what I received on that particular Christmas, except the knowledge that I could be tempted, and that finally I could resist the temptation of knowing what I wasn’t supposed to know ahead of time. I could wait and be patient and learn in due time. That, and what my brother learned, were the most important and memorable gifts from that Christmas.

Too Eager to Get to Christmas

13 Sunday Dec 2015

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Memories

3 trees lighted in different colors

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

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

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

I dreamed a dream…

24 Tuesday Nov 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Gullibility, Learning from mistakes, People

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events

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

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

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

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

Beginning work as a pastor at Wapella

14 Saturday Nov 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Caring, Church, Learning from mistakes, Small town life

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A License to Preach, events, Memories

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

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

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

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

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

Dangerous Domestic Disputes

12 Thursday Nov 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Caring, Church, Farm, guns, Small town life

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A License to Preach

Apart from random reckless hunter’s shots and target practice on my car traveling through inner city neighborhoods at night, and the occasional shots through the parsonage windows that occurred at Tilton, Minonk, and Burlington, one bullet hole apiece, the only serious threats occurred as I tried to moderate domestic disputes.

At Tilton I learned that domestic disputes provide the most common setting where guns come out.

I was making a regular pastoral visit to an aged grandmother, whose several children lived within a few blocks of her house. She informed me that her daughter was going through a terrible ordeal and needed my help. The daughter had no phone, but she was home. Could I go and talk to her? I could and did. Talking to daughter and grand-daughter together, they explained the abuse they had endured and the sense of despair and hopelessness they felt. Where could they go? In the midst of that conversation, the husband came home early and drunk, and before I had a chance to say anything more than hello, he held a gun on all of us. Forty years later, I do not remember much of what I said, only the feeling that these could be my last moments, and the resolve to be calm and non-threatening, as I explained that I was a pastor, there to help all of them and not to take sides. His gun could only make things worse for him and for those he loved. Gradually he lowered his gun and began to cry. How it happened, I never did know, but over the next several months that family survived intact, that husband stopped drinking, and eventually they became active in the church.

In another situation a father held his gun on me when I came with his daughter to his house to take her children away from him. They had lived together for several years, but the daughter had resolved that her children’s well-being and her own required that they live on their own. Only with repeated assurances that he could still see the children regularly, and no threats about legal actions or custody, did he give up his threat to use his weapon and kill everyone.

When I later agreed to serve as a volunteer chaplain for the city police department, the first instruction dealt with the dangers of domestic conflicts. The police trainer noted that officers wanted to have chaplains with them in family disputes to shift the focus from law enforcement to peaceful resolution. They felt more secure when the chaplains could join them, but they warned us that these situations remained volatile and unpredictable. They didn’t have to tell me. In the months that followed, twice more I wondered if I would make it out alive. Years later, in another town, when I received another request to serve as a police chaplain, I decided that I was dealing with enough stress without adding that to the list.

An Incident on the High Road

23 Friday Oct 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Miracles, Travel

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events, Memories, Serendipity, Synchronicity

We were driving the high road from Cripple Creek to Colorado Springs, named the Gold Camp Road, nine miles following an old narrow gauge railroad bed. Actually Jan was driving, since she didn’t trust me to drive and sight-see at the same time. I do love the scenery, and it doesn’t get any better than the Gold Camp Road. It was a one way, one lane road beginning at Cripple Creek until a tunnel collapsed in 1988, and now it is a hiker and biker trail, so this event occurred before 1988.

The Alpine flowers were in multi-colored full bloom in mid-summer, the clouds were high and sparse for a rare rain-free July day, and the views of the mountain terrain and the distant foothills and high plains were forever. No one else was ahead or behind us for miles, and Jan was driving about 10 to 20 miles per hour on the loose gravel, since one side of the road was cut from the mountain rock, and other was a steep fall that had no visible bottom. Once in a while she would stop so that she could enjoy the scenery, take a break from a nervous hold on the steering wheel, and we could walk through the flowers.

In a few places the mountain rock was cut so that the single lane ran through a narrow canyon with rock on both sides. That would seem to be a secure place, but as we were driving through one of the longest of these narrow one –way passages, we saw a large dump truck barreling toward us at high speed. You could see the gravel dust billowing out behind the truck. It was not slowing down, although it was plain that there was not room for both the truck and our little Dodge Colt station wagon inside the defile at the same time. There was not time for Jan to back up, nor was there room on the shelf behind us for two vehicles side-by-side.

Jan didn’t even have time to brake to a complete stop. The truck just kept coming at full speed.

This was one of those moments that seem to last a long time, because you know you’re going to die. You have time to review your whole pathetic life in an instant.

Jan pulled the car against the right side until you could hear the panels scrape against the rock, and we both let out a loud groan in our prayers—not to become a can of sardines squished against the rocks by a truck that was large and heavy enough to destroy us without leaving so much as a dent on its bumper.

I don’t know how the truck managed to squeeze past us with just a scratch on our rear view mirror. I think it was divine intervention. We had some time left to mend our ways.

“I never saw a cross-eyed preacher…but I’d rather see than be one.”

21 Wednesday Oct 2015

Posted by chaplines2014 in Disabilities, Growing up

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A License to Preach, Memories

I was seventeen when I had the opportunity for a surgery that would either correct or confirm a visible defect. By that time I had worked for years to overcome the “diploplia” that was gradually making my right eye, the near-sighted one, more and more dominant, and my left eye, the far-sighted one, less and less effective. I had worked on muscle control exercises, used more and more prisms in my eyeglasses, changed lenses every few months, and tried bifocals, but I was still losing ground steadily in the muscle control of my eyes. Surgery was the only option left, if I was to avoid being cross-eyed and losing the use of my left eye.

Many people have had to deal with that physical defect at a younger age than I did, and many have not had an opportunity to correct it, but, whatever age a person is, the social costs are present, and a teenager, hoping for a public career, finds those costs daunting. I was not looking forward to eye surgery, which came at the end of my senior year in high school, but I was dreading the loss of eyesight and visible attractiveness more.

Eye surgery to correct the muscle arrangements for both eyes involved a three hour procedure with my eyes removed from their sockets, the ophthalmology surgeon reported, a two-day stay in the hospital, and a three to four week recovery with my eyes bandaged. It was my first surgery. I remember being nauseous afterward; my reaction to the sodium pentothal used for anesthesia was extreme. I don’t know what I said to the nurses, but I’m sure it was the truth. There was a general concern that the violence of my reaction was not helpful to my eyes, but I couldn’t do a thing about it. When I was returned to my room, I had a roommate, who happened to be a shooting victim in serious condition. I couldn’t see anything, of course, but his moaning and gasping did keep me awake throughout the night. It was a good time to pray, and his condition was clearly more critical than mine.

In the morning a tray was placed before me, and I felt my way through the various items on it. I poured the carton of milk mostly into a glass and proceeded to try to drink it, finding that it was actually cream provided for the sticky mass in the bowl, making my gag reflex return. My roommate was transferred to intensive care, I was told. All in all I was happy to go home the next day. I worried about the results of the operation for the next three weeks, until the bandages came off. The whites of my eyes were still red, but it was so much easier to focus and see without effort that I was greatly relieved.

The surgeon was pleased with the results, and, even though they weren’t perfect, they were so much improved that I no longer had to worry about loss of vision. In fact my eyesight steadily improved for many years.

I still wonder what my life and career would have been like without that surgery and its successful results. Like anyone with a visible disability, I suppose I would have adjusted and done my best to overcome the reactions of people around me and tried to compensate with other abilities. I am thankful that I didn’t have to.

“We thought we heard a siren…”

14 Wednesday Oct 2015

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A License to Preach, Memories, Serendipity

Making our home in Iroquois, Illinois, during my final year of graduate school provided a challenge to Jan and me and to the people of that rural village. Jan was pregnant with our second child and in charge of three year old Alicia without a support system other than the new friends we were making. I was serving a temporary appointment as a “student pastor” of the only church in town. They had broken away from a yoke arrangement with a church ten miles away. They were getting used to having their own pastor, but one who had no more time to give them than their previous “shared” pastor. In addition I was working on a doctoral project which turned our life together into research on how they responded to historical critical approaches to the scripture and how they were coming to grips with the social and political changes in the world around them. (That was the year that the U. S. involvement in Vietnam came to a formal end with a negotiated settlement. Racial politics and sexual roles were in widespread transition.) I traveled back and forth to Chicago every week to keep up with my doctoral work. We packed a lot into that year. Somehow both they and we survived it.

While we had lived in Chicago, Jan had studied with a fine vocal coach, Elsa Charleston, and regained the wonderful voice she had developed in high school and her first year of college, before she traded her vocal performance major for a Christian education major. In Iroquois she was on her own. Almost every day she crossed the street from the little house they had rented for us to the church, and used the piano to practice. She did the vocal exercises she had learned to do, and she worked on songs that stretched her abilities. The exercises included the “Tarzan yells” that Elsa had incorporated to increase Jan’s volume, support, and range.

One fine fall afternoon, two of the church members were in the yard taking care of the mowing and shrub trimming when they heard a sound that they had never heard before. Henry Easter stopped his lawnmower, and Tom the barber stopped his electric hedge trimmer and listened. It was coming from inside the church! They checked with each other as the sound continued, and they decided that they would have to investigate. They entered the building cautiously and stood in amazement at the back of the meeting room. They were listening to Jan’s practicing. Finally she glimpsed them standing in the back.

“Do you need something?” she asked.

“We thought we were hearing a siren,” Henry answered.

They obviously didn’t know what to think, not only about Jan’s practicing, but about our presence in their community. When the year came to an end, I received my degree, Nathan was born, and our interim appointment to serve that congregation ended also. Many shed tears at our leaving. Were they tears of sadness, or joy, or both? I’m not sure.